Week One: Embarking

There's a lot of planning you can do before you unpause the game. I like to take my time checking out the map; seeing where all the murky pools are, where the flowing water is (if any,) and finding a good spot to start digging.

I like my entrance to be semi-protected by walls, where I can remove the ramps up to give myself a nice "safe" spot. I'll start with a 3x30 tunnel into the side of the hill for my entrance. I used to make it only one tile wide, but expanding it to 3 gives you more space for traps and lets your dwarves move in/out quicker when several dwarves are traveling at the same time (when you send your military out, for example.)

At the end of the entrance, I dig out a 5x5 room with a 3x3 up/down staircase in the center (or down only, if there's not another layer above me.) Attached to that I dig out a 5x5 room that will be the meeting hall until I get a dining room set up, after which it will become the trade depot. I'm also digging out two 3x3 rooms attached to the main stairwell by a small hallway: one for my first farm plot and the other for my turkey farm.

Just outside the tunnel I create a wood stockpile and designate a large (~30x30) area to chop down trees. I make sure to turn on the wood cutting labor on my axedwarf and carpenter. I designate the same area for picking plants, and enable the plant gathering labor on my doctor, farmer, and organizer. I'll remove those labors once they're done with that area, it just gives them something semi-productive to do while they're waiting on the miners to dig. I normally create a refuse stockpile around the corner from my entrance. This time around I'm going to channel out a refuse pit to throw junk into. No particular reason other than I think a refuse pit looks/sounds cooler than a pile.

One z-level below, I clear out a 10x20 room for my main stockpile, and a small room that will be the bookkeeper's office.

The last thing I do before unpausing the game is assign my nobles. My axedwarf becomes the militia commander, the doctor becomes the chief medical dwarf, and the organizer becomes the manager, broker, and bookkeeper. Sherrif remains empty for now, and militia captain is only for when I put together a second military squad (I think...)

With all that set up, I can unpause the game and watch all my dwarves get to work!