Note! In case you are new and not aware yet, many problems can be solved, and many features can be added, by using DFHack (which is free, and even downloadable on Steam). So please check that out as well.

It's no longer possible to designate a line of purely up/down staircases everywhere in the normal manner. Instead the game forces staircases to be designated over multiple levels, then forces the top tile to be down-only and the bottom to be up-only.

This means that you can continue digging downward from a previously dug staircase designation, but you can't continue digging upward because the main area of the top tile cube is completely dug out empty, and only the floor plate of the top tile cube is a (down-only) staircase.

The language changes for stone-related skills and labors here have been confusing to old players. Some inconsistent terms are used in different contexts. Here we will attempt to untangle it all.

• Mason's workshop was renamed to Stoneworker.
  
• Craftsdwarf's workshop was renamed to Crafter.

• Stonecutters: Smooth rough stone walls AND oddly enough make blocks at a Stoneworker workshop.
  
  
• Engravers: Engrave smoothed walls, same as before, and rock slabs.
  
  
• Masons: Build walls and other constructions with stone (sort of like old Building designer skill which no longer exists). Notice this word doesn't match anything else in the UI. It has nothing to do with the workshops.
  
  
• Stone Carver: Should be called "Stone Working" to match the Stoneworker workshop's name. Basically anything else in at a Stoneworker workshop. This is NOT for stone crafting at the crafter workshop.
  
  
• Stonecrafter: Anything made with stone in "Crafter" workshop.

Note: There is a bug involving strange moods and these skills changes. A mood where a dwarf takes over a stoneworker shop and crafts a piece of furniture will bump that dwarf's skill in mason to legendary, not the stone carving skill which is actually used for making stone furniture. As far as I can tell legendary mason does nothing for you, except MAYBE construction speed.

Coffins can no longer just be placed in a room and then enabled for burial.

They must now be in a Tomb zone.

But public coffins can't all be thrown in one giant Tomb zone like a dormatory for the deceased, they must each be in their own separate 1 tile tomb zone.

This is annoying and hopefully was and oversight and not the way this was intended to work.

Either a tomb zone shouldn't be required and unused but constructed coffins should just get used, or a tomb zone with more than one coffin should just get used as a public catacombs.

Bedrooms attached to taverns and longterm residents don't seem to work right. Essentially, the game treats tavern bedrooms as standard bedrooms that citizens will claim even if there's other bedrooms available (and they will claim them rather than sleeping in a dormitory).

On the other side of things, long term residents won't automatically claim any bedrooms, even ones linked to a tavern, and will just sleep on the floor wherever they are when they get tired. The only real workaround to this is to manually assign vacant rooms to long term residents.

You can set up an emergency shelter burrow and assign everyone to it when attacked, but unfortunately dwarves won't cancel jobs and children especially will not head to be burrow immediately.

There was a feature called "civilian alerts" that would cause dwarves to run to a burrow immediately, but this seems to have gone missing in v50.

DFHack contains the feature though:

alerum68 mentions: "It's actually part of DFHack, and currently working by clicking on the Squad icons, and in the lower left corner of the Square Box you'll see Civilian Alerts, and can configure via a GUI." (See comments.)

Kennels[dwarffortresswiki.org] have gotten changed into Vermin Catcher's Shops.

All tasks that were previously available to kennels have been transferred to Vermin Catcher's Shops, except for taming wild animals.

To tame a wild animal, designate an animal training zone and select it for taming from the creature/livestock menu. Keep in mind you will require plants or meat, a caged animal and a dwarf to accomplish training.

The current Steam version (unlike legacy versions) does not allow designation of ammo for squads or hunters. So dwarves just grab from the nearest stockpile, which means a lot of expensive bolts get shot at practice targets OR a lot of wood bolts (not very effectively) get shot in combat.

I have managed to somewhat control this by placing a stockpile (I use a quantum stockpile for this) near the archery range that accepts only wood (and maybe bone, depending on supplies) bolts/ammo, making sure it's closer to those than to my defensive positions for marksdwarf squads. Then another stockpile (or more, though more require much more micromanagement to stock the bolts) for combat bolts (metal, sometimes bone too, depending on supplies) very near the defensive positions. This has resulted in much less waste or ineffective shooting. They burn through whatever is in their quivers at first, but after that they mostly use the desired bolts.

I have not found to way to do the same with hunters, but then I haven't made hunters work in this version. I just avoid them and use military if I want to "hunt" animals.

You can limit migrant arrivals by micromanaging settings as you go forward in time in a fort. No need to restart game as was the case in classic (except if using dfhack, I think). If you want to have a bit more time to build out starting areas before being swamped, just set the maximum population (Population Cap AND Strict Population Cap) to the most you want in fort. I sometimes do this for scenarios I dream up to make things a bit different (eg a martial artists monastery limited to 17 members at a time, no women or kids! (see below on how to do the latter).)

Note: This applies only after the two first groups of immigrants which are going to always happen. Even if your origin civilization is wiped out before they are scheduled to arrive.

After the first two waves the immigrant count is based on your current population and how much trading you've done with your home civilization. You can limit immigrants somewhat by not trading, but the the thresholds trigger fairly large jumps in potential immigrants from what I've seen.

The Baby+Child Cap and Baby+Child Percentage do not work, from what I can tell. These MAY eliminate births (if you don't like waiting 18 years for a useful dwarf!), but immigration waves still bring kids when set to 0/0 or 1/1.

My workaround if I don't need 33% useless mouths to feed is to just be harsh and exile any families with kids. That is painful sometimes if a parent has some nice skill(s). But this opens up room for more immigrants next season.

Just did a brief test at the surface on soil fertility to quantify that change.

I embarked with a skill 5 (max allowed) planter and immediately sent out my gatherer to gather some local flora so I could use those seeds (along with some plump helmet spawn) for the test. After turning prickle berries and rat weed into drinks, I made three 5-tile farm plots.

1 - surface (prickle berries)
2 - channeled down to first layer (clay loam in this case) and exposed to sun (rat weed)
3 - in same layer as 2 but not exposed to sun (plump helmets)

Then I set planting those seeds in spring only (to remove risk of more than one planting) and had the planter do his thing.

Results:

1 - 10 Prickle Berries
2 - 12 Rat weed
3 - 5 Plump Helmets

I suspect the difference between 1 and 2 is just RNG and small sample. The most notable difference is the 3 results were all singletons, which is very inefficient and actually returned no extra seeds. I know the occasional double is possible because I have multiplied plump helmet seeds in the situation in other embarks,

The 1 and 2 plots were rarely singletons, if any, and those were offset with the occasional triple or quadruple, which are much more efficient for downstream processing and barrel economy (each fruit produces 5 drink, with 25 drink able to fit in a barrel.)

Once I get down further I will add some irrigation and cavern testing.

Conclusion from this: early embark if you need drinks, do it with above-ground crops on the surface or just under in a channeled out "greenhouse." The only thing (and it's not nothing!) planting below ground crops is good for in this situation is skilling up a planter. It's still more useful to do that with above-ground crops though. Just keep the best batches and dump the singletons to save barrels. Or forbid the singles (or even doubles), brew up the others, then unforbid them, turn cooking those on and turn them into lavish meals. Multiple meal stacks fit into barrels (unlike drinks). Can always offload them to traders in exchange for more barrels.

Testing underground with same skilled dwarf resulted in same results as for above ground crops in the topside soil. In soil in the cavern I got 11 plump helmets (3-3-3-2-2) and in irrigated stone floor got 10 pig tails (2-2-2-2-2).

Final conclusion: Grow above ground crops up in the soil layers, and underground crops on irrigated stone (not in the topside soil layers) or on soil in the cavern for best results.