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[cog disso]

I chop down all nearby trees, position the fort entrace, decide which pond I'll have to drain so I can farm.

[DumbfoundedElf]

1.Digging, chopping and gathering designations
2.Fishing zone (if there's a river) and hope for no drowning
3.Carpenter, still, crafting and siege workshops( siege because I want some "last stand" protection quickly, makes me feel safer)
4.Beginning stockpiles
5.Separate rooms (3x3)
6.second floor, normally my workshop and furnace central
7. Meeting area
8. squads

[celem]

Interesting to see a range of tactics.....

So heres mine:

1. Dig in entrance approx 5-10 tiles, sink up/down stair approx 15 z-levels just inside entrance, looking for a cavarn strike ideally. Meanwhile, universal stockpile right outside entrance, pick/cut area around fort mouth.

2. all stone hauling labours off...dont need stone yet, non herbalist,cutter/miner hauls from wagon

3. 5x5 dorm and 5x5 meeting hall go in 1z above cavern or ~15z down (noise). Lose wagon

4. carpenter and mason shop outside on the grass, stone and wood specific piles beside, selected dorfs get stone haul (anyone but wood/stone crew)

5. Miners channel moat with single tile left ramped, mech workshop goes up outside.....rock mechanisms (i always embark with an engineer) + wood cage = temp traps

6. Move inside, miners clear workshop/stockpile rooms 1-2z below entrance (entrance z ultimately only Depot and traps...but later)

Next Up in order: Indoor farm plots,clear tree farm in soil levels (helps to irrigate food/tree farms together and your miners skill clearing big soil rooms), irrigation, wall inside moat, bridge, well in cavern water, pierce (and seal) 2nd/3rd caverns, find magma, metalworking/exploratory digging

2nd Yr: Traps that dont fall under (b)-(T) menu, weapons/armor, militia

I generally leave my farms later than tutorials indicate (and a lot of other folks judging by this thread)
I typically embark with 1 training axe and gut most of the utility end of items (splint/crutch/rope/bag/bucket), this frees space for booze which allows you to delay the farms.  Early well means bringing a rope.  Its fairly simple to free enough points to bring sufficient booze to see 7 dwarves through to caravan 1.  In this time they eat what you brought, supplement with picking from bushes, youll also get a nice outdoor seed range.
More Fun embarks on evil/savage terrain often require some reordering:)..im more into getting indoors asap than reaching the depth to avoid surface noise reaching bedrooms

[Psieye]

It occurs to me: am I the only person who brings stone on embark, just to speed things up that little bit more at the start? Plus, I get to choose some really interesting rock on embark - typically being Uranium Ore (Pitchblende). I have workshops set up about the time the miner takes his first swing with his pick and the 7 beds and 4 pairs of chairs/tables which form my basic living arrangements are done long before the rock from mining can be hauled back. I don't even bother bringing all my goods over to my entrance when I start, I train some war dogs and tie them up next to the wagon and it deters animal thieves. Alternatively, I could just wall off my wagon so I can get away with fewer ropes and war dogs but I've never had much trouble with animal thieves.

All this time I save goes into clearing away rubble as I always bring Proficient miners on embark. I want my legendary miners fast so I can get at the riches of the earth without worrying about destroying it while digging it out.


Why yes, I do get into trouble for accumulating wealth way too early.

[Uzu Bash]

Why build anything on embark? You got the stone around you, just carve it the shape you want and put on some doors. It's quicker, lower maintenance, and gives you stones to work with later. Especially if time is a crucial factor in getting shelter, why screw around with pieces of wood and stone?

Try this for a comparison: One embark where you dig nothing for a year, another where you build nothing for a year, and see where they both stand.

[LoveMachine]

Ugh, I bring an anvil, 3 copper bars and 3 magma-safe stone.
I forge 2 picks and an axe with the wood from the wagon (only takes a couple of days with a fair weaponsmith) and get the woodcutter to train war dogs until his axe is ready.  Others gather plants.  Takes a while micromanaging labours.

I heartily agree with digging straight for the cavern; free mud saves a lot of messing with farm irrigation.  The times I've played I found magma by the second cavern - so I think I'll always dig for the third asap looking for that or shiny stuff.

I dig a fair hallway in the soil/sand to get the food stockpiled underground, chain a wardog at the entrance and dig one-tile wide ramps as straight down as possible.  If I hit a solid block of economic stone I'll make a 3 tile landing with space for the mason to build 3 tables and chairs.

When I hit the cavern I'll check to if it's an easy to secure place (low ceilings and/or bottlenecks are perfect).  If not I'll wall it off and keep digging hoping for better lower down.

Once I see a nice spot I'll build a farm and stockpile the seeds beside it to get the plump helmets going.

Miners remove upramps and a couple of others will wall off gaps which can't be sealed that way.  It's surprising how quickly you can secure a large area this way - from ground units that is.

Carpenter likely has enough trees down there for the seven beds.  Tables and chairs in the middle of the space should make a grand dining room even on cheap rock.

I play in wilderness areas and always seem to get a pack of crundles in the first two caverns (is this always the case?  Like rivers spawn with hippos that you never see again?).  These can't seem to take down a civilian and with a bit of luck a wardog will kill one or two for an amateur butcher to cut up.

I get a still and kitchen going and set up a small (5x15) magma forge area if I can.  I'll mine enough rock to build defensive walls up to the ceilings and then go dig sand for training while the dining room and "bedrooms" are set up in the dank cavern.

Then I start churning out barrels, a bucket and mechanisms if I don't have a magma forge.

Needless to say this isn't going to work with scary wildlife around and a big flying monster or tribe of bat people would make short work of everyone, but once I went 3 years forgetting to complete the walls and nothing flew in.  Wilderness is just a gentle biome I guess?

Heh, I just realised that I consider digging a ditch to keep beasties out to be an exploit, but I'm fine with removing ramps for some reason.

ON EDIT:  Having started a couple more forts I realise that I was just really lucky.  The above concerns maps with less than 70 underground levels and magma pipes seem rarer than I thought =)

[RandomNumberGenerator]

Evil areas often have some interesting stuff in varying combinations, like silverbarb (high value booze, dye) and phantom spiders (above ground webbing) and friendly neighbors like ogres and harpies and werewolves.

Sliver Barbs(Not silver) actually brew into gutter cruor, a low-value liquor, or can be milled into sliver dye, an average-value dye which turns things black. Blue dye from dimple cups or green dye from rat weeds is worth the same amount, though having black dye in and of itself is still pretty cool.

Evil forests also have Glumprongs, a type of tree that has purple wood and is about twice as heavy as most other trees(thus it makes good arrows and bolts, but bad bins or barrels). It has the same value as other woods, though once again simply having purple beds might be worth it even if they have the same value.

[konzill]

I use a custom embark with a wooden training axe, some stone and ore to make bronze. so my pattern is

1) build a wood burner & designate a wood pile.
2) start chopping more wood
3) build a smelter (and strart smelting coal which I brought)
4) build a carpentry shop if there if there is no easily reachable stone this will build 3 chairs & three tables, after that (or right away) 6 beds then bins and barrels.
5) build a forge
6) forge 2 bronze picks and start mining with thee rooms
   1) an office for my manager / bookkeeper
   2) a 2 seat dining room
   3) a dormatory.
7) if I have easily reached stone then I build a mason (the mason will build tables and chairs if I haven't already, then doors, floodgates coffers and cabinets).and mechanics shop

then I will dig down 10 z levels.  The first underground area will be for a food stockpile with a fishery, butcher kitchen and still.

  first export industry I start up is glass making for which I bring plenty of pre bagged sand as this is often cheaper then bringing empty bags.  Once set up my glass maker will make goblets, serrated discs and musical instruments.  If I have no stone I build a second glass furnace and make green glass coffers and cabinets (after an initial run of trade goods).

I used to deliberately start on an aquifer and use pumps and windmills to breech it (hence the if there is no stone strategy). However after a few times this got a little boring.

[gtmattz]

What do you do first after embarking?

Make a temporary food stockpile, then deconstruct my wagon and make an axe and deforest the map while gathering all the plants.

[Arkenstone]

What I usually do in my fort is seperate all non-specialists out into two groups: Peons and Serfs.  Pions do bulk mining, masonry and hauling, while Serfs do woodcutting and food-related jobs.  (There are far more peons in my forst than serfs.)  But the first thing I usually do after embark is set everyone but the two mining/military dwarves to gather food from herbs, because I don't bring too much.  *Sniff* I miss the free food in human towns, it's worth the trouble with the aquifers... 

[Uzu Bash]

First channel down, ramp up, slap a hatch over it, carve space for a base camp and haul everything inside. Next thing I personally do is engrave every stone surface for posterity -- when my seven are rulers of the land, it'll be their ground-breaking memorial. Then slaughter the pack animal for food and scrounge the soil for boozables while I figure out how to use the terrain to control any approach.

[rephikul]

1) Set up jobs
1 Dedicated Woodcutter
1 Dedicated Miner (secondary carpenter if i have no picks)
1 Plant gatherer and Brewer
1 Carpenter
1 Cook and Mechanics
1 Animal trainer and secondary plant gatherer
1 hauler and book keeper and manager

2) Set up living quarter
If I have a miner, i do it underground. if not i build wooden roofs over the beds.

3) Secure the area
Dig dry moat around the map, set up stockpiles on the moat to prevent tree growth from blocking it and destroy all muddy pools happen to be in the way. Set traps on the choke point

I'd get to first caravan just from doing this 3.

[Halnoth]

I find it odd that everyone puts farms as near #1 priority. You actually don't need farms until about your second migrant wave and not even then I can usually subsist on trading for food, herbalism, and hunting until around 100 dwarves. At which point farms are needed for booze. This of course depends on your enviro, if you are in an evil desert/freezing then maybe farms would be high priority but in virtually any other biome farms are not needed right away. In fact I never spend embark points on any food jobs. I'd rather spend them on military or things which are harder to level like the various metalsmithing professions.

[Raufgar]

Been following a mixture of Tatter's & Elfhater's starting builds, and I find they tend to be quite efficient in saving EPs to upgrade your dorfs to their max available skills at embark. Here's what I normally do on a non-volcano embark, adjust the smelting requirements for magma furnaces (less coal, magma-safe stone) when required:

1) PRE-EMBARK:

a) Remove the following: 2 x battleaxes and 2 x picks. Keep the anvil.

b) 31 x each of dwarven ale, beer, rum and 10 x wine

c) 41 x of 2 EP meat, preferably 1 of each type of meat (1 dog meat, 1 cat meat, etc). As different types of meat are stored in their own barrels, this, combined with the booze barrels, will give you the maximum amount of barrels at embark.

d) Materials enough to make 2 full sets of Bismuth Bronze armor (1 of each type; helm, mail shirt, breastplate, greaves, gauntlets, shield) and 1 x pick & 1 x battle axe. This is a personal preference, it is cheaper than bringing materials for steel implements (the same EP will only give me enough steel for 1 pick & 1 battle axe, roughly) and Bronze is 2nd behind steel for strength. (the Bismuth addition is so that I can sell the weapons at a higher price later, when I have access to steel). The materials are (taken from here):

d1) 8 x copper ore, 4 x cassiterite, 4 x bismuthinite, 10 x bituminous coal, 2 x fire-proof stone, 2 x any wood

e) Keep the 5 seeds of each type of seed (I personally keep only 1 x Dimple Cup, I don't dye my dorf clothes), plus 5-10 bags of sand (1 EP each) and 5-10 bags of gypsum plaster. How much sand and plaster you bring is up to you, just don't bring too much. I usually choose skills for my dorfs first, then decide. The main reason for this is for the cheap bags provided. An empty bag costs around 20 EP each, so one can see the savings here. Seed, Sand & Plaster are stored in random bags on embark.

f) Tab to your dwarves, choose the skillz you want them to have. My personal choice would be 1 leader/miner, 1 mason/miner, 1 carpenter/woodcutter, 1 smith (weapon, armor, metal), 1 doctor (all doctor skillz), 1 mechanist (mechanic + siege op skill) & 1 farmer (farm + forager).

g) Finally, Tab back to items and keep only 3 thread, 3 cloth, 1 crutch, 2 splints. You can do this earlier if you don't have enough EP for your dorfs. I would also remove all but 10 plant food, if any.

2) POST-EMBARK:

a) Build a Carpentry with 1 wood, make a training axe, go axe-happy on the surrounding trees. Make a wood stockpile and refuse stockpile near the proposed entrance of your fort, or near your wagon. Make 6-10 beds for your future dormitory.

b) Build a Smelter & a Wood Furnace. You can dismantle your Carpentry for the wood if your surroundings are not Nature-friendly. If you're in a hostile environment, I suggest you do not dismantle your wagon until you have a new meeting place setup. (Once, my mechanic wandered off to get eaten by a crocodile when I dismantled the wagon)

c) Make 1 charcoal, and use it to make coke of all your bituminous coals.

d) Use the coke to smelt your Copper, Tin and Bismuth Bars. Continue on to make Bismuth Bronze Bars. Dismantle your Wood Furnace.

e) Build a Metalsmith Shop, make your weapons and armor. Suggest you start making a pick and 1 set of armor 1st.

f) Dig your entrance, put down stockpiles for everything else, search out location for subterranean farm. Put down separate stockpiles for food and seeds. Put down a still immediately. Start foraging the surroundings. Dismantle your wagon.

If you're in a hostile embark (haunted or terrifying, for others, it should be safe to just keep your Wagon intact until you've carved out your abode), you might want to bring along some cheap stone for a quick barricade while you make your weapons.

[rephikul]

Why build anything on embark? You got the stone around you, just carve it the shape you want and put on some doors. It's quicker, lower maintenance, and gives you stones to work with later. Especially if time is a crucial factor in getting shelter, why screw around with pieces of wood and stone?

Try this for a comparison: One embark where you dig nothing for a year, another where you build nothing for a year, and see where they both stand.

I personally import exotic wildlife i.e. elephant to cold regions or polar bears to tropical regions so there usually arent much spare points for common goods. A pairs of polar bears and a pair of grizzly bears last time leave behind 9 points (4 booze + 1 bag) I believe other people have their extreme reasons not to bring picks, anvils or both. For us construction is the only mean available to obtain shelter.