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.