So I'm pretty much a newb when it comes to Dwarf Fortress, been playing it on and off for about two years now (I play until I get extremely frustrated because I don't know how to do something then come back to the game later and be able to do it), however, this problem really baffles me:
Here I am watching my dwarves run around, I got my armorer possessed to make a pig iron shield, and finally found the sedimentary layer area on my map and explioting it; everything is going great until I realize I am running out of booze and food... I know, huge problem right? Wrong! An Elven caravan has arrived so I might be able to trade for some food.
About a month goes by with me attempting to break up enough parties so my butcher would decide to kill a reindeer so my possessed dwarf gets some bones and I realize that I haven't seen the message that the elves are unloading their goods so I look back for the announcement about the caravan, find the source (the caravan), and realize it is on the edge of the map... Where it has been the entire time (there is a small stream separating the area they came from and my fortress which I quickly made a bridge over just in case they were afraid of water).
A very important note is that the depot was used before by the dwarf caravan to trade earlier with no issues.
I used the Shift+D command to see if there was any problems with pathing... I got this:
This is a picture of my Fortress:
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This is my Fortress
as if it were an impossible minesweeper puzzle... Well you'll see for yourself:
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I really need help because I don't know if I can survive without hacking in a couple of those
tasty tasty badgers and
eating petting them. I also really do not want to start again so soon as this is the first map I felt I have a really good thing going. Please help me.