40d:Starting build

A starting build is a personal strategy for choosing the initial supplies, equipment, and skills of your initial seven dwarves when starting a new game in fortress mode. These skills and items which you assign to your dwarves will have a large impact on life in your new fortress, especially in its first year.

This page attempts to give some advice on some of the many gameplay elements which influence the flow of your game based on your goals. These include: choosing a fortress site, the starting build itself, as defined by who and what to take with you, as well as challenge builds aimed at providing new or unusual challenges to advanced players.

But one thing should be made clear - there is no "best" build, no "perfect" or "clearly superior" final mix of skills and items. There are too many variables to explain and connect, not the least of which is... you! Your play style, what you, as an individual player, considers preferable for the proper mix of fun and challenge. And then there is the environment, where your dwarfs will land, the creatures, the resources available, and so forth. Many, many variables.

And so while suggestions can be made, and new ideas presented for your consideration, ultimately the final "best" mix for you will have to come from your experience, which will start during your first game. Without understanding "everything", some decisions will just have to be guesswork - and even then, you never know "everything".

Until then, there are some recommendations...

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• Your First Fortress?

Note: If you are a new player looking for a solid basis to survive the first couple of months or years, check out this guide. It includes a basic starting build similar to one discussed below.

Components of a Starting Build

A starting build must be seen as a whole - the embark location affects the needed supplies, and influences what skills may be most needed or useful. Along with this is player preferences - if you wish an economy based on prepared meals, glass, or steel, each of those have very different requirements. Likewise, if you want to play a military game, fighting off sieges with huge battles, that's a very different mix (and different site requirements) than if you want a calm location to build your perfect mega construction.

Skills

You can't take every skill, so you have to balance what you do take. The considerations are several:

• Maximizing starting skill ranks vs. generalizing and having more skills covered at lower levels.
• Balancing multiple skills for a single dwarf, so they aren't constantly needed for two different tasks at critical periods
• Military vs economic needs
• Your goals vs "basic survival needs" to keep your fortress healthy and happy.
• Speed that a skill can be trained in game
• Demand for a skill during a game
• Whether quality or speed are significant considerations for tasks/final product

While there are some arguable "no-brainer" choices, the final few selections are often a coin toss, or close to. And there is often more than one way to skin a cat - in fact, while many players recommend never starting with more than one cat, cat breeding (for leather, bones and meat) is one way to go with a fortress. Until you have some personal experience, the various suggestions and advice will mean less, but will have more meaning after your first fortress inevitably fails - and it will, they all do - mine, yours - losing is fun.

Matching skills to a dwarf's personal profile

Taking the time to view each of your individual dwarves and matching skills to their preferences can be very advantageous; if you have a dwarf who likes steel, clear glass, crossbows, siege engine parts, or something else equally interesting, they're an ideal candidate for matching skills.

Likwise, if they have any personality strengths or weaknesses, that can be factored in. Some are obscure or abiguous, but some ("Is constantly active and energetic" or ""Very rarely does more work than necessary") are a clear sign.

Items

The starting items are what are needed for your dwarfs to survive until they are self-sufficient, or at least enough so that the yearly caravans will keep them afloat. The first won't show up until Autumn, so that's more than 2 seasons of your dwarves on their own.

A dwarf eats about 2 meals a season, and drinks about 4 drinks in that same time. For 7, that's about 30 meals (2 dwarfs x 2 seasons x 2 meals) and about twice that in alcohol that will be consumed. You can bring all of that, or your hunters, plant gatherers, fisherdwarfs, growers and brewers can provide some or most of it. It's always safer to bring enough, and see how things go - losing a fortress to starvation before the first caravan is a painful process.

Most of the finished products are expensive to buy pre-embark, and so a minimum are recommended - maybe an axe or two for immediate defense and cutting wood, maybe a pick or two for immediate mining and back-up defense, maybe a bag or five for whatever, and call it good.

But you can make any and all of those from scratch if you are willing to wait - and your surroundings don't kill you first. Raw materials are much cheaper, in the form of ores, wood, leather and so forth.

So, again, your playstyle will balance immediate with long-term needs, and your vision of how best to jumpstart in the direction you desire to move.

Your civilization

On the map menu, if you hit Tab twice, you will see a list of possible Civilizations that your dwarfs can start from, if there is more than one. Each will have access to different starting equipment and material to offer you - some will be significantly better or worse supplied, and some may be lacking one key item you desire, while another will lack something else equally as critical to your plan.

If you don't like the civilization you chose, or wish to compare what each has to offer, you must use Esc and select "Abort Game", which puts you back at the main game menu. You must then Start again, reload the game world, and find the same embark site - this is not difficult if you made careful notes, but is still a bit of a pain, no doubt.

Every such re-start gives you a different mix of dwarfs, with different names, personalities and preferences, but the civilizations are part of the map and so are constant. The default civilization chosen for you will vary, however.

Saving a starting mix

Once you have a mix of items and skills that you like, you can hit s and save it to a template with a custom name. In a later game, you can that profile when you embark. If your selected civilization does not have any of the desired items in your template, this is announced clearly, and a different civilization can be tried as described above, or you can continue and change your mix as normal.

However, if you match skills to the preferences and personalities of your dwarfs, it may be an idea not to include any skills in such a template, as they will simply be applied in the original order to the current dwarves as they appear on the list.

If you find additional items that you wish to add (perhaps another type of cheap meat, or an ore not previously available), you can edit those in by hitting {{k|s} and overwriting the old file.

(You can also go into the .txt file, located at data/init/embark_profiles, and edit in the SKILLS or ITEMS as you want - the syntax is fairly straightforward.)

Site considerations

Each fortress location offers particular challenges and opportunities, and can make different demands on your starting build. The starting builds below should be adjusted depending on the region your fort occupies, the specific vision you have of your fortress, and what it will take to stay alive where you're going!

The differences include what biomes, regions and stone layers are present in your chosen embark site, as viewable on the starting menu.

General Surroundings

Simply put, if your surroundings are evil or savage, your dwarfs have a higher risk of suddenly facing personal combat before they are safely behind their defenses. Consider bringing extra weaponry, in the form of axes, picks or crossbows (see free equipment). Hand in hand with those, consider skill mixes that include axedwarf, mining (the skill used to wield a pick), marksdwarf, or wrestling (a solid unarmed-combat skill).

The same is true if you are embarking near an exposed magma vent or an open chasm - these features can be seen on the embark map, but it's impossible to tell if they are "open" to the surface or not, until you are there in person.

Be sure to include some source of water on the map, preferably running water. Water is (almost) essential for any fortress. In Cold and Freezing climates streams and lakes will often be frozen year-round and your dwarves may quickly die of exposure, in Hot climates murky pools will dry up, and in Dry ones rain will only rarely re-fill them, if ever. Choose Temperate or tropical zones for an easier game.

Aquifers

If an aquifer is present in the first soil or stone layers (visible on the pre-embark menu), it may bar all access to stone and ore until you find a way through the water barrier. Bringing some stone for building, and ore for your first basic needs, may be critical.

Mountains

Mountains often have abundant ores, but at the loss of trees and plants. Magma and rare metals lure settlers here, but goblins, chasm dwellers, and giant eagles are potent threats. You'll want to include non-mountainous areas in your embark area to obtain lumber and food - or, failing this, to pack a lot of extra food and logs.

Depending on the exact layers, it's common to find exposed veins of useful ores that can be immediately mined for DIY weapons and tools.

Wooded/Plains

Flatlands with at least some trees and gatherable plants can also make for highly successful fortresses. Advantages over mountain zones include abundant trees and plants, guaranteed agriculture both on the surface and underground, and (unless frozen) more abundant water. There are even (rare) magma vents. Extra wood is not necessary,

The greatest disadvantage is the potential lack of exposed stone to mine. Fewer elevations means fewer exploitable z-levels. The first level(s) below the surface is often soil of some type, which offers no building material and only rarely useful ores. However, soil is mined much more quickly than stone (x3-x4 faster), and (temporary?) expansive accomodations can be achieved quickly even by untrained miners. You will find stone, you just have to go down a bit for it - but that's what dwarves do, isn't it?

Training a Miner from No Skill to Proficient takes less than a season in soil, and to Legendary in less than another.

Oceanside

With many features in common with some of the above locations, beaches are often a mix of ease intermingled with bouts of extreme difficulty. Minerals and trees are often abundant, as well as farmland and sand, but there is often no drinking water unless the biome has a flowing water of some sort.

By definition, the settlement will fall between (at least) two biomes (one land, one water), potentially hazardous if the player expects a peaceful oceanside meadow, without realizing the terrifying ocean is full of amphibious zombie whales.

Desert, Glaciers, and Barren

Treeless (or near-treeless) biomes are challenging sites for a fortress: you get most of the disadvantages of a flatland site without having access to nearly as many trees and plants. However, near-lifeless zones such as glaciers are wonderful for those with slower machines, as there's little to burden the CPU but your dwarves and livestock. Deserts and barren areas often have sand; with a sufficient source of energy (preferably magma), you can build almost anything out of unlimited glass.

Hunters should be replaced with fisherdwarfs, and a fish cleaner (altho' the latter can be easily trained.) Depending how much water vs. land, more starting wood and ores might be helpful. Swimming is rarely useful in Fortress mode, even at the beach, and can be trained.

"Play Now!"

This option gives you an automatic, low-powered and generalized starting mix with no thinking involved. When you pick this option, you currently^{v0.28.181.40d} start with:

Dwarfs:

• one (no label) Miner (+2 skill levels, skill = 7)

& six dwarfs with Novice (+1 skill level, rank = 6) in each of the following skills...

• Engraver/ Mason/ Mechanic/ Building Designer
• Gem Cutter/ Gem Setter/ Woodcrafter/ Stonecrafter/ Bone Carver
• Fisherdwarf
• Fish Cleaner/ Butcher/ Tanner/ Weaver/ Clothier/ Leatherworker
• Carpenter/ Bowyer
• Wood Cutter/ Brewer/ Cook/ Grower/ Herbalist/ Wood Burner/ Furnace Operator/ Lye Maker/ Potash Maker

Items:

• 1 iron anvil
• 2 steel axes
• 2 copper picks
• 12 barrels of alcohol (60 units)
• 2 barrels of meat (two random types, 10 + 5 units)
• 2 barrels of plump helmets (10 + 5 units)
• 5 Plump helmet seeds (w/ bag)
• 5 pig tail seeds (w/ bag)
• 2 dogs (breeding pair)
• 2 cats (breeding pair)
• 2 draft animals (random species, random gender)

As a challenge for an experienced player, this is not uncommon. But even as a starting player, you can do better if you choose the "Prepare for the journey carefully" option and do just that - prepare carefully, as described below...

"Prepare for the Journey Carefully"

Good advice. This option allows you complete control over your starting mix of skills and beginning items. By default, your dwarves start with no skills, and you are offered the following items, which are very similar to the "Play Now" mix. Each item costs a number of "points" - you will buy both your starting items and the starting skills for your dwarfs with one pool of combined points. The point costs for the default items are listed below.

Items:

• 2 Copper picks (20 each)
• 2 Steel battle axes (300 each)
• 1 Iron anvil (1000)
• 20 alcohol, random¹ (2 each, 4 free barrels)
• 20 alcohol, random¹ (2 each, 4 free barrels)
• 20 alcohol, random¹ (2 each, 4 free barrels)
• 5 Plump helmet spawn(aka seeds) (1 each, 1 free bag)
• 5 Pig tail seeds (1 each, 1 free bag)
• 15 meat or fish of one random (cheap) type (2 each, 2 free barrels²)
• 15 Plump helmets (4 each, 2 free barrels²)
• (no cats, no dogs)

1. There are only 4 different alcohols to choose from at this stage, so if two or three of the same are randomly chosen, it's quite possible to start with 40 or 60 of the same type. A wider variety is usually better.

2. A barrel can hold up to 10 dry items (or 5 wet). One of these barrels is only half full.

With the above items, your point pool starts at 200 (visible in the lower right corner). This is not close to enough points to buy full skills for all your dwarfs, but you can sell back any or all of the above items that you choose and recover the points, spending them as you prefer. This is often achieve quickly and easily by taking only 1 axe (300 points returned), but the possible options are infinite. Some players return the anvil, for an additional 1000. Returning all equipment is worth 2060 points total, but unused points are of no use after embark, once the actual gameplay starts, so spend now or waste them.

Using the menu

Use Tab to switch between selecting Skills and Items. Use the 4 directional keys or number pad to navigate to highlight the different choices/columns, and + or - to choose more or less of the highlighted item or skill. When viewing items, hit n to go to a menu for any "new" items, that are not currently listed, including any you removed by reducing the number to 0; select the item, hit Enter, then increase the number desired as above (+ or -) in the main menu.

If you cannot buy additional skill levels, you are out of points and must return some items for additional points. Higher-priced items will automatically be removed from viewable new items if you do not have enough points for those selections, showing only what you can afford with your current points.

Skills

At this stage, pre-embark, skills cost a number of points equal to the current rank of the skill (Later, once playing the game, all skills will be trained by practice, and "cost" is no longer a concern.) "No Skill" starts at rank 5, so the first additional rank of any skill (Novice) costs 5 points. To buy the next rank would cost 6 more, and so on. To buy up to rank 10, Proficient (the max allowed to start with), costs 5+6+7+8+9, or 35 points.

A dwarf can start with up to 10 additional ranks, regardless whether that's 10 skills at rank 6 (+1 each), or 2 skills at rank 10 (+5 each). So, if you are going to buy the maximum skills allowed (highly recommended!), that can cost from between 50 to 70 points each, but usually around 400+ for all 7.

Each dwarf can (over time) learn any or all of a wide variety of skills. Dwarves with little experience in a skill will work slowly and ineffectively, while dwarfs with higher skills work faster and/or produce a significantly higher quality product. Some skills are not used often, and/or produce no "quality" in the final product, or produce qualities that have little impact on the game - with these, it's questionable whether investing in high starting levels is worthwhile, but that's often a judgment call.

• For example inexperienced herbalists will gather stacks of only one or two plants, and often nothing at all, and inexperienced farmers will often plant stacks of only one or two plants. This results in a small overall output which takes many containers to store in, less effective food preparation in the kitchen, and more space needed for stockpiles.
• Inexperienced miners work very slowly and are less likely to recover mined gems or valuable ores. Mining can be levelled up quite quickly by mining soil, but taking two dwarves with at least some points in mining is recommended in many cases.
• In nearly all workshops, inexperienced dwarves who create items will only rarely produce high-quality goods, and take a long time doing so. Skilled dwarves work quickly and produce high-quality items far more reliably.
  • Quality is a central concept in the game - it affects food, alcohol, and almost anything you will have your dwarves create in the game: trading goods, barrels, clothing, armor, furniture, weapons, and so on. Quality also has a large effect on the worth of an item while trading.

Dwarves improve their skills on a learning-by-doing-basis. Dwarves who have specific labors will attain Dabbling status as soon as they complete one job of that type. (Certain jobs, such as building workshops, won't make your dwarves more experienced. But most will.) As the number of jobs they do increases, their skill will increase as well. Overall, "levelling up" the dwarves' skills quickly is a good game goal to set. Doing so may result in your dwarves efficiently creating a magnificent fortress filled to the brim with valuable items and furniture. (Or it might not.)

Using and seeing high-quality items gives dwarves happy thoughts. This tends to decrease the incidences of tantrums, increasing a fortress's longevity.

Which skills do I need, really?

The only thing that you absolutely must do in the first year is get your food supplies into a food stockpile, preferably inside, otherwise your food will rot on the ground and your dwarves will starve. Anything else you want to do can be accommodated by sufficient investment in initial food supplies and/or skills. This means the options for possible starting builds are vast because virtually any set of starting skills for your dwarves is viable (and that's before you even think about equipment, which adds more variables).

In the longer term a few other constraints may influence your choices of skills:

1. Some skills are harder to gain experience in than others - requiring valuable resources or taking an extended period of time, and thus inconvenient to train from the ground up. Investing in some of these extensively in your initial dwarves can make those industries much less painful to start. For example, metal-related skills generally eat metal bars, and thus the less time you spend training metal workers up to a decent level, the faster they'll be churning out high-quality items for you, and the fewer bars they'll waste becoming skilled. On the other hand, despite its importance, skills like mining train relatively quickly and barring extenuating circumstances (expected need to accomplish particular digging projects in the first month or you'll get mauled by a Giant for example) there's little need to actually invest your starting skills in it - they can learn on the job.
2. Keep in mind that some skills are used to make legendary artifacts, and successfully making an artifact will give the dwarf a lot of experience in the used skill. It can be worth investing in some skills solely to bias your artifact skill pool in the hopes of getting a legendary dwarf in an industry you want to really get working on a year or two in. (See Strange moods for more info.)
3. While its possible to feed your fortress on nothing but caravan goods, you'll never come by enough alcohol that way, so you'll eventually need to grow crops for brewing, and dwarfs will literally go crazy if forced to drink nothing but water for long periods. Thus you'll want to plan for farming eventually. Not that you need to bring a highly skilled Grower, but it'll certainly be very helpful. Likewise, a skilled brewer produces higher quality alcohol, which improves your dwarves' mood, as does a skilled cook with the foods they prepare. However, most food can be eaten raw, and so long as they are not starving there is life.
4. If you plan on settling in a dangerous area, consider including at least some military skills, if not a dedicated soldier, or several. The nature of the environment should dictate the military skills chosen (for example, marksdwarves will be an ineffective counter to expected roving hordes of skeletal wildlife).

The following skills will be "used", to one extent or another, by virtually every fortress:

Mining

Carpentry (can't make beds out of anything else)

Masonry

Growing

Brewing

Cooking

Mechanics (If you want traps, and most people will. Also handy for machinery.)

Building Designer (mandatory for some buildings and constructions.)

Leader skills (most importantly appraiser)

Many other skills will certainly be used, but not often enough (or critical enough) to spend (many? any?) points on for your beginning dwarves.

Every other skill is only useful if you want it to be. Skills have to be balanced against your play-style, the environment (danger, ores, other resources), the relative value of the final product, and what you must give up to gain those skills.

Of the above, Masonry, Growing, Brewing, Cooking, and Mechanics are generally worth considering as "highly desirable" starting skills for your dwarves. Carpentry is used, but beds and buckets are just not worth that much, so the difference between high-quality and no-quality is minor. Mining is important but also fast to train. Skill in butchery is irrelevant for the most common use (killing kittens), and you'll be able to easily train a bonecarver off an immigrant (or end up with legendary from a mood), so these three are less worthwhile to start with. Leadership skills are highly recommended to start with at the novice level - it'll make your life much easier (especially appraising).

Of course, even near-certainty that you will use these skills doesn't mean you have to start with dwarves already skilled in them. Ultimately the answer to "What skills do I need?" is "Whichever you want". Choosing a mixture of these commonly used skills and your desired specialized skills will make starting up your fortress easier and more efficient.

Generalist vs Specialist

Any dwarf can have any labor designated, and they will perform that task and learn or improve that skill, even if they have no skill related to that labor when they start. So you don't need an example of every skill. A skilled dwarf will produce a better quality product, and/or do it faster, but if that's rarely used, "faster" doesn't mean as much. Many jobs have no real "product", and so no quality modifiers - plant gathering, wood cutting, wood burning, smelting, animal trainer, etc. etc. merely produce "stuff", not "quality stuff", or may not be used very often, and/or not be used much after the first year of the fortress. There are as many opinions about balancing generalists with specialists as their are players.

Some skills are also trained up fairly quickly or cheaply, especially where the task consumes no (valuable) materials, or doesn't matter in the final product - mining, furnace operator, wood cutting, butcher, tanner, glass making and (especially) administrator skills being only a few examples.

Another consideration are attributes - a dwarf with 10 skills at 1 each has 5000 [[Experience#Increasing skills|experience, or just over 2 attributes, while a dwarf with 2 skills at +5 ranks each has 7000 experience, or almost 3. One extra Agility can make a big difference in tasks, one extra Strength or Toughness make the difference in an unexpected combat, etc. etc.

Combining Skills

Some skills are highly time-consuming, and working at different jobs levels up specific attributes. One could level up a miner until he becomes mighty and ultra-tough - and then turn him into a soldier, or retire him to haul stone. If you plan on doing so, it may not be a good idea to give this guy a second critical job that will demand a lot of time away from their focus. There are many parts to a suit of armour, so armoursmithing will take more time than weaponsmithing - once you have one weapon per soldier, he's done. Masons, miners, growers, and any craft that your fortress will base their economy off of (glass, stonecrafts, armour, etc) will take a lot of time.

Since tasks will take place in specific areas, another approach is to combine tasks into dwarves who will take care of a specific industry, or spend all their time in one generally narrow part of the fortress - the forges, or the kitchens, or outdoors, for instance. So combining Farming with cooking, rather than mining, for example, and turn on only Haul Food, not Haul Stone. Woodcutter/Herbalist/Mason/Axedwarf (for outdoor walls/projects) might be another combination - the possibilities are endless.

Some combinations follow naturally in sequence to each other, but also can conflict with each other. One animal is butchered, then the leather is tanned, and the meat is cooked. But if you have 5 animals, several will rot before one dwarf can process all of those. A highly skilled craftsdwarf is often better suited at sitting in their workshop and having others deliver raw materials to them, than going out and obtaining their own raw materials themselves.

Many builds recommend combinations such as:

• Outdoors: Woodcutter/Plant Gatherer. Add Axedwarf for added security.
• Mason+____ : In many fortresses, the Mason is a very busy dwarf. He could be a spare miner, have abilities that are only rarely needed, or do tasks that can be accomplished quickly like building designer.
• Farmer/Cook, Farmer/Brewer. Basic two-person food team.
• Farmer/Herbalist, Farmer/Brewer/Cook. One bold dwarf to farm and venture outside looking for wild plants, the other to keep busy in the still, kitchen, and indoor farms.
• Boss: Novice Negotiator/Novice Judge of intent/Novice Appraiser. This guy will be your Boss and Trader, make him record keeper too, at least to start with. Combine this with a single time-intensive task such as Masonry and optionally turn off all hauling tasks right at the start of the game. Or keep him a generalist, or combine with one of the other options.
• Weaponsmith/Leatherworker: If they're not arming your military, they're making leather armor for them.
• Craftsdwarf, depending on your strategy - e.g. glass maker, weaponsmith or armorsmith, sometimes combined with related tasks from that industry (furnace operating, wood burning). Typically an item hauler in the initial months of your fortress, this dwarf may become one of your most valuable dwarves later.

Not all combinations have to "look right" together. A weaponsmith will most probably not spend nearly 100% of their time creating weapons - what they do with the other part of their time may have nothing at all to do with forges or smithing.

• Grower/GemCutter: When gems are found, he's there, otherwise he's outstanding in his fields.
• Mechanic/Brewer: usually produces the mechanized defenses, but does moonshining when it's called for.
• Miner/______: This dwarf will quickly become legendary in mining, and then retire to pursue something else full time. On call for important veins of high-value ore.
• Brewer/Appraiser/Leatherworker: several typically low-demand skills
• StoneCrafter/Herbalist/ - after quickly finding above-ground plants for seeds for the first season, they never go back unless something goes wrong.
• ____/Armor User: Plan for the future - armor using is slow to train in if this dwarf is ever going to join the military.

You can max one skill and have several lower-ranked additional, or just many lower-ranked skills - the combinations are (almost) infinite.

Combinations like these often have one moodable skill and one non-moodable (or a less desired and lower-ranked moodable skill), so any mood will improve the desired one.

Combining Skills for Moods

Strange moods will create a Legendary skill of the "moodable" skill with the highest level, and moods take hold of dwarfs with different professions at different rates. Some skills are "moodable" where others are not. Another consideration is to place desired moodable skills with non-moodable, to ensure that both the professions and highest skills stay as preferred. Usually this involves one "craft" skill and one "farmer" type skill, such as Armor/Cook, or Weapon/Brewer. This can take some manipulation, and is not of primary concern to many players.

Items

Some basics are recommended for all builds. Unless you plan unless to DIY, you definitely need to bring one pick for each miner, and if you plan to gather wood, you need an axe, which will become a weapon in wartime. Also a minimum of about 25-30 food and about 50 alcohol, which should get 7 dwarfs through to the first caravan in Fall. Everything else depends on your strategy and on how tough or leisurely a challenge you want the game to be.

Note: Many builds recommend that you bring many different cheap foods, in quantities ending in a "1" or a "6" (1, 11, 21, etc.), and alcohols in amounts ending in a "1" or "6". This is to maximize the number of free barrels you start with; dry foodstuffs fit 10/barrel, and (pre-embark) alcohol fits 5/. More barrels will let you build a larger stockpile for your first winter and conserves the wood you need to cut and shape in the early game for beds and other necessities. (Seeds are 100/bag, and you don't need near that many of any one type, so 6 bags max with this approach.)

Items for moods

When a dwarf is taken by a strange mood, they often need obscure material or they will go insane and die, possibly with severe consequences to an entire fortress. Bringing along some of the harder to find ores (cassiterite, sphalerite, bismuthinite, garnierite) and shells (cave lobster, turtle), and putting those aside, forbidding their use "just in case", is spending a few points on an insurance policy. Bringing along a few bits of cloth thread is a good idea. Just in case.

Free Equipment

Dwarves who start with the ambusher skill may get some leather armor, a crossbow and some bolts for free.

As of 27.176.40, this appears to only be true if they have no civilian trade skills - military and social skills are fine, and administrator skills so long as they are not higher than Ambusher. Replace any of those skills with something civilian and they show up in street clothes.

Sample starting builds

There are personal builds suggested by various players. Their style may not be your style - consider the reasoning offered, mix and match, adopt, adapt or reject as you please.

A basic build

The first order of business is simply to survive. Here is a simple, somewhat paranoid, way to do this.

Skills

• 2 miner/X (digging stone can be slow - this gets you into the ground asap)
• 1 mason/mechanic
• 1 carpenter/woodcutter
• 1 grower/brewer/cook. He's responsible for making prepared meals and drinks.
• either an herbalist/grower, or a fisherdwarf/X, or a hunter/X. The first gets you lots of brewable plants on maps with plants, the second gets you food and bones on maps with water (in maps with dangerous fish such as carp fishing is suicidal so be careful), and the third gets you meat and bones on maps with animals. Herbalism is usually the safest of the three.
• 1 spare dwarf. You might make him the leader and broker; if so, give him at least novice appraiser skill so you know what stuff is worth. You might make him responsible for making trade goods, or turn him into your first soldier, or you might just give him some skills you want to experiment with.

Items You want picks, food, and drink. Everything else is optional. The suggestions below assume you spent the maximum possible on skills. We'll pack lots just to be safe.

• 2 picks - 1 per miner
• 1 battle axe - so you can chop wood
• 1 Anvil - so you can make weapons, trade crafts, and such
• 20 units of drink: Anything but dwarven wine, which you'll get through brewing asap.
• 30 plump helmets - They're good to eat and produce 5 units of booze for each one brewed at a still.
• 5 turtles - they get you bones and shells
• 20 plump helmet spawn - for planting.
• 2 dogs - to guard against thieves and help kill intruders.
• (optional) other kinds of seeds and rock nuts
• (optional) 1 of many different kinds of meats for extra barrels
• (optional) some cheap (5 point) leather to make quivers and bags and such

If the map is treeless, remove the battle axe and spend the freed points on more plump helmets and logs (you're going to run out however many you bring...).

If you're willing to wait a year or two to do any metalworking and you're sure traders will come, remove the anvil and spend the freed points on such things as skills, food and drink, wood, leather, raw materials, or weapons.

Metalbashing/Glassworking

Heavy metalbashing and glassworking requires a site with 1) abundant fuel and 2) raw materials - ores and sand. Magma is ideal but large coal seams or a forest will also suffice. A site with sedimentary and flux should mean nearly unlimited steel. Any site with sand (not "loamy sand" or the like) will permit glassworking. Your biggest choice when setting up is whether to optimize for a fast start or long-term success.

Skills

• A Carpenter/Woodcutter/Leader: A bunch of nobles' skills, including at least novice Negotiator and Appraiser. This dwarf should have good inter-personal personality.
• A Mason/Mechanic/Building designer: Adding more points to Mason gets construction materials and furniture faster. More points to Mechanic allows faster trap-setting. Adding Appraiser and/or Negotiator skills gives you a back-up leader or broker. A boost to Wrestling gets you better on-call defense.
• A Farmer/Herbalist: This dwarf will gather the plant material you need to brew drinks. Leftover skill raises should be invested in a valuable, hard to raise trade skill such as Blacksmith, Metal Crafter, or perhaps Glassmaker or Clothier.
• A Farmer/Brewer/(Cook): This dwarf is responsible for keeping your community fed and liquored up - the cook is optional. Leftover skill raises should be invested as for the Farmer/Herbalist.
• A Craftsdwarf: Points into whatever hard-to-raise skills you most want. Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Bowyer, Glassmaker, and even Siege Engineer, Clothier, or Gem Setter can all be good choices depending on your setup. If you plan to bash metal, remember to spend a few points on Furnace Operator and (if needed) Wood Burning.
• 2 Miners/Soldiers: Points into both mining and military skills. The miners first get legendary and then become extremely powerful fighters. Remember that it's much easier to increase Mining skill than most of the military skills (especially Armor User), but also that you'll want capable miners immediately.

With this setup, you have several ways to make the trade goods you'll need to buy what you lack. Metal goblets, stone mugs, handwear, footwear, mechanisms, bone or wood crossbows, prepared meals, or bone and shell crafts are all solid choices.

Food and drink for the first few seasons are assured by first cooking all the meat to free up barrels, then brewing your plump helmets (and any gathered plants) to make booze.

Core Items (all starts)

• 2 picks
• 6 or 11 of each of dwarven ale, dwarven beer, and dwarven rum. With abundant brewable plants and lots of wood you don't actually need any starting booze, but it's nice to have a backup.
• at least 11 plump helmets. Bring a lot more if you anticipate problems with gathering brewable plants.
• at least 6 turtles. Not only are they good eating, they ensure you have the shells and bones needed to satisfy strange moods. 11 give 2 barrels.
• 1 of every kind of meat that costs 2 or 4, as each type of meat will be packed in its own free barrel and cooking the meat will release that barrel for use. If you don't like this feature, bring more turtles or plump helmets instead.
• Unless the map is glacial, or you intend only outdoor agriculture, bring plenty of seeds as well. A minimum of 15 plump helmet spawn are essential for a quick start to underground agriculture; rock nuts, sweet pod seeds, pig tail seeds, and cave wheat seeds will diversify your meals and drinks and let you set up for clothes-making. Seeds are packed in bags.
• (optional) some cheap (5 point) leather to make quivers and bags and such

& Items (fast start)

• 1 Anvil
• no battle axe - you'll save points by making it yourself.
• only a few logs (just enough to get started with), unless the map has no trees

See Make Your Own Weapons for more details on what to bring and how to make the battle axes you need to chop wood.

& Items (slow start) Warning: Going without an anvil will slow you down until you get one in trade (which can take 6 or 7 seasons) and might even cost you a failed strange mood.

• no Anvil
• no battle axes
• with the points you save by not bringing an anvil, ores or bars of metals, and (if needed) coal (for fuel and coke) and/or flux.
• lots of logs - at least 25 on a heavily forested map. Note that you could get a free barrel (normal cost 10/) for every 5 units of alcohol (cost 2/) or 10 food (or part thereof), but the barrels are not empty until that alcohol or food is consumed.

A "moderate start" would split the differences.

Everyone Mines

One build that is actually very easy to use is to take no mining skills and 7 )or more) copper picks. Then, choose a site with a type of soil, which is extremely easy to mine. Assign all of your dwarves except your woodcutter to mining, and dig out some big storage areas to begin with in the sand. By the time you have a basic fort laid out (less than a season) they will all have plenty of skill ups and attribute gains, and will be able to go through regular rock quite quickly. Then you can turn them off mining, and turn any immigrants on mining and have them do the same. This allows you to rapidly increase dwarf attributes, so they can later learn some other skill which aligns well with their attribute bonuses. Also, it makes them more dwarfy!

Do it yourself

This is based on taking only the minimum needed to get things started, plus some hard-to-find items in case they are needed later. Read the Make your own weapons article for more info and possible variations.

The skill mix leans toward military and metal bashing, but has room for something else.

Skills

• Ambush 1, Axedwarf 1, Appraise 1, Judge of Intent 1, Building designer 1, Armor User 5 - Leader, Outdoors, Security
• Miner 5/Siege Engineer 5
• Mason 5/Stone Crafter 5 (
• Armorsmith 5/Cook 5
• Mechanic 5/Brewer 5
• Weaponsmith 5/Leather worker 4/Armor User 1 (Leather stays smaller than weaponsmith for moods)
• Grower 5/____ 5 (skilled profession of your choice - Gems, Glass, Bowyer, Clothier, you name it)

This mix tries to put one moodable skill with one non-moodable. The Mason/StoneCrafter gets pulled in two directions sometimes, but Mason stays higher than StoneCraft for moods, and the latter has a high chance for an immigrant mood to create a Legendary in another dwarf, at which point this Mason is free to focus on that full time.

The one miner dives into soil first, only mining stone as needed, and is Legendary by mid-summer, ready to haul and build siege engines while other dwarfs take their turns training up to about Proficient Miner (again, to not interfere with chosen moodable skills). The Leader/Outdoors dwarf does untrained wood cutting and plant gathering, and all animal training so the 4 wardogs stay with him until assigned or restrained. Someone covers carpenter untrained, and several part-time furnace operators and butchers/tanners cover those areas for the first year until immigrants arrive to specialize.

Items

• Anvil
• 1 copper pick (to get digging with no delay)
• (an axe only if danger is expected immmediately)
• 16 alcohol A (4 barrels)
• 16 alcohol B (4 barrels)
• 11 alcohol C (3 barrels)
• 6 Dwarven wine (2 barrels) (more can be quickly brewed from Plump helmets, below)
• 3 Plump Helmet seeds (solid starting crop, plus more after brewing)
• 3 x 3 crop seeds (enough to get started)
• 6 Quarry bush seeds (the best food producer)
• 2 Dimple cup seeds (not a food crop, just enough to get started)
• 11 Plump helmets (2 barrels)
• 11 Turtle (2 barrels)
• 2 Cave lobster (for rare shells)
• 1 each fish or meat that costs less than 8 pts (availability will vary depending on civilization)
• 4 wood (plus 3 from wagon, enough to get started)
• 4 bauxite stone
• 8 bituminous coal
• 1 copper ore (copper nuggets or malachite)
• 6 Tetrahedrite ore (for silver potential)
• 3 Cassiterite (tin) ore (for bronze)

2 Bismuthinite ore (to make bismuth bronze)

3 Galena ore (for silver potential)

2 Sphalerite ore (for zinc, to make brass)

3 cheap leather (to be made into bags)

1 cheap leather bag (for immediate use)

4 dogs (outdoor dwarf will train)

2 cats (for breeding, to produce leather, bones, meat)

The 3 alcohols (A, B and C) are non-wine, the final mix based on any dwarves' preferences for alcohol. If you wish to change the mix, that's fine - 49 total, 13 barrels (including wine), in lots of 6, 11, 16, or 21 each.

On a low-wood map, more wood and less ore. If one or more ores are unavailable, buy more food, wood or other ores.

When you start, make 2-3 charcoal, smelt the copper ore and one cassiterite to make 2 bronze bars (1st charcoal) - one bar for an axe (2nd charcoal), the other for a second axe or pick as desired (3rd charcoal, optional). (Forbid the tetrahedrite - smelting it into bronze will lose any chance for the silver, and that's why you pay more for it!)

Later, smelt the tetrahedrite and galena into bars - odds are very good that you'll get at least two bars of silver for lowest-damage practice weapons, plus the copper (for quick chains) & lead (for grates). These will be made by non-weaponsmiths for lowest quality - you don't want them dangerous. Forbid the unusual ores (and shells) for later moods & mandates.

Build a kennel and have the outdoors dwarf do the training for wardogs asap, or as need/opportunity arises.

With the low number of starting seeds, a skilled Grower is mandatory to get the crops up to speed, but that's advised for any fortress that is going to have an agriculture. The rest of the skills are easily tweaked to suit.

Chopping wood is dangerous!

This can be adapted to most any other build. Buy wood - a LOT of wood. Don't worry about an axe (at first), don't worry about chopping wood, or hauling it from the scary outdoors to inside your nice safe fortress. 100 wood only costs 300 pts, will last for years, and that's just one of your two axes.

Challenge Builds

If you want a challenge try some Challenges.

Beginner's guide FAQ
Basic getting started guide
Where in the world should I settle?
What skills and items should I equip my dwarves with?
Where in my area should I build my fort?
What should I build first?
How do I assign tasks to specific dwarves?
How do I get more dwarves?
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