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[Urist Imiknorris]

The only thing I look for is good kinesthetic sense and possibly a preference for iron or steel for my weapon/armorsmith.

[Poindexterity]

i look to see if any of them have the "finds helping others rewarding" and if one does, he gets to be a doctor.
then i look to see if any of them tire more slowly than the others and he's my miner.

apart from that, i have never given it any thought.

[SixOfSpades]

. . . Bad enough trying to find a decent embark site with flux, shallow and deep metalS, a river, trees, clay, soil, and a calm, cooling breeze most of the year around (and NO aquifier, F you very much, find function).  Once I finally did, and I _finally_ got a solid three dwarves for the more intensive jobs (and some suitable miners), then the game crashed on me when I pushed e.  And I have to start over.   

Backups are your friends.

I created a world, and before I did anything I copied the world-gen files to another directory. Started DF again, found what looked like a pretty good site, and wrote down its coordinates. Embarked with a "Play Now!" and . . . oh my sweet Idrath (a deity of the Mirror of Letters; commonly takes the form of a female dwarf and is associated with wealth) does this look like an awesome site. I took some screenshots, Abandoned, and loaded up my backup save a few times in order to Embark to adjacent sites to get a close look at the entire area. Compared & contrasted all the sites to get the optimal location, and . . . Welcome to Goldencrowns. A really steep slope with a southern exposure, a nice brook swimming with trout at the top of that slope and plenty of flat, heavily wooded pastureland (okay, technically swamp) at the bottom. Native gold, lignite, and 3 types of iron ore all right at the surface, and promises of Deep Metals later on. Plenty of rain, but it never gets below freezing. No hostile critters except for Badgers. Yeah, I think I can settle for this.

Do the same thing with your dwarves. I mainly care only about the Expedition Leader (your 6 workers will be outnumbered before the year is out, so fine-tuning them is rather irrelevant, but I really like knowing that the Mayor is the guy i've been grooming since Day 1), but basically I make sure all of the more rustic skills are covered, making sure my Miners are strong while my craftsdwarves have high creativity. Once you've finalized your party, Embark, and then immediately Save your game, and create another backup folder. Fall back to this if something stupid happens.

[Iton Ibrukrithzam]

I'm fairly ambivalent about the traits and attributes.  Most of them don't seem to make too big a difference, and if a miner ends up being "quick to tire" he'll train out of it with some good old fashioned exercise.  I'm not even against the odd use of Runesmith to fix, say, procrastination problems on the butcher who has little to no real work to do until the moment a butcherable corpse turns up, at which point he goes on break until it rots.

What I get anal about is names and appearances.  The last names, specifically, since I can wipe the first name off with a nickname.  At minimum, I need one dwarf with a kickass name.  Irontomb or Blazebanners or something evocative of a champion.  This one becomes my militia commander and it's simply a job that can't be done by a "Tinfalters" or a "Pageoil".  I also look for either a female with long hair, or a male with short hair neatly combed(no budging on the neatly combed) who will be my bookkeeper/manager/broker. 

[daggaz]

Backups are your friends...

Not really interested in spying out the land before hand, kinda takes away from the sense of adventure.  Would be nice to be able to save my actual dwarf party before embarking, in the event that the game crashes yet again. 

As for my own party, (the following are hopeful bonuses, but I settle or not having a negative)

Leader.  Needs social, empathy, and linguistics.   Would like intellect, too, so he can be the appraiser, as he will have all the bargaining talky skills. 
Skills: appraise (2 or 3), negotiator, persuader, consoler, judge of intent, pacifier, conversationalist.  Maybe recordkeeper if he has memory.    Traits need to not interfere with his skills, there are only two or so, plus he needs to like leading.   

Doc.  Needs intellect, focus, intuition and preferably memory too, for diagnostics.  Empathy is a plus for wound tending etc, but his main goal is to be lead diagnostician.  I give him a point or two in carpentry so he can make his own hospital gear (he is rarely busy in the beginning anyways) and otherwise he makes barrels etc.  He should like helping people, but its not essential.   I dont look much at traits from here on out.
Skills: Diagnostics at 3+, one each on the other medicals, one in carpentry, maybe one in herbalism or recordkeeping. 

2 miners.  Used to be one point each that was it, but trying now making them mason/building designers as well.  Need will and spatial sense, used to desire good strength and indefeatigibility, but think perhaps the physical traits are easier to level up?
Skills: 1 mining, 2-3 mason/building engineer

Smithy.  Makes armor, weapons, metal, etc.  Usually does traps too.   I give him as many ranks as I can, but generally dont try to match traits too much as its too hard after leader and doc.  Looking at metal preferances from now on tho. 

Brewer/cook.  Max ranks in brewing (alcohol is important!), one or two in cooking.  generally look for kinesthetic, agility.  But I take what I can get.

Grower.  Dump guy.  worst one gets this.  He gets max ranks in growing, perhaps one rank in herbalist if it fits (often doc gets that). 

I pay for skills by selling my tools and starting with ores to make bronze, I dont bring any wood, I sell half my starting gear as well as I plan to make it all soon enough.  It is aggravating to say the least, finding a suitable party and taking the time to set all the skills and edit their gear, only to have the damn game crash.  =/

[jeffreyac]

I'll speak as one who was OCD about the starting seven (to the point you know well, where it takes you hours just to get to the embark screen...)

I used to do this, but I found there just wasn't all that much difference to my untrained eye. Heck, other than my leader (who, as my bookkeeper and broker, I had to go look for every time a caravan showed up) I initially didn't even really note any of their names, let alone attributes. So, slowly, I worried less and less about attributes, until finally I was just randomly assigning. "Ok, dwarf 1 is leader, 2 is doc, etc etc".

I'm actually coming back from the don't-give-a-damn edge a little - I've had some forts last long enough to have problems with the dwarf I picked as leader having a liking for some super rare material I can't get, which causes issues later, so now I've been finding a dwarf who likes common things (or things I think I have a good chance of getting/producing) and making them leader. After reading the thread, I htink I'll go ahead and picksomeone with a liking for a *good* metal to make my armor/weaponsith - that hadn't occurred to me before...


So, yeah, I have to admit that I've gotten past my OCD about the attributes. Of course, I still have my OCD about starting locations, fortress setup, and just about everything else, but hey... 

As far as the start, I take:

For things:
- I remove the anvil. I never get metal production up before the first caravan hits anyway, so I just buy one from the first caravan to save points.
- One pair each of dogs and cats - the initial breeding pair. Cats for anti vermin (and, strangely enough, I like them) and dogs for war/guard animals.
- A recent addition - I've been trying to wean myself off of wood addiction (and heavily forested starts) and as a result, only taking one copper axe. New, and the jury is still out on this, but so far seems to be OK.

For the dwarves:

Leader/grower: judge intent-1, appraise-2, organizer-2, record keeper-2, grower-2, cook-1
Doc: diagnosis-2, the other 4 medical skills -1, brew-2, metalsmith-2
hunter/outdoorsman: ambush-3, butcher-3, tanner-1, woodcutter-2
Carpenter: carpenter-3, grower-3, weaponsmith-2, armorsmith-2
Rockworker: Mason-3, stonecrafter-3
miner: miner-5
miner: miner-5

This list is actually from before my removal of the axe, so there are a few more points available; I think I threw a mechanic-2 in there and added mason-3 to a miner (for life after mining), plus adding a level to stonecrafting and/or masonry on y primary stone guy.

[daggaz]

Hmmm, just the kind of post I was hoping for.  Maybe I will try to take it easy on picking the little bastards out then (tho it seems sad, there is ALL this information, can't I use it??).    As for miners, I had read/heard that they will level up real quick in soil, so Ive only been giving them a single notch and then carving out massive complexes for goblins to get lost in, in the dirt.    I always have dirt, not going to try irrigation just quite yet. 

Also, it does seem that there are a lot of threads with psychotic dwarves who ruin good forts in a tantrum of petulance because they couldnt get their goddam slade earrings and matching slade teapot, so maybe it is prudent to pay more attention to their tastes, like you say?   

[Psieye]

First, see whether your copy of the game allows you to embark at all. Once you know crashes are random and not 100%, then you can start thinking about how to perfect the embark.

Second, I really don't get why some compulsively obsessive (i.e. OCD) people leave everything to the random number generator. If you care so much about something, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT is my attitude. I hate aquifers too, had a bad experience with one destroying all my FPS at embark because it breached a cavern once. So I just erase aquifers from my game instead of agonising over whether this otherwise perfect site would be spoiled. I like having sand on my embark sites, but you can't search for sand so easily on the site finder. Therefore I made any soil be usable as sand if it's not clay. Some may call that cheating, but in a single player game that just means "not the playing experience I'd want", i.e. personal opinion. Want metals? Change the mineral scarcity settings or tinker around with mods (e.g. the 'bundle' item so you can bulk-buy metal bars from caravans). All this we can do even without touching Runesmith which I do feel takes away the fun from the game so don't use to ultimate optimise.


Personally I don't give much of a damn about the starting 7 traits. Exception being what preferences they have: do they like a key metal? Do they like axes (weaponsmith)? Do they like beds (carpenter)? I don't really care if they don't have the ideal preferences, but if they do then I tailor my embark build to them. I'm going to get more dwarves pretty soon anyway, it works out fine in the end and it's fun to see how the fort develops based on what traits the migrants bring. Some forts I'll have a thriving textile industry because that's how my early migrant traits were ideal for. Other forts I'll have a strong military, etc.

Attributes can be trained over time. The personality system doesn't have much impact on dwarf performance. I don't give much care for personalities (aside from perhaps, how indecisive key dwarves are and how altruistic they are) as I know it's a hodgepodge list that's facing extensive rework. Skill is the most important parameter in how good dwarves are at something. The tiny differences from other factors are insignificant in the big picture (e.g. "a bolt is stuck in their head, it doesn't care whether the dwarf was legendarily tough or not").


Being capable of paying careful attention to detail is something to be proud of. However, being unable to distinguish between relevant details and noise is foolish. But that's a learned skill, whereas the former is an innate quality that can't really be trained.

[daggaz]

Gais, gais! Hey gais!  Gais!!   

I embarked! 

[VerdantSF]

I embarked! 

So what did you name your starting 7?

On a completely different note, did you ever play the MUD "Accursed Lands"?  I knew a "Daggaz" there way back in the day.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Do all the people who like embark with one or more military skilled dwarfs routinely embark on savage/evil biomes, or is it just a preference over a walled/trapped fort entrance?

With my average embark location being a temperate woodland, my starting build looks something like this:

2x Miners5
1x Mason5
1x Carpenter5
1x Appraiser5/Judge of Intent1/Stonecrafter4 (my Manager/Trader/Legendary stonecrafter)
1x Grower5/Brewer2-5
1x Woodcutter5

Two picks, one axe, three dogs (one male), a breeding pair of cats and 60 units of booze. Additionally I may take some fuel, lye, extra wood or animals. For the most part I ignore my dwarfs attributes while selecting their skills on embark. After the first 10 or more migrants I pick my engraver whom I make sure has the appropriate skills and attributes for his future job, but he is the only one.

[VerdantSF]

I don't use a danger room, so these days I usually embark with 3 hammerdwarves and set them to training all year round with 2 active at any given time.  While one lounges around, the other 2 spar like crazy.  When the first gobs arrive, they promptly get smashed in the face. 

[Tryble]

I'm surprised there's so many people so adamant about finding key traits in their starting seven.

I did a fortress where I'd named the founders after myself & my friends, and just used Runesmith to manually change all the personality traits and attributes to more closely match the people they were named for.  I don't really bother doing this for normal games, though; I just fit the professions to the dwarves' personalities as best I can.

Relying on the RNG to crank out the right set for you is just horrible.  May as well take matters into your own hands and do it the way you want, right?

[Psieye]

Relying on the RNG to crank out the right set for you is just horrible.  May as well take matters into your own hands and do it the way you want, right?

Pretty much, yes. The trick is to find where the is line beyond which it no longer feels fun.

[King DZA]

Do all the people who like embark with one or more military skilled dwarfs routinely embark on savage/evil biomes, or is it just a preference over a walled/trapped fort entrance?

I bring a military dwarf for a few reasons:

1) I never overuse traps, and I don't use danger rooms, so my military usually play a pretty big roll in my fortress defense.

2) It means I have someone to take care of those pesky animals that impede my fort's progress early on, and maybe someone to use as a hunter if I didn't feel like bringing one.

3) And, of course, it means I will have at least one decent soldier to rely on when the goblins come to visit.

Also, as I've said before, I enjoy the survival/randomness factor of setting up my embark/dwarves, so that usually doesn't take too long. What does normally take up a vast amount of my time, however, is group/fort names. I like the names to be relevant to whatever it is I'm planning for the fortress, so constructing an acceptable name for both can take quite a while.