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[crossmr]

So I haven't played DF in a few months. Decided to try it out again. Now last time I was doing very well and had everything running tip-top. I got into a totally new fortress, and everything seemed to be going well except I hadn't found any copper yet, and had just formed my first squad. They were watching each other roll around on the floor when a minotaur showed up. Luckily a caravan also showed up at the same time and their guards slaughtered it.
*phew* thought I.
Shortly after the caravan left, a snatcher showed up. It was one snatcher. I had a few weapons, not much armor, but it was just one snatcher, against 10 guys who could almost tie their shoes. What could be the harm?

Well just as they left the safety of the fort. Ambush!!
Crap.
Like 2 full squads of goblins, at least. Probably more. It was like a siege but without the siege word. I immediately jumped in and activated the alert level and tried to get the civilians to safety. They seemed slow at first. Before I remember it was like they dropped everything and just ran. So I went in and double checked everything and then everyone started to move. Unfortunately the goblins popped up right by the door and immediately "took" the door.

This is where it starts to get weird.
I tried to pull the squad back, but they didn't make it, they did take some goblins with them. A couple goblins entered the actual fort, and suddenly like almost everyone flees the fort. Even though the burrow was still active. The alert level was up, the burrow was active on the alert level , and like 40 of my 50 dwarves just start rushing the main entrance. This is not in the burrow. I was hoping to get everyone pulled back into the meeting room or something so I could lock a door until they left, but no...

They did manage to haul down 3 or 4 goblins, but not before they slaughtered nearly everyone.

Finally in the end, all the soldiers were dead, I had the doors locked, with about a dozen survivors. and 2 large groups of goblins roaming the lands.

With miasma everywhere, and a couple people having nervous breakdowns, one of my guys decides to have a strange mood. I didn't have the materials he needed, so I just let him go to the workshop and I locked the door. I knew he'd eventually go insane.

The rest of the people were mostly smearing blood on the wall and poking dead babies. I quickly checked and noticed my chief medical dwarf had survived, but he was not in a good mood. I let him be. There was one stable dwarf, I made him a mason and had him get to work on coffins. There were a lot of bodies to bury.

About a day later, after resting..the chief medical dwarf, my hope to save the fort went insane. He got out of bed and murdered the guy beside him. Then he started chasing people through the halls. Finally he had them all cornered. So they rushed him and he took 4 people with him.

6 people dead off one insane dwarf. A couple of other random people died from insanity/wounds. I was left with 4 people in the fort.

A caravan showed up, and was promptly slaughtered by the goblins. The guards couldn't hold them off (elves)
Then two waves of migrants, who were slaughtered, and required more coffins. All told, I made like 70 coffins. I converted several smoothed bedrooms to tombs, I hoped it would give some good thoughts that there friends were buried in nice rooms.

All my legendary workers were lost. My farmer, mason, carpenter, all total noobs.

Another caravan showed up. Again, slaughtered.

Finally a group of migrants and the dwarven caravan showed up at the same time. I was afraid to open the door, but I finally tried to chance it.. I think the goblins had left, 7 migrants and the caravan came in. Unfortunately with so much going on, I couldn't trade. I finally got the new broker to the depot with goods when the merchants up and left. When I opened the door, there were a lot of bodies to be hauled among other goods left laying around the map.
It's probably going to take me months to clean up the map.

We actually ended up taking down about 7 goblins or so.

but I really wonder, what happened to the burrows? Why did like 40 dwarves rush the main entrance and leave the burrow suddenly? I probably could have saved many more of them.

[Girlinhat]

*Didn't read it all, just got to "Everyone rushed the door"*

Dwarves are not smart.  They will respect a burrow in so far as their livelihood is concerned.  If thirsty or hungry, they will leave and then return, or if frightened out they will rush as blindly as ever, but will return as soon as they are able.  Thus, your dwarves will NOT sit in a 1x1 burrow while two dozen goblins surround them.  They will presume to run as idiots as per normal dwarven behavior.  I believe this to be a fix, as you would realistically expect dwarves to be stupid.  Burrows are also slightly less than instant.  It takes a short moment for them to heed the call.

Ambushes are considerably more troublesome than sieges.  A siege, you have warning and can EASILY shut the door.  An ambush, you may not know about until they're in your dining hall, if you didn't set things up right.  They come in 2-4 squads, for goblins, but I've observed elf ambushes to contain upwards of 9 squads mounted on war grizzly bears (not as impressive as you think, they used the grizzly's pathfinding and were thus nerfed).  Each squad of ambushers is roughly 5-10, with the leader of the squad normally different, being an elite of the same type or a different type entirely.  Sometimes different species for goblins, since they're babysnatchers and may have human or elf citizens.  Ambushes almost always arrive with a caravan, and with goblins they arrive every season.  Babysnatchers and thieves are VERY common just before an ambush, it's my guess that they spawn at the same time but the vile thief is quicker than the squads.  If you see a babysnatcher, activate your panic burrows immediately.

In the raws, under entity_default, the [AMBUSHER] tag allows ambushes, which elves have.  The [BABYSNATCHER] tag implies ambushes, which is likely why babysnatchers and ambushes show up together, but the babysnatcher type of ambushes tend to be much smaller than the ambusher variety.  A proper elven ambush is the size of a siege, just stealthy.  How in the world they manage to get a group of 70 elves mounted on 70 bears to sneak up on an entire fort is beyond me.  They do it every spring, too!  Either way, you can easily remove either or both of these tags and prevent ambushes.  It sounds like you need some time to re-acquaint with DF, and there's no shame in turning that learning cliff into a regular learning brick wall.

[Triaxx2]

Indeed. I suspect by now we've all seen the EVE learning curve gif. That's DF in a nutshell, but without the players at the top of the cliff stepping on the fingers of those trying to get over it.

We use magma.

[Girlinhat]

Magma has become a part of the learning cliff for DF.  Every time a question is asked, the answer is immediately "magma" even if it's terrible.  It's a nice joke, sure, but a bit off-putting when you're looking for help and that's the only answer you get.

[crossmr]

Well, I've got the population back up. Migrants are coming, despite the danger.

I've got about 40-50 dwarves back in, but I can't get much else in at this point. Ambushers are showing up regularly, basically they come with every caravan. I've just locked the door almost permanently now. The biggest problem is fuel. I've got about 20 logs left, and I can't for the life of me find lignite or bituminous coal. I've got my 3 miners digging day and night trying to find a vein. I've got lots of copper, so I could move on to making metal bins and such, but I gotta get some fuel.

I just had a strange mood go beserk again.

He was asking for bones and blocks.
I made like 10 stone blocks
nada
slaughtered a couple animals, he went and got some
used a little fuel to make some metal blocks (2 copper)
and he wouldn't go and get them
was working on another metal block when he went beserk.

he wasn't asking for anything else.

They were all available to him, but he'd stopped moving.

[Syrup Roast]

Well, I've got the population back up. Migrants are coming, despite the danger.

I've got about 40-50 dwarves back in, but I can't get much else in at this point. Ambushers are showing up regularly, basically they come with every caravan. I've just locked the door almost permanently now. The biggest problem is fuel. I've got about 20 logs left, and I can't for the life of me find lignite or bituminous coal. I've got my 3 miners digging day and night trying to find a vein. I've got lots of copper, so I could move on to making metal bins and such, but I gotta get some fuel.

I just had a strange mood go beserk again.

He was asking for bones and blocks.
I made like 10 stone blocks
nada
slaughtered a couple animals, he went and got some
used a little fuel to make some metal blocks (2 copper)
and he wouldn't go and get them
was working on another metal block when he went beserk.

he wasn't asking for anything else.

They were all available to him, but he'd stopped moving.

is he in a burrow?

[crossmr]

No he was not. Burrows were turned off at that point. The door is locked, so no need to restrain them.

He was in a workshop in one hallway, the stone blocks were a couple rooms over and the metal blocks were down another hallway. Plenty of room and no pathing issues between them.

In fact he went almost all the way to the metal block room to get the bones from the butchery.

[Marthnn]

I recently had a strange mood, the dwarf asked for bones (and other things I had). No bones. I reclaimed dead wild animal corpses, butchered the first (a badger), he took the (6) bone stack. Still nothing. Butchered the 2nd corpse, he took the (14) horse bone stack. And THEN he went for the other items.

I am positively sure the "I need bones" claim was as short as all the others. Meaning a strange mood with bones requires a minimum number of bones (or bone total size), not just any stack.

[Girlinhat]

Mooded dwarves grab things in order.  If they ask for a shell, a log, a string, and a block, they'll wait until they find a shell before they go after the rest.  I'm entirely unsure why you made multiple copper blocks though.  Did you make one and say, "Well, this didn't work.  Maybe if I try the exact same thing again it will be different."

[crossmr]

Mooded dwarves grab things in order.  If they ask for a shell, a log, a string, and a block, they'll wait until they find a shell before they go after the rest.  I'm entirely unsure why you made multiple copper blocks though.  Did you make one and say, "Well, this didn't work.  Maybe if I try the exact same thing again it will be different."

I was trying anything to get it to work.
he was only asking for 2 things, and he'd already grabbed bones.
I was in the middle of making a gold block as well, but then he went insane.

I had come across a note somewhere where someone said something about there being enough of what they needed before they'd act, so I thought if he needed 2 blocks or something he might not move until there were 2 available.

unfortunately my animal supply was short due to the constant goblin raids and not having any pastures. All I had were dogs and a couple birds. I killed a couple birds but he only made the initial move and did nothing else after grabbing some bones off the first slaughter.

[Anathema]

If he wants say, 3 blocks, and you make one, he'll grab the first one the moment it's available then start waiting for you to make the other two. So if he doesn't grab the first one, making more won't help. Also on the subject of bones, I've seen dwarves use ~100 bones for a single artifact (an entire elephant, mule, and cat's worth of bones), your dwarf probably just didn't have enough bones.

Generally speaking if a dwarf asks for x.. y.. do this:
1. Acquire some x
2. If he doesn't grab it, you misunderstood him, goto 1 and try a different x
3. If he grabs it, keep making more x until he's satisfied and stops collecting it
4. Repeat for y, and so on

[Girlinhat]

Bones are, to my knowledge, the only moodable material that stacks, and stacks aren't handled well.  Elephant Bones[20] counts as 1 item.  An elephant, mule, and cat's worth of bones, is 3 bones.  You can observe this especially when building bone helm or chestplate or such, as they'll take several stacks of bone regardless of their size.

[Anathema]

Bones are, to my knowledge, the only moodable material that stacks, and stacks aren't handled well.  Elephant Bones[20] counts as 1 item.  An elephant, mule, and cat's worth of bones, is 3 bones.  You can observe this especially when building bone helm or chestplate or such, as they'll take several stacks of bone regardless of their size.

Ah, well then - just my bad luck that he grabbed a 70-elephant-bone stack when a 5-cat-bone stack would've done just as well. Thanks, noted for future moods.

[Girlinhat]

At least your artifact is using expensive elephant bones, boosting its value by, like, 60 I think...

[crossmr]

If he wants say, 3 blocks, and you make one, he'll grab the first one the moment it's available then start waiting for you to make the other two. So if he doesn't grab the first one, making more won't help. Also on the subject of bones, I've seen dwarves use ~100 bones for a single artifact (an entire elephant, mule, and cat's worth of bones), your dwarf probably just didn't have enough bones.

Generally speaking if a dwarf asks for x.. y.. do this:
1. Acquire some x
2. If he doesn't grab it, you misunderstood him, goto 1 and try a different x
3. If he grabs it, keep making more x until he's satisfied and stops collecting it
4. Repeat for y, and so on

Well I did butcher further animals and he didn't go for more bones.
Which is why I went for the blocks.