Newbie trying Dwarf fortress for the first time, anything I should be aware of?

Newbie trying Dwarf fortress for the first time, anything I should be aware of?
Any hints and whatnot?

Also DF thread.

Get idlers to smooth stone walls.

>Any hints and whatnot?

Get Dwarf Therapist.
Maybe install a tileset.
Have a browser window set to the DF wiki.

Grow plump helmets, turn them to booze.
Bring some egg-laying animals with you, they seem pretty good for early food production.
remove elf

Don't embark on a location with an aquifer until you know what you're doing. Also, build cage traps outside the entrance to your fort for EZ mode defense.

Literal casual.

There's a great start guide on the DF wiki.

Dig as deep as possible. Mine all the adamantium you find, it has free hidden fun stuff in it.

Once you get handle of the (g)ui, it's not so hard.
Don't dig too greedy and/or too deep unless it's in a section that can be caved-in and safely cut off the rest of the colony.
Prepare some single cells that can be used for complete isolation of an individual without killing them. It's gonna save you from tantrum spirals when somebody goes in fey mood you can't satisfy.

>ez mode defense
Is complete isolation. Just take anvil and some wood, and try to find underground trees as soon as possible.

Go to /dfg/ on Veeky Forums to ask questions rather than here
Check out the OP of /dfg/ for a guide. It's outdated but it still helps a ton
Keep a tab with the DF wiki open at all times.
Don't install tilesets immediatly. Learning the game will get even harder as you can't relate to things on the wiki
DO NOT get third party software. DF is enough of a pain to learn without having to understand multiple other programs too.

Some things to keep in mind:
-You gotta have patience and willpower to learn the game. The learning curve is more of a learning cliff due to how the shitty ASCII makes things hard to understand and the menus are pretty shit and inconsistent. You'll learn in time and the things that seem tedious at the start become easy to use later on.
-Expect to get your shit kicked in the first few times you play. Remember: losing is !FUN!
-Once you have gotten the hang of the game, you'll notice managing the labors for the dwarves gets annoying when there's more of them (30+). If you feel ready, now is the time to install the first 3rd party software: Dwarf Therapist. Makes managing your dwarves a ton easier.

Feel free to ask questions on /dfg/ any time. It's a pretty slow and dying general all year through but questions tend to get responses pretty quickly and it is probably the most welcoming place on this webiste.

As for some technical things for starting out:
-Don't settle in an "evil" place.
-Avoid aquifers
-Don't make your embark zone more than 3x3. Even with a good processor you'll get shat upon eventually as DF is still single-thread.

But there's no Fun that way. Besides how will you greet the elven caravans that way?

Make a depot with a bridge outside, wait for elves to enter, raise bridge.

Let elves await starvation.

What is it used in that ss to change the aspect of the game?

Anyone ever implement their DF into their dnd? I always imagine dwarfs eating plump helmets and huge mushrooms growing in caves when I dnd. I would like to try to imitate some of the forts into a session.

What the hell is with evil biomes nowadays? Even if you start off with 3-4 proficient axe/sword/spear dwarves, they seem to get wrecked from just a random zombie cow, which then proceeds to become legendary and ruin any attempt of reclaiming the fortress.

I use their language and random generators to write my dwarves in my home brew. Suőri Skornbrekker is a mighty musketeer!

Zombies had a moment in which they got extremely OP
It's not as bad these days with the addition of pulping mechanics, but it's still pretty bad.
Not to mention some unkillable undead can be created by the weather.

Start in a warm environment, ideally forested, that's easiest

Isn't that supposed to be on /v/?

What tile set is that?

Is /dfg/ a very different community, or is it a bunch of exiled fa/tg/uys?

They are the rejected outcasts of Veeky Forums which itself is the last resting place of /less edgy v/irgins

wrong board
mooods

The only true way to play DF is to play it like a proper dwarf. Drunk and angry

DF has always been Veeky Forums related

Try the bay12 forums. They have a surprisingly great and helpful community as long as you don't ask about the koboldfortress, obok or mermaid bones.

This guy has the right of it.

Don't forget to attack the caravans that come for you. They are poorly defended and carry lots of gear.

Beginner stuff:

Always set up a bookkeeper quickly, make the same guy broker and manager too for convenience's sake. Set bookkeeping to high accuracy so you know how much food you have.

Minimize the sizes of your hallways, 2 or 3 wide should be good. Bigger makes pathfinding harder for dwarves which can eventually lower your FPS.

Make stockpiles for everything! Put them near workshops that make sense for them, so rock piles near masonry workshops.

Keep an eye on your farms, and have stills set up to make alcohol.

Make a dormitory for your dwarves, that should hold you over until you're secure enough to start giving them individual bedrooms.

Set up a small dining area so a bunch of your dwarves can eat at tables and chairs at a time. Don't make it a dining room, just put the furniture and they'll eat there. One chair to a table or they'll get mad about sharing.

use therapist, managing your dorfs otherwise is not logical.

if you want the game to be easy just wall your dorfs in a hole with booze.

look up how to do things in the wiki, you will need it.

make sure you have water on the embark, like a brook, as you start up, until you know what you are doing

use a lot of traps, especially boulder traps, trap fucking every entrance many times over, especially the entrances around the caves

have someone be a dedicated hunter and provide stuff for him to be able to do his thing, by the end of the first year he will be a legendary marksdwarf and will make a good militia captain

don't bring more than one cat

for fuck's sake, bring soap

Also, aquifier and brook/river/lake aren't the same thing. Aquifier means that the ground is such that it leaks through your walls and floods your fortress, like if you start in a place with a lot of sand.

Death by thirst in a forested area is a really real thing too, though, because otherwise you would have to rely on an underground river for everything that requires water, and that is very dangerous, not to mention you are not really guaranteed to get underground water.

A natural and contained water source also lets you fish, which is a good thing to throw idlers at.

Dwarves also won't drink from pooled water - it has to be running water, like a stream.