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[Chezzik]

Hey, I just downloaded this game last night, and decided to try it out, so I really have very little idea what I'm doing.

Generating a world took a long time, but I finally got in, and the screen said that the ground had collapsed!  It put me at level 58, and everything was black.  Using <>, I went up to the top level, and it was level 138.  I tried digging on level 138, but after marking the area and unpausing, nothing happened.

So, are my dwarves all on level 58?  Is there way I can light up the world to see it?  Are my dwarves dead?  Do I need to restart?

I know it's a lot of questions, but I am very new, and don't want to go through the pain of regenerating a new world.

[Talvieno]

Try pressing the "u" key. It'll put up a list of all the creatures (dwarves, animals, allies, enemies) on the map, and you can zoom to them. If you can't find your dwarves, that's the fastest way to do it. Select a dwarf in the list and press "c".

Really, though - I'm somewhat new myself. I had no idea what happened with it saying you had a cave-in when the game started.

[proxn_punkd]

Cave-in upon start tends to be the sign of a glitchy location.

[Chezzik]

Cave-in upon start tends to be the sign of a glitchy location.

Well, I used the 'finder' to pick a location.  I just said no to aquifers, and yes to flux stone and river, and then took what it gave me.

Did it kill my dwarves?  Do I need to restart?  Do I have to make a new world, or is there a way I can use this same world and embark someplace else?

[proxn_punkd]

The comment before mine tells you how to find your dwarves with the (u)nit menu. Do that first. They should be able to see their surroundings, and that should give you an idea of whether the area is playable or not. Obviously an area with a giant magma column is going to be unplayable as soon as gravity kicks in.

Calm down and use your common sense; unlike your dwarves, you should have some.

[i2amroy]

Cave-in upon start tends to be the sign of a glitchy location.

Not necessarily, often it just means that you are going to have some cooler caverns then most people.

But yeah, using the unit screen should let you find your dwarves with no problem and you should be fine. This happening simply means that something caved-in in the caverns and so the game automatically zoomed to it. Your dwarves are probably sitting up on the surface completely unharmed.

[Teneb]

Also, keep in mind that by default, F1 can be used to zoom to your wagon (or the spot where it used to be). You can change where it zooms to later by pressing [h]

[Dewar]

Hitting F1 also centers the camera on your Embark location.

Edit: *Drat* seconds late.

[Garath]

the levels actualy go up as you go down

your dwarves are at lvl 0 or 1.

the cave-in means that there was an unstable ceiling in a cavern there. Probably the map generated an island in a cavern (surrounded by water), and nothing on the floor below to hold it up. It then immediately caves in

check with "a" and then "z". If any of your drones was near, you should see something. Also in "r" (reports) you can usually see if someone got hurt

[Chezzik]

Thanks for the responses.  I'm not at home, so I can't really try out these suggestions yet, but I'll get to them tonight. 

I really thought that they must be dead, because they weren't on my screen at all, but if the view changes to the point of the cave in, then that makes more sense.

As far as levels, I was looking at the number in the bottom right hand corner. Looking at a screenshot on a guide now, I see that there should also be a number in the top right corner, which probably corresponds to the level that you actually viewing.   All I know is that I had to press shift-< about 80 times before I saw something other than black, and at that point, the number in the bottom right had changed from 58 to 138.

Thanks!

[proxn_punkd]

The number in the bottom right I think represents how many levels there are below you to the end of the map. So the cave-in was quite a ways down, but not all the way down.