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[AzuredreamsXT]

First of all, thanks to the guys and gals who welcomed me and suggested tutorials to learn the game, the community for DF seems great. I've started a fortress using the quick start guide on the wiki, have a few starter questions if anyone can help.

 - I created a garbage dump near my workshops as the guide suggested, however a rotting prepared llama intestine got dumped in it and it seems to be creating miasma. I have a refuse stockpile out front, so why is rotting crap or whatever is causing miasmi being left in the garbage dump?

 - On the topic of garbage dumps, the guide said to use the dump command and designate rectangles over the rocks littering the fortress. I used the dump command and designated every tile of my fortress thinking that this command only told my dwarves to pick up rocks for storage in my garbage dump, however many other items seemed to have been included. Some items were relocated from my general purpose stockpile to the garbage dump, others were left in the general purpose stockpile. What exactly is going on here?

 - Are goods stored in my garbage dump available to use for all dwarves?

 - How long can my dwarves survive on water and raw plump helmets? (currently getting still up and running but it's taken me awhile to get to this step)

 - How aggressive and lethal are Giant Badgers and Badger men? Advice on their presence in my embark vicinity?

 - I have a pile of tame dogs pastured outside my fortress entrance, are they a line of defense as they are? Or must i train them as war dogs before they are any use?

 - Any other newby tips would be greatly appreciated as well. I'm in a joyous temperate forest area, about to try and set up my dining quarters, still, kitchen and decorate my dwarves rooms. I only have low quality furniture materials though.

[ASCIt]

First of all, thanks to the guys and gals who welcomed me and suggested tutorials to learn the game, the community for DF seems great. I've started a fortress using the quick start guide on the wiki, have a few starter questions if anyone can help.

 - I created a garbage dump near my workshops as the guide suggested, however a rotting prepared llama intestine got dumped in it and it seems to be creating miasma. I have a refuse stockpile out front, so why is rotting crap or whatever is causing miasmi being left in the garbage dump?

 - On the topic of garbage dumps, the guide said to use the dump command and designate rectangles over the rocks littering the fortress. I used the dump command and designated every tile of my fortress thinking that this command only told my dwarves to pick up rocks for storage in my garbage dump, however many other items seemed to have been included. Some items were relocated from my general purpose stockpile to the garbage dump, others were left in the general purpose stockpile. What exactly is going on here?

 - Are goods stored in my garbage dump available to use for all dwarves?

Ah, mass dumping. I remember my first attempt, I ended up ending my fort...

You see, when you set things to be dumped, everything on your map except trees and whatever your dwarves happen to be wearing is fair game. This includes materials used in constructions, and as soon as they are taken down those get dumped as well.

Once dumped, items are automatically forbidden, so if you want to use them again press d -> b -> c and highlight the garbage dump. That will claim everything the dorfs have dumped so far, rendering it all useful again.

Finally, press d -> b -> D to check which stuff is still set to be dumped, those things will show up purple. If there's still stuff set, the dorfs may not have gotten to it yet.

- How long can my dwarves survive on water and raw plump helmets? (currently getting still up and running but it's taken me awhile to get to this step)

Technically they can survive forever, assuming you always have clean water. However, dwarves who are deprived of alcohol become sober, and lose their ability to ignore logic. This makes them very slow and unhappy, as they now fear for their very lives because they realize that the fort is a deathtrap and anyone can be a victim. The easiest solution is to get them sloshed again, which increases production and makes them quite happy.

- How aggressive and lethal are Giant Badgers and Badger men? Advice on their presence in my embark vicinity?

...*shudder* Eh, badgermen are really more annoying than dangerous, but I've heard horror stories of giant badgers killing off the starting seven as soon as the game unpauses.

[Hitty40]

- I created a garbage dump near my workshops as the guide suggested, however a rotting prepared llama intestine got dumped in it and it seems to be creating miasma. I have a refuse stockpile out front, so why is rotting crap or whatever is causing miasmi being left in the garbage dump?

It's best not to place your garbage dump inside your fort unless you have a door in front of the dump.

- On the topic of garbage dumps, the guide said to use the dump command and designate rectangles over the rocks littering the fortress. I used the dump command and designated every tile of my fortress thinking that this command only told my dwarves to pick up rocks for storage in my garbage dump, however many other items seemed to have been included. Some items were relocated from my general purpose stockpile to the garbage dump, others were left in the general purpose stockpile. What exactly is going on here?

When you ordered a massive dump, you basicly ordered your dwarves to dump every thing. One way to clear this is to do a mass undump command over the garbage pile. If you don't have a stone stockpile, then the rest of the items will be returned to where they were once before.

- Are goods stored in my garbage dump available to use for all dwarves?

With the undump command, yes.

- How long can my dwarves survive on water and raw plump helmets? (currently getting still up and running but it's taken me awhile to get to this step)

Dwarves can survive on raw plump helmets forever, but you will sometimes get a Dwarf dying of thirst if you don't have booze production going, and for that, you also need Plump Helmets.

- How aggressive and lethal are Giant Badgers and Badger men? Advice on their presence in my embark vicinity?

They are fairly aggresive, and will rip apart any Dwarf not covered in armor.

- I have a pile of tame dogs pastured outside my fortress entrance, are they a line of defense as they are? Or must i train them as war dogs before they are any use?

They can be line of defence as they are, but not very well. Training War Dogs makes them more effective.

- Any other newby tips would be greatly appreciated as well. I'm in a joyous temperate forest area, about to try and set up my dining quarters, still, kitchen and decorate my dwarves rooms. I only have low quality furniture materials though.

Before you dig too deep and hit caverns, build up your military. It's best to have 1 squad of melee and 1 squad of ranged, incase you meet any FB with a syndrome.

If you plan on breaching HFS, get a few good squad of useless Dwarves going and have them train.

Build walls around your fortress, no matter what. I recommend building on flat ground to where your fort will start up at and away from cliffs and higher Z levels.

[AzuredreamsXT]

Thanks for the advice! About the walls, do you mean build them around my outdoor fortress entrance, or dig an outer ring around the interior of my fort and build walls there too? Do any enemies
dig to reach your fort?

[Thatdude]

Thanks for the advice! About the walls, do you mean build them around my outdoor fortress entrance, or dig an outer ring around the interior of my fort and build walls there too? Do any enemies
dig to reach your fort?

To be honest you could do both! But a straight up wall is faster because channeling ditches leaves ramps so effectively, a channeled moat does nothing until you remove the ramps ([d]-[z] i think, but can't quite remember). A one z-level wall will stop anything getting into your fort.

Nothing currently can dig it's way into your fort, but I heard rumours at the very least saying Toady has an intention of adding them in. So it may be a feature in the future.

[Organum]

To be completely safe, I advise you to make a wall around your fort and then a roof over the wall. Titans can sometimes fly, if I remember properly, and I'm almost certain they can all breathe water- that means no rivers or ponds should cross under the wall.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Do any enemies
dig to reach your fort?

Oh my god, I just realized what's missing from this game 

[AzuredreamsXT]

Any tips on building turrets at my entrance for marksdwarves to fire from? Do I need to designate an ammo pile somehow near them? Also if I leave dogs pastured at my entrance will they fight boatload that stray too close?

And how do I check if there are neighbouring civilizations to my own?

[Frelus]

You can (and possibly should, exspecially for possible future siege units) dig a moat around the walls and make a drawbridge, best choice would probably be a retractable.
It keeps arrows out, building destroyers cannot destroy bridges from the side where the bridge lies when not retracted, and ofc it lets you seal off your fort.
For marksdwarfes, I would make a level above the bridge, roof it and make fortifications into the walls where you want them to shoot from.
Just care that a), there is a moat so the enemie's archers cannot run up to it, and b), care out for legendary/high master shooters.
They can shoot through fortifications most of the time regardless the distance.
And, if you want to have a really heavy defense without traps, make a entranceway into your fort with a turn somewhere 40-50 tiles into the fort.
Make the tunnel go a few tiles more into the original direction, and build 1-3 overlapping ballistae there.
Train up siege engineers and operators, and as soon as a siege comes, FIRE
Oh, and you can possibly make a drawbridge in front of them too, so that a), you can decline gobbos who overran your first defenses further acces to your fort, and b), guard your siege engineers if an enemy archer comes too close to them.
And never forget the fortifications in front of them either, because siege engines are not affected by them, but your enemies are.
But do not forget, siege operators are civillians, and they WILL run if anything comes in a 20 (?) tile radius of them, being the reason for the long entranceway.
greetz, Freddy

EDIT:
Oh, the ammo.
As long as dwarfes haven't got a (short) path to their enemies as ammo runs out, they will reload.
If they can path, they will go to them and beat them with their crossbows.
make a forbidden door and an ammo stockpile, and it should work.
At least that's what I heard

[thegoatgod_pan]

Marksdwarves are a bit tricky to figure out:

They won't shoot unless right up against a fortification (unless they are very experienced)--so make the space thus FfF (fortification/floor/fortification)-stretched out of course as in
FfF
FfF
FfF
...

If close to an opponent they will try to use the crossbow as a club (so make sure they are on a wall, by a fortification a few closed doors away from being near the enemy)

They need quivers and backpacks to properly carry their ammo.
They reload from a workshop first and a stockpile second--which leads some players to put a bolt-making workshop (usually crafts for bone and wood bolts), in an enclosed area immediately under the defensive wall so dwarves can duck under, out of enemy sight, refill their quiver and be back in battle with just a few z-level shifts.

Finally archery training is nearly the opposite of normal training: most set their melee dwarves to either squads of 10 with 7 or so training fulltime, or squads of 3 with 2 training fulltime, this does not somehow work with marksdwarves (or rather it does but they train crossbow bashing and biting--not archery).  Instead assign many dwarves to crossbows--all useless dwarves even, make many crossbows and many many bolts--it's a great early economy for using up dead animal waste.

Then put all these marksdwarf squads on "inactive" (actually that should be the default) rather than "active/training" after making sure you have a min 10-urist long archery range (b-A) that the proper squads are assigned to.  With these in place all your random dwarves will train archery in their spare time becoming little sharpshooters in no time.

[Muttonhawk]

A tip on the subject of schedules:
It may be desirable to designate a burrow in a line up against your fortifications (name it 'turrets' or something), then add an extra task onto the marksdwarf squad(s) schedule to defend this burrow with an appropriate minimum of dwarfs (the sum of these dwarfs and the ones you have training should be less than the total squad numbers so they can take breaks). Then you'll have dwarfs on the walls keeping watch at all times! If they get thirsty or hungry they will take care of that themselves.

When your fortress gets big enough to have more than one marksdwarf squad, make sure that you rotate the squads' monthly shifts defending the turret burrow because some dwarfs get a bit pissy on tours of duty.

[AzuredreamsXT]

Thanks for all the great info and advice guys

When i'm checking my stores with z, i see some wares listed in grey in one column and some in red to the right of the grey. I assume the grey is what i own, but what is the red?

[drilltooth]

grey is availible, Red, unavailible, (usually means it;s been used to build something, liks a wall.

[Reudh]

 - I created a garbage dump near my workshops as the guide suggested, however a rotting prepared llama intestine got dumped in it and it seems to be creating miasma. I have a refuse stockpile out front, so why is rotting crap or whatever is causing miasmi being left in the garbage dump?
Quantum stockpiles require a garbage dump zone. ANYTHING goes there. Generally it's a good idea to disable the dump zone and activate one where the llama intestine will go after you've mass reclaimed the items in the dump zone.

 - On the topic of garbage dumps, the guide said to use the dump command and designate rectangles over the rocks littering the fortress. I used the dump command and designated every tile of my fortress thinking that this command only told my dwarves to pick up rocks for storage in my garbage dump, however many other items seemed to have been included. Some items were relocated from my general purpose stockpile to the garbage dump, others were left in the general purpose stockpile. What exactly is going on here?
Quite simply, everything was dumped. Dumping selects all items on the ground. Some items may have been in the stockpile space but not actually stored in it and hence were removed.

 - Are goods stored in my garbage dump available to use for all dwarves?
Provided they're reclaimed using d - b - c, yes.

 - How long can my dwarves survive on water and raw plump helmets? (currently getting still up and running but it's taken me awhile to get to this step)
A fair while. They'll get steadily angrier and angrier, so it's wise to get them variety of food and drink.

 - How aggressive and lethal are Giant Badgers and Badger men? Advice on their presence in my embark vicinity?
Giant Badgers are EXCEEDINGLY aggressive. Instead of seeing a dwarf and fleeing, they instantly enrage and charge toward the nearest one. A 'Badger Conga Line' has been the end of many a burgeoning fort.

 - I have a pile of tame dogs pastured outside my fortress entrance, are they a line of defense as they are? Or must i train them as war dogs before they are any use?
Tame dogs can fight, but they're weak. If you don't want to use them as pets, or don't want to leave them around as a buffer when you run low on meat, then train them as war dogs.

 - Any other newby tips would be greatly appreciated as well. I'm in a joyous temperate forest area, about to try and set up my dining quarters, still, kitchen and decorate my dwarves rooms. I only have low quality furniture materials though.
Quality doesn't really matter until you get nobles.

[/quote]

[AzuredreamsXT]

Any tips on reassigning a barrel for my brewer to use? The wiki has articles but i'm hoping theres a simple away to do it