User:Silfir

Dwarf Fortress Start Builds by Skill

This guide's purpose is to offer thoughts on the value of skills and their viability as part of a standard seven-dwarf-starting build, for all the crazy optimizers out there.

All skills that the author deems to make any kind of sense as startup choices will be mentioned. Those that are not even mentioned are mostly useless even later on in the game, when there is no shortage of dwarves that have this skill, and simply are of no use to a fledgling fortress. (I wonder if some guy will come out now and say that he actually uses a Dyer very early to great effect by trading dyed clothing for obscene profits or something...)

The order in which the skills are discussed follows the order in which they are listed on startup. An entry for the skill will try to discuss any viable combination, at least the tendencies; it is implied that taking one point off maximum skills for purposes of making room for others won't change the general idea.

MINERS

Almost essential if you want to set up an underground fortress early; dabbling miners will simply take too long. Having a maximum skill miner in your startup team also makes a lot of sense if you want to mine ore at any point before "horribly late", since ore mining is something that shouldn't even be done by proficient miners; a miner that started out proficient and got to expert level or something while he dug out your initial fortress space will make you much happier with your ore output.

NO MINER:

For challenge games that forbid mining. You don't have to read a guide like this if you contemplate something along those lines.

NO MINER/A COUPLE OF PICKS:

If you don't want dedicated miners at all yet - put your unskilled dwarves to work! If you want the skills for other stuff...

MINER:

Doesn'T take a lot of skill points. Still will take bloody ages.

PROFICIENT MINER:

A single dwarf with maximum skill in mining will be hard at work to carve out your initial fortress; generally it will take long enough that you will have to set up workshops and stockpiles and work outside for a while. On the upside, if you don't plan on having much mining done later on, you can make sure that you still have one extremely skilled miner in any case if he is the only one who ever did any mining. Mining for ore once your fortress space is set up is thus very satisfying. However, it really does take long for your initial fortress to be dug out by a single miner; and if you happen to lose that one miner together with his pick... If you plan on setting up an underground fortress anyway though, one proficient miner is more than you'll ever need (you still want the one to dig out ore and stuff).

PROFICIENT MINER/EXTRA PICK:

Well, this solves the problem of losing your only pick together with your one starting miner at the very least, with only 20 dwarfbux extra. Also, you can have one of your other dwarves help dig out the fortress, albeit at a very slow pace...

PROFICIENT MINER/MINER:

Something to think about. Generally this might be enough to have your fortress dug out in a sensible timeframe. The level 2 Miner will not stay a miner forever; usually he will work at his other job once the initial fortress is dug out, and leave further mining, for instance exploratory mining, to his more skilled buddy, only mining out living spaces where you don't want to get too much stone. This might be a good choice for your fulltime single Mason in the beginning, when he doesn't have any stone to work on yet. Once he's done enough work, switch Mining off for him and never turn it on again. You'll still have a spare pick you can give to immigrants later if you need to do more mining than your single dedicated miner can take care of.

TWO PROFICIENT MINERS:

This is recommended often in beginner guides, and usually wise. You will have your initial mining done fast enough, and later you will often find at least one of your two miners ready to work. This also means that your miners can take up secondary jobs with relative ease; the other is there to pick up the slack, after all. In most beginner guides, one of the miners also gets the administrative skills (Judge of Intent, Appraiser, Organizer, Record Keeper, Social Skill (Negotiator, for instance) and becomes expedition leader, while the other gets Stonecrafter, a job that can be worked anytime if mining isn't needed, for the large benefit of turning useless stone into vendor trash. Other builds are imaginable, given the flexibility of this build variant. It does use up a seventh of your total skill points.

PROFICIENT MINER/TWO EXTRA PICKS:

A variant of one of the above builds; speeds up initial fortress set up with the help of two dwarves that don't have any jobs needed initially and thus can at least be put to this use without wasting any skill points on them. Only if you think putting this kind of inefficient use of dwarfpower in initial setup is worth it to save the few skill points that would make your dabblers much more effective...

PROFICIENT MINER/MINER/MINER:

This gives you the rough initial setup speed of two proficient miners. It costs about the same in skill points and requires one more pick, but it divides the skill points used among two dwarves instead of another one. This is an option if you want these dwarves to get high level skills, but still work other jobs beyond Miner initally, which might be the case if you want to start out with Proficient Armor- and/or Weaponsmiths.

PROFICIENT MINER/PROFICIENT MINER/PROFICIENT MINER:

Honestly? This is overkill. You don't need this large a fortress set up this fast. It costs a bit too much in skill points with doubtful use. Having your initial mining divided up between three dwarves also isn't good for ore mining efficiency. Only choose this if you want to engage in some hardcore mining right from the start.

WOODCUTTER

Woodcutting is near useless on treeless maps (you might still be able to grow towercaps later). On maps WITH trees, at least some degree of Woodcutting skill is wise, especially if the trees are few and far between and it thus takes long enough time to even get to them.

NO WOODCUTTER OR AXE:

As mentioned, if there aren't any trees, and you know for sure you won't be growning towercaps for a while, if at all (no underground river or lake = no towercaps), then you don't need to bring a Woodcutter, or even an axe.

STEEL BATTLE AXE:

If you want a dabbler to cut your wood. This will take bloody ages, and so is not really recommended. If you've got trees, you should at least have a

NOVICE WOODCUTTER:

Yeah. This should be the minimum for Woodcutting skill. Give this to a Carpenter, in addition to some other skill or skills, and you're all set for reasonable wood item production. As a crazy optimizer, I won't go much higher.

HIGHER THAN NOVICE WOODCUTTER:

Got skill points left over and want to increase your woodcutting speed for any reason, for instance since you want to use wood for more than just carpentry? Then invest some skill points here, but keep in mind that your Woodcutter will practice cutting wood anyway. I stop at Competent Woodcutter at the most.

PROFICIENT WOODCUTTER:

Starting builds choose this for simplicity. I consider this a waste of skill points that could have gone into some more useful level 1 skills, like Metalsmith, Thresher, or even Woodcrafter, or most notably Axedwarf for extra early defense (remember the axe you have to bring with you anyway?) If you combine Woodcutter with Carpenter, take points away from Woodcutter, not Carpenter.

If you have TWO Carpenters working since you plan on building an aboveground fortress, having a Proficient Woodcutter is actually worth it, since you have to cut the wood at about the same speed at which your carpenters work. Of course, since you don't need miners, this is easily forgiven.

MORE THAN ONE WOODCUTTER:

Axes are too friggin' expensive. If you plan on forging two copper axes on site... Nah, not even then. One Proficient Woodcutter is generally enough.

CARPENTER

The only carpenter-only items that you need for a well-rounded fortress are beds. Beds have quality levels, so high-quality beds are useful, but they are not strictly essential as you can impress nobles with other stuff.

Carpenter is usually paired up with Woodcutter because of the obvious synergy: If your carpenter runs out of wood to work with, he doesn't have to wait for any other dwarf to get the wood for him, but can go and cut it himself, and have the haulers fetch it for him so he can start right on carpenting once he's finished.

NO CARPENTER:

A possibility on woodless maps or maps with very low supplies of wood, if you only plan on making beds and buckets out of wood anyway and don't care about the quality. Does take a lot of time, so your dabbler of choice should get to work immediately in an aboveground workshop. You'll get carpenter immigrants later to work on your traded-for wood to make more beds, and you have the skill points free for other, more useful stuff. Does pretty much require you to have magma or at the very least bituminous coal or lignite, because if you don't have those you need wood made out of charcoal for barrels and bins, too, and even if you do have access to coke, it's only a limited resource better used on steel, armor or weapons.

NOVICE CARPENTER:

Like the above build, with one skill point spent on having it require less time to make the initial beds and bucket, and subsequent beds.

PROFICIENT CARPENTER:

This is generally recommended if your map has at least some wood, and to get beds of at least some quality. Even more suitable if your map has decent supplies of wood, and definitely worth it if you plan to make bins and barrels all out of wood (i. e. no magma or superfluous metal). Taking one point off to make room for Novice Woodcutter and another Proficient level skill is not unwise, as there is not that much difference and high skill levels aren't that crucial, especially if you happen to have large amounts of wood to train with, as is the case on maps containing Woodland or Heavily Forested biomes.

TWO PROFICIENT CARPENTERS:

In case you want to build an aboveground fortress out of wood. On Heavily Forested all-aquifer maps, this can happen, and might be preferable to having a fortress entirely in soil. You need the extra carpenter to construct buildings.

MASON

Masons are usually hard at work, because usually stone is the material of choice for anything that can be made out of it. If there's no aquifer, stone is essentially available in practically limitless amounts. It's not the only and definite building material, especially if magma and sand are available, or the map is heavily forested anyway. On maps with aquifer, it's almost reversed; stone can be sparse there, and wood the better choice for furniture. Few important items need to be made of stone or stone blocks (mechanisms spring to mind), after all. Only stone blocks (they can be traded for), millstones and querns need to be made by a mason, and these don't need any quality levels.

NO MASON:

As has been mentioned, maps with an aquifer generally contain few stone or none at all. If you don't plan on breaching through the aquifer anytime soon, then you'll never get stone except for trading or deposits above aquifer level. Even if you do need to make some furniture items out of stone, you can have a dabbler or later on immigrant work on it.

MASON:

The alternative if dabblers don't work fast enough for you. Cheap in skill points.

PROFICIENT MASON:

The most popular build choice for maps WITHOUT aquifers, or for people who plan on breaching through the aquifer early anyway and want their mason to work full-time on transforming stone into furniture. High-quality furniture is worth your while since it makes dwarves happy, and happy dwarves are farther away from a homicidal rampage than unhappy ones. Also, if your mason needs to provide the fortress with most of its furniture, you need him to work reasonably fast pretty much all the time. This is one of the main problems with this build: Giving your one Proficient Mason skills that he'll even have time to make use of. Some even don't give him any skills beyond Proficient Mason; I think that at the very least you can have him be Novice Building Designer, since he will have to build most of the buildings that require a designer himself anyway, and it comes up rarely enough that it won't take away much of his time. Also useful: Novice Animal Trainer, to transform your starting dogs into war dogs while there is not yet any stone to work with. Give him Competent Herbalist in addition to those two and have him gather some plants while there is still no stone or particular need to make furniture quick, and you're set. Also a possibility is to give him some Mining skills so he can help set up the fortress. In short, any skill that, although useful, takes very few or almost no time away from his Masonry will suit your Mason dwarf well. It might even be prudent to give him some fighting skills just in case.

TWO PROFICIENT MASONS:

Having two Proficient Masons only makes sense if you plan on having them working both at the same time; if you only plan on having two masons so you can give them some other skills they can work on while the other takes up mason duty, it's more sensible to have one dedicated mason and another dwarf with both of those non-mason skills - you'll always need at least one Mason working full-time. TWO Masons working full-time - or at least, one full, one half - are generally not necessary, except if you plan on setting up an aboveground fortress with stone dug up by a single Miner. You'll need the extra Mason then, and can substitute one of your miners for him because you only need to mine for stone, not space.

ENGRAVER

The value of this at startup is doubtful. Engraving is mostly decorative work with the exception of fortifications. Of course, having a high-value dining room early does wonders for dwarf moral. There are stupider skills to take.

NOVICE ENGRAVER:

Well, if you do get an early Engraver, he needs some mad skills to be of use, since he can't waste time training for them as one of your starting dwarves. Only choose this if you absolutely must have some early fortifications carved out of walls, and even then you might just hand that to a dabbler. For early smoothing with a dwarf that you think won't get much better to do with his time for a while, this is okay.

PROFICIENT ENGRAVER:

Get a legendary dining room in no time! Beyond that, pretty much a waste of skill points. The truth may lie inbetween for you.

BUILDING DESIGNER

Not strictly necessary - you can also simply enable the labor for any dwarf and have him get to work. But that will take longer. At least

NOVICE BUILDING DESIGNER:

Should always be worth it. Give it to your primary Mason, or any other Dwarf that still has room for a level 1 skill that seldom will be used. Your single Mason is best because he usually doesn't have many other sensible choices anyway, and will be the one who constructs the building designed most of the time.

WEAPONSMITH

Usually metal industry takes up time, so it's not much trouble to wait for an immigrant Weaponsmith. BUT - since these are not guaranteed, and they will start at skill level 2, it's tempting to include a highly skilled Weaponsmith among your starting dwarves, especially if you have no magma and can't quite waste coal fuel training a n00b.

NOVICE WEAPONSMITH:

In case you plan on setting up a metal industry very early. Novice already means a lot towards higher skill levels compared to zero, so this is an effective use of skill points if you don't plan on having enough to go all the way.

PROFICIENT WEAPONSMITH:

But I say, if you plan on including one at all, try to make him or her as skilled as possible. He'll work some other job until a metal industry is set up, and he won't churn out weapons exactly all the time even then, so give him a useful secondary job, like some sort of crafting, or Furnace Operating, or Grower. Even Carpenter, he can still make beds, barrels and bins during his downtime as a Weaponsmith.

BOWYER

Wooden or bone crossbows - that's all you can do with this. This is only worth it if you plan on having no metal at all for a prolonged time early on, and you must equip your military with SOMETHING, and you have no obsidian for swords either, and you don't want to rely on traders.

NOVICE BOWYER:

At least it won't be all no-quality, and you can't go that much wrong with only one skill point for a seldom-used skill. If you have surplus wood, have your Novice Bowyer churn out a lot of crossbows and trade away (or just dump) the low-quality ones before assigning any to your marksdwarves or hunters. Your material is shitty, so try to make the best of it.

PROFICIENT BOWYER:

In theory, this gives you the best weapons outside of obsidian and metal. In practice, a waste of skill points. Getting access to better weapons shouldn't be THIS hard. Better get higher-skilled crafters, to get more trade goods worth more dwarfbux, and TRADE for some weapons until you can set up a metal industry. If you don't plan on having a metal industry at all... Well, get this if you must. Dwarves in leather, wearing wooden shields and firing bone crossbows are still better than dwarves wrestling naked.

ARMORSMITH

I could write "See Weaponsmith", as the same criteria apply. Armorsmiths tend to be a bit more busy than Weaponsmiths once the metal industry has started, because you need only one weapon per military dwarf, but in theory they all can wear multiple pieces of different armor. (Plate mail + helmet + shield + boots + greaves...) Keep this in mind when assigning your Proficient Armorsmith his other job to work on until he gets to apply his mad skillz. Carpenter is probably not the thing for this guy.

METALSMITH

Metalsmiths produce items with quality levels, but not usually items that NEED to be of high quality. You can make furniture out of metal, but that requires fuel and a lot of metal bars versus one single stone. Usually metal furniture is only made out of bars of metal that you obtained in trade - if you dig the metal out, it's much more efficient to just have a mason use the ore to make the statue, resulting in the same value, no fuel used to turn the ore into bars, and most importantly only one ore's worth of metal used instead of three. Thus, metalsmiths don't usually make furniture, but anvils, chains, cages or barrels, bins and buckets.

NO METALSMITH:

No early metal industry planned, you'll make one of your free immigrants dabbling Metalsmith if he isn't already a level two one.

NOVICE METALSMITH:

This is generally enough even if you do plan on having a metal industry early. Barrels, bins and buckets don't need to be of any kind of quality. Usually you only want to churn out barrels, bins and buckets if you are low on wood, but have magma and a lot of superfluous metal to work with.

HIGHER THAN NOVICE METALSMITH:

Usefulness is doubtful. You'll never need that many items or that high quality to warrant things like a Proficient Metalsmith at startup.

FURNACE OPERATOR

Furnace Operators are needed to make coke out of your coal, metal bars out of your ore with some measure of speed to supply your smiths.

NO FURNACE OPERATOR:

If you ever do need one, you can have one dabble in it. Usually you can wait for your first immigrant wave.

NOVICE FURNACE OPERATOR:

To do your early Furnace Operating, before you have immigrant dwarves to train in this task. Since Furnace Operating is essentially a full-time job in a running metal industry, you usually don't plan on having an initial dwarf do this for any kind of prolonged time, so don't spend more. Go regular Furnace Operator at the most, and even that is probably not required.

WOOD BURNER

Only needed if you don't have magma. With magma, the only use of this is to get access to fertilizer potash, soap, and clear glass. Also, steel if there is no other source of refined fuel whatsoever. If you don't have Magma, then you need your Wood Burner to start off your metal industry. More useful if you have lots of wood on your map, as you don't need to rely as much on lignite or bituminous coal.

NO WOOD BURNER:

If you have magma.

NOVICE WOOD BURNER:

If you have no magma, or want to smelt stuff without having found it or any kind of advanced coal yet, which will require you to produce quite a pile of charcoal.

METAL CRAFTER

A highly skilled Metal Crafter is nice to have in case you have access to highly valuable metal bars early, so you can make high-quality goblets out of them. Usually it's easier to get highly skilled Stone Crafters to make stuff out of the ore though, which makes Metal Crafter another skill of doubtful priority.

NO METAL CRAFTER:

No problem at all with this. Apart from trade goods, the only item you need to have a Metal Crafter for is metal chains for your jail (ropes can be snapped by angry dwarves). You can get those from a dabbler too.

NOVICE METAL CRAFTER:

AT MOST. Find some better use for that skill point, if you ask me.

STONE CRAFTER

Stone is a dime a dozen. Actually, more like a dime a hundred dozen. Unless there is an aquifer, there is no shortage of stone. Stone trade goods aren't worth much (unless made of rare ores or obsidian/flux), but in this case it's a matter of sheer mass - and crafter skill.

NOVICE STONE CRAFTER:

Giving this to one of your dwarves is not bad, but not worth much either. He or she'll produce goods at a slow pace and they will be of low quality. If you want to use crafts by your stone crafter to buy a lot of stuff from caravans early, you should go

SKILLED STONE CRAFTER:

Or something along those lines. Nothing wrong with having a Proficient one. Set him to work relatively early, and he'll buy you an anvil and some more useful stuff. This is well placed with one of your Miners (not your single Miner though) usually, because you can essentially choose freely whether you produce crafts or mine. Give this, in any case, to some dwarf who'll have time to do it most of the time. If you go high with this skill, disable the stonecrafting labor from the immigrant craftsdwarves unless you really want another one producing low-quality stone crafts uglying up the content of your bins. With craftsdwarves in general, specialization is key.

WOOD CRAFTER

The least useful of the material crafting skills. Wood crafts are worth much less than the wood they are made of (not in dwarfbux, but in actuality, since wood makes beds and beds can only be made of wood). Even in a wood-rich map, the proper use for surplus wood is not crafts, but bolts. And that's the one thing a Wood Crafter is useful for: Bolts. Not for war, mind you, but for training. If you have more wood than you ever need, make bolts. Make crafts for trading out of rock - it has the advantage that even the hippie elves will take it.

NO WOOD CRAFTER:

What I do usually. I generally don't start getting wood surpluses until later, when I already have immigrants, and usually there's some n00b craftsdwarf available to do this instead of one of my valuable starting dwarfs.

NOVICE WOOD CRAFTER:

We've established that you only want to produce training bolts with a Wood Crafter. Your skill level doesn't matter one iota in this case. Give this skill to some dwarf who doesn't mind wasting some of his time producing a couple of training bolts. Maybe your Carpenter/Woodcutter, should he have more than enough wood and have produced more then enough bins, barrels and buckets... Or some other starting dwarf who finds himself with too much freetime. Other skills might be more useful.

BONE CARVER

Bone has many uses. For bone or shell armor, you should have skilled Bone Carvers at the ready. Otherwise, there's always bone bolts to make, or skull totems to use in trade. Bone isn't usually worth much unless it's some awesome stuff like dragon bone.

NO BONE CARVER:

I don't recommend this, actually. You'll always have bone, from unlucky invaders to eaten fish, even very early on. On the other hand, if kept in an inside refuse stockpile, it won't disappear either, and you can usually wait for an immigrant craftsdwarf to take up your main bone carving business.

NOVICE BONE CARVER:

Enough to make training bolts... But you won't need these much until you have a military. If you have a skill point to spare and need to provide a dwarf with some skill he can pursue while his other, main jobs don't require his attention, get this, usually in favour of Wood Crafter, since you can make better use of your wood in the early times of your fortress, even if there is a lot.

PROFICIENT BONE CARVER:

Overkill. You simply don't get enough bones to justify this investment; high value bones are too rare. (Of course, there are the likes of Nist Akath, where bones are too numerous to count, but in that kind of environment FETCHING the bones will prove more problematic) For money, you want highly skilled Stone Crafters working away at the assloads of stones your fortress produces. That's not to say that highly skilled bone carvers are useless, but they are most useful if you have a skilled hunter at work, which is going to be much later - and immigrant bone carvers are better for that.

GEM CUTTER

Another one of the "moneymaker" skills. If you do find gems early on, this will help you transform them into dwarfbux in trade. Needless to say, however, stone is much more numerous and reliable. Pass. Wait for immigrants.

GEM SETTER

See above.

MECHANIC

This is very useful to have in general, and good use of starting dwarf skill points. The question is: How much points will you give this, and what will you combine it with? Mechanisms are considered decent, if somewhat heavy, export goods, so quality is not entirely unimportant. A Mechanic can do a lot even in early fortresses; his mechanisms will be required for early irrigation schemes or other things done with levers, and traps are considered to be the easiest way to protect your fortress bar nothing at all, considering that it takes only a single mechanic to produce sufficient stone fall traps to smash hordes of early attacking animals, and more devious traps capable of handling sieges (also, cage traps, but you need a Metalsmith or a Carpenter for the Cage).

NO MECHANIC:

Not recommended, even if you don't plan on using any traps. At the very least you need someone to make mechanisms and set up some lever schemes. Even if your map happens to lack any stone, you need this guy working on the imported stone for mechanisms all the more.

NOVICE MECHANIC:

Minimum. Maybe enough if no traps are planned and mechanisms will not be used for trading.

COMPETENT MECHANIC:

This is a good average value if you intend to produce traps at a decent speed very early.

PROFICIENT MECHANIC:

In case you want to just go all out and use these for trading. Keep in mind that you have to trade items of sufficient weight for these. If you have Proficient Mechanic, you can in theory use it as a substitute for any kind of Stone Crafting. Stone crafts ARE less cumbersome to trade with (they go in bins!), however. Your choice.

FISHERDWARF

Fishing is the simplest source of food. Get fish, clean it, eat. You can cook your fish if you want, too, but that means you don't get bones and in case of turtles, shells.

NO FISHERDWARF:

Maps without water: Of course. If it does have water, then you might still shrug and point to your Grower dwarfs, who will make more than enough food to get by and don't have to risk their necks going outside. Shell can be gotten from turtles you bring at startup and simply stored in an inside refuse stockpile.

FISHERDWARF:

Sensible. Only two skill points, and it gives one of your starting dwarf something to do until you have set up your fortress. You should probably give some other dwarf the Fish Cleaning skill, since if you give it to this guy you have to turn the Fishing labor on and off periodically. You'll also have to turn the Fishing labor off to let him work on his numerous secondary skills, like Mechanic or a Crafting skill. This guy is never unemployed, but flexible. Don't overdo it with the secondary skills, and remember to turn some off once the first immigrant wave hits.

PROFICIENT FISHERDWARF:

Overkill on most maps. If there's a lot of water you can get more out of this, but it only improves speed to have high Fisherdwarf skills... Remember the risk for carp to be generated, and how useless this major skill point investment will be then.

MILLER

Makes flour out of longland grass and cave wheat that can be used for cooking.

NO MILLER:

Entirely okay. Both longland grass and cave wheat can be brewed instead. You need bags to put flour in too.

NOVICE MILLER:

Not the most useless skill ever though... Well... Maybe not worth it.

THRESHER

Processing plants gives you seeds. Useful for pig tails if you lack barrels for brewing.

NO THRESHER:

You can live with this. But:

NOVICE THRESHER:

Bags can be very useful to get early, and this is the first step on the way from pig tail to pig tail bag. And it gives you seeds, as mentioned, without having to rely on barrels. More skill points are probably overkill though. Give this to a dwarf who will find himself with occasional freetime in the beginning.

GROWER

Unless you are batshit crazy, you want to make plants the mainstay of your food and alcohol supply. So you'll want Growers, since having dabblers do this wastes a lot of seeds while they learn.

LOW SKILL GROWERS:

You'll have no shortage of low-skill Growers later on. If you get Growers, make them highly skilled, as this makes the most use of your occasionally sparse starting seeds. You never know.

PROFICIENT GROWER:

Might be enough, though you might get in trouble if you want to plant many different kinds of crops. And you also will most definitely get in trouble with All Dwarves Harvest turned off unless you give this guy NO secondary job (Proficient Weaponsmith for instance, which is NOT supposed to be even used early on)

PROFICIENT GROWER/PROFICIENT GROWER:

This is generally recommended (you can afford going Skilled/Skilled, or even Competent/Competent too here). Has the advantage that you can have them work most secondary jobs pretty freely, like Brewing, Cooking, Fish Cleaning, while still being able to grow a lot of useful and nutritious crops.

HERBALIST

If you want to set up aboveground crop farming early, you need a Herbalist to get some aboveground plants.

NO HERBALIST:

One does not have to be a skilled Herbalist to do this, but since it will take long and have a high chance of failure if you send out a dabbler at least

NOVICE HERBALIST:

Should be considered. For speed reasons and efficiency, especially should you have to rely on these guys to help you out of food shortages, you might want to get

COMPETENT HERBALIST:

instead. There. Herbalism, not unlike Fishing, is a job a dwarf can work anytime they find themselves with nothing better to do, like Masons before there is stone - you can use immigrant Herbalists later; they can train the skill easily if it's the only thing they ever do and become better than your starting Herbalist has time for considering the other skills he might want to work.

BREWER

Sober dwarfs are unhappy dwarfs and don't work effectively at all. Brewer is an essential job in a fledgling fortress. You also need your brewer to get seeds out of aboveground plants picked in the beginning.

NO BREWER:

Next!

BREWER:

Minimum. Brewery does not have to be executed all that fast, and you will want additional stills and brewers for larger communities, much, much later, but this is something you should be able to afford for the sake of your dwarfs. Remember, dwarfs would rather run around naked than drink inferior booze.

PROFICIENT BREWER:

Definitely not a bad idea if you can spare the skill points. Distilled happiness for your dwarfs! Other skills might strike your fancy more, though. Maybe the truth lies between Brewer and Proficient Brewer...

COOK

Well, food is as important as booze, needless to say.

NO COOK:

Are you serious? Do you want your dwarfs to eat only shitty food made by a bumbling fool dabbling as a cook?

COOK:

Probably minimum. Cooking is less critical than Brewing is, because dwarves can eat stuff that isn't cooked, but never stuff that hasn't been brewed. A decided disadvantage of cooking is that it doesn't produce seeds, bones or shells. And also, dwarves drink twice as often as they eat. You should always give Brewing a slightly higher priority than you give Cooking.

PROFICIENT COOK:

Only if you already have a Proficient Brewer. Do you really have this many skill points?

WEAVER

A low-priority skill that will not be used for long by any of your starting dwarves. This is excellent for later immigrants.

NO WEAVER:

Okay. If you don't have Novice Thresher, then you also don't need Novice Weaver.

NOVICE WEAVER:

BUT if you already got Novice Thresher, you might want to invest a point in this for quicker early bags.

CLOTHIER

The prime purpose of this in an EARLY fortress is to make bags. Cloth bags are easier to make than leather bags because pig tails are much, much easier to obtain than animal hides. A dedicated cloth industry for clothing should be left to immigrants.

NO CLOTHIER:

If you don't think you'll need bags, and if you ever do you'll have dabblers work on it.

NOVICE CLOTHIER:

Almost essential if you plan on not only getting a few bags, but quite a lot - maps with magma and sand might need this. Bags are also required to store quarry bush leaves. You probably can't go wrong with this. Think about getting the Novice Thresher and Novice Weaver skills too.

AMBUSHER

Combine this with some sort of weapon skill. Hunting is a gamble - your dwarf might always be slaughtered, by real badass horses, or two-humped camels... Hunting is something you should reserve for expendable dwarfs, not one of your starting seven!

BUTCHER

Not for hunted animals, that's for sure. But you can butcher your tame animals in the beginning to get hides that you can tan to leather, and have a leatherworker produce some bags. But pig tails and an cloth industry are much better for this, since early on you won't have many animals at all, and slaughtering those will inhibit your breeding. Keep this in mind for immigrants, when your animals have had time to breed... and get on your nerves.

TANNER

Only if you have a Butcher, which you usually don't.

LEATHERWORKER

This is very useful. Leather can be made into all sorts of useful items: Clothing, bags, armor...

NO LEATHERWORKER:

But, of course, you can keep this in mind for your first immigrants. If you don't have a Butcher or Tanner planned in, you can still use traded-for leather, but that will take some time to get anyway. Bags can be made out of cloth. Quivers, backpacks and armor cannot, but they can wait for your first immigrant wave, which is the earliest point to build up a dedicated military who would need those.

NOVICE LEATHERWORKER:

But this is probably a bit more sensible than Butcher or Tanner, since you'll get your first leather by autumn most of the time, earlier than the first immigrant wave. Still, you want a dedicated Leatherworker later, so don't put more into this.

FISH CLEANER

Get Novice Fish Cleaner if you have a Fisherdwarf - it doesn't take up much time, just queue up a repeated Clean Fish task at the Fishery occasionally. Without Fisherdwarf, getting Fish Cleaner would be just nutty. If you like, you can have a dabbling guy do this job, too.

ANIMAL TRAINER

Get Novice if you like, beyond is a waste of skill points. You can also have dabbling animal trainers working on your starting dogs. I usually give this to my mason.

GLASSMAKER

First of all, you need a map with sand for this choice to make any sense. Beyond that, if your map has magma, think about getting a dedicated Glassmaker to churn out large parts of your furniture in green glass form; you have infinite sand and infinite fuel! Of course, stone is never exactly sparse and Magma Glass Furnaces take some time to set up.

NO GLASSMAKER:

No sand. Or, sand and no magma. A glass industry without magma is of highly doubtful use and can definitely wait for immigrants.

NOVICE GLASSMAKER OR MAYBE UP TO COMPETENT:

Sand and magma... It might be of use. Most stuff that can be made out of glass can be made out of stone too, but this guy can somewhat relieve your mason of some of his stress.

PROFICIENT GLASSMAKER:

This is if you go all out and make ALL your furniture out of glass, possibly even replace your mason. This is actually an excellent course of action you have on maps that contain magma, sand AND an aquifer, so very few stone is available if at all. You might even be able to forget about a mason entirely!

PROFICIENT GLASSMAKER/PROFICIENT GLASSMAKER:

Same conditions, enormous building projects planned... If you want to make a glass-themed fortress, this certainly is in style!

WRESTLER

Unarmed Combat skill. Whether you want combat skills at all depends on the type of map you embark on and the level of paranoia you display. This has the advantage that you don't need to give your wrestler dwarf any weapons, and is a good defensive choice for dwarves that do not carry a weapon-like item at work...

AXEDWARF

While this is the most logical choice for your Woodcutter. If you want only one dwarf with at least a semblance of military skill to protect the others, make it this.

SWORDSDWARF MACEDWARF HAMMERDWARF SPEARDWARF

You'll have to bring extra weapons for these guys, so consider with care. Hammers and Maces are probably the best to use against skeletal entities in terrifying biomes... Remember that there is no way to have your dwarves still carry these weapons while they are civilians. Giving them Wrestling will benefit them more in emergency situations.

MARKSDWARF

Crossbows have the advantage that they need only wood to make on-site, and that they are the least risky weapon for your dwarfs. So you might give this to one of your guys. If you give him the Hunting labor, he'll still carry this as a civilian - but of course, he'll go out to hunt and do nothing else. Not a good thing. So like the other non-axe, non-pick weapons, hardly useful in an emergency.

SHIELD USER ARMOR USER

Consider these for terrifying biomes where well-rounded soldiers have a much greater influence on survivability than most other things. Remember that these make no sense if you don't also get armor and shields. Expensive.

SIEGE ENGINEER

Like Weaponsmith and Armorsmith, you might want this at maximum level for later - siege engines definitely only make sense if you have skilled operators working them, so you need immigrants anyway. High quality siege engines are important though, and Siege engine parts consume materials like crazy...

SWIMMER

A reserve skill for your Fisherdwarf just in case? I dunno. More of an adventure mode skill I suppose. Maybe if you want your miner to make some really crazy mining stunts. In that case, go as high as you can afford (Novice skill is no guarantee for survival), or grow some brains.

PERSUADER NEGOTIATOR LIAR INTIMIDATOR CONVERSATIONALIST COMEDIAN FLATTERER

Social skills to choose from. Doesn't make much difference. Novice level is all you need if you ever choose one.

JUDGE OF INTENT

Useful for your Broker, as it displays the attitude of the people you trade with. Since it is also a social skill like the above, it's more useful than the others - slightly, of course. Novice level is all you need.

APPRAISER

Your broker needs this to properly calculate prices. Novice level is all you need.

ORGANIZER

This does not have to be a skill of your brokerdwarf, as it doesn't need social skills to work. It trains very fast, you putting this above Novice is probably not required. If you do not have an Organizer at all, you can't use the job manager to issue work orders, but have to queue up items in the workshops by hand. There's enough micromanagement in Dwarf Fortress even without that. Still, you can have an immigrant in your first wave become Organizer and save this skill point for other things.

RECORD KEEPER

You need SOME dwarf with bookkeeper skill to get even the roughest estimate of your stocks beyond counting it all yourself. For accurate counts, you also need to give him an office and have him work. You can have a dabbler do all this though - he'll get Novice in the shortest time, and if you set him to Highest Precision (not recommended for a starting dwarf, since that will require most of his attention) he'll reach legendary status very quick.

CONSOLER PACIFIER

These skills are useful for your leaderdwarf, and you might choose this in favor of other social skills. Consolers will have a positive influence on sad dwarves, Pacifiers will be able to calm those that have snapped and thrown a tantrum.

With all these in mind, this is my current build, for a map that contains a magma pipe, no aquifer, a river and sand:

5 MINER/1 JUDGE OF INTENT/1 APPRAISER/1 NEGOTIATOR/1 ORGANIZER/1 BONE CARVER (The Guy. Yup, I decided against having him keep records like is usually recommended. The reason for this is I can't control when the bugger goes off keeping his damn records, but I can EASILY control when he goes carving some bolts out of bone. The fact that I have to set up a second office if I want both Organizing and Record Keeping done doesn't faze me in the slightest - one more chair and table doesn't make much of a difference, and Organizing isn't that helpful in an early game fortress anyway. Yeah, I can just have him stop keeping records when I want to by putting out his chair under him or something, but that would be mean.)

5 MINER/4 STONE CRAFTER/1 CLOTHIER (Mine, Produce vendor trash and occasionally bags)

5 MASON/1 ANIMAL TRAINER/1 BUILDING DESIGNER/3 HERBALIST (The key is being moderate with the herbalism. You only need to do enough herbalism to get some of every crop that groves in your biomes. Then you switch off cooking for them and set up a brewery, supply it with barrels, brew, and boom, outdoor farming. By this time, he should be able to get to work producing doors. If not, he can train my two starting dogs, and THEN produce doors.)

5 WEAPONSMITH/4 CARPENTER/1 WOODCUTTER (First thing: set him to shop some assloads of wood. Second, have him start carpentry. Much, much later he can produce some kickass weapons on the side while he carpents stuff as his main job. Some other schmuck should eventually do the woodcutting for him.)

5 ARMORSMITH/4 GROWER/1 FISH CLEANER (He's going to plant stuff and clean fish while he doesn't plant stuff, and haul if he ever has no stuff to plant or fish to clean. Once the metal industry starts, he's going to make armor, armor, armor, and have others pick up the slack for his other skills. Maybe keep Grower enabled for the rare cases when he doesn't have armor to forge.)

5 GROWER/3 BREWER/2 COOK (Everybody loves this guy! He plants, produces most of the seeds to plant by making the much-coveted alcoholic beverages, and occasionally makes some prepared meals out of the meat, flour, sugar, leaves and expendable fish I produce. I don't do cooking drinks; It's a waste of good alcohol.)

3 FISHERDWARF/3 MECHANIC/1 THRESHER/1 WEAVER/1 METALSMITH/1 RECORD KEEPING (I like to think of this guy as the bitch who has to all sorts of menial work for the other guys who bully him. In truth, he would like nothing more than just being kept alone with his mechanisms and traps. The only other thing he really enjoys is to go out fishing to be alone sometimes. He will get a LOT of relief once the immigrant wave hits and other guys can do his threshing, weaving, metalsmithing and record keeping. He'll always stay a Fisherdwarf/Mechanic though.)

Finished! Hope this doesn't waste too much server space.