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[Firehawk]

Didn't read the thread so sorry if this has been mentioned, but as a noobie using the site finder IS NOT a bad idea at all. Your problem is you were to specific.

To get a noobie friendly area just pick a 3x3 embark area with:

Aquifier: No
River: Yes
Flux: Yes

This will almost always put you in an area with a decent number of trees anyways, and having a flux and a river with no aquifier is very noobie friendly (easy steel, lots of coal/lignite available, wood, water).

[Psieye]

I would argue a newbie doesn't have time to worry about steel. The very very first thing a newbie wants to learn is how to farm and how to get some basic furniture going. The metal industry can wait, stone and wood is what newbies work with as they learn the game.

So for embark advice...

Generate Pocket Region (or bigger if you're patient) and ask the site finder for Aquifer:NO and River:YES. If you want to be guaranteed trees, also ask for mid-high rainfall and mid-high drainage. That gives you the terrain-type for forests and similar lush green lands.

[greycat]

Lots of good advice here already.  I can't add much, but I can say a couple things:

• Avoid aquifers.  (Already been said, but bears repeating.)
• Don't bother with stone-fall traps.  They do very little damage now, and your dwarves will rush to reset them, right into the hands of whatever the trap failed to hurt.
• DO bother with cage traps instead.  They're ridiculously powerful.

[gtmattz]

I am going to pop in here and just say that, if the OP is not opposed to starting over once again, that he stop using whatever video tutorials he is currently using and instead try tinypirates tutorial, which comes with a prepared version of the game and (in my opinion) is the best guide for actually learning the game, even if it is for an older version.

[Tsarwash]

If you select 45 different kinds of food you'll get 45 seperate barrels, which is very useful in the beginning.

Oooh, I didn't know that. useful. Thanks.

[Zachski]

Didn't read the thread so sorry if this has been mentioned, but as a noobie using the site finder IS NOT a bad idea at all. Your problem is you were to specific.

To get a noobie friendly area just pick a 3x3 embark area with:

Aquifier: No
River: Yes
Flux: Yes

This will almost always put you in an area with a decent number of trees anyways, and having a flux and a river with no aquifier is very noobie friendly (easy steel, lots of coal/lignite available, wood, water).

Those were the parameters I WAS using.

It would place me in the middle of an un-embarkable mountain range.  Which is why I had to add other variables.

In any case, I suppose I should start over.  Again.  Because I'm trying to deal with this aquifer, but that means I have no stone, and that's quickly getting annoying.

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?

Erm.

I create pocket islands. They come with plenty of salt water and aquifers, so you should make a pocket region instead. Creating these tiny worlds is really fast, this is why I create them instead of the huge worlds.

The only parameters that I would change if I were you, are the minimum numbers for the volcanoes. Volcanoes are awesome, so up it to 20 for a pocket region or so.

EDIT: Okay, I see now.

Alrighty, 20 for a pocket region.  Got it.

Next: finding a suitable site.

Find the mountains on your pocket region. Find their edge that connects to the nearby forest. Look through these squares until you find the brook that probably is somewhere along this line; if you can't find a brook, look through all available squares of your pocket region until you find a river. Follow that river until you find a suitable spot for your embark.

You are really new, so you can really just embark anywhere though, until you get the farming down.

My problem is whenever I find a perfect location like this, it has an aquifer.

Next: farming.

Farming is really the only thing that you need to hurry to get doing. I will assume that you found a suitable spot with trees, shrubs, some river or brook and some murky pools.

The shrubs mean that you can do and should do some aboveground farming straight away, before messing around with irrigation projects for your plump helmet farms.

While you send your miners to cut some holes into the ground and your lumberjack to cut down some trees, enable the plant gathering labor on all of the idlers.

I would recommend that you download Dwarf Therapist for this, because it can get quite tedious with the game's interface.
Dwarf Therapist thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66525

If you don't want to use the Therapist, you need to find the idle dwarf, then (p)reference - (l)abour - scrollscrollscroll Plant Gathering.

Anyway, collect some prickle berries and rat weeds and put them into food stockpiles (just a hint: disable barrels for this plant stockpile. Let them put the booze into a different stockpile. q-s enables you to change the settings of your stockpiles.)

Build a small farming plot (2x2 tiles is sufficient for now, really) in the open, on some soily squares. Tell this farming plot to farm prickle berries or whatever you got.

Build a still.

Now, I am going to assume that you started out with some booze, so it's not really necessary to get a booze production ready so quickly, but booze and access to some food is really the one vital thing in your fortress. You don't want to ever have the dwarves in the desperate vermin-hunting mode; and as long as there's booze, you don't need a water source anyway unless anybody got hurt and is in the hospital.

Once this is set up, feel free to do your digging and subterranean farming experiments.

Alright.  I guess I'm just in "Plump Helmet" mode since that can be used for booze.

[Lord Vetinari]

If you have problems with underground farming, you can set up more traditional (for a human, that is) above ground farms. You just need soil and you'll avoid all the irrigation thing. Seeds are gathered from plants (d->p, select some bushes, you may need to enable the herbalist job on some dwarf: v, select the dwarf ->p->l->farming and related->plant gathering) and fruits can be brewed just like underground farms. It's not really dwarfy, but it will keep your dwarves alive, fed and drunk while you're making experiments with underground irrigation.

[Lytha]

Alright.  I guess I'm just in "Plump Helmet" mode since that can be used for booze.

Strawberries, Longland Grass, Prickle Berries, ... heck, almost all plants can be used for booze. The only ones that can't be used are Quarry Bushes, Dimple Cups, Hide Roots and Bladeweed.

Having your dwarves  on a diet of Strawberry Wine might seem not very dwarfish, but you should do that to keep them safe at first.

[Zachski]

actually, moot point, I managed to empty a pool into an underground cavern and have now made a Plump Helmet farm out of it.

w00t.  Booze for all!

Also, I've got some... random dwarves with random skills now.  Awesome.

[Nameless Archon]

Also, I've got some... random dwarves with random skills now.  Awesome.

These are probably migrants. Just like most other 'simcity' type games, your population will fluctuate. In SimCity, you have to deal with expatriation, but in Dwarf Fortress, goblins and tantrums serve the same purpose.

It's already been recommended once, but I will recommend it again. If you're not using Dwarf Therapist, you're a masochist. It's that good. It will enormously streamline the process of assigning your migrants to useful endeavors!

Now that you have farms, and your embark gear is underground, your next order of business is defense. Weapons/Armor/Militia, Lots O' Traps, Architecture (Bridges!), Attack Animals. Pick one and get started, before the cougars get hungry.

[Chandrak]

Does DwarfTherapist work for the latest version? The wiki lists it as 31.14

I've never used it, but now that I've looked into it it looks pretty helpful, considering my comp is capable of running 250+ populations.

[gtmattz]

Does DwarfTherapist work for the latest version? The wiki lists it as 31.14

I've never used it, but now that I've looked into it it looks pretty helpful, considering my comp is capable of running 250+ populations.

Yes it works with .16, the thread has not been updated, but if you follow the link to the project page and download the most current version, it has the appropriate offsets to work.