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[Itnetlolor]

My earliest memories have to be my first forts, or more like holes in the ground during the 36-40d eras.

When I first started, I embarked near mountains, of course, and I thought the rock floors were cave zones, and grass was where outside was, and the obscured areas were where I could mine (at the time, I wasn't aware of the Z-axis either, and had just started playing thanks to Boatmurdered, and been wondering why it was so popular in Something Awful back then (no longer a visitor/goon since eons ago. I also found a motivation poster or two that used screenshots from the game as well (RPG.net and it's insane list of motivation posters (enough to crash their servers multiple times.))).

Retardedness aside, I dug through the wiki and got some basics down, even watched a tutorial video. Apparently, I skimmed it, and not read it. I had a decent fort layout done, but I forgot to designate drinking zones and etc. Once I ran out of booze (which at the time I wasn't familiar with making), let's just say my entire population had a really long nap by the end of the 3rd season (all of them in bed appropriately enough).

Another fort learned from prior mistake, and made use of a nearby brook. I had some decent layouts for the time, but again, it was poorly laid out. Ran out of booze, had some water, but nobody willing to drink much of it. Add to it, AMBUSH! CURSE THEM! I lock up the fort best I could, only for invaders to take the back door in, and start causing a ruckus from therein. I decide "what the hell" breached the brook and attempted to flood it in. Took a season or 2, and then my population eventually either decide to drown or die of thirst. The ambushers decided to wait my dwarves out and kill anyone who leaves.

EDIT:
I'll admit, the menu system did bother me for a bit, but then again, I was raised since before the DOS game era, so I could deal with it (plus, considering all the details and features; it's actually well done for what it's worth). Now to play the role of an old man, "You spoiled kids and your easy interfaces. Back in my days, we didn't have a mouse to give commands to our characters. Try playing a text adventure or the first Space Quest and King's Quest games in their original form before their VGA conversions. And back then, sometimes you had to be specific. Nowadays, it's Jetsons-tech for you lousy runts. Sure, you have many buttons on your mice and gamepads. One button can kick down a door, pull a lever, and drive a car."

Grow a pair and deal with it. Toady will get around to improving the interface when he feels like it. That's my message to the nay-sayers just by the interface alone. Consider it this way, for all the details in this game alone, Toady is going easy on us with the current interface as it stands.

[SalmonGod]

My earliest memory of actual play would be my first encounter with an aquifer.  So much water.  Desperately trying to channel a stream for all the water to exit my fortress before it could flood my food stores.  I succeeded, but drowned several dwarves and somehow managed to trap both of my miners in a little room they refused to tunnel themselves out of in the process.  They starved to death in there before I could figure out how to help them.  Didn't know what to do with only a few living dwarves and no picks.  Abandoned.

[Argonnek]

My earliest memory of DF would have to be my first fort. It was a pitiful thing to look at. Dwarves dying from thirst because I thought booze production needed water. (HAH! None of that pansy water for TRUE dwarves!) Anyway, they slowly died until the winter passed and migrants replenished my decimated population. That was fun. I think I was overrun by a single ambush.

[Byakugan01]

Ah. My very first fort back in 40d was a complete disaster...because I was playing on a laptop, and didn't have the controls set up properly for it. As I remember, I then took the time to read the wiki, and then used that one world save someone had posted-the one with the pit, chasm, volcano, and three GCSs. I then promptly dug out a home in the mountain. Well, things went well for a while since I had read the wiki...then discovered that when one dwarf dies to a GCS, and I don't mark EVERY item forbidden, well...there are...consequences. Eventually, I got a tantrum spiral.

 Now that I started playing again after about a year and a half of not playing-and usiong the new version-the new stuff is taking me a bit to learn, but I finally understand how to use the new military. Not that I need one. I miss the orc mod-guranteed iron, and forces me to actually be creative with how I build. As it is, with no threat my fortresses simply have a path from the door and a central shaft, from which living quarters, craft shops, storage rooms, offices and whatnot spread out from by z level.

[Sutremaine]

then discovered that when one dwarf dies to a GCS, and I don't mark EVERY item forbidden, well...

Did you learn since then about auto-forbidding?

[Byakugan01]

Yup, but I forgot it since I stopped playing...it has been one and a half years, after all.

[Immacolata]

...  lost my third to faulty harddrive.

Gets ya every time doesn't it.

[Vandersleld]

I thought that ramps were trees. My early forts were understandably short-lived.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Learned about it from TV Tropes.
Read the wiki for a few months or so.
Finally downloaded. Did a (very) little modding.
Tried to figure out how to goblin-fort.
Signed up to these very forums to try and figure a couple odd things out. Search for "Ustrogast Unu, the goblin fort" and "Slaves to armok...Goblin Fortress" if you want to find them.
(I never did figure out screenshots, BTW.)

[Niyazov]

I started playing just when the first 3d versions were coming out and all the advice on the web was for the 2d version.

Some things I did:

- draining an entire magma pool into a chasm to prevent batmen from spawning and then wondering why there wasn't a red line at the bottom of the chasm (and also why I didn't have any magma left)

- channeling magma from a pipe halfway across the map to my forge area and then abandoning because my furnace operators refused to smelt limonite even though there was clearly 1/7 magma under all the smelters

- relying entirely on plant gathering because I thought I needed to find an underground river before I could start farming.

- wondering why the underground river I eventually found wasn't flooding my fields

- my #1 priority after digging in was to build a paved road to the map edge

- wondering why no blacksmith came in the summer

other stupidity:

- never using activity zones or designating rooms for anything and wondering why my dwarves were all wandering out of the fort and hanging around where the wagon used to be

- digging out and completely smoothing and engraving a cistern, only to have my three legendary engravers/miners go berserk simultaneously the moment that I filled it

- filling my entrance hallway with animal traps and being surprised when the goblins walked right through it

- scrambling to get trapping, small animal dissection and soapmaking industries set up for the migrants who arrived with those professions

- building a refuse stockpile and wondering why the dwarves weren't [D]umping anything into it

- trading caged undead to the elves

- many, many fortresses were built in areas with no underground features whatsoever

- the artifact platinum platemail (and only piece of metal armor in an ore-free fortress) that killed every dwarf that wore it because its enormous weight slowed the wearer to a crawl

Fond memories of the old pre-40d 3d DF:

- buying animals from the elves that looked like they had been through a meat grinder

- megabeasts arriving and then immediately passing out because of nervous system injuries and limb loss they sustained in worldgen

- hydras arriving and getting decapitated by random children, cats, etc.

- having all my miners fall into the bottomless pit that I didn't know was underneath where I had ordered them to dig my central staircase... in the first spring.
- mass-designating rocks to be dropped into the bottomless pit and accidentally ordering my entire booze stockpile dumped in as well
- dropping goblin prisoners into the bottomless pit
- dropping kittens into the bottomless pit
- collapsing the trade depot into the bottomless pit
- champions dodging antmen and falling into the bottomless pit, taking all my steel gear with them
- I got a lot of mileage out of bottomless pits. I really miss them.

- having to manually designate things for dumping and melting one at a time (this was before mass designation)

- goblins hanging in midair for a year after being launched airborne

- the edge of the map getting more kills than any of your dwarves because getting knocked into it usually resulted in an instagib

- actually being able to gouge enemies eyes out or tear out their throats instead of just ripping them

- incredibly brutal combat reports: ""It explodes in gore!" ""It is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass!"

- finding an +iron scourge+ in adventure mode- it's not a battle if they die with any internal organs still intact

- throwing dirt at enemies and having it penetrate three limbs

- sneaking into villages at night and strangling everybody without anyone ever waking up

- updating to a new version and discovering that none of my dwarves will wake up
 
- champion marksdwarves that burned through my entire 11x11 stockpile of bolts in one season by going full auto on archery targets and hoary marmots. I miss the old rapid-fire crossbows; I loved seeing the huge fountains of bolts spraying out of my fortifications like they were coming out of a firehose every time that goblins attacked. Dwarf fortress today holds few wonders that can compare to an old champion marksdwarf with a stack of 80 ≡elephant bone bolt≡ in his quiver. 

[Bohandas]

I first heard about Dwarf Fortress a couple of years back from a couple of guys and a gril who were hanging around the Commuter Lounge at Drexel University, but didn't start playing until about a little over a year ago when I downloaded a written tutorial and actually set down to figuring out how to play...

[darkrider2]

First memories...

starving from lack of food
starving from lack of food
dying from lack of booze
goblin ambushes
goblin ambushes
goblin seiges
tantrum spirals
cave collapse
magma                                                                                      x83
FPS                                                                                         x63

I just realized the dwarf fortresses learning curve isn't based off of learning the game, but the method in which it manages to kill you.

[Slugman]

I first stumbled across dwarf fortress while looking for some of those indy dungeon crawlers which were (and probably still are) mostly ascii back in the late 2009. Maybe I got to bay12 from a link there or I simply googled it. Can't really remember. Anyway, dwarf fortress suddenly seemed a lot more interesting. Even more so because just a week ago I had watched a rather boring lord of the rings toon movie. I'm not really a fan of lord of the rings in general but I was quite fascinated by the dwarven architecture idea after seeing said movie. I thought it was cool if anybody ever made a game where you could design & run a majestic fortress yourself... and suddenly there it was, dwarven style even! Unfortunately it was quite ugly and difficult to get into. :p
Nonetheless I kept trying and trying until I somewhat got the hang of it and in the end it proved to be quite rewarding. Without the graphic sets and tutorials I would probably have given up on it though. I'm not much for looks but plain ascii just isn't my kind of thing. And I actually love those pixel art graphics.
The forums also seemed like a great thing because they were mostly devoid of the usual "lol, wtf, l2p, I pwn and u suck" sort of people and I also loved the bitter sarcasm about the game itself that you could find in pretty much every thread. Generally the forums left a "more intelligent" impression on me. A place where you'd like to stop by and read something and where you could seriously discuss some things.

I don't quite remember my first few forts. The only thing that comes to mind is me trying to figure out how to dig down and embarking again on a new spot after learning a few lessons - always refering to a couple of tutorials which were pretty confusing themselves.
But I do have some find memories of a few of my first real fortresses. One was set into a mountain side in a yellow sand desert with a brook starting at the foot of the mountain. There was even a giant Eagle on top of the mountain. It was quite an inspiring scenery, especially after I set up my fortress next to the spring. A small constructed yard with the trade depot in the middle, surrounded by high walls (made from rock blocks because I felt rough rocks would take away some of its majesty although it doesn't make any difference in gameplay terms) and with two towers at the entrance gate - all in white and statues everywhere. I also built a small sewer network filled with water from the brook. The area behind the trade depot was the actual mountain into which I later intended to build the real fortress. The first Goblin ambush quickly put an end to that though. I remember how they killed a few dwarves and then lurked at the locked entrance doors. While they didn't actually kill everybody I just didn't feel much like continuing the fortress anymore. There was a lot I learned again and I was burning to set up a military next time. The game was also already really slow at that point because I didn't know how to keep the performance at an acceptable level back then. I guess my next attempt was a medieval castle set in a forest full of werewolves (built upon a magma valve because there was no magma sea back then) followed by a lake castle next to a magma valve. I remember how I was pretty proud of tunnling out an underground magma channel connecting the two to fuel my forge and smelters - just because of the idea and looks itself, not because it was actually anything difficult you would come up with. My last fortress in 40 d was a town built around an underground bottomless pit spanning a few z-levels. Then 2010 came out and while the new content was great, I simply couldn't play DF for a few months because of all the bugs.
But now I'm back again because the game is one of the few that never gets old. Sort of like master of magic and master of orion 2, but in a way better because there is always something new to discover due to the constant development.

[Kusgnos]

I can't even recall how I found the Bay12games website back in mid 2006. I found his games, and LCS quickly became one of my favorite roguelike-ish games.

Toady One/Tarn Adams had enough time to respond to my silly emails about LCS, and thinking back on it it's amazing how much this site has grown since then. Around late 2006 or 2007 I saw some news on the site about an upcoming project he was working on called Dwarf Fortress, and I remember thinking that it'd probably be neat, and mildly looking forward to it. When it came out, I didn't move to play it immediately, but a few months in I decided to dive in, and when I first ran it I was boggled.

I remember puzzling out the symbols and having no idea how to construct buildings, and emailing Toady about how to make buckets, and how to construct beds. The menus were much, much smaller then, I think.

Dwarf Fortress has come a long way, and I'm really happy about it.

[Bohandas]

It took me a while to figure out how to switch z-levels so for the first few games I wound up playing v.40d as if it were the 2-d version (23a IIRC)