CloisterMagic

It started out by following the wiki tutorial:

• Customized starting dwarves based on their preferences
  • One engraver noble carpenter. Damn does she like to polish the place up. I have to disable engraving, or else she won't chop wood.
  • One mechanic craftsman. He's not a very good worker.
  • One soldier miner. He's the best.
  • One miner soldier. Kind of a drunkard.
  • One bowyer blacksmith. Pretty busy.
  • One farmer/brewer.
  • One brewer/cook.

I took my sweet time picking the site, needed hills and woods. I don't think there's any magma. It turns out it has a huge bottomless chasm in the southeast. No pics of that yet.

And when I got there, I burrowed into a plateau and walled off the top. There are 3 stairwells:

• There's one doored-off stairwell from ground level to plateau, and it leads to a trapped-up entry hall. It's the only way in currently.
• There's the east and west stairs. They provide most access to the workshops.
• There's the central stairs that lead to the foundries and the mines.

I've got 24 dwarves now, and am starting to specialize them. I keep them full of beer, but someone keeps eating the plump helmets instead of all the prepared food I've made them. So they tend to go around to the river every now and again when the beer is out. I built a complete road with stairs and a bridge to take them to the river by the most direct route, but I'm going to end up diverting the river and making a well if I can figure out how.

It's slow going because I keep pausing as the number of idlers hits 3 or more. And I keep having to go back to the manual and wiki.

Mr. Fortress Crack Master and I agree that some Civ-like advisors or tutorial pages that can be disabled would be a welcome addition. That way, instead of working through the wiki, you could stay in the game and get prompted to build features your dwarves clearly needed.