You're gonna "the WHAT" on one of the most normal monsters in the game? Your head is gonna literally explode when you encounter one of the entirely RNG creatures. lol
My favorite I've personally ran into while playing was a demon made of smoke. Basically the fog monster from Lost. Except that it wasn't as terrifying as it sounded from its description because smoke is, you know, super easy to cut. He died basically by being wafted away by an infant.
I did say it's my first playthrough, lol. Thus far my biggest enemy has been myself, and a hungry mysterious vampire.
I also made this meme before I even attempted to fight, and once I did, was pretty relieved at how easy the fight was. But without any context it's an intimidating popup.
There's fun stuff you can do with that vampire if you ever figure out who it is. They make great slaves because they live forever and don't need to eat.
Figuring out who it is can be hard tho. You really have to watch the logs or build in ways that they can't feed without being witnessed.
And if you do want them alive, make sure your hammerer just has something weak because if you have the justice system set up, they usually will sentence a vamp to death. Adamantine makes a great non-lethal hammer. It's so light, blunt weapons become foam bats.
I've made it to year 4, I think, and 120 dwarves. I think I have a vampire somewhere in my fortress because we keep finding dwarves dead, drained of blood. 😅 And I may have reloaded a save from year 2, to build a wall, because I sorta kinda mined through a frozen river which then flooded my base in late spring that year.
Vampires are wild. I caught the one I had, and he admitted it, and also admitted he was here under a false name. He got exiled from another dwarf civilization for embezzlement. My dwarves apparently didn’t care. After he was punished, they elected him mayor. :D
My favorite fortress fail was from a were-iguana. A visitor turned into a giant iguana in the middle of the dining hall and caused a minor ruckus before my militia dispatched it. 2/10 invasion, really not that special.
Then next full moon there were 7 of them, including my militia commander. Oops. Pay attention to combat logs when you fight a were-creature! Quarantine the bitten!
I still remember my most recent fortress mode cyclops, even though its been almost half a year. I had 2 squads who I had been training using training spears, but forgot to change equipment before sending them to kill it, by some miracle, they dodged all of its attacks for about 20 attacks despite having no dodge skills at all, then one of them either punched or bashed the cyclops in the face and got lucky, knocking it out. What followed was around 20 in game days of a circle of 14 dwarves mercilessly beating a puddle of bruises that was once a cyclops, as training weapons do next to no damage, occasionally it would wake up, then immediately give in to the pain again, with the only non bruise damage coming from whenever a dwarf would decide to punch, kick, or bite instead of using their main weapon. It FINALLY ended when one of dwarves punched it in the head, tearing the brain through the skull, putting the poor thing out of its misery.
My dwarves went in competent speardwarves and came out around grand master level, all very dehydrated.
Another thing to help you out is to learn to use macros.
Escape
Settings
Game
Keyboard cursor enabled Yes
Now you can select mining (be mindful of your priority and warm/wet stone settings) and you will see a box that is your keyboard cursor.
Press ctrl + r and design a room using the arrow keys and enter. Try to start the room at the door so you can better know where to place the cursor to print.
When you are done press ctrl + r again.
Now you can press ctrl + p to print that same room multiple times
Ctrl + s saves the blueprint currently active, ctrl + L brings up a list of your blueprints.
Using macros will help you build from scratch faster. The game is about losing, and macros let you get back up and running way faster after your inevitable downfall. and they are a big help keeping my base looking good to!
I personally have a "grand hall" blueprint i use for temples and bars, housing blueprints, and commerce blueprints.
Then you just connect the blueprints with hallways and BAM insta fortress! Again be mindful of your priorities when setting up blueprints.