Studebaker wrote:5. [Food other than pike?]
6. Is the 1st underground level (i.e. the caves) lined up with the surface? If I find a vein using prospecting on the surface near my cave can I then count the tiles to the cave entrance and then count the tiles in the cave to locate the vein?
Hi. If you can't hunt yet, other strength-giving fish are brill and, if you can get them, sturgeon (I get brill pretty much all the time using leeches in rivers, and have had fits of getting quite a few sturgeon, but that probably depends on the phase of hte moon or something. Also, the sturgeon was in a lake, idk if that makes a difference). Pumpkins are also handy (the only food plant that can be properly farmed at full industry!), and if you're not already doing so, it's worth mixing up your diet with low-q variety items - when you're not aiming for quality, grapes can be grown by your miner as you can eat them and still replant the seeds.
Yes, the tiles line up. I've done this by taking screenshots of the cave and the exterior, and overlaying them in an image-editing program where I can make the layers partially transparent. I'd gone round the cave hitting the walls -as I thought- quite frequently but finding nothing, then I prospected somewhere about ten squares into the cave wall, but got lucky and found that once I knew where to look, the vein touched the cave wall for about four squares. Good luck to you!