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[Horizon9]

Pretty much any mistake you made that was bad enough to make you have fun.
For example, on every fortress so far that I've made, I always forgot to make a still, which made everything so slow by the time I noticed it, I couldn't do anything about it.
I had a lot of fun.

[Eric Blank]

The first few forts of mine were defeated by starvation, a trend that continued for quite a while, until eventually one was finally beaten during an invasion.

I just didn't know how to properly farm and maintain my stockpiles.

[dennislp3]

Mine was the neglecting of my metal industry...I was to busy setting up everything all perfect like that when the gobs showed up....I was screwed

[h3lblad3]

Immediately beginning bedroom preparations anytime migrants arrived.

Migrants can wait until I finish what I'm doing.  They don't need bedrooms right away.

[Astramancer]

Mine was forgetting to check the zlevel below when I was diverting a brook.  I ended up diverting it through my dining hall.  (fortunately, I'm kind of particular when it comes to all rooms having doors, so it wasn't *that* bad)

[malimbar04]

Stage 1: first few forts were killed by thirst in the winter. I fixed that, then they died of starvation before I figured out how to butcher animals and build wells.

stage 2: I figured it was a good idea to farm, and flooded a good 3 or 4 fortresses before I stopped making stupid mining mistakes and figured out how floodgates work. A decent amount of fun.

Stage 3: I make an early farm and still, but still largely neglect my army. 2 fighters who occasionally wrestle can't hold off a goblin siege... or a troll... or a forgotten beast or two. Lots of fun at this point.

Stage 4: (I'm here right now) vultures and cliffs are the bane of my existance. My practiced sworddwarf rushes in a mad frenzy with a wooden sword, beating the poor flying vermin senseless until he promptly falls off a cliff and drowns. half of my army does this. Good fun.

[Internet Kraken]

Make sure you are building a proper irrigation chamber. Otherwise, you'll flood your entire fortress.

[lanceleoghauni]

DOORS

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm... my first fort...

My first fort was actually a wild success, I got a queen, magma forges, turned back seiges, built a waterworks and some indoor waterfalls...

Cave-ins. 

Stupid cave-in mistakes because I wasn't cautious enough with the channeling designation.

Also, I had problems with having my mayor have a wall that touched the outside of the mountain, so she would run outside during seiges to have conversations with the diplomats through the wall.  Yeah, always F***ing Fun when unresolved glitches in behavior make everything take hundreds of times longer and make your legendaries run headlong into a seige.

[Terv]

So long ago... Pre-40d if I remember correctly. My dwarves starved. The dehydrated. They were accosted by terrible vermin. I brought no dogs or cats. That damn river within the mountain always flooded over on my dwarves, so they drowned as well. A few were killed due to moods, that is FAILED moods. Spending time giving EVERY dwarf an uber bedroom (of course, they had no food or drink, but did I care? NO! They needed cool rooms... I quickly got over that habit). I never tapped into magma that time, mainly because the dwarves were dead or dying... Ahhhh, the early days when there wasn't half as many features, and I felt like I was learning a new language. After much fun did I get the hang of things.

[Thadius]

Heh.  I just put 'Dwarf fort walkthrough' back in 40d and didn't have any problems with my first fort.  I liken it to looking up at the sheer cliff with an overhang that is learning Dwarf Fort, and then looking over to the side to find somebody already carved out an upward staircase that had finely prepared roasts and barrels of booze on the side for when I got thirsty or hungry, along with a table and chair to use as a rest stop.  When I finally reached the top of the cliff, I looked back down and saw my life as it had been, and openly mocked my old self for thinking it was too hard.

Then I went and tried it without anyone holding my hand and learned that carving that upward staircase is hard work on your own.  I've never made any serious fort destroying mistakes, but when I mess around with something I haven't tried yet?  ...My complaints of forts not dying are suddenly silenced in the screams of tantruming dwarves and the sound of me savescumming.

[jester]

I started in 2D, once I got things worked out the first issue I had was pretty much boatmurdered.  6 cages in the trap but 8 big E's running at it, 6 get caught and my dwarves dash out to get them.  A dwarf goes splat and leaves precious socks in the 1 wide corridor now packed with dancing E's.  You all know how this ends.  I also did pretty much the same thing in 40d a few times, only put 6 cage traps in on the elephant path and 8 show up.

  Giant stone stockpile outside the door was something I insisted on having for a while too.

  The biggest, most fun and memorable one for me though is the fort that taught me not to use my main corridors as booze stockpiles when there are fireimps about.   Booze fires are impressive at the best of times, but this was my first serious fort and I had about 2000 booze in stock, all in a 5 wide corridor (2D version so it was the only corridor heading back into the mountain). 
  Fireimp turns up and is dispatched quickly with no wounds that I can see, but wait, what is this? the dwarfs (pig tail glove) is now a !!pig tail glove!!, what could this mean? To the wiki!!!  Ohhhh dear, this isnt good, poor urist is on fire and nobody can save him.  Quickly get a tomb assigned to the poor hero and forbid all his stuff.  Its sad to see poor Urist doomed and we drink to salute his bravery but it is not a huge cost for the death of a fire imp.  Raise your mugs to Urist lads, look at him, a true dwarf, skoalling his last moments away....   and falling over dead and burning RIGHT ONTO MY FUCKING BOOZE!  URIST YOU STUPID FUCK! OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT WHATTHEFUCKDOIDO?  maybe it will all be ok?  if I just ignore it maybe it wont set the booze on fire?  no, no booze definately burns.  Jesus look at that ripple effect its almost as fast as a dwarf can run.....    no wait... looks faster....   yep, definately faster.

I think I lost about 30 dwarves to the initial explosion and then about 40 more to the next few hellish minutes.  I sat and watched the goods stockpile outside burn for a while and then abandoned, the whole inside of the fort seemed to be on fire.  I couldnt see anything for the smoke

[Vattic]

I didn't know about d - b - d, h, f for mass [d]umping, [h]iding, [f]orbidding respectively. Such a simple thing to miss so much time wasted.

[LordSlowpoke]

To be perfectly honest to you guys, when I first modded DF, I was drunk, and somehow thought [HOMEOTHERM] was [BADASSLEVEL], seeing how dwarves have over nine thousand of it and such. Then I added [SEVERONBREAKS] for the sake of it. !!dwarf pancreas!! everywhere.

[OldManNeck]

In the newer version, I always forget to set up farming. And once I remember to, I fail hard at setting up irrigation.