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[Jachim]

Urist McMiner cancels dig: damp rock detected.


.. who cares? *order dig again*

... oh.

[Jordo]

Don't remember what it was called. I do remember that I didn't understand that creatures can travel diagonally. The goblins had no trouble getting in.

[Sysice]

My first actual fortress that wasn't a false start was Olonedos. (I don't remember the English translation) This was in 40D, so I didn't even know we were supposed to get often updates. It still feels pretty weird.

It got up to about 70 dwarves and huge amounts of lag. I used one tile hallways for most of the fortress and most of it was in about three z-levels. I would kill any dwarves that didn't meet my requirements by cave-in (I would probably have had 200 if I didn't do this). This left huge gaping holes in my fort that goblins could shoot down, but eh. I would then sell their clothing for trade goods. My soldiers were armed in steel and had axes, though almost all of my defenses were cage traps. They didn't work very well.
I never struck adamantine or anything. In fact, the first time I struck adamantine was in DF 2010.

[Pan]

First try. DF2010
Dig into soil. Dig into rock. Create bedrooms etc in soil. Notice mistake and unengravable bedrooms and dining room. Abandon.

Second try.
Dig into soil, and then straight into rock. Create stone stockpiles by excavating a large stone room. Waste of time (didnt realize tht was a mistake that time, either.). Having no idea that The Complete and Utterly Newb Tutorial was made before underground irrigation was introduced, everyone hunts for tasty rats and spiders. Abandon.

Third try.
All of above, except I managed to get a murky pool and farm. Messed up with burrow, and got farmer starved to death (WHAT DO U MEAN UR HUNGRY?? WE GOT FOOD!). Broke into cavern and got invaded by a dralthas and molemarians. Abandon.

[Jachim]

One of my first forts I do know I managed to embark on a terrifying map without knowing just.. how bad it would be. Zombie carp... zombie.. freaking.. carp.

[Frogwarrior]

The first fort I ever did, I didn't really know much about the game... so I embarked somewhere with only 1 non-mountain tile and no flux, and never ever struck iron ore anywhere, and not enough trees to make enough metal anyway. (Although I did get some bronze in IIRC...) Good thing I never got far enough to get full-fledged goblin sieges...

I did have quite a few good crossbowdwarves - I was planning on my main defense being an elevated shooting gallery about the main gates. Things got fun and bloody when the goblins sent about six ambushes at once, especially since I didn't know how many there actually were - it was a month or two until they stopped appearing next to my miners (who were mostly mining pre-exposed veins) and finally retreated.

Eventually, I realized that I should probably be ordering wood and metal bars from the caravan. Oh well. And, I nearly starved to death before I irrigated a large plot of ground.

I think the last decision I made before I switched to my now-abandoned megaproject fort was to move the entirety of the usable fortress across the map, near the one embark tile that had soil, so that it would be closer to all my food production (I'd recently put out a fairly large plot for Sun berries). Also, I dug channels around most of the non-mountain embark square so my woodcutters wouldn't get attacked by goblins.

Fun times. I recently started a new fort, my first actual fort in .31 - and I kept the name. Frogfountain shall rise again! And it's already hilarious - I irrigated my underground farms by piercing a murky pool, but the pool was so large that in order to drain it all I pretty much had to let it wash out all over my entire fort, what there was of it. Also, there's going to be a several-tile-wide 3d spiral staircase going allll the way down; it'll be awesome.

[atomicoctobot]

Yes. I studied the Wiki very carefully before beginning and consulted various forums on the subject. I set to work and found it nowhere near as difficult as people claimed. My fortress was doing really quite nicely and my population was well over a hundred.

And then the dragon came. Foolishly, I let my guard down and relied on a long series of stonefall traps to protect my dwarves. Moments after the dragon's arrival, fre and smoke was raging through the fort. Everything came crumbling down around me. A brutal end to something that seemed to have so much promise.

[Lytha]

I actually remember some of my first few attempts from several years ago. One failed because I couldn't figure out how to change the z-levels (but a kitten adopted the butcher, aw, how cute). Another failed because I had absolutely no idea which of the dozens of workshops I should build with my limited initial resources. That was on a glacier/forest mixture with red sand.


Anyway, the first really interesting one was not so long ago. 5x5 embark (40d). Steep, 50 z-level-something Mountain in the middle. Flat forest in the northwest. River in the southeast. At the top of the mountain was a volcano opening.

For some braindead reasons, I thought that my first priority should be to get some water from the river towards the forest patch. So I started the plumbing semi-megaproject and ignored everyone but my two miners, who tunneled and channeled something through the bottom surface layer of the mountain. Yeah. No plant gathering, no farming plots, no brewing... the other 5 dwarves just sat there and waited faithfully that the miners finished their job. It must've been an "embark NOW" embark, because they survived actually quite well up until the water was almost at their position. Then, quite dramatically, I had my first and only tantrum spiral. I blamed the immigration wave of about 25 dwarves who had arrived just prior to the tantrum spiral, drinking all of the remaining booze and eating the last few pieces of meat, but obviously it was my fault as well for not actually doing anything with the 5 idlers from the start. Anyway, they got into a tantrum spiral.

That one was very remarkable, too. Not knowing what to do, I appointed a sheriff. He was quickly beaten to death by the mob. So was the major.

Pets were slaughtered, doors were bashed in, diplomats left unhappily, insane dwarves crawled with broken legs all over the forest clearing, fathers killed their wives infront of the eyes of their children.

The FPS dropped to something really amazingly low, like 1 frame/minute.

In the end, only the leaders of the mob, and an insanely skilled at social skills child survived. All of them had quite high bounties on their head for murder, assault and demolition. And they became the new leaders of this fortress.

Some more immigrants arrived, quickly fitted into this society of hard-nosed criminals, and the fortress became stable.


... until the goblins arrived later on and I got fed up because of them.

[LoSboccacc]

I remember the very first fortress.

I was following The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress, it was on the early 40d era.

I built a downward stairway, and then a long tunnel ending with a upward ramp, for the wagon.

then I started the flooding project for my farms, tapping the river on the side of my fort. I was somewhat in knowledge of the water pressure, having read the wiki, so I did cut a diagonal tile just before the river. only that I cut it on the same river top level. the water flowed so fast that the lever got submerged before I could stop it. 2 were trapped on the lower levels, in the dining room that was just enhanced with doors. the miner drowned. the others, on the surface, started to gather wood hoping for a pick in the next caravan. a mandrill killed one. another tantrumed and went stark raving mad. then the trapped one started to be dehydrated and one after another died.

and when the caravan arrived, there was no anvil. so the remaining sane dwarves did the only thing they could do: packed up and left with the caravan, abandoning the fortress

[surturhero]

Mine was in 40d, dont remember the name but it got me hooked. Was a valley surround east and west with hills with a river down the center. Because I didn't know how to farm, they survived on fishing until that ran out. Then the carpenter goes crazy, claims a butchers shop and turned a peasant walking by into a head veil. I think thats when I decided to keep playing

Also I remember my most social dwarf, who hosted my first party going insane. Killed a dwarf ran into the far hills, came back a year later to kill another dwarf, then came back 2 years later and I ganked her with the survivors. At that point there were only like 8 left, and the vermin stockpile was running out. Finally figured out farms, but not that you could assign labor. Somehow I waited until the migrant wave that thankfully had a farmer, but with everyone trantruming he soon died. Finally gave up.

Oh and all the dwarves for some reason(clothing deterioration I think) were naked about 2 years in. Dang I miss that place

[KingOfBudgies]

I am a VERY recent convert to Dwarf Fortress (courtesy of Minecraft, which prominently lists this as one of its influences) - I only started playing at around 00.31.16.  As such, I am very, VERY ashamed that I can only vaguely remember my fortress - I abandoned it after roaches ate all my food, and I still hadn't figured out farming and didn't want to lose my first Fortress to something so petty.  Since then, I have repeated this pattern of "start a fortress, learn something new, cock something else up" for the past week (learning to take along cats to kill vermin, learning how to farm, learning not to rely on farming as your main food source owing to the fact that cooking destroys seed and even though brewing gives you more you still have to wait for the food to grow, learning how to use reservoirs to irrigate, learning to get farms up and running as fast as possible, learning not to accidentally close off construction areas and accidentally flood your fort, learning to take some war dogs to protect against wild animals and thieves...).  It's only today that I've finally produced a fortress that I am starting to feel proud of - I've got steady sources of food and booze, a well, nice dining rooms and bedrooms, large stockpiles, and both plentiful stone and soil to use for construction and train up my miners.  Will I cock this up eventually?  Since I haven't had any practice with managing a military, probably.  But as a newbie who's finally managed to accomplish something he's proud of, I'm feeling good right now.

Quick update: My first real fortress has since come to an end; While digging deeper in search of flux (yet another lesson learned: make sure any flux stone is near the TOP), I hit upon an underground cavern, and all my dwarves got eaten by a cave crocodile as I had no military.  Alas, Libashur Sedilzasgeshud Sog, I barely knew ye.

[forsaken1111]

My first fortress? Oh man, those poor dwarves. I dived right in with Play Now! before reading anything about the game. I got the basics down and dug out a little room, then couldn't figure out what the hell all the purple mist was, then dwarves tantrumed because there was no food and also elephants killed the leader.

Then the dwarven caravan arrived, a carp made one of my 3 remaining dwarves dodge into the river, another one died to a mining accident falling into a chasm, and the last one went batshit crazy from the loss.

Your fortress has crumbled to its end indeed!

[Aspgren]

Heh.

I remember relying on fishing for nourishment. I had no idea I had to clean the buggers ... when winter came there were no turtles to eat and by the time i realised it .. the starvation was a fact. Dwarves didn't clean the fish because they were busy hunting for vermin to eat.

There were no survivors.

[NSQuote]

I had a little tiny settlement with about ten dwarfs in 40d, making a meager living off of fishing for turtles in a tiny pond. It took me so long to figure out how to clean them that I was dangerously low on food. I was able to scrape by for one more season until I learned two very important facts.

1. Turtles are not a renewable resource
2. You cannot make booze from turtles.

This is, of course, the point when I was hooked.