Ok so we have generated a new world “The legendary universe” in this case.  Now we need to pick a site for our band of 7 dwarves to start building a new home.  We should now have a new option at the title screen.  “Start Playing”

Title screen now showing the "Start Playing" option

I select start playing followed by Dwarf Fortress mode.

Next we start looking for an ideal (or not ideal if you want a challenge) location for our fortress.  Ideally I want lots of wood available (trees).  An average temperate.  Too cold and all the lakes will freeze during winter.  Too warm and they will dry up during summer.  Although there are ways round for this game I would like a reasonably easy fortress to play.

Choose Fortress Location

This seems like a nice place.  The three windows show where you are planning to embark each at different zoom levels (local region and world).  This spot seems great although maybe a little warm.  We have soil and fluxstone (for making steel), plenty of trees in woodland and we are surrounded my wilderness.  I don’t fancy emabarking in somewhere haunted :S.  I press e for embark and our dwarves make there journey to the “The silken hills”.

Arrival

I chose a location where the ground is very flat for this fortress, you can embark on a mountain if you wish.  Dwarf Fortress is a 3 dimensional world, that world is cut into sheets for you to view on your screen, the sheets are called z-levels.  The level is shown in bottom left of the screen, hence this is z-level 143 as we build the fortress will dig deep into the earth many z-levels below the surface.

Here are our dwarves alongside there caravan.  The area consists of several lakes which are great for water and for creating mud for our first farm.

Arrival at the site for our new fortress

Thats it for now! We have embarked on our fortress location.