New Dwarf Fortress

[Proteus_MST]

And yes, use the forge, Luke

It is especially useful for making metal crafts from the Platinum you said you have.
To give you an example:
I have gold instead of platinum and with just 2 golden crowns my legendary metalsmith makes I am able to buy out a whole dwarven caravan.
With a less than legendary metal smith it might take more crowns of course, but skill levels increase over time and who knows, maybe one of your metalsmiths gets into a fey mood

[Skanky Burns]

Two full-time farmers are enough to feed a population of over 100. Add in a full-time brewer and a full-time cook and you should have plenty of food and drink for all. The trick is that the amount of seeds gotten back from farming depends on the skill of the farmer. Two highly-skilled farmers will get you much more food than 12 low-skilled farmers will. Of course, the game includes potash makers and lye makers in amongst farmers, so YMMV.

As Proteus said, you assign nobles through the 'n'oble menu. They require an office (a seat/throne in a room). Other noble positions also require stuff like personal dining rooms and tombs, you can check their requirements through this screen too.

[Skanky Burns]

The main function of artifacts is to increase the net valve of your fortress. Success means many more immigrants for you to test traps with put to good use. Your luck (and the artifact's value) can vary a great deal.

Regarding thirst, your dwarves should be drinking alcohol exclusively. Even the babies and children! If your dwarves drink water, they tend to work slower which is not a good thing. Step up production in your still (make more barrels too).

Regarding metal-working, if you have flux around (check wiki for what stone types these are) you can make iron, then pig iron, and then steel at the smelter. This makes very protective armour and damaging weapons. I have magnetite in my current game (which usually occurs with flux stones) so I will be eventually making steel armour.

[Jon Miller]

I promised myself I wouldn't start the game back up until Friday, but memory says that I have 2 Brewer/Cooks + 1 Cook + 3 Farmer/FishCleaners + 4 Fishers + 1 Hunter/Sheriff + 2 Rangers (also Hunt) + 1 Butcher + 1 Farmer + 1 Herbalist as my food type people. A lot of them also do a lot of the hauling. Since I have so little wood, I like using bone for my bolts. Also, before I figured out that stone was a menu and I could make things inside of it, I made a lot of bone carvings to sell to the caravans.

I really like my location (I have so many different levels I can build on), but I have definitely screwed up a bit (I shouldn't have lost the dwarves to the Liason (3 of my first ones + 1 of my second ones) and I shouldn't have lost the fey dwarf (another of my first ones, I think) to not having any metal bars).

On alcohol, do you see how much I have? My dwarves basically live on the stuff. They want water when they are sick.

JM

[N35t0r]

I buy them out with steel plate

[Skanky Burns]

My bad. I didn't check your actual stock levels and also forgot you had injured dwarves.

[Proteus_MST]

I hate dragons.

You´ve got a well running fortress at the end of its seconds year with around 70 inhabitants then the dragon arrives and a short time later you´ve got around 30 inhabitants less, which were killed either unexpectedly when he first attacked with his fiery breath or in the successful attempt to kill the dragon.
And not only this, the rest of the dwarves is lost as well, as they constantly keep tantruming and getting insane, so that, when I finally abandon the fortress there are only 25 dwarves left (with 7 of them being children).

This teaches me to first get my underground defenses ready before I try to establish an external defense perimeter (i.e. external fortress walls, which kept a part of my dwarves busy [and lead to stones getting used] at the time the dragon attacked)

[pg]

If you reload it from a save after an attack you usually can survive. However, if you keep playing it seems to get continually worse. Whenever I have massive problems with tantrums I reload a save, and it helps a lot.

[Proteus_MST]

Ah, good to know.

Too late for this fortress, but it might save future fortresses from abandonment due to mass tantrums.

[N35t0r]

Yeah, I try and keep most of my dwarves indoors at all times. Only woodcutters, and any hunter I don't feel like reeducating go outside.

I killed a dragon by stationing 6 marksdwarves behind fortifications and shooting at it while it scorched the human caravan guard. Hooray for +steel bolts+!

My last fort (It's a bit more built up now). It's only a 3x3 map square, so I decided to put it on hold for a while and make a new fort on a mountain with no magma and a 6x6 region. Not all levels pictured - the entrance is all roofed, and the 'barracks' to the SW has 3 floors ATM.








This is actually several floors down, on the last level. The catacombs are being built here

[LotC]

What's the deal with crafting? Any item I order gets canceled.

Make bone crafts: Job canceled because crafter doesn't have any bones. What about the piles of bones lying around all over and in my refuse piles? Same with shells.

Make stone crafts: Canceled because crafter needs non-economic stone to craft with. What about the hundreds of obsidian boulders scattered about and filling up my stone stockpile? Those aren't economic.

Make wood crafts: Canceled because crafter needs logs. Those piles of logs in the stockpile aren't good enough for you?

Make stone swords: Canceled because crafter needs stone that can be sharpened. Wiki seems to say that obsidian is just the stone I want. See above for availability of obsidian.

[Skanky Burns]

They are not considered available if the item in question has a move task on it. Dwarves will happily starve to death in a room filled with food if someone hasn't moved the food yet. The stones / bones / etc are sitting in a stockpile and aren't marked to be dumped?

:Shrug:
If you post the save I will take a look at it.

[Proteus_MST]

Hm,
does he have a valid path to the resources needed?
If he cannot get to the resource (for example stockpile) you will see this message even if there are tons of resources lying around (but out of his reach)

And what about the things your craftsdwarf creates?
Do you have a valid stockpile to which they can get carried away? If not, well, just a theory, but maybe your workshop has lots of created items lying around and there is no place to put a new resource to create another item.

[LotC]

My masons are happily using the stone from my stockpile so my crafter should too I would think. He has a short and clear path to all he needs. I have a finished goods stockpile that sits empty because he will not create a single item.

Here's the save:

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/14786_region2.rar

Don't laugh; it's my first game. Any other tips are welcome. As you can see, it's a pretty sweet site. Magma close by and a kobold cavern complex to pillage later on (unless they come for me first). The river never freezes either.

[Skanky Burns]

I abandoned fortresses 1 through 4 before actually coming up with a somewhat decent design. The best parts of my design are also shamelessly stolen from others, like this apartment complex for dwarven bedrooms.

And on levels above / below that entrance: