? How could you even achieve this with only 30 dwarves?
You should be focusing on economy, not on this (Clowns basically yield no real reward)

Easy. Dug my way downwards, and eventually managed to reach it. I was bored, and there was nothing wild to hunt, no ponds to fish, and I accidentally prevented traders from entering...
Also, HFS (I have a fear for those c-c-clowns...) has a reward, although it could be anywhere in the world.

That particular cotton candy item would look a lot better in the hands of an adventurer who can use it properly. Once ever have I located that particular piece, and that was with the help of some "tools".

Anyway, if you have a particularly good weaponsmith, and a good supply of cotton candy you could potentially make several of those. I'll have to dig through my old saves and see if I can find my fortress in .31 that had a rather hefty supply... which was right next to a magma sea ):

In other news, I had to abandon my fortress because of excessive giant mosquito raids and too many children leaving me with low FPS. I'm now trying to find it in Adventure mode, but that's proving to be very difficult.
"Tell them it was the Painted Doorways, if you survive!"

Strangely enough, all of my metalsmiths are crazy. As soon as any migrant metalsmith appears, they get strange moods, and it never ends well. A single dwarf has caused a lot of chaos.

So you're attacked by bandits, 4zb41? It can be difficult, especially if there's a tower between the fortress and the starting town. Necromancers are really annoying. Worst of all, it's the only way to the fortress...

I was rather shocked actually. Back in version .31 I never had quite so much trouble with bandits. Now I can handle maybe one or two, but one always seems to be able to cheapshot me and off goes an important limb - or I'm suddenly dealt a mortal wound. I've started running away from the bastards, only killing those that get in my way and are weak enough for me to handle.
Granted, my problems might stem from the fact that I almost always have little in the way of armor to start with. Last adventurer I had was a dwarf, and I found a nice fort with some superior quality metal armor. BUT, didn't fit dwarves :P

I checked the map and there is indeed a tower reasonably close to my old fortress. Well, determination may eventually get me there

@4zb41:
And yet I don't understand why a lone swordsman could take out a huge amount of foes, including four Forgotten Beasts. His skill isn't even Legendary yet. He even killed an entire town because they were vampires. All of them. And I am on a quest now to kill a Dragon. A Dragon of all things. I'll be surprised if the Swordsman makes it through that battle and slices it in half.
I'm extremely persistent and determined, maybe that's how my Talented Swordsman named "Shane" could get through that battle.

Well, my last adventurer (axedorf) racked up 70-something bandit kills, don't know what's up with people being owned so hard by them. I regularly solo whole groups of bandits, but the trick is to only fight them one at a time (and kill ranged foes ASAP). If you get surrounded, you die, so kite them around with your super good agility. When you have a clear shot, give them a debilitating blow to the foot. A prone enemy is much less scary than a standing one, since they're easier to hit and much slower to hit back. Lobbing off a couple of limbs almost guarantees that they'll bleed to death, so you don't need to hang around till you can take off their head.

Also, if you get a martial trance, heads will roll. Run straight up to the nearest enemy, lob his head off, rinse and repeat. Bogeymen ain't got nothing on a trancing dorf. Why is that? Well, supposedly a trance adds 1 to your skill levels... And then multiplies them by 5. To put that into perspective, a competent axedorf will fight like a legendary +5 axedorf while trancing. If you're a bandit, that's fucking terrifying, because fighting a legendary axedorf is comparable to being hit in the face with an RPG. That is, you suddenly turn into a gory explosion of limbs.

Example: I once had an axedorf adventurer; Thob Beardrage was his name. He only had one functional hand, but he was also a grandmaster axedorf in his final days. He could chop off every limb of a human before the human could bleed out, and subsequently disembowel and decapitate them. How did he die? A copper bolt brained him. Moral of the story: crossbowmen suck.

In other news, GIANT SPONGES

supposedly they're really dangerous

Man, I just don't get it Shook. One of my previous (and equally short-lived) adventurers had high agility, went into a martial trance, AND had Talented level speardwarf skill, and yet couldn't land a single hit on a particularly irritating bogeyman who was obviously high on crack and dodging shit like a bloody matador. Hell, I was even presented with "Easy strike, square" more than once and he dodged right out of the way and continued slowly removing my extremities.
As for bandits, I always try to fight them one at a time (especially rangers) and it's always one bastard who'll gut me by himself with no help. Bonus points: the first outlaw my second adventurer in .34 was sent after turned out to be a Hammer Lord. Dear god that did not end well.

I must be doing something wrong. I'll fire up a new adventurer tomorrow.

"Olщ!"

Hm, don't hold me up on this, but i hear that worlds with a longer generation time have tougher bandits, because they rack up skills as time goes on. I usually have a short world gen (125 years), i reckon most others go with medium (250 years). That, or i was just really lucky, because my most recent adventurer (the one with 70-some kills) fell to bandits in a crypt. The fact that i dodged into a big fall probably didn't help.

Well well! That might just be it then. The world I'm on has had just under 300 years to develop (I put it on medium during worldgen for a change - I usually use "very short" for the megabeasts) including fortress play time.

I'll test this out first thing tomorrow.