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[Kuroda]

Truth is the only reason I even got to making the fort was thanks to the wiki. All my other attempts were slow games of me guessing how to make them do jobs and eventually abandoning the fort. I have like 10 forts to reclaim... even though they're just wagons.

I apologize if this is too basic for you, but you may learn a few things from the old Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress. It was written for 40d (the older version of DF), but 40d really isn't that different from the newer DF2010 at least as far as basic stuff goes - almost everything you learn from the tutorial is the same in DF2010.

I definitely wouldn't be playing DF today without that tutorial, it turns DF's patented "learning cliff of doom" into a more typical "learning curve."

I've actually been having fun slaughtering building fortresses only to learn one or two things from each try. I have been looking for a good tutorial, though. I shall give this a try.

[Girlinhat]

The biggest thing that helps you learn, is to realize "You're going to die anyways".  With that in mind, why NOT place some random designations?  If you do it, you'll learn something and die.  If you don't, you'll die.  Experimentation is the name of the game, and dwarves are a renewable resource.

[Anathema]

I've actually been having fun slaughtering building fortresses only to learn one or two things from each try. I have been looking for a good tutorial, though. I shall give this a try.

Yeah, learning by trial and error is the heart of DF - just think of the tutorial as a head start to quickly get through the easy stuff, so you can get your dwarves killed in much more interesting and elaborate ways. Instead of losing from starvation, you'll be losing from goblin invasions at least, and you may even get as far as losing from overenthusiastic applications of magma.

[Kuroda]

The biggest thing that helps you learn, is to realize "You're going to die anyways".  With that in mind, why NOT place some random designations?  If you do it, you'll learn something and die.  If you don't, you'll die.  Experimentation is the name of the game, and dwarves are a renewable resource.

That pretty much goes for every roguelike, and the fact I didn't know how to survive, and knew I didn't know how to survive, puts my mind at ease as I look at all the skeletons from past reclaiming of the fortress.

I've actually been having fun slaughtering building fortresses only to learn one or two things from each try. I have been looking for a good tutorial, though. I shall give this a try.

Yeah, learning by trial and error is the heart of DF - just think of the tutorial as a head start to quickly get through the easy stuff, so you can get your dwarves killed in much more interesting and elaborate ways. It'll take you from losing from starvation up, to losing from goblin invasions at least, and you may even get as far as losing from overenthusiastic applications of magma.

Read the tutorial, and although it told me barely anything I didn't already know, it pointed out stockpiles for me, which I was too confused by the sandwiched menus to spot. But now I won't be using a Garbage Dump to store items anymore...

This time I'm bummed about having to reclaim... unlike the other times, my last attempt was actually going pretty well until I decided to have fun, and now there's around 500 pieces of clothing, bones, exc. all over the place. Claiming all of this is going to be boring as hell fun.

[Kuroda]

By the way, how do I make them actually descend the stairs? They just walk away after building it and act like it never exists.

[Girlinhat]

They need something down there to do.  The natural habitat for a dwarf is "wherever the hell I feel like".  They'll only go somewhere in specific if there's something in specific to do there.  Like sleeping, or eating, or workshop-ing.  Or if you use i to draw a zone and declare it an m.

[Anathema]

It's usually a good idea, after you make a new world, to go into your 'save' folder and make a backup copy of it (you'll see a folder called 'region 1' or whatever, just make a 'copy of region 1' and don't play that one). That way if you really screw up a fort and don't want the hassle of reclaiming it, but you really liked that spot, you can copy over the save folder with the backup and get to start fresh.

[Kuroda]

Actually, it's no problem to me to claim all of it and haul it to a stockpile, it's just that hauling is both slow and time consuming.

They need something down there to do.  The natural habitat for a dwarf is "wherever the hell I feel like".  They'll only go somewhere in specific if there's something in specific to do there.  Like sleeping, or eating, or workshop-ing.  Or if you use i to draw a zone and declare it an m.

That's not it... I mean that I built the stairs going down, now what? I can't get him to do anything with the stairs or the lower levels. Do I designate him to dig on the lower level? Designate him to build upward stairs on the lower level?

[Girlinhat]

Yes, you need to have connecting stairs.  Stairs are possibly the second most difficult part of the game, with military the most difficult.  It's easiest to think about it as pairs.  Every stairway needs an up AND a down stair, on the levels they intend to connect.  You go upstairs from the lower level, and downstairs from the higher, so you need an UP on Z, and a DOWN on Z+1.  You can save space with the Up/Down stair.  This one performs both directions at once, so you can have 1 tile that allows traffic to go up and down.

In general, you up a downstairs at the top, an upstairs at the bottom, and up/down on the levels in between.

[Kuroda]

Yes, you need to have connecting stairs.  Stairs are possibly the second most difficult part of the game, with military the most difficult.  It's easiest to think about it as pairs.  Every stairway needs an up AND a down stair, on the levels they intend to connect.  You go upstairs from the lower level, and downstairs from the higher, so you need an UP on Z, and a DOWN on Z+1.  You can save space with the Up/Down stair.  This one performs both directions at once, so you can have 1 tile that allows traffic to go up and down.

In general, you up a downstairs at the top, an upstairs at the bottom, and up/down on the levels in between.

So pretty much, I'm going to have to go down a level, find a cliff face, mine to that spot, and build a upward staircase. Kinda figured.

[Girlinhat]

No, you can assign stairs from the counterpart angles.  IE, you can carve an upward stair while standing on the level above it, and you can carve an up/down from either direction.

[Kuroda]

I was about to note I just figured that out right when you posted. Through all that hassle, I managed to dig into 3/7 water...  Oh well, thank you all for your help. I'm sure this topic is finished.