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[Croabadrale]

Finally got around to reading the guide that's stickied here and I'm a little curious about some stuff that's happening around my fortress so far (haven't gotten too far into it yet).

I dug into the nearby mountain. Made of sand. Okay, so that makes it a dune, but still. Can I still farm in the sandy floor, or am I going to have to have my farm outside?

I haven't seen anything hostile yet. I think. Still adjusting to the ASCII display. Am I normally supposed to start seeing things like that, if just in passing?

Rat Corpses. EVERYWHERE. It's nothing absolutely spectacular, but... it's a startling number and they're building up. I'll figure out how to take care of them, but are there supposed to be huge piles of rat bodies everywhere?

One more question; when my expedition leader was digging out the rooms in the dune-mountain, a red question mark would occasionally flash. Does it mean anything?

Thank you for your time.

[Sphalerite]

I dug into the nearby mountain. Made of sand. Okay, so that makes it a dune, but still. Can I still farm in the sandy floor, or am I going to have to have my farm outside?

You can make a farm indoors on the sandy ground without even needing to muddy it with water first.  Sand counts as soil for the purposes of making a farm.

I haven't seen anything hostile yet. I think. Still adjusting to the ASCII display. Am I normally supposed to start seeing things like that, if just in passing?

In the unmodded game, you usually won't see anything hostile till the second year at the soonest.

Rat Corpses. EVERYWHERE. It's nothing absolutely spectacular, but... it's a startling number and they're building up. I'll figure out how to take care of them, but are there supposed to be huge piles of rat bodies everywhere?

I take it you brought a cat or two along?  They'll kill vermin and leave the corpses everywhere.  Make a Refuse stockpile outside and your dwarves will clean the remains up.

One more question; when my expedition leader was digging out the rooms in the dune-mountain, a red question mark would occasionally flash. Does it mean anything?

Red question mark mean the dwarf is thinking about what to do next and how to get there.  It means he just finished a job and is taking another one.

[NecroRebel]

Sand is soil. You can farm in soil or on muddied rock. Thus, you can farm in sand.

Depending on your biomes, you might never encounter anything hostile except kobolds, goblins, and special creatures, all of which will give you a notification whenever you meet them. Most wild animals don't actually bother you. Generally, only undead will actively enter your fort to try to kill you, and they appear only in evil areas, while large carnivores will attack dwarves if given the opportunity.

You've got cats, I take it. Cats will kill vermin and leave their bodies around. Even one or two cats can quickly produce a huge number of vermin remains; this is normal.

The question mark means that he's processing available jobs. It's nothing to worry about.

[i2amroy]

Sand is just the particular type of soil that the ground is made out of, therefore allowing farming on it. You can think of it as an exceptionally sandy type of dirt if that makes you feel better (not to be confused with sandy loam however ).

You probably won't see anything more hostile then a roaming badger or other wildlife until your second year, and trust me you will know when it happens. "Goblins have sprung from ambush" or something like that will appear and your game should recenter on them. Other than that you just have to watch out for random wildlife and those usually consist of 1 or 2 groups of foxes or some such animal at a time.

To remove the rat corpses use (i) to lay down a zone, and then toggle that zone for (g)arbage dump. Then go into the (o)rders - (r)efuse screen and set dwarves to dump other ("k" I think). The dwarves should then begin to gather up the corpses and throw them in a big pile in the designated zone. I suggest also that you place your zone outside or in a room with doors, that way when the corpses rot away they won't generate miasma or it will be contained in that single room. Also you can reduce the amount of vermin that come inside of your fort by placing doors on your food stockpiles and on your front entrance. It doesn't make that big of a difference, but it does add up over time.

The question mark is a perfectly normal thing that just means that a dwarf has a job but no current path to reach the job site. It appears when a dwarf has to recalculate how to reach a job site (such as you shutting a door in their face) or when they first accept a job but before they calculate how to get there.

Also, welcome to Dwarf Fortress, I hope you stick around long enough to see what a great game it can be regardless of the difficult learning curve.

[Croabadrale]

Thank you for the answers! I appreciate everyone taking time to answer them, as they've all been very helpful.

I do indeed plan to stick with this game. It's honestly not too horrendously difficult to follow so far, and so long as I can figure out what keys do what, I should be able to handle it.

Again, thank you for the support. This is one of the... friendlier game communities I've seen.

[Garath]

it comes from having a game that has a very steep learning curve. We all still remember the horrors of just beginning. Its a good idea though to check out the wiki, there is a constant link here above the threads in the sub-forum

the quick start guide may be helpful, and just type anything you see and dont recognise there

some pointers: there is sand (yellow, red, etc) and sandy clay, sandy loam. Sand is actually useful as it lets you set up a glass industry. It may not be the biggest profit you'll ever turn out, but it'll provide trading stuff in the beginning. Secondly, there are some "weapons" to be made from glass. those weapons are only used in traps, but can be quite deadly to any early invaders

the most important thing here is that there is an unlimited amount of sand on each sand tile, so if your glassmaking skill sucks in the beginning, you wont have wasted valuable limited resources, while you may want each iron item made count. Some suggest training your weaponsmiths by making weapons of baser metals first, same for armor. You can actually melt them down again later, but its advisable only to do this if you have plenty of wood to make charcoal

If you also have clay, which can be used as building material, you basically have unlimited "stone" and, well, sand

If i could fill in a wish list, i'd ask for magnetite (huge groupings of iron ore), some flux stone, possibly marble just for kicks, i like marble, clay and sand. A second ore like tetrahedrite (copper+silver 20% chance) or galena (lead+silver 50% chance), maybe even something more useful (though tetrahedrite is pretty useful)

but yeah, i like sand, especially early on. 2 traps with 10 serrated green glass discs will cut down any snatcher trying to sneak in and do enough damage to an ambush to send em away running. to reduce the system jamming because a body is in/on it, you may want to make 4x5 instead of 2x10. You can always take them apart later on, reclaim the materials, and build something better. Note that traps require mechanics skill and a mechanism. The better the mechanism the better their attack

[Muffindog]

Is this your first fort? And welcome to the community! 

It's okay to dig rooms in soil/sand, but they're not as good as those made of stone. I suggest you always go for the stone, smooth it and eventually engrave it. It'll keep your dwarves happy.

About farming - there are above and underground crops. You need sand/soil for them. If there are some bushes around your dune, you can assign dwarves to harvest them if they have the herbalist labor enabled. It may not be as effective as farming, but you can find some new plants and seeds to plant and farm later.

Don't worry, you'll get used to the ASCII graphics pretty quickly. The wild animals should leave you alone. Even the predators like jaguars won't attack you if your dwarves don't attack them first. But if you're on a savage terrain, giant versions of the creatures may appear, and you'll be in for a nasty surprise.
Hostiles shouldn't show up for at least a while, and the first thing will probably be a thief, that will get scared and run away as soon as discovered.

As others said, cats kill vermin like rats. There may be other corpses and remains, including bugs and little critters. They can't harm your dwarves, but you want them dead, believe me. They can gnaw and eat your food if left alive, but you'll be safe as long as you have cats.

If you have other questions feel free to ask.

[Starver]

I'd just add that digging in sand/soil does not give good-quality rooms (for purposes of happiness about various resources), but can be quickly dug through, and helps build up miner experience so that your subsequent digging into rock happens faster, as well as give you loads of temporary (or permanent) underground areas for storage, workshops, basic bedrooms, maybe pastures, etc...)

Also, you don't get spoil from sand/soil digging (you can collect sand and clay resources from sand and clay-type floors, dug out or otherwise, if you create a collection area and get the collection job into the appropriate workshop queue).  OTOH, when you dig into rock, you get raw rock/gems/ore/whatever.  Not all the time, and more likely the more experienced the miner[1], which can be both a blessing (for rocks/ores you want, see footnote again) and a curse (so many rocks sat around, doing nothing but cluttering up the place).


The joys of all of this, I'll leave you to discover.

Welcome, I suppose.  Enjoy.  They'll tell you that losing is fun.  It is, but it's often as much fun learning how to not lose in a particular way, during the next attempt.  Or two.  Or three. 


[1] So if you find a metal vein (other than one type of metal that always drops, but is not yet something you probably need to be concerned about), you may want to avoid digging it out until your miners have a decent experience (or you're getting on the edge of needing the ores freed up and are willing to risk the occasional no-get) so that you get the maximum resources when you finally do pursue it.