Dwarf fortess starting skill set

[oxinabox]

What are good starting skill set, (pairings., groupings in Dwarf fortress?)


i think, a leader/trader/ masson is good:
Prof mason. novice appraiser, novice judge of intent, novice consoler, novice purspaider, novice negotiator.
Because you want your mason basically working all the time, on furnitiure what ever. but it getnerlly doesn't matter if he misses a little doing trading.

and AxeDwarf and Woodchopper.

but really i'm lost, for what goes well together
what goes best with Miner? considering he will have his Attributes massive very quickly...

[TheSummoner]

Theres already a general DF thread but...

I typically take a Miner, a Woodcutter, a Carpenter/Woodcrafter who also is assigned Bowyer labor, a Mason/Building designer who also is assigned Stone Detailing and Stonecrafting, a full time planter (turn off all dwarves harvest and all non-food growing and hauling relater labors on this guy), a brewer with social skills (because the guy who provides the booze is the one who should be leading!), and a seventh who is typically either a military dwarf or a weaponsmith/armorer (who also gets furnace operating, metalsmithing and metalcrafting) depending on how dangerous the area I'm embarking into is.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

My normal starting build is
Miner x2. (I don't bother giving them any other skills)
Woodcutter/Carpenter
Mason/Stonecrafter
Farmer/Mechanic
Farmer/Brewer/Cook
Leader/Trader/Bookkeeper/Manager

I also typically spend 1 skill point on the last 2 guys to give them a metalcrafting moodable skill. The other 5 already have moodable skills.

[shadow_archmagi]

Depends on what I'm going for.

1. Normal Setup
2 miners
1 mason
1 carpenter
2 farmers
1 wood cutter


2. Strike The Earth!
4 miners
3 engravers
Loads of food.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Theres already a general DF thread but...

And a succession game, and a Let's Play (I think).

[Milskidasith]

No point in taking a dedicated leader with a bunch of novice social skills; social skills can be spammed up quickly. What you want, though, is a high judge of intent, so you can always know their mood.

[TheSummoner]

Judge of intent is the social skill I put on my brewer =P

Really though, I question why you would need more than one starting miner... Early in the game, its fairly safe to do things aboveground, so you have plenty of time for him to skill up his mining to legendary and dig your fortress out.

[Milskidasith]

Generally what I find is that it's better not to have a miner because it trains so easily. When you can have rank 5 in siege engineer, which takes forever, why would you want rank 5 in mining, which you can get in a month? Hell, mining is actually my "toughen up" training for my initial dwarves; all of them mine.

[TheSummoner]

Because in the current version, siege weapons are garbage? =P

Maybe once the army arc comes and I can do some actual sieging, then I will have use for siege weaponry. Until then they're more work than they're worth.

[oxinabox]

I look at starting with a Prof miner,as a short cut to ultra-mighty, perfectyly agile, and superdwarvenly (ultradwarvenly?) tough.
I don;'t know if this is gight, but minors pumb there attibutes so fast!

[Milskidasith]

I look at starting with a Prof miner,as a short cut to ultra-mighty, perfectyly agile, and superdwarvenly (ultradwarvenly?) tough.
I don;'t know if this is gight, but minors pumb there attibutes so fast!

You are completely wrong. All attributes move up at the same rate based on how proficient you are with a skill; I.E. getting proficient in mining and, say, masonry give the same amount.

As I said earlier, anybody can mine, and mining trains quick. You want to put proficient on skills that don't train easily and need trained dwarves to work; mining is the opposite.

[nooblade]

Mining is important for digging out the fortress quickly though, people don't take it for the skill, they take it so they can get a bigger fort and thus more immigrants, both more quickly. Mining out the fort faster also means that you can start on other industries sooner, further increasing your wealth early on. This is particularly important for the difficulty of the "Dig Deeper" mod I'm running (it also gives me a chance to get some ores to possibly make into armor for fighting off the early sieges).


I like to make my starting miners also Siege Operators. They can train in Siege Operator quickly if they have high stats, even strength is important for carrying those heavy stones. The main problem with ballistas is that they often shoot off to the side with a low-training operator (and maybe the parts or the arrow, ionno). They're awesome when they work though, much better than catapults, so I'm putting a bit of spare time into figuring out how to wield the beasties. No clue if they fire up or down z-levels, not much interest either since they work much better when they travel in long, flat, straight, non-diagonal lines. It's much fun to pierce through ten or so orcs.