40d:How to safely start fortress mode

This guide was compiled by Yanlin (And the users) for the users. Basically it contains Yanlin's personal advice with the advice of others taking a higher rank.

The page has not yet been completely made wiki friendly and it is a WIP.

The guide

All advice in the replies will be summed up here in user friendly bits.

Dwarf jobs and happiness

Don't try to take one of everything at the start. All jobs that will be run almost constantly can just be done by an immigrant. For example, start with one mason working like a madman churning out doors and such. Then when you get your first wave, start at least 4 mason workshops and make them churn out standard rooms. If you can make an apartment complex instead of a huge barracks room, you get yourself a good happy bonus. -Yanlin

• Legendary dining room is all you need. It is so useful it makes rooms better than barracks merely a roleplay thing. Also, dabbling masons should work on blocks, not furniture. -Someone-else

Legendary dining rooms: Any room that's about 5x5, fully engraved and has maybe 4 tables and chairs will be legendary from my experience. I usually take a proficient engraver with me on the start to speed it up and it also helps if he is the only one doing the engravings. Legendary dining rooms can make dwarves forget even the most horrible things! Even death. -Yanlin

• Average artifact in a small plain room with crappy tables and thrones counts as legendary dining room too. -Someone-else

A fort divided does not stand. Make sure your dwarves don't run around like idiots. -Yanlin

Cave adaptation: I set up a simple system. There is only one exit out of my apartment complex. My apartment complex spans multiple floors and each one has the entire entrance in light state. How? Well light passes through floors! Go figure. This is how I do it. I [[channel[[ out the entire entrance from the top to the level I am currently building in. I wall it in on the top to prevent goblins and other nasty stuff from jumping or firing in. I create a small "maintenance" tunnel going near the channeling area so that the channelers have access to it. It's simple really. When the channeling grinds to a halt, pave all the channeled areas with floors. I never tested wood floors. (What kind of idiot wastes wood on anything but bins, buckets, barrels and beds?) -Yanlin

Stone stockpiles: NO! NOT A CHANCE! But if you set up a special workshop for churning out expensive items, set up a stockpile that accepts only that one kind of expensive rock. Setting up a small stone stockpile under your masonry workshop is a good idea though. -Yanlin

• If you're training siege operators, you can set up an 8x8 non-economic non-ore stone stockpile to ease the hauling load on your catapulters. -GreyMario
• A worthwhile alternative to stockpiling is channeling a hole above some workshops (I haven't tried directly above, but it might work), setting it as a garbage dump, and then dumping all the stone you come across. Unforbid the stone you want to use when you want to use it. It takes up only 1 square to store an arbitrarily high amount of stone, but requires more micromanagement (you don't want to pitch your obsidian into a chasm, or that rotting corpse into your workshop) and will only work for one material at a time.

Haulers: Have at least 5-10 free peasants for hauling. Usually my fortress can run on just my 7 starting dwarves. I can easily supply 60 dwarves worth of food and booze while the rest do the odd job here and there. -Yanlin

Micromanagement: Only your core dwarves need it. The rest can just do anything they want. -Yanlin

Fishing: Not worth it. Only the shells are worth it. -Yanlin

• However, fishing can give you lots and lots of fishbones, which can then be made into bone bolts that Dwarves use for practice. Very useful on maps without trees. - HisMajestyBOB

Hunting: Worth it. But at least give your hunter some armor. -Yanlin

• Do not waste starting dwarf on it. This is job for immigrants. -Someone-else

Farm size: 10x10 of plump helmets without fertilizing will feed 500 dwarves. A 5x5 field WITH fertilizing will feed about 500 dwarves. Do the math. (Rough estimates. Untested.) -Yanlin

Cloth: Pig tails will provide you all the cloth you need and booze too. -Yanlin

Buying your first anvil: Mugging. No not robbing the merchant. Making tons and tons of stone mugs! You'd be amazed how much you can buy with a few bins worth of mugs. Each stone gives 3 mugs and a skilled mason can make enough to... Well... Buy anything you need. Remember, craftsdwarves are GOOD! -Yanlin

• Mechanic is the way to go. Not only are mechanisms single items (less hauling) but also aren't useless. Prepared food is very good too, though it needs 3 dwarves working (planter, brewer and cook. Combining them into one dwarf is bad thing). Craftdwarves aren't really useful at start and are almost totally useless after that. -Someone-else
• Scrape up enough to buy at least 2 cheese then cook the cheese. Use the cooked cheese to buy the rest of the cheese. Cook the rest of the cheese. Buy out the rest of the caravan with the new meal. -Ikko
• Seconding cooking over crafting. I generally have a 5x5 plot of plump helmets, which I brew then cook, which will feed an arbitrarily high amount of dwarves and allow me to buy pretty much whatever I want. -Vaniver

Nobles: Give them a huge bedroom, huge office and cram it up with some decorations and engravings. That should keep em happy for a while. -Yanlin

• If you happen to have artifact furniture just build one room of average size, but few beds, tables and thrones in it and make it a "noble room". Artifact will boost its value enough for all dwarves who aren't kings unless it's made from one log, stone, bone, shell or the like. -Someone-else

Pets and food animals

Cats. DO NOT DO IT! IT IS NOT WORTH IT! -Yanlin

• Wrong. Having one cat will not only boost dwarves' mood (no rats and other ugly crap) but will also make your food safer. -Someone-else

Dogs. DO IT! IT IS WORTH IT! -Yanlin

Shamelessly kill off any newborn pets to prevent overpopulation. Especially useful on cats. -HisMajestyBOB

• Or put them in a cage as an emergency food source. Caged animals do not breed, block paths or waste CPU power on pathfinding. -Someone-else

Dogs give a lot of bang for your buck. They are a good source of meat. You just pay 16 bucks for them upon embark, if I remember correctly. This might be a little bit more than the price of 5 meat (which is 10 bucks) but you have to take into account that they get offspring, son that 20 dogs of the first year might turn into 30 dogs or more in the second year. when you slaughter them each dog gives you 5 meat, 5 bones, a hide and a skull. This as well as the fact that dogs, in contrast to meat don't rot, makes it useful to buy at least some of them upon start. -Proteus

Dogs are better than cats. Dogs breed just as fast and you can have an army of wardogs slaughtering everything, not to mention they make an incredible thief defense. Simply put a meeting zone across the entrance to your fort, then you'll have all eleventy billion dogs wandering around in that meeting zone. Any thief is instantly turned into kobold kibble, and they're quite handly at dealing with smaller sieges too. Also you can slaughter dogs at whim, whereas you can't slaughter an owned pet. -Hyndis

Defense

An army of peasants is a good thing if you think about it. Churn out a few crossbows and bolts. Even copper weapons can take down most sieges you will probably get. -Yanlin

Goblin babysnatchers and Kobold thieves. One dog on a chain will kill them on contact. Especially a war dog. I usually buy a few chains at the embarkment. -Yanlin

Security. Stonefall traps at the entrance help. After you need more than that, you probably have more than that. Make weapon traps that shoot or better yet, station marksdwarves in fortifications outside your fort. Make sure to put them in a tower. -Yanlin

• Interim/second-line defence layout requiring minimal man-hours to assemble; mine out one long entrance tunnel, with doors and fortifications at the very end, one line of traps just inside the entrance to soften them up and another line in front of the defences to mop up whatever your marksdwarves can't kill off in time. Optionally carve fortifications out of both sides of this passage, screened by traps or even a channel, and establish a crossfire. "Crossbows to the left of us, crossbows to the right of us..." -Jake Grey

You might want to bring along a rope and then wall in your fortress entrance so there is only one path. Then set a dog on the rope (Not a cat, those are more useful against vermin) beside the door to stop the sneaky sorts. -Gamerofthegame

Weapon traps and marksdwarves = survival for for most -wendigo

Production and efficiency

Glass. You want sand on your map. It is awesome advice to have sand on your map. Remember. Glass is EASY to make especially if you can get a source of fuel for your forge. You can make almost everything out of glass. If you can get a magma glass furnace, you win. -Yanlin

Iron. You want it. If you didn't find iron, I suggest just starting over in another location or if you feel determined, buy it. But it can get costly. -Yanlin

• If you're being beseiged by goblins, you can melt down their armour for iron. -Tenebrais
• I have to agree here. If you have a magma source. Each goblin gives about 3 bars of metal when you melt down the equipment. Also, dwarven and human caravans bring maybe 10 bars or more each if you give it a high priority. Since you only need iron (/steel) for weapons and armour, you can easily survive on a map without iron ore. -Qwertyu

Common barrel exploit. Each piece of meat and booze you bring with you, will give you one free barrel. 5 of each can fit in a barrel and if you take 6 of something, you get 2 barrels. Etc. -Flok Speargrabber

Turtles are AWESOME! -Flok Speargrabber

• Be sure to disable bones and shells in your early outdoor refuse stockpile so you don't waste turtles' awesomeness. -Someone-else

Bringing a few seeds of everything along with you is wise. (I suggest bringing plenty of plump helmet and pig tail seeds.) -Flok Speargrabber

• The second advice is bad. Just start your farm soon and brew what you can and you will have more seeds than need. As for bringing everything: 1 seed each is enough. Rock nuts are useless before you have food chain and plenty of bags. -Someone-else

Immigrants are good for fishing that pesky carp. (Well not really. But they are good for fishing nonetheless.) -blakyoshi7

If your dwarves need to go to water that contains carp, longnose gar, or other ravenous river creatures, any goon given a crossbow and stationed at least one tile away from the river can keep a fair region of river clear of animals, given a little while. Remember to turn off chasing so they don't run up to the river and get dragged in. -Heron

Farming. The best source of food. If you don't want to "Cheat" you can just plant a big plump helmet farm. Make sure you don't cook it all though. Make sure at least some goes into booze. Booze and eating raw returns seeds. Cooking destroys them. Alternatively you can cook the booze. That creates a cheatish infinate supply of food. -Yanlin

Wood. You don't really NEED a heavily forested map. Assuming you will make about 100 beds during 3 years and some barrels, buckets and bins, you only need about 500 trees. Might sound like not enough on a non heavily forested map right? Well wrong. Trees DO grow back. Even a lightly forested map has at least 200 trees from what I could tell. -Yanlin

• If you plan on doing a lot of metalsmithing on a map with no magma, or a lot of clear glass or soap, you will need a lot of wood for charcoal and ash. -Bouchart

Pig tails are good to bring, as a source of booze that your dwarfs won't accidentally eat up before it's turned into it's sweet elixir of happiness. -Overdose

Pigtail makes great booze. It helps keep your dwarves happy and avoid the "Tired of same booze" unhappy thought. -motorbitch

You need cloth only for strange moods. You can easily buy all the cloth you need and have your farmers do more useful work. -motorbitch

• Wrong. Glass industry requires many bags. -Someone-else
• Arguably, if you've got a use for cloth in bulk then you've probably got an export good valuable enough to buy it with and still turn a profit, though a local supply to top it up couldn't hurt. -Jake Grey

Two humped camels are good for farming as they yield a lot. Consider this option to diversify your meals. Also helps if you want to avoid the booze food exploit.- motorbitch

Lopped off body parts create small bones that are rather useless. (Training bolts are never really useless as you should have too many bins anyway.) -motorbitch

You should only put a priority on Magma if you have the ability to make glass with it. If so, it should be one of your first things. -Gamerofthegame

Have your carpenter(s) craft a steady flow of beds/barrels/bins -wendigo

Run a still nonstop. Get those seeds, distill that booze. -wendigo

• If you have many barrels filled with booze and no free ones just cook some beer biscuits. Not only they will make your dwarves happier but also will train your cook and let your brewer continue his work. Don't do this if you have no plants to brew. -Someone-else

Metalworking is desirable, but not crucial. -wendigo

I set every dwarf in the fortress to butcher and tan. Its a very high priority job since the corpses and skins will rapidly decay, and by setting every single dwarf to be able to perform this task (skill doesn't matter, a dabbling dwarf does just as well as a legendary dwarf) there's a very high probability it will get done in time. If you have a lot of corpses to process, simply build a bunch of butcher and tanner workshops. -Hyndis

If you find yourself on a map with an abundance of metal ore and coal or magma, save your wood for beds, ash and the odd strange mood and make as much as you can from metal; it's usually a lot easier to defend and safely access a vein of cassiterite or a coal seam during sieges than a whole forest. Metal bins also make trading with the elves a bit less laborious. (NB: I would strongly advise you to use up your less useful metals such as tin first, even if you're practically buried in magnetite; a sudden run on crossbow bolts could come at the very worst moment.) -Jake Grey

Speaking of which, don't underestimate the usefulness of elven merchants, as the one thing they're reliable for bringing is cloth, and lots of it. Unless you forbid the use of pig tails and/or rope reed for brewing, your still and farmer's workshop will be in direct competition for the same supply, which can lead to shortfalls in one or the other. Apart from the fact that running out of cloth is infinitely preferable to running out of booze, it's also better value for money as an import. -Jake Grey

Wood is useful for:

Beds - Bins - Barrels - Spikes - Pump parts - Windmills and water wheels

-Flok Speargrabber

Stone is good for:

Statues - Coffers - Cabinets - Coffins - Trade goods - Doors - Floodgates - Chairs - Tables - Blocks for roads and floors (More brick-y than block-y)

-Flok Speargrabber

Metal is good for:

Weapons - Armor - Magma-safe stuff - Expensive statues - Noble orders, usually, unless they don't want a special metal item

-Flok Speargrabber

Performance

Cats are not as bad as they used to be. Now slaughtering the newborns is easy enough and with the new partial print feature, they are not the huge FPS problem they used to be. They are also, like dogs: a good source of meat and such. -Vaftrudner

Don't bother with clothes. They don't really do anything and lag your FPS because they get checked every moment. Your dwarves wont mind walking around nude and no one is going to judge them about it. (Politically it does not matter.) -motorbitch

Bring a cage. Just one. You can use it to stuff your excess creatures. Mainly anything outside two cats and maybe two dogs. -Gamerofthegame

Special conditions

You could bring five picks and 300 logs if you're on a treeless map. Just don't make stuff from wood if you can make them from something else. (Stockpile = bad) -Ashery

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