Some newbie questions about settling.

[Berlioz]

Greetings pilgrims!

After some startup trouble I got the client running and that is what I've been doing since. Running that is.
Figuring out how to play and orienting myself in my surroundings have occupied me, then I started around looking for a place to settle and found not much and those rare places were thoroughly hogged.

From the newbie guide and the wiki I gathered I will need green (grassland), brown (prairie or something), red/green (forest), blue (water), yellow (sand) and whitish striped (lime) in traveling distance.
Q1: Can I skip on sand or lime? Because those are hard to get together with the forest and the grassland.
Q2: Sidequestion: What is the whity stuff that's neither lime, nor sand, nor stone? Doesn't seem to do anything and doesn't turn up on the wiki.
Oh and on the subject Q3: Do I need dirt for clay or is that more or less optional?

After a lot of traveling I found a beautiful and quiet spot literally at the border of the map, it had everything and grand scenery on top, but no lime in a 100 miles. Probably a dealbreaker, huh? Oh well, I continued marching on and on into the darkness and of course there is a nice cosy spot, just right for me.
Now the final question:
Q4: Should I consider settling in the Darkness as a newbie? The spot is very nice and I like the challenge, although it might be hard. The constant drain could make it almost impossible to improve the character, since I cannot let my humours drop to much and I can never reach gobbling state to increase them.

Oh and yeah, I traveled a lot, starting near Boston...

[Pjotr84]

Q1: Yes, for now you can. Lime is needed for farming and iron smelting, so you can concern yourself with getting lime when you get to that point. Also, there's a beach in Boston where you can forage for beach specific items.
Q2: Not sure what you mean there
Q3: You can make clay with dirt (and lime), but it can also be dug up from clay pits directly.
Q4: No, not as a newbie, since the drain will make it almost impossible to do anything.

[Berlioz]

A1: I want to start farming asap, as soon as I can set up the infrastructure and I don't want to wait too long with the smelting either. Only limits are waiting times on humus, etc.
A2: It's grayish-red on the minimap, but a kinda dirty white on the screen. It has no foragables.
A3: Oh, okay, so I don't need clay pits at all to make bricks, thanks for the info, that is good news indeed.
A4: All I read was "almost" :-)
I usually choose more challenging gameplays, just for the fun of it. Started nethack as a tourist, dwarf fortress in a terrifying, scorching hot desert, so why not?

[Pjotr84]

1. Then either settle in the vicinity of a lime pit, skill up an alt to get the lime or buy from other people.
2. I should know this, but drawing a blank for now...
3. No, you'll need a clay trough filled with milk of lime (water + lime) when not using pits.
4. I'd really advise against it as the drain is suicide for low bile chars.

[Borgins]

A1: I want to start farming asap, as soon as I can set up the infrastructure and I don't want to wait too long with the smelting either. Only limits are waiting times on humus, etc.
A2: It's grayish-red on the minimap, but a kinda dirty white on the screen. It has no foragables.
A3: Oh, okay, so I don't need clay pits at all to make bricks, thanks for the info, that is good news indeed.
A4: All I read was "almost"
I usually choose more challenging gameplays, just for the fun of it. Started nethack as a tourist, dwarf fortress in a terrifying, scorching hot desert, so why not?

The Greyish-red, dirty white stuff it could be clay.

[Burseig]

I feel in the mood of repeating what has been said already

A1 : I personnaly use the beach of boston for sand foraging. I use an alt that sleeps next to a lime depot.
A2 : I would have say stone, but you say it's not. On the floor, lime is white, clay light orange, stone white grey (first time I saw it, I thought it was snow).
A3 : Absolutely not.
A4 : Read A3 above.

[momosan]

It's best for you if you settle far from any points of interests, like the lines between biomes, rivers or lakes.

You can have water from Boston, limes and clay from an alt and dross as stone. I'd suggest autumnal biome as there are plenty of early game inspirations to be gathered.

Q2: Those are mountain tiles, dig them to get stone boulders.

[wiatrak]

I'd suggest autumnal biome as there are plenty of early game inspirations to be gathered.

early game?! Having a 5%+ spot of singing old logs, is always nice!(hint: a lot of things matter when looking for a nice place to live, make a settlement for now, next one when you find a metal node, and next one when you find a nice spot)

[Berlioz]

Thanks for all the help, great tips!
It never occured to me to just port to Boston for supplies... *facepalm*

I did some more scouting, found a few nice places and I think I decided to settle down. Basically next to a huge forests, I started to like them, all those singing logs and yummy mushrooms. Oh and some lime is around the corner, that should do it.
My map is huge by now, I think, I should talk to the guy who uploaded the world maps to include my tiles.

For the grayish-red stuff, it's not in here:
http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Terrain/Quarries

I made a screenshot, stone on top and mystery stuff on bottom of the screen:
http://plymouth.seatribe.se/mt/ss/8ecb25e43ca4b0b9f2063b124c9c6a0c
To see it on the map just look on one of the world maps, it's everywhere.
Looks a little bit like sand, but that is yellow on the map, plus no foragables.
(It's definitely not stone and clay should look like dirt according to the wiki, which it does neither.)

Edit: Replaced huginormous screenshot with link, used the ingame caption function and my laptop has 1600x1200 resolution...

[BubbaMKII]

Dig the mystery stuff and see what you get.
Then report back and do a facepalm again.