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[Zachski]

My problem is I can't find a site that

A: Has no aquifer (I swear, 95% of the ground in world is an aquifer!)
B: Is near a river
C: Isn't salt water (If it isn't A, it's C)
D: Has trees

The finder thing... it doesn't want to help me.  I'll say no aquifer, medium elevation, medium temperature, yes to rocks, and yes to rivers... and while it'll get temperature/rocks/rivers right, it'll play me in either a low elevation or un-embarkable mountain... that has aquifers.  Or, on the rare occasion it gets the aquifers right (in that it doesn't have any) it's a salt-water location.

Help me, please... I've created three worlds so far and they either have this problem or are so huge that it takes a long time to render.

[BigJake]

The first is easy; just mod out aquifers.  That should help you find whatever you need.

By editing the the raws and removing the [AQUIFER] tag from all of the appropriate entries in inorganic_stone_layer.txt and inorganic_stone_soil.txt it is possible to remove all aquifers from the world. Make sure you do this before creating a new world to play on.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Aquifer#The_modding_method

[Zachski]

The first is easy; just mod out aquifers.  That should help you find whatever you need.

By editing the the raws and removing the [AQUIFER] tag from all of the appropriate entries in inorganic_stone_layer.txt and inorganic_stone_soil.txt it is possible to remove all aquifers from the world. Make sure you do this before creating a new world to play on.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Aquifer#The_modding_method

That... seems like cheating.

[BigJake]

You don't have to take all of them out.  Maybe a third or half and you'll have a much easier time finding a decent site.  Either that or learn how to breach an aquifer; it really is very fun.

[Zachski]

You don't have to take all of them out.  Maybe a third or half and you'll have a much easier time finding a decent site.  Either that or learn how to breach an aquifer; it really is very fun.

Quite frankly, I'm a complete newbie at this game.  As in, I just downloaded it today.  And it's frustrating because nothing is going according to the video tutorial.

The "Finder" function won't work right (it'll find an area with things when I told it not to find that area).  I have two miners, and designating a spot to mine will result in only one of them doing anything.  The last time I tried, I ended up in a marble area with water and absolutely no trees.

And every tutorial I've found states to avoid places with aquifers.

I suck at this game.  I'm tempted to say this game sucks, but really, I suck at it, and I'm so frustrated because I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[BigJake]

Sorry you're having a hard time, I'll try to help as best I can.  It's definitely hard to get started.  First of all, the finder is pretty much junk, don't use it.  Finding an area with trees is pretty easy, just stay away from completely mountainous areas and look for at least Woodland.  The game will tell you on the right whether there are trees and other plants; you want those words green.  You should be able to spot forests on the map, those are what you want.  It might be kind of hard to find a forest without an aquifer but I usually have luck looking along the slopes of mountain ranges.   

I can't imagine why your miners wouldn't be mining.  You can view your dwarfs with the (v) key and while highlighted press (p) then (l).  In this screen you can set which labors each dwarf will do.  If mining if enabled and they have picks, you should be mining.  More specifics will allow us to help you better.

edit:  The best advice any DF player will get is to use the wiki.  Use the wiki, use the wiki, use the wiki.  Learning this game takes reading, mostly because of the byzantine interface.  Also, you should pick up Dwarf Therapist in the link below.  Trust me, it is very easy to use and will make dealing with your dwarfs MUCH easier.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525

[Eskielidder]

Don't think of it as cheating....more like bending the world to suite your ideals.

But I mod out Aquifers as well, hate the dam things. I've also given up using the 'Find a site' function as it clearly has different ideas of what I want than I do.

I've also spent hours (3+), genning worlds and searching for a very nice noob friendly embark location. But definately stick with manual searching.

WRT your miners, did you bring 2 picks with you when embarking, could be a case of 2 miners but only 1 pick.

and finally....Welcome to DF, the learning curve is epic, but so is the game.

[xellas84]

First things first... NEVER try to use the silly site finder.  It's been broken for... oh at least 10 versions now.  It's worthless.

I've never had a problem finding sites with no aquifer + water source... brooks are your friend, since they are like rivers with half the danger.  Trees aren't all that vital to a fortress in the end... the only thing that they do for you that can't be done with metal is beds, and almost all the caravans bring at least 2 pages worth of trees on sale for dirt cheap (Traders are IDIOTS.  One masterwork obsidian mug can buy out 5 pages of trees... which is probably a few hundred TONS of wood!)

As for beginning hints:

Dig in fast.  Hollow out a decent sized room and set up some stockpiles to store your junk inside, cause the last thing you want are thief critters starting to steal food and critical items.  Your miners will get around to anything you designate, but it may take a few minutes.  Patience is your friend here.

When laying out your fortress, make all main corridors at LEAST 3 tiles wide.  Trust me, when you get to triple digit dwarf numbers you'll be thanking yourself.

Remember to work in 3 dimensions.  Housing a hundred dwarves can be done with only 5 zlevels of space and 4 apartment towers, and all your dwarves will be very pleased with their accommodations.

Farming is your friend:  Work out how to irrigate things quickly early on.  The easiest way is to dig a small tunnel to the bottom of a murky pool, stop short 1 tile, put in a floodgate, hook it up to a lever, then channel out the last tile to let the water loose.  Voila, you have an irrigation system, just pull the lever to start it and again to stop it.  A good precaution is to channel a 2x5 'trench' in the side of the room opposite to your floodgate to let excess water flow into... and believe me, there's ALWAYS excess water.

A very good defense is a 1 tile wide section of flooring over a 5 zlevel deep pit with traps on it.  Iron serrated blades will absolutely shred about 90% of what you'll encounter early on, and make an appreciable dent in the rest of things.  If the trap doesn't kill it, the fall will cripple it and leave it easy prey for even an unskilled dwarf to stab to death.

The 'Danger Room' training method will make a 10 warrior squad legendary inside of a year.  It is your friend.  However, my advise is to be a sexist prick and use ONLY MEN in your armed forces, as the women are too stupid to put their babies down when they enter the spiked room of infant death.  Tantruming legendary axedwarves are a great source of FUN.

Cats need to be caged ASAP.  Leave only two males out if possible.  Alternatively, keep an eye on alerts about kitten birth and cage the little mewling bundles of bolts quickly.

The forum is your friend, and will help with most questions.

[Dr. Melon]

I disagree with the "cats must be caged" tip from the poster above. Wait until your first catsplosion, then you'll have plenty of meat for the butcher!

[Darkmere]

Well. I got ninja'd 4 times while typing a response. So I'll leave it at this. Start small. Once you figure out a particular industry you'll know it forever, basically. Step one: Food and booze. Step two: Housing. Step three: trade something. Step four: basically whatever. Play with weapon traps and wall building, or figure out the military interface and metalworking. Once your minions aren't sober or starving, the rest is kinda free-form.

Don't be discouraged when forts fail, either. Losing is FUN!

[BigJake]

Also, check out the sticky on farming if you haven't already.

[Fellhuhn]

Important note on the site finding business:

You will most likely see sites that cover multiple biomes (switch through them via F1-Fx-keys). That may be why the finder is not working right, or at least looks like that. You also don't need rivers. I find them annoying because they ruin the FPS and don't really add a lot. If you only find sites with an aquifier and are a newbie: Take a site that has a steep mountain cliff. That should give you enough room and material for your fortress without breaching the aquifier.

[Zachski]

I have 2 picks, and actually, both dwarves are mining.  I was just being impatient.

I'm gonna have to start over.  AGAIN.  I can't figure out how to edit each dwarves' specific orders (funny how I studied the video tutorial just before this, and all that knowledge has just poofed.), my miners are refusing to dig because of damp stone, and I can't get a farm going because I can't figure out how to get the dwarves to bring water to this channel (which means I probably did it wrong.  Doh.).  And my farmer refuses to actually plot the farmland.  Which sucks.  Which means I can't get booze going.

And inexplicably, all of my dwarves just stopped working.  Argh!  This interface is a little confusing...

Okay, when creating a world, what are the settings you use?  What items should I bring?  How should I spread out my initial professions?  Do I aim for temperate, or warm?

[Darkmere]

You can just re-designate the damp stone tiles once they've been revealed and the miners will go knock them out. Manually filling an area is part of the pond zone fill command, covered in the farming sticky at the top of this forum, step-by-step.

[Chandrak]

I disagree with the "cats must be caged" tip from the poster above. Wait until your first catsplosion, then you'll have plenty of meat for the butcher!

I'd agree with the above. Once you've got 1.5 to 2 pages of pets/animals on the animals tab (press z for your fortress status), building butcher shops and then butchering every new foal/kitten/puppy/calf that gets born is a GREAT way to do things. It keeps you well-stocked in Bones for Crafted Goods, Skins for Leather and Bags, Meat for food preparation, and Fat/Tallow for other stuff.

However, that being said - it may be a bit much to take in / pay attention to all the alerts as a new player, and it IS simpler to just build one cage and assign pets to it.

I would highly advise doing a search on 'Catsplosion' and 'Meat Industry' on the Dwarf Fortress Wiki for more info there. Dealing with Catsplosions IS important to learn about as a newbie, because it can kill your framerate.

On the embark site side, I can make a few suggestions that might help.

1st, dont look for rivers near the ocean. For some reason, I've found they often end up being saltwater.

2nd, look for Brooks instead of Rivers. Brooks are listed in the info screen to the right if they are present. It will say something like 'Brook: The  <Insert Name Here>' just above where it lists the kind of stone. Streams and Rivers actually show up on the Region Map (the middle one), but Brooks can be in any region tile, giving you more leeway.

3rd, I'd recommend looking in Mountain tiles that border Forest tiles on the region map. There is almost always some spillover between region tiles. When you find a tile thats a mountain next to a Forest of some kind (Jungle/Swamp/Temperate Forest, doesnt matter), you can move around with umhk to select the proper spot - center it where theres some mountain and some forest in the local tab on the left. Mountains rarely ever have aquifers, and many of them do have brooks.