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[GHudston]

I haven't played Dwarf Fortress in months.

I REALLY want to, of course, but as soon as I got past the first few "everyone dies of hunger/thirst/tantrums/goblins" fortresses and started trying to build more elaborate designs I ran into a problem. I seem to be incapable of finding a good embark location and so I usually fail before I've even begun, which is the only type of losing that isn't fun.

I must have generated hundreds of maps in the last couple of weeks and, every time I get as far as picking a spot that looks ok on the map and hitting "e", I always end up with a dull landscape without any interesting redeeming features of which to speak of. It's not really helping me to begin any megaprojects any time soon!

I've seen some amazing landscapes on this forum so how do you go about finding what you want? Is there some method to it? Is it just patience? Do you use thid party tools? (I've tried the perfect worlds utility, it creates pretty world maps but the embarks seem to be the same. Unless I'm doing it wrong of course!) Am I missing something or is it just luck? Also, I'm interested to know what YOU look for in an embark point? Anything you cannot live without?

[geoduck]

You need to be clearer on what you find inspiring. Lots of mountains? Evil biome? When you are picking out an embark site, you can use the TAB key which cycle through several info screens, including elevation differences at your current possibility.

[Urist Imiknorris]

If you don't have any interesting features, then MAKE SOME.

[GHudston]

You need to be clearer on what you find inspiring. Lots of mountains? Evil biome? When you are picking out an embark site, you can use the TAB key which cycle through several info screens, including elevation differences at your current possibility.

I'm sort of interested in what everyone else does to find their ideal embark locations, there are so many styles of play with this game and I'd love to see what people do when they're on the embark screen trying to choose a location.

I'm finding that even when I make use of every info screen available (especially the hightmap/cliffs screens) I never have a clue what my final embark is going to look like, I find that it just doesn't really give a good indication of the landscape beyond the biome and whether it will have a river or volcano in it. I'd love, just once, to see a decent waterfall, some sheer cliffs or something like that, all I seem to get is either a very flat area or a big slope that covers the entire map. No variety at all! I just thought that I'd check to see what methods everyone else uses because it's DF and I'm probably doing it wrong!

If you don't have any interesting features, then MAKE SOME.

That would be the more dwarfy solution to the problem, yes. I wonder how long it would take to actually BUILD a suitable mountain and then carve a fortress in it.

[Internet Kraken]

I don't get why some people are so picky about their embarks when they don't even have a clear goal in mind. If you're not working towards some specific goal, why do you need a special embark?

[Tuxman]

Well, when I embark I look for a completely flat (or mostly flat) area, devoid of life (badlands, desert, wasteland) and then build a tiny outpost. The difficulty should be (in the beginning at least) to survive, although with the caves now any area is easy...

Its an interesting notion that now Dwarves can found a base with no difficulty in any biome due to their ability to dig down to the cavern level in but a moment...

But you have to find your own style of play. do you purposely lack planning when you build, or perhaps do you plan exactly what you're doing? Do you like to build fortresses across many many z-levels, or perhaps you like to keep them confined to a few? This all matters...

[GHudston]

I don't get why some people are so picky about their embarks when they don't even have a clear goal in mind. If you're not working towards some specific goal, why do you need a special embark?

If you were building a new settlement you'd find the best place for it before starting, you wouldn't just plonk it down on the first hillside you found. At least that's what I'd do, but then again I'm the sort to get crippled by the "blank canvas" when it comes to most creative things. Everything must be perfect before I can even begin! *twitch*

Perhaps I was a bit unclear in my post anyway (it is 4am here afterall...). I want to know what everyone here looks for when starting a new fortress, it's obviously a personal prefence sort of thing so I was hoping to start a discussion beyond the obvious "I want easy magma, so I build near a volcano" type stuff. It wasn't really supposed to be a basic newbie question, I can go to the wiki for that.

Well, when I embark I look for a completely flat (or mostly flat) area, devoid of life (badlands, desert, wasteland) and then build a tiny outpost. The difficulty should be (in the beginning at least) to survive, although with the caves now any area is easy...

Its an interesting notion that now Dwarves can found a base with no difficulty in any biome due to their ability to dig down to the cavern level in but a moment...

But you have to find your own style of play. do you purposely lack planning when you build, or perhaps do you plan exactly what you're doing? Do you like to build fortresses across many many z-levels, or perhaps you like to keep them confined to a few? This all matters...

I like to build to the landscape. I like the idea of hollowing out a mountain, building a huge entrance in the cliffside, or rerouting a river for my own purposes that sort of thing. I've had a few lucky embarks that have been really exciting, like one with a volcano at the base of a large cliff face where I built my entrance (this was my third fortress, I got killed by imps ) and another one which was divided in half by a massive 30 tile wide river with waterfalls flowing into it from both sides, unfortunately in winter the downstream end of the river froze over and simultaneously lagged my game to hell and flooded my fortress (it was FUN though ). It's these kind of embarks that get me started with a good fortress, but I just can't seem to find any when I actually go looking for them.

[axus]

I usually pick "boring" spots with some similar characteristics. 

Heavily forested, I like lots of trees.
No running water, I like high framerate.  Now that I got a new computer, this may change
Layers of flux stones, I like steel.
Temperate climate, I like seasons   Rain is nice because I don't have a river.
I'm ambivalent about magma or aquifers.
Some wildlife, nothing too dangerous though!

Oh yeah, no big cliffs, framerate again.  I don't like perfectly flat, though, I like some small hills to construct a tower on.

[Hans Lemurson]

I too have suffered from the "Blank Canvas" problem.  You can spend a lot of time "looking for inspiration" and getting nowhere because of one tiny little detail:

If you don't have a good idea of what you're looking for, then you won't know when you've got there, now will you?

My advice here is have a sort of "checklist" of specific tasks you need to accomplish to get your dwarves settled in.  While you're doing this you will get a good general "feel" for the place and can start planning your dwarvenly plans.

[Zaik]

I personally like to have a mostly flat area with two seperate levels, so i can dig into the lower one and only have to build one wall instead of 4 and only a little bit of roof. Bonus if it naturally vorms into a V so i can start walling it before i even dig it all out. Helps defend against nasty wildlife like alligators and whatnot early.

[bumblepuppy]

My favourite sites are either glacier, tundra, or desert type biomes. If I have sand I usually like a volcano to go with it as well to make glassmaking super easy. My current fortress is on a very cold glacier on relatively high elevation with a chalk layer and no aquifer -- so cold I could not bring food, drink or lumber with me on embarking, and there is no wildlife on the surface because it's too damn cold for them. The entire map is composed of mountains, glaciers, and tundras. The dwarven civs have all died out -- only goblins remain. It was really exciting to try and keep my initial seven dwarves alive long enough to set up proper food and water sources.

Previously I would always go for glacier/tundras that had access to traders, which tends to be rare because it's usually too cold for them to bother venturing out. I decided to change my tactics after I started to rely on them too much to the point of making the game dull (build heaps of craftdwarves' workshops, assign a hefty amount of stonecrafters to them and proceed to buy everything you need).

[Lemunde]

If you want waterfalls, try to find a site where rivers intersect.  There's no guarantee but I got a really nice one doing that.

I think too many people rely too much on the site finder.  It really cuts down on the variety of sites that are available to you.  As does relying on any particular resource.  For a bit of a challenge, try embarking on a site that just looks good to you.  Don't worry about whether it has the stone you need or if there's an aquifer running through it.  Just go with it and deal with the problems as you find them.  You may be surprised at the different tactics you'll have to rely on.

[oolon1]

When I embark on an area, I want the terrain features to "speak" to me.  To inspire me to construct something more organic-feeling, something more than just a few rectangles, to feel alive.  I just embarked on a site that has a neat little 7-level hill near the middle of what is otherwise a wide open plain, with two sides of the map ascending into the nearby mountain range.  I love this isolated hill--it's this kind of feature that inspires me to build a magnificent tower growing from it.  Also, underground, the third cavern is 60 levels deep and has a winding one-tile-wide ramp twisting down the entire space.  My imagination runs wild with ideas of building a vertical fort in the narrow pillars that span the entire depth of this cavern.  I'm sad that I'll probably abandon it as soon as the new release comes out just because I want bedrooms to work.

This game will be a magnitude better when we can preview embark site terrain.  If it only takes five seconds for me to go from "Play Now" to the embark site, then I hope in the near future we can get a preview (at the very least) of what the surface looks like before we embark.

In my experience, embarking near mountains with cliffs in the red (8+) provides the best opportunity for interesting terrain features.  Finding waterfalls has been hit or miss lately, but that is always a fun place to build a fortress, as are river junctions (they form nice isolated areas of rock that are fun to carve out).

Anyway, to the original post, I can relate.  I have several old versions of DF where I generated hundreds of worlds, or generated a world I liked and made copies of the folder.  But until there's a feature of the game that lets you preview the actual embark site at full resolution, it's impossible to know exactly what your embark will look like until you commit to the location.

[FleshForge]

Why don't you look in the Worldgen Cookbook thread, there are some really interesting embarks there.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64032.0

In particular some really dramatic waterfalls:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64032.msg1511600#msg1511600
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64032.msg1530092#msg1530092

[KaguroDraven]

I just gotta ask, since it's semi-on topic, this has been bothing me, and i just started playing like a week ago(NerfNow got me interested in checking it out finally). How the heck does one get a map like Boatmurdered? I mostly mean with the river of magma near the top level, I've started on volcanos but those only have a small 'lake' of magma.