/rlg/ Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode Guide Mk4

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR AN OUTDATED VERSION OF DF AS OF JULY 7 2014
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR AN OUTDATED VERSION OF DF AS OF JULY 7 2014
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR AN OUTDATED VERSION OF DF AS OF JULY 7 2014
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS FOR AN OUTDATED VERSION OF DF AS OF JULY 7 2014

A new guide will be written, but it'll take time.

/rlg/ Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode Guide Mk5: Victory is Mine

DF Version: 34.11

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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1. Important Websites
2. Quick Guide to the Early Game
 a. Creating a New World
  a.1. Design New World With Advanced Parameters - The guide
 c. Home Civ Selection
 d. Intro to Attributes & Skills
 e. Hello World!
 f. Training Time (OPTIONAL)
 g. Becoming a Necromancer
 h. Becoming a Vampire
 i. Thralls & Husks
 j. Werebeasts
3. My Adventurer just died, now what?
4. Using AdvFort
5. Stonesense & Other DFhack utilities

Appendix
 a. What _____ Age means. (Taken from the Wiki)
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1. Important Websites
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Game Source
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

/rlg/ Adventure Mode Pack (Recommended, this guide assumes you are using it, but if you aren't there's still useful info)
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4dxya0f7new461d
NOTE: No longer contains pre-generated world to keep the file size down. I'll upload one separately later. When I do you'll no longer see this message.

Large Address Aware - Lets DF use more than 2 Gigs of Ram and hopefully not crash as much in world gen
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556

Adv Mode Quickref
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Adventure_Mode_quick_reference

Adv Mode Wiki Article
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Adventure_mode

Forum - Mods
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=13.0

Forum - Adv Mode
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=13.0

Wiki
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

Attributes
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Attribute
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Attribute#Attributes_trained_by_skills

Skills
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Combat_skill
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Skill


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2. Quick Guide to the Early Game
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Warning: This entire pasta will be extremely spoilery. If you want to play spoiler free then don't read any further. First off. You have a big decision to make. Are you going to visit and loot an old fortress as a dwarf that's been pre-made with everything you'll ever need or are you going to play through as a human? This guide is presuming you went Human. It's also presuming that you are new and therefore will go Demigod for an easier start. Once you get a handle on things feel free to start as a Hero/Peasant. If you went dorf just loot your pre-made fortress and go on with life. If you're playing one of the more exotic races like Tengu, you can find gear sized for you in their towns, but you'll have to buy it or get it from the keep.

Second. You need to decide on who you are. Are you a genre savvy wannabe Adventurer who listened to stories from grizzled old adventurers in the tavern? Or are you the handsome brown-haired blacksmith's son who ran away from home dreaming of adventure. This guide is presuming that you are genre-savvy and intend to play cautiously or train yourself.

This is essentially an addition of metagaming advice to the pre-existing adventure mode guides on the wiki and is presuming you have read them and have a basic understanding of the controls/symbols. This guide also assumes you're using the Quickstart Pack linked above.

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a. Creating a New World
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Go to "Design New World with Advanced Parameters" and select one of the FTN presets. If you want to fiddle around with it you can go ahead, but be aware that adjusting "Number of <x>" can cause Fear The Night's creatures to not show up as frequently, or even at all. Larger worlds will take longer to generate and will have more possible spawn locations and civilizations. Worldgen can also crash, this is due to DF being in alpha, just try again.

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a.1. Design New World With Advanced Parameters - The guide
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Aim for:

Higher Population cap for larger sites

Higher Site cap for more towns/etc

Use mesh's to influence how you want your world to look. Read up on the wiki's Adv World Gen page to get details.

Max megabeast and semi-megabeast caves so you have lots of places to raid.(You'll have caves falling out of your pockets. These also make decent places for stashes if you don't want to use a human fortress or one of your abandoned forts.)

Max the titan number for lots of things to fight. This will make it a bit hard for civs to survive but at this point in time fighting titans/beats is really the only thing to do.

Zero for Night Troll types/vampire curses/Werebeast types/Secret Types so FTN functions properly.

High amount of evil cloud/evil rain if you want to max your chances for a thrall/husk.(Check the area with a fort in adventure mode to find out what kind it is. Keep a txt file noting the region name and it's effect.)

Erosion - Read the Adv World Gen article to decide how much erosion you want less rivers so you don't have to break out of travel mode as much to cross a 3-tile stream

Caverns - Add more layers if you want more than just 3 to explore

	Openness - go 90/100 for caverns being very large

	Density - go 0/10 for low-desity caverns. It's an utter pain running around a cavern full of 1 tile tunnels and getting lost.

	Water - Do what you want. You'll train swimming anyway

Consider Vastly Increasing natural cave size for better odds of them breaching caverns and giving you access without using a retired fortress

Lots of caves in non-mountain areas give more areas to explore and sites for monsters. You can increase the mountain ones as well but they're notoriously difficult to find sometimes.

Make caves visible - Yes

Number of Civs - More civs equals higher chance of more humans for fortress' to loot. Other civs also build cities in the Quickstart Pack, so you can visit and get quests from them as well.


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c. Home Civ Selection
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Decide which race you want to be

Human - Lots of quests, can use most equipment found in human fortresses
Dwarves - Can't use armor found/bought from humans. Will need to somehow acquire smaller armor.
Elves - Pure Flavor, start with shit gear and wooden weapons.

The quickstart pack also adds

Orcs - Barbaric and violent, usually at war with everyone. Be prepared for a lack of quests. Can start with flamberge (swordsman) and spontoon (spearman).

Gnolls - Also very barbaric, they wear only chain armor and no clothes. They blood causes nausea and dizziness in non-Gnoll races. Can start with a cleaver (axeman) and barbed spear (spearman)

Lizardmen - Desert dwelling humaoids. They wear no armor, and can create steel weapons on occasion. Can start with a hook sword (swordsman) and cudgel (maceman)

Geckomen - Slimy humanoids that live in swampy areas. They use staves (staff user, equivalent of spearman) and atlatls [also known as throwing sticks, look it up](uses blowgun skill for both ranged an melee, renamed to throwing stick user. It won't help you with other melee weapons, but no matter how you use the weapon you'll get better with it). They can spit poison and are covered in it at all times.

Merfolk - Tritons [male] and Sirens [female], can breathe underwater, can spit freezing water, have extremely sharp fins. Can start with a trident (tridentman, equivalent to spearman) and harpoon gun (Harpoon gun user, equivalent to crossbowman).

Ents - Slow tree people. They are gigantic, with no equipment. They can fully regenerate their bodies. They do not have to eat or sleep.

Tengu - Bird people. Males are large and flightless. Females are small, delicate and can fly. Can start with a Katar (Katar user, equivalent of swordsman) and Dagger Gauntlet (dagger gauntlet user, equivalent of spearman). Also produce cestuses, but never use them due to militaries not using "unarmed" weapons.

Then decide Peasant/Hero/Demigod status. This amounts to how much starting points you get and you might as well just go demigod as going peasant just means an extra 8 or 10 hours of skill grinding.

Scroll through your available civs and try to pick one with a good centralized location in relation to the other civs and the world in general as well as a good cluster of fortresses to raid for starter gear. This will ideally give you a good selection of places to use as a home base for all your future adventurers without needing to pre-make a fortress for that purpose.


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d. Intro to Attributes & Skills
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Starting Attributes (Taken from the wiki)

Attributes are divided into Body and Soul attributes. This section provides some guidance for allocating attributes as it relates to adventurer mode.

 Body Attributes

    Strength - Alters the damage done in melee, increases muscle mass (thicker muscle layer also resists damage more), and increases how much a creature can carry. Increasing strength, at least in adventurers, increases movement speed (albeit not as much as agility) due to better carrying capacity.

    Agility - This attribute is directly related to a character's Speed and is also used in combat skills.

    Toughness - Reduces physical damage. Also relates to defensive combat skills.

    Endurance - Reduces the rate at which the adventurer becomes exhausted. Used in Wrestling.

    Recuperation - Increases the rate of wound healing. Not as important as Toughness. Recuperation isn't that useful in adventurer mode since you usually have as much time to rest as you need assuming you can escape a situation alive.

    Disease Resistance - Reduces the risk of disease. Reduces the "risk" of becoming a vampire in adventurer mode.

Strength, Agility, and Toughness are the Body attributes that most impact combat skills, and Endurance to a lesser extent.

 Soul Attributes

Some of these are useful for adventure-mode-applicable skills, but some are totally useless except as dump stats.

    Analytical Ability - Useful for certain crafting skills, the only one currently being Knapping.
    Focus - Affects Archer, Ambusher, Observer.
    Willpower - Fighter, Crutch Walker, Swimmer, and helps resist pain effects such as those caused by chipped bones. Raise if you want to fight through the pain of multiple shattered limbs.
    Creativity - Currently completely useless in adventure mode. Normally it impacts crafting skills.
    Intuition - Only helps with Observer.
    Patience - Currently useless.
    Memory - Records more of previously traveled areas when you return to them. Deletes all memory when you travel.
    Linguistic Ability - Currently useless because adventurers don't have social skills.
    Spatial Sense - Important. Affects combat skills, Ambusher, Crutch Walker, Swimmer, Observer, Knapping.
    Musicality - Completely useless as of yet.
    Kinesthetic Sense - Important. Combat skills, Crutch Walker, Swimming, Knapping,
    Empathy - Might increase chance of persuading people to Join you. Pretty much useless as of now.
    Social Awareness - Increases the number of followers you can have at a given "fame" level. Normally you start with a limit of two. Increasing this stat by one level raises that to three.

Attribute Advancement Cap

Adventure mode attributes are capped at double the starting value or the starting value plus the racial average, whichever is greater. Humans, for example, have a racial average strength of 1,000. If a human adventurer starts with an above average strength of 1,100, then his strength will ultimately be capped at 2,200. Had this human started with a below average strength of 900, then his strength would be capped at 1,900 instead. For the purpose of maximizing final attributes, this makes it important to start with as many attributes in the superior range as possible (more attributes per point allocated), while avoiding taking any penalties to even remotely important attributes (big attribute deductions per point recovered). As a consequence of the attribute cap, demigod adventurers will always have a much higher potential for advancement than mere peasants and heroes.
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Skills:

Weapon Skills - Every weapon plays slightly differently, so take your pick. Be aware that bladed weapons are often easier to kill with than blunt weapons at low levels.

Fighter - Automatically trains as you fight. Dump anything extra into here.

Observer - Ability to spot ambushes/stealthed. It'll be trained as you play so feel free to ignore/dump 2 or 3 levels in it.

Swimmer - Novice is the bare MINIMUM to take if you want to survive training this.

Ambusher - Increases stealth. Can be trained easily. Don't waste points.

Armor User - Reduces movement penalty from armor. Fairly easy to train. Don't waste Points.

Shield/Dodge - Pick one to dump points into. Both are fairly interchangeable for the most part, and will train as you play.

Reader - Put one level into this if you plan to ever become a necromancer or other wizard type.

Anon's build:

Attribute:
Superior Strength
Superior Agility
Superior Toughness
Average Endurance
Average Recuperation
Average Resistance
Average Analytical ability
Average Focus
Average Willpower
Very Low Creativity
Average Intuition
Very Low Patience
Average Memory
Very Low Linguistics Ability
Average Spatial Sense
Very Low Musicality
High Kinesthetic Sense
Very Low Empathy
Average Social Awareness

This will make you a fighting machine to be reckoned with. You'll be fast, strong and tough to injure with very good combat skills.

Skills:
Weapon - Accomplished
Swimmer - Novice
Dodge/Shield User - Talented
Reader - Novice

This will let you use multigrasp weapons as well as single grasp. Dodge rises very quickly and the extra points into fighter can help out early on. If you don't want to put them into there, shield user is another good skill if you're going to use a one-handed weapon.


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e. Hello World!
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Immediately hit (Q)uests and look at your worldmap. Plan a land-route to loot all the nearby fortresses and decide on which you'll use as your temp home base. You can also recruit followers from there if it's inhabited.

Hit (S)neak the second you get near any enemies and make sure to be in sneak as much as possible. You may have to go into a hole/behind a tree so nobody can see you but ALWAYS be in sneak mode. What's that? It's slow? Well you want to stop being goblin fertilizer don't you? Sneaking is highly effective at saving you from being mobbed and murdered.

Your goal in life in the immediate future to to acquire a "Kit" of sorts by looting all the nearby fortresses/camps you can. And then making extras for future runs to use to recover your corpse.

Do NOT attack ANY DOMESTIC CREATURE/member of a civ unless you enjoy being swarmed on sight by tons of angry soldiers/hunters who will send your raggedy ass to the graveyard.

While running around inside safe areas always:

 Be (S)neaking
 Have some piece of metal armor on so you're ready to train armor user
 Crutch equipped (Trust me)

Look for and haul to your "Home":

 2-3+ waterskins/Flasks. Take extra and store them at home
   Later on you will look for werebeast hunting quests and store as much werebeast blood as you have spare waterskins/flasks for future use.

 1-3+ Backpacks
   After 1-2 extra adventure kits are made you'll be stuffing these with bodies for you necromancer/lich/summoner/infernomancer adventurers to use.

 Crutches. Holy fuck do you need crutches. Equip one and keep on at all times to train crutchwalker BEFORE you need it. You can craft crutches, which is very useful.

 Training Weapons - Try to have 5 or 6 of each at home for new runs/crosstraining. Training weapons allow you to hit things without killing them.

 Weapons - Try to get 2 quality weapons of each weapon skill. You can use these on other characters if you die.

 Wooden shield - Good for early Misc. Obj Training.

 Metal shield - Once you have Misc. Obj trained you can shield bash to work as your bonebreaker.

 Iron/steel shield - Better/best armor penetration to avoid ____ was deflected by ____

 Set of shitty leather armor - you probably wont have an early set of metal armor and make extra full sets of leather armor for future adventurers. Read:
 http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Armor#Some_more_workaround_about_Size.2C_Permit_and_Layering
 for knowing what to equip. Be aware that you can also make bone armor in the Quickstart Pack, which is shit, but still better than nothing.

 Set of shitty metal armor - Even the worst copper armor is like 20 times better leather. Get it early and trade up to better whenever possible

 All the knives you can carry.(Make knife caches errywhere) These make for wonderful light-weight throwing weapons and are invaluable for raiding necro towers. Boning knives are also required to make bottles, which are used for all FTN potion reactions.

 1 of ea. Bow/Xbow/Blowgun - Ranged weapons can be highly effective, but unless you're skilled for it leave them at your base.

 Any and all ammo should be lugged to the place that will become your eventual base.

 Grabs bags and empty them. ALL the bags. Because you're going to have so much junk you'll soon need to compact your stash piles using bags. Leave 1 identifier item on top then stuff the rest in bags for easy relocation.

 Coin - You'll probably not need any Dosh after a bit but grab all you can and sort it in 3 piles of copper/silver/gold from civ 1, civ 2, etc. for easy sourcing. Any and all bandits you kill should be carrying a puch of cash, so make sure you grab those.

 Grab multiple spears if you want to pretend you're a javilineer.

 Food - Make a larder in your home base as well as lightly stocking sites so you can restock even if you're far from home

 Books containing secrets of various things - These will be from far later on after you've trained and raided necro/sorcerer towers.

 Amusing books

 Take all metal armor home and sort by base material then quality with the masterwork stored separately.


Stash Management -

Armory - Store all your armor in separate piles sorted by base material then type then quality. Keep leather and masterwork in separate piles. Hopefully you'll accumulate full sets of decent

armor for future adventurers to start out geared. Keep piles for all your weapons as well.

   Copper - well crafted

   Left Boot, Right Boot, Greaves, Left Gauntlet, Right Gauntlet, Mail shirt, Breastplate, Helm

   Repeat. Yes, this'll take forever and a TON of floor space but it's nice to grab and go in the future and tell at a glance how complete your sets are and if you can improve instead of cycling through 15 pages of -copper high boot- to find the *copper high boot*

Ditto with Weapons. Try to have at least one decent weapon per skill so if you feel like a whip/mace run you're good to go.

Now, time for the real meat. Once you've gotten enough gear, go ahead and start asking villagers about "Service". They'll give you quests that you can go do. Eventually you'll get famous, and the king/ruler will start asking you to do things for them. If you're lucky, you'll end up murdering nearly every important historical figure in the world, and become one yourself.

Alternatively, start killing everything. It is fully possible to kill every historical figure in the world, leading to the "Age of Emptiness". Though this will take more time, if you're the genocidal type it can be great. You'll also max out your skills pretty fast with all the maiming and slaughtering you'll be doing.

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"
 - Some huge motherfucking Austrian guy in a funny headdress thing

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f. Training Time (OPTIONAL)
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Now the real work begins. Bear in mind that all of this is NOT STRICTLY NECESSARY, but it can help if you've splattered a few dozen characters and don't want to repeat that.

Equip a shield and Hit (C)hange your combat prefs and change them to close combat. Go sneaking around in search of a hoary marmot/wolf/etc. just something without a way to gore/kick/tear off limbs with biting/etc. and wrestle it until you reach wrestling & Fighting legendary+5.

Then spam the wait command until dodge or shield user is legendary+5. If you don't mind the wait keep at it until they are both at legend+5

Now you can head back home or wherever you have a stable food/water source and find a tile with rocks to throw. Read up on the wiki's macro page and make a throwing macro. spam it until you reach throwing+5. Go home and grab a bow/xbow/blowgun and 1-3 stacks of ammo and repeat for each. Just a heads-up. Using bow/xbows in combat is a BAD idea as you can spend ~6 turns reloading during which a goblin is just going to kill you. Just train them for the attribute boosts and forget about them.

Grab a wooden training weapon in your weapon skill and change combat prefs to striking to work in a smidge of kicking/striking/misc. obj and sneak around the wilds hitting things. If you intend to use your shield as a weapon leave your weapon hand open and run around with striking as your combat pref. Dual shield if you don't want to train as much striking skill from punching things.

After doing that for a bit you'll have solid defenses and competent offenses as well as a solid crutchwalker skill in case of getting maimed, solid sneaking for reliable hunting and getting close to gobbos, and even if you lose your weapon you can just shatter it's leg with your shield and use wrestling to take HIS weapon! Keep in mind that maiming/crippling a pack of enemies while kiting them if probably going to be your main tactic forever.

At this point you'll probably want to consider savescumming as you've probably spent 12+ hours grinding and would really hate to lose that to a random horse kicking your face in/random marksgob/lasher instagib. Save often and use task manager to close DF and you'll restart from your last savepoint. So Save often!

Once you know how to savescum go to a place where the (P)temperature is warm/hot and hop in a body of water to train swimming. Spam the wait command until you reach legendary+5.  Be prepared to savescum because water in areas where it can freeze will instagib you just to be a cunt after like 3 minute of swimming.

P.S. Keep an adventurer log/write down the region location when you fight tough stuff. Always keep in mind approximately where you are. If you get terrible wounds, STOP, check on the map where you are so you can spend 3 hrs finding the corpse. Bring it home to your "catacombs" and "bury" him with all his gear at the foot of his corpse ;_;

P.P.S. Don't fuck with things that have hooves/horns/firebreathing. It only takes one botched roll to end 15 hours of work.(And you still have to recover the body!)

P.P.P.S! AGAIN: This is all optional, you can still play and will in fact probably have just as much fun not grinding, but you will die a lot more.

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g. Becoming a Necromancer
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[Do all the previous training/make sure you're pretty badass] and make sure you've stocked up on a few bags of carving knives/daggers/throwing ammo. The name of the Zombie eradicating game is to arrive, survey the area around the tower for a hole to dump collapsed corses in. Get JUST close enough to grab the attention of 1 or 2 undead and run about a map tile away then throw knives/daggers to wound/collapse them. Do NOT sever limbs as ANYTHING with a [Grasp] tag like a arm/head can be reanimated. Do NOT be in melee range of more than one undead and even then try to never be in melee range. Pretend that EVERY reanimated corpse is a god-tier bodybuilder that uses 100% of his strength. They can EASILY grab AND RIP OFF YOUR LIMBs OR PUNCH YOUR BRAIN IN. So treat the undead with respect. When you get a necro on the first floor make sure to pull him in the opposite direction of where you're storing the collapsed bodies. Flaming Zombies also spread fire, which can and will melt you. Summoners can turn any collapsed corpses into powerful demons that WILL fuck you up, so make sure there aren't any nearby if it's a summoner tower. After you've cleared the first floor just sneak and work your way up repeating until it's completely empty and disposed of. If you run into a necro/sorcerer be careful. They have abilities which can seriously ruin your day. Dark Sorcerers will curse you, liches are nearly unkillable, summoners can make demons and Infernomancers will melt your flesh off. Read books until you find ones regarding the secrets and lug those home. congrats. You are no longer concerned about petty mortal troubles like sustenance Undead are now peaceful (they will attack living people with you though). You may also have gained the ability to curse people, throw fire, fly, or summon demons.

If you feel like it (and you aren't an infernomancer) run around with a backpack stuffed with the corpses of semi-megabeasts/megabeasts/titans/forgotten beasts, throw it, then reanimate it to kill difficult/dangerous stuff. keep a spare backpack on hand to stock up your corpsebombs on the move.

WARNING: DO NOT RUN AROUND WITH A GIANT 500+ UNDEAD ARMY. THIS IS A GIANT FLAG TELLING THE GOBLINS THAT YOU'RE AN EASILY KILLABLE ASSHAT AND TO SEND 80 BOWGOBS TO SHRED YOUR ARMY AND GET YOU TO COMMIT SUICIDE FROM HAVING TO REANIMATE 100 UNDEAD OVER A 30X30 AREA A TURN FOR LIKE 2000 TURNS. USE NECROMANCY JUST FOR THE NO HUNGER AND PEACEFUL UNDEAD BENEFITS.


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h. Becoming a Vampire
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So you've decided you want to glitter in the daylight? Good, because it isn't going to be easy. Unlike vanilla, FTN vampires aren't little pussy faggots and will seriously fuck you up. Minor vampires are the weakest, and you shouldn't ever try to become one. Elders are the next step up, and are certainly more powerful than most creatures. Master Vampires will KILL YOU DEAD. DO NOT FIGHT A MASTER WITHOUT BACKUP. When a vampire is injured it will typically transform into an animal form to regenerate. This is your chance, kill it quickly and use the corpse to create an extract. Drink to gain an interaction then activate it to convert. Make as many extracts as possible and store them. Note that extracts require bottles to be made, so make sure you've got some. You can re-use a corpse as many times as you want before it rots to create extracts. Also note that drinking the human form's blood CAN convert you, but it's a bit of a crapshoot.

WARNING: Becoming a vampire disallows you from becoming a werebeast/lich/infernomancer/other type of vampire. It is also irreversible.

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i. Thralls & Husks
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Make test forts in evil regions to find out what that regions evil cloud/rain does. Once you find a husker have fun. Keep in mind all living things are hostile to you afterwards.

(Pasta'd from the wiki)

Thralls, Husks, and Zombies

Certain kinds of evil weather can instantly turn any syndrome-vulnerable creature into a bloodthirsty undead killer, opposed to all life. These creatures are referred to be the sort of weather that transformed them, an identifier as a thrall, husk, or zombie, and their original creature name-- for example, a stray guineahen unholy gloom husk. The specific syndromes that generate these creatures are created at the time the world is generated, but vary only slightly from one another. Some traits these creatures are likely to possess include:

    Increased strength, toughness, and/or reduced speed.
    Opposition to life, lack of emotion
    Undead status (NOT_LIVING), sterility, no attribute rust or gain
    An almost complete invulnerability to the effects of damage
    Transformation into one of many mutated forms, such as a one-armed ghoul

Because of the plethora of tags added to these creatures, they are typically vulnerable only to beheading or bisection. Because the interaction can happen without first killing the target, thrall-like creatures retain any armor or weapons they were carrying. And, perhaps worst of all, they may still be contaminated with the material leading to the transformation, infecting those with whom they wrestle.

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j. Werebeasts
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Do quests/get luck exploring to find a lair. When you find a werebeast in normal form, injure them severely to cause them to transform. Once it transforms, use the material it's weak to to hurt it. Nothing else will do much damage. Try to get it to bite/sting you and BAM, you're a werebeast. Get used to traveling w/o travel mode as you can shift and lose all your gear while using travel mode. While it comes at a high price the ability to regenerate severed limbs and nerves can be very powerful. You also gain the ability to shift at will, and werebeast human forms are insanely strong. Just don't get hit by the material you're weak to, because it WILL kill you.

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3. My Adventurer just died, now what?
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Well since you were a good anon, you know the region and approximately what tile you died in. You're going to roll up a new character, make a beeline to your old home, gear up, possibly do a Training Montage, then go recover your old corpse and stash it as well as all its gear in a floor of your home you'll use as the "Catacombs" If you're having trouble finding it, save and quit DF, copy & paste the DF folder, go into the copy, retire, go into legends, and look at the dead adventurer's entry. (You write down names right?) That'll give you the region name of where it died. Then go back to the original, use the (Q)uests menu to look for the region, then travel there and look around continually checking what region you are in to make sure you're in the right place.

Alternatively you can just restart.

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4. Using Advfort
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What is AdvFort? Only the best goddam thing ever. AdvFort allows you to do ANYTHING you can do in fort mode in adventure mode. To activate AdvFort, press Ctrl+X (can be adjusted in dfhack.init). You will then see a menu at the top of the screen. Pressing Shift+R and Shift+T will change the type of task you are performing. To perform a task, "careful move" (Alt+move) into the direction you want to perform the task in. You will then be prompted/will perform the task and a timer will count down. If you see a -1 in the timer, that means you must press "." to wait a turn. To create a workshop, place the template down then careful move into one of the pieces. Be warned that you cannot perform any normal adventure mode commands while in AdvFort mode, so if you want to pick things up, you must press Esc to close the menu. When performing certain tasks such as removing walls, the wall item will be hauled, and will appear to be picked up near you when AdvFort mode is exited. The rest should be apparent, so have fun. Note that for some tasks, you may need a tool. I'd suggest buying one, though you can also craft them.

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5. Stonesense & Other DFhack utilities
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Stonesense is a graphical engine for Dwarf Fortress, and can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+V (can be remapped as well). The window should appear and load the currently loaded map section quickly. You can use the arrow keys to move the camera and Enter to rotate it. ? can be pressed to get a more complete list of keybinds, but those are the essentials. Note that when moving, stonesense may not follow your character, so you must manually update the camera position.

DFhack also has a host of other utilities, which can be accessed through the console. Of particular use is forceequip, which can cause followers to equip designated items. To list all commands, type 'ls', to learn more about a command, type help <commandname>. If you've used a UNIX system before, this should seem very familiar. if not, don't worry, it's easy.

Just remember, DFhack is not cheating if you don't use it to cheat.

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Appendix
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-Age of Legends is generally the best for maximum fun.
-Golden Age will have a shitoad of vampires

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a. What _____ Age means. (Taken from the Wiki)
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Known Ages

Below is a list of 'Ages' that may occur, an explanation and their (possible) triggers, and their in-game descriptions.

    Age of Myth, Age of Legends, Age of Heroes
    In previous versions, those three were the most common. Since the first .31 update, changes in underlying parameters in world gen mean that it has become rarer for the world to reach even the Age of Legends. The progression from Myth to Legends to Heroes is conditional upon the percentage death of megabeasts in a given world during generation. Slaying Megabeasts that visit you in Fortress Mode is known to trigger change of Age. When there are very few Megabeasts/Demons left, breaking into a very bad place can also trigger an Age change.

        The Age of Myth was a time when living gods and mighty beasts still held sway.
        The Age of Legends was a time when powers of the world were fading.
        The Age of Heroes was a time when the last of the powers fought their final battles.

    Age of (Megabeast's/Demon's name/title)
    Occurs mostly in pocket worlds, where there's one Megabeast/Demon with relative large kill list.

        The Age of Flarrgh was a time when the dragon Flarrgh was the only great power in the world.

    Age of (Megabeast/Demon) and (Megabeast/Demon)
    Same as above, but with two notable Megabeasts/Demons. eg: "The Age of Titan and Dragon" or "The Age of Two Demons"

        The Age of Dragon and Demon was a time when the dragon Flarrgh and the demon Blarrgh were the only great powers in the world.

    Age of Three Powers
    Even better than above, three notable Megabeasts/Demons.

        The Age of Three Powers was a time when the dragon Flarrgh, the demon Blarrgh and the titan Glarrgh were the only great powers in the world.

    Age of (Race name)
    One race becomes dominant in the world, or it's the only race left in the world. eg: "The Age of Dwarves"

        The Age of Dwarves was a time when dwarves ruled the world.

    The Golden Age
    Civilizations are expanding, and there are no wars and other things for them to worry about. Incidentally, in this age vampires tend to eat entire cities.

        The Golden Age was a time when various civilized races peopled the world.

    Age of Fairy Tales
    Toady One' quote from 2008 devlog:

    "I finally saw a world arrive at the Age of Fairy Tales, which happens if mundane creatures (ie humans) make up at least 90% of the world's civilized population with the requirement that there are still a few fantasy creatures lurking around. In this case, it was a kobold cave that their scouts never found. I guess all of the fairy tales were about people having their crap stolen."

        The Age of Fairy Tales was a time when fantastic creatures were few and far between, and some even doubted their existence.

    Age of Twilight
    There are no wars and other worries, but civilizations are too weak to expand or are crumbling apart.

        The Twilight Age was a time when fantastic creatures no longer lived in great numbers.

    Age of Civilization
    Seems to be triggered when the world is mostly occupied by civilizations and there's no more fanciful creatures around.

        The Age of Civilization was a time when fantastic creatures were but mere stories told by travelers.

    Age of Death
    The Age of Death is a time when there are no civilizations left alive. It is respected in Dwarf Mode, so no invaders, merchants, immigrants.

        The Age of Death was a time after civilization had crumbled completely.

    Age of Emptiness
    The Age of Emptiness is a time when there are no civilized beings left alive. This is a game state that can be achieved in adventure mode, because everything can be killed in adventure mode. However, the game does not register the civilizations themselves as being extinct, so the Age of Emptiness is not respected in dwarf mode; things will be re-populated.

        The Age of Emptiness was a time when no civilized peoples existed in the world.