Decided to make a swordsman in adventure mode. With the new ability to add whatever you items you want ( within a budget ) on character create, I gave my human warrior an iron scimitar, and a wooden practice sword.
I proceeded to use my iron scimitar to cripple large animals, and switched to my wooden sword to beat them like a moving punching bag. I was able to get my swordsmanship from Talented to Grandmaster in only like 6 hippos.
From there, I decided I needed to actually fight proper enemies to make the jump from Grandmaster to truly Legendary swords master. For the principle of it.
Effortlessly cut down two ogres, and several big cats that tried to ambush me. The real test was a fortress of goblins.
Nearly got killed on the first engagement. Gobbos had bowmen, so I immediately run to the other side of some trees for cover, while three melee fighters surrounded me. Somehow, I got one hand crippled, then a leg, then my other hand got bitten. I dropped my precious iron scimitar, but was able to scoop it up into my backpack, while simultaneously choking out all the goblins coming after me ( I'd already hamstrung most of them before I got crippled ).
I fled, and after resting, was amazing not permanently crippled. All either muscular or just sensory nerve damage. So it was back into the fort.
I'm up to 37 goblin kills. Not a single one of them can beat me alone, or even 3 on one, an their ranged fighters are missing. Green fish in a barrel ( so far ).
DF. Haven't had this much fun building up a particular skill in a while, and actually being able to survive long enough to use it. I'm hoping for even bigger and nastier opponents to cut down, but actually finding anything in adventure mode is so much harder than it used to be.