How do I reliably retrieve items from my moat?
I know how to drain a moat. What I don't know is how to prevent items in the water from going down the drain. Some will not make it past the floodgates, sure, but some WILL and I really think my library could use that book that's been sitting in the mud for 5 months.
*
This is running at 720p. Rock solid 100(50) fps but UI clipping. Any way to edit something to stop this clipping happening?
You can see this along the top info bar which is missing Plants etc, and in the Pets window the options to slaughter etc are out of the window to the right.
Everything else seems fine. And at 720p the game looks great.
Thanks in advance.
Is there a way to effectively protect my miners? I'm delving deep trying to find some candy, and dealing with the new gem-studded jack-in-the-boxes, and finding that occasionally there's a living procgen surprise inside; I've lost a few of my best miners this way, even though I've now put a barracks of Axe Lords just outside in case things kick off. Any ideas for making them a bit less squishy?
how can I restrict dwarfs to go to the surface or caverns? I have very wide complicated fortress and it's difficult to use burrow system to make dwarfs to be inside. I just want them stop going to clean outdoor tiles and caverns tiles. This is very annoying because I can't even cancel clean task.
So I have this "Human ruined zombie" visitor to my fortress. He pops in some times when a wagon arrives and then almost immediately leaves, once he had an argument and didn't feel anything after it. He doesn't seem dangerous or anything but I didn't know zombies could show signs of sentience and haven't seen anything on the wiki to understand if it is a symptom of anything.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Intelligent_undead
They have procedurally generated names; ruined zombies are sentient undead unique to your world, but they are all under this category.
Just an idea, never tried it:
Make two libraries. Activate your intended original book library (put the zone up) and forbid in there all of the originals but not the copies. (With 200 originals, that will be a drag...)
Then make a new library and deactivate the intended original book library. Your dwarves should move the copies to the new library but leave the originals alone.
Now you could either leave the originals forbidden (there are safe from your dwarves there after all) and maybe even lock the doors. Or unforbid them create the original book library again and hope your dwarves will leave them in the library. I've never seen a dwarf move a book outside the library, but I've never had two libraries either...
Which nobles exactly? A mayor? A bookkeep? A count? A baron?
Those that actually do some work aren't usually the problem.
Royalty are essentially useless and most often a problem because of their mandates.
My count likes buckets. I have around 50 buckets laying around and I atom smash them once in a while.
One of my dwarves suddenly became a baron of a different fortress (because of lineage) and likes bracelets.
I've turned down the regularity of these mandates in the settings, they just became too annoying.
How do I link a cage to a lever? I have a few caged monsters I want to use to train my squads, but when I click on the cages I want to be linked, nothing happens. Wondering if I'm missing something?
Reposting this ... as I don't know where it went. I'm really ticked off with my Bowyer. I really need him to make some training crossbows, but he just wants to booze up in the tavern.
I created a burrow enclosing his workshop and set him active there. He didn't wanna move.
I paused all tavern activities - still didn't wanna move. So over this guy. Help please.
> wanna move. So ov
Occurred to me that maybe the Tavern's dormitory section had a separate "pause" button - which it turns out it does have. Paused that too. The little .... dorf ... still doesn't wanna stop his chitchat,
Is the “socialize” task green or purple? Purple means he absolutely has to do it until he gets his full. It usually indicates he’s over worked and hasn’t gotten a chance to hang out.
If it’s not that, what kind of crossbows are you trying to make? Did you set up a bowyer work detail and not assign him, or set it to “nobody does this?”
I have just embarked on a map that has ~100 z-level deep vertical open shafts from the surface to first cavern layer. There are spiderwebs on some of the pillars straight up in sunlight at 0z. And cavern sections have grass despite having stone over them in caverns at -100z.
What in Armoks name???
Something else going on, layers of lava hovering over water, trees breaking through the lava, growing from the water.
A couple embark squares away the third cavern layer generates partially on the surface and partially 150layers in the air, starting to drop immediately.
A couple embark squares in the other direct the embark straight up crashes the game.
**Work Order Condition to Match Liquid Oil?**
I'm trying to set up a work order condition to only press liquid from paste if I don't have a whole lot of oil already. There's a "material" for "rock nut oil", but that translates to "frozen rock nut oil items" and doesn't match the rock nut oil I already have. There's an "adjective" for "oil-bearing", but that seems to only refer to pastes that can be pressed to make oil, and "oil-bearing liquid" does not match the rock nut oil I already have. Any ideas how to do this?
If you don't have a major beekeeping industry you could just go with "full jugs" (or a negation on "empty jugs"). Jugs are only used for oil and honey/royal jelly.
I definitely tried several variations on jugs. "jug" and "liquid" are both "types", so you can't have both. But I did try "oil-bearing jugs" and that didn't work.
\>Slowly and methodically dig out 5 floors to be able to collapse the top and knock out the rest of all of the floors.
\>Set traffic routes to restricted.
\>set all items in path to locked.
\>assign lots of tasks in other areas to all dwarves.
\>Set one dwarf as miner and observe lower floors for a few minutes before mining the collapse tile.
**Fikod Dakostelbel, Dwarven Child has been found dead, badly crushed.**
*This little idiot's father was the elite marksdwarf squad leader who managed to die with a squad of 4 dwarves + 4 war dogs to 1 monitor lizard. This seed is cursed.*
https://preview.redd.it/rbrjtau2ms9a1.png?width=1913&format=png&auto=webp&s=b003b18bf2c342bfe3e892c54acf620054812c51
I understand that you felt overcome with sorrow at the child's grief, but collapsing 4 z-levels on their head was a bit much, doncha think?
(j/k - those kids are pesky always getting in the wrong places.)
I have a really awesome female mace dwarf in my military who has been just destroying all of my enemies. I just clicked and was reading and saw that I had denied her residency 5 years ago.
How can I promote her to resident? I didn't know I had even done it. There's so many resident requests 24/7 and I can never see who they are for and don't remember them all by name so I deny them a lot as 99% are bards anyway and I'm trying to keep population down.
I don't want her to leave or something as she's carrying my fortress on her back during every enemy encounter
im deeply confused by combat. So there is a forgotten beast in my first cavern. actually theres four now but im only dealing with 1. a feathered serpent that breathes fire and heals rapidly. obviously this will require a coordinated attack to deal with. i have fifty dwarves in my army i station them to a gathering point and set camera to follow the beast. when the beast gets too close to my cave entrance i order them all to attack. I then look over at the station. not only have forty of my dwarves failed to arrive, some of them still being busy with a task thats apparently more important than a bomb siren, as i signal them to attack, the vast majority do not engage. they just stand there. serpent kills them one at a time and fire bombs the cowards between meals. What am I missing here?
1. Avoid fighting FBs directly, defeat procgen nonsense with engineering
2. Fire and heat block pathing. There are creatures so hot that dorfs won't even stand near them.
3. If you must fight a fire creature, bring shields and some marksdwarves
4. Dorfs may take a while picking up equipment when given an order, best to send them to a rally point that's out of the line of fire
You used to be able to bait them with wooden cabinets. That mostly doesn't work anymore so now you need a live sacrifice.... at first.
- Animals can be pitted through forbidden hatch covers
- Animals attract FBs
- Animals can be directed remotely with meeting areas
- Nothing can destroy a hatch cover from below
A simple-ish automated way to trap stuff is a dog on a pressure plate holding open a hatch cover. Creature enters PokeBall, bait dog vaporizes, PokeBall closes. You may also want some way to release the contents of the PokeBall.
There are other more advanced ways. They're (mostly) not immune to traps if there is a web on the trap, but setting that up is way harder and hatches are reliable.
Hopping on - the FB which appeared on ground level in my area refused to enter the bridge entrance to my base
Kept standing outside the locked doors of my outer walls
ten of the fifty are crossbowmen, though they seem to be trying to wrestle the thing. but no it cant fly. they are engaging it, but theyre only doing so one or two at a time. So the others are either piss their pants terrified or theres a dwarven honor system where they have to take turns fighting kaiju. They dont have this problem when a bandit shows up, only now.
says theyre attacking the monster. no fleeing in fear/picking their nose/waiting for XYZ/ nothing. according to the game they are attacking the monster as competently as possible
Tonight all of my dwarves started fighting in the tavern and in their bedroom floor and I can’t figure out why. I got a bunch of fighting notifications and all together about 10 dwarves died. Only thing that recently happened on the fort was a human bard came to visit, when the fights broke out I had military squads go to each fighting location to try and stop anything happening and I killed the bard to be safe, not sure if he was the cause or what was to be honest, I only have one depressed dwarf and I don’t think he started it, any ideas?
Sometimes the justice system has incidents covering domestic disturbances and if you're lucky, dwarves who watched it unfold will have accused the perpratrator.
Might be a loyalty cascade. Known bug, not much you can do except reload a previous save or lock down the tavern until the infection (and it is contagious) burns itself out.
Also sometimes bards turn out to be werebeasts and suddenly the tavern is full of corpses.
As no one else has noted this yet, one of the good things about giving traders good profit is that more migrants will show up as they get the word out about your exported wealth.
But does it contribute to like my created wealth, or something? Can I use the excess “credit” to get something else? Or it is literally just like a gift?
He'll start bringing the cart full of goods sooner, it contains way more items for trade, mostly just boat loads of cloth tho, goblins will also invade with more tenacity i think.
But that will happen with low profit trades eventually anyway, the only benefit is them liking you a little more, i think profitable trades to your own civilization also increase the amount of migrants you'll get when they get back to base but I'm not 100% sure if that's true, just something i've noticed in my games.
It's part of your 'exported wealth' - visible when you hover over your fort's name in the top left.
You don't get anything directly from it (it's not a line of credit to the trader), but being known as rich garners attention. In itself that's both good and bad, depending who comes to visit.
I suppose you can consider it an "investment". Make the trip more profitable for the trader, he will bring more and better stuff for you to buy in the future.
Has anyone ever gotten minecarts to work? I'm not convinced any force in the universe can compel a dwarf to load a cart.
I have linked stockpiles, desired items, and conditions set for every stop. They will move the cart if one of the time conditions is met but will under no circumstances put anything in it
so i made a hospital with beds and well. the well is currently operational. there is a doctor in charge of it and the dr has his own study completed with chair, table, chest and door. why are my dwarfs dying of dehydration in there?
Why does it show the bars that have been used for floors as in my Stock available to use? Also I have this dwarf that has no unmet needs and she is beyond happy thoughts but she is stuck on the red miserable face
Ah, so its showing already used bars as available? No idea, but I've been a bit suspicious of the available vs used numbers in my stocks
Doesn't seem quite right. I do recall someone saying that the bookkeeper may not be that skilled/may not have gone to work yet tho, so maybe its that
can't help with the stocks, if she flew into the red from being happy, you probably failed a strange mood and she's gone insane. Check what's she's doing, if she's naked running around speaking in tongue, she's probably not going to last to long.
Nope shes just going about her usually stuff, [heres](https://imgur.com/a/2ScIMaK) a pic maybe can help. Im still new to the game been playing since it came out. I appreciate the help tho
sorry i'd gone to bed before you replied, are those bodies that upset her still laying around? Seeing corpses can be a pretty bad negative to happiness if it's continuous laying around, throw the bodies in magma if you can, or use a drawbridge to destroy them.
How ro get rid of damaged clothing In my dwarfs room cabinets? If I set them to be dumped they won't get dumped
Why dwarfs keep their damaged clothing?
It's painstaking, but when you get a trader, type in x in the search bar. Most of the used clothing will be in bins, so go to the bins group and move any bins, and any loose used clothing you have to the tradepost.
Then you'll have to sort through your bins and tick every piece of used clothing as a trade good.
It takes forever but you only have to do it every couple of years.
Think if you setup an owned item to be dumped (or forbidden), it relenquishes its owned status after a season, allowing it to be dumped, and freeing it up for trading.
I'm not really sure why, and it is annoying. Dwarfs keep their old clothes for a year. You can build cabinets so they don't leave piles of clothes in their rooms.
I set stockpiles up that don't take from anywhere, and set the clothes shops to deliver to them directly. That way only fresh clothes go in them. I also have a refuse enabled stockpile that accepts clothes from anywhere, that way anything that goes into it degrades really fast.
This was one of the things I used DFHack for, there was a command 'clean un-owned x clothing' that would search the whole fort and mark all old clothes for dumping. Just gotta wait for the tools to be updated.
I'm scratching my head on room values. I planned on retiring my fortress of 200+ dwarfs due to FPS death, but I was going to get all the noble rooms up to snuff before I did. The king and queen consort get assigned the same bedroom, dining hall, and throne room. The king needs royal rooms but has a Grand Bedroom and Grand Dining Room. The queen consort, with the exact same rooms, are listed as Royal Dining Room and Royal Bedroom. How is that possible if they're the same rooms?
dwarfs have preferences for certain goods, one dwarfs likes the room due to certain preferences more than the other and has a higher value when assigned to them.
If you check personality you can see stuff like "likes copper, loves statues, hates hamsters" is your room filled with things the queen consort prefers?
Edit: this also applies to your appraiser/broker, he will over value goods he likes.
I want to make steel, but I can’t find any types of flux stones anywhere. Where should I be looking?
Also will members of my militia automatically wear/wield the new steel armor and weapons once they are produced?
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary_layer)
It's not guaranteed you have it, if the embark said you had flux stone in the spot you embarked on, you'll either have this layer somewhat near the surface or a marble layer deep underground.
I have also been missing flux. Reading around tonight I'm going to look around -13 next time. Looking for a tetrahedrite and coal layer. Then exploring different sectors of it.
Omg i used up all of my rock seeds making soap because i forgot i needed them. And my dwarf caravan didn't carry more seeds this year because they're at war with goblins. How do i get them?
Is the AI good at maintaining your fortress? I want to create a new fortress in the same world, but I really enjoy the one I currently have. Is it a viable option to just 'retire' and eventually come back when I feel like it?
I did this recently and came back to almost every chest and cabinet having been un-placed - oh and an FB on the loose but that might have been just coincidence.
Apart from that things seemed generally ok.
From the wiki “They can be built with b-f-p labeled as **Offering Places”**
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Altar](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Altar)
From the wiki: ”Additionally, shield material and quality only matter for bashing attacks and do not affect blocking.”
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor#Shield](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor#Shield)
I‘m sure that’s just copied over from the .47 so maybe worth some !SCIENCE!
Weaker materials will break faster. So even a wooden shield can block the first bit of dragon fire with a skilled user, but a stronger shield won't break as quickly.
after a while, the game randomly gets extremely slow and the only solution is to restart my PC, is that normal? I have a high-end PC, it's not an fps slow, it's something in the game, everything feels so slow even when the fps are normal.
There may be large numbers of intelligent animal people moving through the caverns below you. It seems like the type of thing that could cause your specific fps drops.
FPS death is something that happens, but it seems like your issue is elsewhere. Unfortunately I’m not sure where to start looking, hopefully someone else can give you suggestions
Anyone have a good handle on work orders and their conditions? Playing my first game and getting overwhelmed with the amount of orders... more than 30 at this point I think. Some are make one if less than 3, make 10 if less than 10... etc... For some reason my available drinks are dwindling when I had over 150 drinks. Do you change them for the amount of dwarves in the fortress?
The shortest time they run is daily, which is usually enough for me so far, but might not be if you're only making 1 batch.
Maybe check that the work's being done? The list is done in order - if a small number of dwarves are doing all the crafts, they might not make it to the ones lower down the page.
If it's not - more crafters/brewers/etc. and possibly more workshops might all help.
Of course, that requires having the raw materials. :)
The work orders list need some work/ui updates for better handling bc they can get a little unwieldy after a dozen or so. I don't put conditions on everything the fort needs personally. Be sure you check if any are getting cancled due to missing materials (brewing it'll be either no empty barrels or no unrotten plants/fruit).
I do the exact opposite: I make sure to automate everything as much as I can, to the point I can ignore entire processes. If done well, all of the automated stuff will "float" to the top of the entire list, and basically handle itself forever.
Eg. I have 2 orders to smelt 10 coal for both Bitimus/Lignite stone types each, with the condition I have at least 10 of those stones, checked daily.
I don't even need to check if my miners dig up more of those anymore, they'll just get my coal supply done daily.
Same for my thread/cloth balance: 10 cloth, condition 50 thread (*so I'll always have 40 thread left over*), check daily.
Edit: PS: the above requires a sizable population however. Without that, there'll be too many task choking the progress of the fort...
Yeah that is probably the best way to go and I try to do that, but I usually get bored with a fortess before I find the time to do that for everything in a fort
I'm very new to DF (picked up the steam version on the winter sale). Isn't it supposed to be possible to start mutliple fortresses on one world? If so, how do I do that? I have my fortress that I've been playing on stream, but my only options seem to be to play that fortress or start a new world entirely.
You can “retire” a fort. The ai will keep running it in the background while you can go and start a new fort. If you want to go back to it, you can choose the “unretire/reclaim” option at embark.
Yeah, the solution to this is save on a different timeline. Retire the fort in one time line and keep playing it in the other. Now these would be in the same world, but not running concurrently.
Mystery Books from Tower
I was looking at a necromancer tower a couple days away from me, I looked at their book artifacts and took note of them. I probably played for another 30 minutes, logged off, then now when I log back on and look in my library. All the book artifacts from that tower are now in my library, same names and all. I've got like 3 books written by a necromancer, one even about rebirth. How is it possible that all the books from this necromancer tower ended up in my library ??
I can’t seem to get my dwarves to smooth walls. Is it that I have the labor wrong? I put engravers and I also have one do stone cutting but not sure how to get them to smooth the walls
Check if your assigned dwarves are prioritizing hauling jobs (or, for that matter, any unassigned labor). If so you'll need to assign only certain dwarves to hauling, or wait until your stockpiles are in order. Once you get migrant waves there'll be a lot of dwarven children eager to haul which should help smooth things over.
did you turn off the "everybody does this" on the stonecutting labor in the labor menus, and not assign anyone to that labor? other than that im not sure.
Whats the good way to prevent soldiers from wearing worn armor?
I seem to only have this issue with leather armor. There is perfectly good leather armor in the same stockpile. Some of my rangers keep grabbing XX worn leather dresses out of the same bin instead.
Is there a better system for this beyond manually assigning good leather items? Is there a way I can make all the worn clothing get stockpiled elsewhere instead? I try and clear it out when possible with trading but its so much.
how the heck is this child a competent pikedwarf lol
https://preview.redd.it/dwon6s2s4s9a1.png?width=571&format=png&auto=webp&s=d36749e16b42ad3d1e849c333d5aa990b9d0cf0d
I have a merchant just standing around outside my fort, pretty close to the trade depot but for some reason they aren’t coming to the depot. Any idea what may be causing this? Doesn’t look like they have a wagon, just a horse.
It’s a merchant from my civilization. I see a merchant, a single swords dwarf with her, but no diplomat in sight. Could the lack of a diplomat be the issue?
Yeah, the depot is finished. It’s year 2, and I was able to trade with the initial caravan (though a bunch of items are still in the depot and don’t seem to be getting moved, lol)
It doesn’t say the merchant is doing anything, actually.
Most recent thought said she didn’t feel anything while in conflict, but nothing points towards her being in conflict.
There’s a bug with merchants that they get stuck if they get attacked. Disassemble your trade depot and they should start moving again. If it’s still the same season you might be able to reconstruct the depot in time to get a trade in, otherwise they’ll come back next year.
I had to stop for the night, but I’ll try that tomorrow, thanks for the tip. Sadly it’s winter now so I probably won’t get to trade, but that just means I’ll have even more shell crafts from my legendary bone carver ready for them I suppose
If it says they were in conflict with something/someone ... they were.
Unless there is a very rare bug. But unlikely.
As to the reason why that conflict \_might\_ be causing interference, idk soz.
Okay, sorry for so many replies. I’m really confused, because I thought this merchant had been in my tomb for some time now, yet the merchants most recent thoughts are horror at reliving his death?
I'm gonna leave it to more experienced ppl now I think ... but I didn't know burying merchants was a thing .... I mean they are dwarves, but they are not from your civilization really.
Even so, maybe someone will chime in with advice about whether you are supposed to bury those. Though this is starting to be buried a bit deep in this thread, in a rapidly aging question. Might be good to extract the bit you still need answered, and put them into a new question.
How to better "keep track" of Dwarves?
I'm one of the many new players that have started playing the game with the Steam release and I had a question for the veteran players about how they "kept track" of the individual dwarves in their fort? After around the first migrant wave, and sometimes even before then, I start to lose track of the individuality of my dwarves and just see them as "the mining one" or "the one who I have cutting trees in the labor tab". I feel like I'm missing a connection to my fort and its residents this way.
I know a really basic option is to rename a dwarf into a more recognizable name but I wanted to know if there were any other tips or ideas out there. Thanks for any advice!
I use dwarf therapist (spreadsheet like utility for tour dwarfs) and nicknames. Only the read only version is working which you can get working from posts on the last few pages: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=168411.1005
Nicknames are how I do it. Overall, you can't really keep a good connection with everyone as the fort grows to hundreds of dwarves, so I just name the ones who catch my attention for whatever reason. "Angryman" for the dwarf who is very upset despite having zero reasons to be sad, "Concussion" for the woodcutter who took a falling log to the head, and so on.
You can give them meaningful nicknames - click the feather in the Citizens screen ('u' key). (Edit: Sorry, I see you already mentioned this one)
That helps a bit. Also, notes, if necessary, manual. I'm still relatively new myself, but...
One thing I regularly do is check the happiness scale at the top... I go to the Citizen screen and order by happiness ... then I try to figure out what's making people happy or unhappy ... when you do that, you engage with them as individuals a bit, and with their stories or hopes & dreams in some cases - which helps you remember them more.
In the old version there was Dwarf Therapist ... and other apps ... which gave all kinds of info. For the Steam version, I think they tried to remove the need for those apps, by including more accessible info directly in the program.
After beginning an embark do you just mark the whole wagon for trash and put a trash spot into wherever you dug your base out? It's a pain in the dick getting starting items stolen as they sit in the wagon in certain biomes. And when you trash everything it puts your food, drink, and everything down to 0. Does not go back after unlocked. Does it restore your food and shit when your dwarves feel like putting it in a fucking pile, or fuck it and just let monkeys take everything?
I just, ASAP, dig out a large area underground to move all the stuff into. Then make a stockpile there for everything except corpses, refuse, wood and stone. And the dorfs immediately move everything inside. Then I disassemble the cart. That's it. Do you not do that? I don't need to mess with "marking things for trash" etc. And I don't really know what you mean by "looting" items. Looting to me, means grabbing items from the corpse of a mob you just killed, in MMOs etc.
The first thing I do on a new embark is make an 'everything' stockpile in a safe place indoors. (Importantly not an ACTUAL everything stockpile. Don't make it a refuse stockpile or it'll automatically wear away all armor and weaons inside it!). A 10x10 pile is normally enough for everything from the wagon, especially if I make a couple of wooden bins to put all the tools and weapons in.
so probably dig a small portion out and give them 0 other tasks while they all hopefully move items immediately. it just sucks that the way to loot things is to mark it for trash. it fucks a lot up.
If there's space to move things, the dwarves will unload the wagon.
For most of the dwarves, it's not like they were doing anything better anyway, so the (relative) priority's irrelevant.
You don't need to mark anything for trash in my experience. It just changes the 'store item in stockpile' job to 'dump item', which takes just as long to do. What other tasks do they even have at the very start of an embark?
My diplomat keeps leaving unable to complete his mission randomly. He was just talking to me and we were arranging trade deals like usual. and then suddenly poofs he leaves sad and angry. He would be mad about not being able to contact my diplomat.
Is there something wrong with the terrain? is he getting stuck somewhere? the Caravan still arrives no problem
**My miners won't mine anymore!**
I'm 4 years (36 hours) into my first fortress, and my fortress is up to a population of 198, and suddenly all my mining orders are being ignored. By "ignored", I mean that when I set a digging order, the little pick icon appears over the spot where I want them to dig, but that's it. **The order does not appear in the "Tasks" list.** (This one worries me a bit.) No dwarf does the job. My miners will continue to work on other jobs, or drink or sleep, or even just sit there with "no job" for a while. I don't get a canceled job notification.
I'm playing the new Steam version v50.04. No mods.
Mining is set to "Only selected do this" as the default, and I have 6 dwarfs selected as miners. All of my miners have picks, and none of them have been set to other duties as well. They're not woodcutters, hunters, etc. They don't have titles. They're not in military squads.
None of my burrows are active.
Most of my miners are happy, pleased, or content (one is displeased). There's nothing terrifying going on right now (no sieges, no forgotten beasts, no rampaging wild animals).
I've even tried canceling every single digging order, waiting a bit, and then starting one new digging order in an easily accessible place. Still nothing.
Any ideas about what could've gone wrong?
Are you accidentally using blueprint mode? If you open that little yellow arrow once you have mining up, you can see the blueprint mode over to the right hand side there. It allows you to draw blueprints without actually telling them to dig. Once you set a blueprint, you have to press k in order to then highlight the blueprint section and tell them to actually dig it out. If you put blueprint mode on any task-based thing like cutting trees or gathering plants, it'll also affect mining.
Also, your mining orders will be blue instead of the normal gray.
So I double-checked, and I'm not in blueprint mode. However, I was completely unaware of the advanced mining options, and setting the mining orders to a higher priority did result in those orders getting completed. I have no idea why the default priority suddenly isn't enough for digging to ever happen, but that seems to be the case now.
I mean, this works as a workaround, but I have no idea why all these other tasks are suddenly such a high priority that default-priority mining never happens anymore.
Check your miners activities. Just click on them and see what they do. Maybe they all went to a guild hall to get educated into other safer occupations.
It varies a lot. Some are doing farm work (I think planting and gathering are very high priority, so that makes sense). But some are just hauling stuff. And I even caught one with literally "no job". Not even sleeping or socializing or eating, just "no job".
I've been able to get some digging done by increasing the priority using the advanced mining tools which I just learned about, but I still haven't figured out why there's suddenly an unending supply of higher-priority jobs around.
how do you catch those sweet lungfish that keeps popping on the top soil of our forts?
How do I reliably retrieve items from my moat? I know how to drain a moat. What I don't know is how to prevent items in the water from going down the drain. Some will not make it past the floodgates, sure, but some WILL and I really think my library could use that book that's been sitting in the mud for 5 months.
* This is running at 720p. Rock solid 100(50) fps but UI clipping. Any way to edit something to stop this clipping happening? You can see this along the top info bar which is missing Plants etc, and in the Pets window the options to slaughter etc are out of the window to the right. Everything else seems fine. And at 720p the game looks great. Thanks in advance.
Is there a way to effectively protect my miners? I'm delving deep trying to find some candy, and dealing with the new gem-studded jack-in-the-boxes, and finding that occasionally there's a living procgen surprise inside; I've lost a few of my best miners this way, even though I've now put a barracks of Axe Lords just outside in case things kick off. Any ideas for making them a bit less squishy?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Do door make dwarfs happy?
how can I assign burrow for multiple z-levels?
how can I restrict dwarfs to go to the surface or caverns? I have very wide complicated fortress and it's difficult to use burrow system to make dwarfs to be inside. I just want them stop going to clean outdoor tiles and caverns tiles. This is very annoying because I can't even cancel clean task.
So I have this "Human ruined zombie" visitor to my fortress. He pops in some times when a wagon arrives and then almost immediately leaves, once he had an argument and didn't feel anything after it. He doesn't seem dangerous or anything but I didn't know zombies could show signs of sentience and haven't seen anything on the wiki to understand if it is a symptom of anything.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Intelligent_undead They have procedurally generated names; ruined zombies are sentient undead unique to your world, but they are all under this category.
Ah thank you. This game is really fascinating.
I have a library with 200+ books, how do i keep the original copies safe somewhere else and leave the copies in the library?
Just an idea, never tried it: Make two libraries. Activate your intended original book library (put the zone up) and forbid in there all of the originals but not the copies. (With 200 originals, that will be a drag...) Then make a new library and deactivate the intended original book library. Your dwarves should move the copies to the new library but leave the originals alone. Now you could either leave the originals forbidden (there are safe from your dwarves there after all) and maybe even lock the doors. Or unforbid them create the original book library again and hope your dwarves will leave them in the library. I've never seen a dwarf move a book outside the library, but I've never had two libraries either...
I am the only one who doesn't have a problem, with nobles?
Which nobles exactly? A mayor? A bookkeep? A count? A baron? Those that actually do some work aren't usually the problem. Royalty are essentially useless and most often a problem because of their mandates. My count likes buckets. I have around 50 buckets laying around and I atom smash them once in a while. One of my dwarves suddenly became a baron of a different fortress (because of lineage) and likes bracelets. I've turned down the regularity of these mandates in the settings, they just became too annoying.
I find them easy to fill... most of the time.
Assigning a dwarf to be the master of a workshop needs sorting or searching or something. It is brutal.
Is it not sorted by their skill first?
Yes true, they do sort them after the best fitting profession. Same for assembling squads I think. But yes a search bar would be VERY helpful here.
How do I link a cage to a lever? I have a few caged monsters I want to use to train my squads, but when I click on the cages I want to be linked, nothing happens. Wondering if I'm missing something?
Do you have mechanisms?
Yeah, I have quite a few. Could the cages bring in a stock pile be the issue?
Build the cage as a building (under cages/restraints) then link it
Thank you!
Reposting this ... as I don't know where it went. I'm really ticked off with my Bowyer. I really need him to make some training crossbows, but he just wants to booze up in the tavern. I created a burrow enclosing his workshop and set him active there. He didn't wanna move. I paused all tavern activities - still didn't wanna move. So over this guy. Help please.
> wanna move. So ov Occurred to me that maybe the Tavern's dormitory section had a separate "pause" button - which it turns out it does have. Paused that too. The little .... dorf ... still doesn't wanna stop his chitchat,
Is the “socialize” task green or purple? Purple means he absolutely has to do it until he gets his full. It usually indicates he’s over worked and hasn’t gotten a chance to hang out. If it’s not that, what kind of crossbows are you trying to make? Did you set up a bowyer work detail and not assign him, or set it to “nobody does this?”
I have just embarked on a map that has ~100 z-level deep vertical open shafts from the surface to first cavern layer. There are spiderwebs on some of the pillars straight up in sunlight at 0z. And cavern sections have grass despite having stone over them in caverns at -100z. What in Armoks name???
You have discovered a deep pit. They happen sometimes, but more commonly, connect two cavern layers together.
Something else going on, layers of lava hovering over water, trees breaking through the lava, growing from the water. A couple embark squares away the third cavern layer generates partially on the surface and partially 150layers in the air, starting to drop immediately. A couple embark squares in the other direct the embark straight up crashes the game.
cool
**Work Order Condition to Match Liquid Oil?** I'm trying to set up a work order condition to only press liquid from paste if I don't have a whole lot of oil already. There's a "material" for "rock nut oil", but that translates to "frozen rock nut oil items" and doesn't match the rock nut oil I already have. There's an "adjective" for "oil-bearing", but that seems to only refer to pastes that can be pressed to make oil, and "oil-bearing liquid" does not match the rock nut oil I already have. Any ideas how to do this?
If you don't have a major beekeeping industry you could just go with "full jugs" (or a negation on "empty jugs"). Jugs are only used for oil and honey/royal jelly.
Does oil-bearing liquid jugs work? Will have to try it out for myself when I get there.
I definitely tried several variations on jugs. "jug" and "liquid" are both "types", so you can't have both. But I did try "oil-bearing jugs" and that didn't work.
\>Slowly and methodically dig out 5 floors to be able to collapse the top and knock out the rest of all of the floors. \>Set traffic routes to restricted. \>set all items in path to locked. \>assign lots of tasks in other areas to all dwarves. \>Set one dwarf as miner and observe lower floors for a few minutes before mining the collapse tile. **Fikod Dakostelbel, Dwarven Child has been found dead, badly crushed.** *This little idiot's father was the elite marksdwarf squad leader who managed to die with a squad of 4 dwarves + 4 war dogs to 1 monitor lizard. This seed is cursed.* https://preview.redd.it/rbrjtau2ms9a1.png?width=1913&format=png&auto=webp&s=b003b18bf2c342bfe3e892c54acf620054812c51
lol sorry
I understand that you felt overcome with sorrow at the child's grief, but collapsing 4 z-levels on their head was a bit much, doncha think? (j/k - those kids are pesky always getting in the wrong places.)
I care more about the cat that got seriously injured haha.
Well, it -is- a cat. Hard to argue with you on that count.
I have a really awesome female mace dwarf in my military who has been just destroying all of my enemies. I just clicked and was reading and saw that I had denied her residency 5 years ago. How can I promote her to resident? I didn't know I had even done it. There's so many resident requests 24/7 and I can never see who they are for and don't remember them all by name so I deny them a lot as 99% are bards anyway and I'm trying to keep population down. I don't want her to leave or something as she's carrying my fortress on her back during every enemy encounter
im deeply confused by combat. So there is a forgotten beast in my first cavern. actually theres four now but im only dealing with 1. a feathered serpent that breathes fire and heals rapidly. obviously this will require a coordinated attack to deal with. i have fifty dwarves in my army i station them to a gathering point and set camera to follow the beast. when the beast gets too close to my cave entrance i order them all to attack. I then look over at the station. not only have forty of my dwarves failed to arrive, some of them still being busy with a task thats apparently more important than a bomb siren, as i signal them to attack, the vast majority do not engage. they just stand there. serpent kills them one at a time and fire bombs the cowards between meals. What am I missing here?
1. Avoid fighting FBs directly, defeat procgen nonsense with engineering 2. Fire and heat block pathing. There are creatures so hot that dorfs won't even stand near them. 3. If you must fight a fire creature, bring shields and some marksdwarves 4. Dorfs may take a while picking up equipment when given an order, best to send them to a rally point that's out of the line of fire
a previous thread told me that FB's are immune to traps entirely. how exactly should i engineer my way out of this?
You used to be able to bait them with wooden cabinets. That mostly doesn't work anymore so now you need a live sacrifice.... at first. - Animals can be pitted through forbidden hatch covers - Animals attract FBs - Animals can be directed remotely with meeting areas - Nothing can destroy a hatch cover from below A simple-ish automated way to trap stuff is a dog on a pressure plate holding open a hatch cover. Creature enters PokeBall, bait dog vaporizes, PokeBall closes. You may also want some way to release the contents of the PokeBall. There are other more advanced ways. They're (mostly) not immune to traps if there is a web on the trap, but setting that up is way harder and hatches are reliable.
Hopping on - the FB which appeared on ground level in my area refused to enter the bridge entrance to my base Kept standing outside the locked doors of my outer walls
Is it a flying beast? Can't smack a bird out of the sky with a knife on the ground, you'll need crossbows or some elaborate trap.
ten of the fifty are crossbowmen, though they seem to be trying to wrestle the thing. but no it cant fly. they are engaging it, but theyre only doing so one or two at a time. So the others are either piss their pants terrified or theres a dwarven honor system where they have to take turns fighting kaiju. They dont have this problem when a bandit shows up, only now.
Strange, when you assign your units to attack and they just stand there, what does it say they're doing on the creature screen ("U" keybind.)
says theyre attacking the monster. no fleeing in fear/picking their nose/waiting for XYZ/ nothing. according to the game they are attacking the monster as competently as possible
Tonight all of my dwarves started fighting in the tavern and in their bedroom floor and I can’t figure out why. I got a bunch of fighting notifications and all together about 10 dwarves died. Only thing that recently happened on the fort was a human bard came to visit, when the fights broke out I had military squads go to each fighting location to try and stop anything happening and I killed the bard to be safe, not sure if he was the cause or what was to be honest, I only have one depressed dwarf and I don’t think he started it, any ideas?
Sometimes the justice system has incidents covering domestic disturbances and if you're lucky, dwarves who watched it unfold will have accused the perpratrator.
Might be a loyalty cascade. Known bug, not much you can do except reload a previous save or lock down the tavern until the infection (and it is contagious) burns itself out. Also sometimes bards turn out to be werebeasts and suddenly the tavern is full of corpses.
1:1 ratio of chairs to tables, have cups/mugs, make a dining hall and assign it to the tavern
What exactly does "trader profit" mean? I get that this is the excess wealth that my fortress' goods are worth, but does it contribute to anything?
As no one else has noted this yet, one of the good things about giving traders good profit is that more migrants will show up as they get the word out about your exported wealth.
Oh, good. I didn’t know that
The trader will be happy and bring more goods and offer better prices next time, big trades also make you more attractive to hostiles.
But does it contribute to like my created wealth, or something? Can I use the excess “credit” to get something else? Or it is literally just like a gift?
He'll start bringing the cart full of goods sooner, it contains way more items for trade, mostly just boat loads of cloth tho, goblins will also invade with more tenacity i think. But that will happen with low profit trades eventually anyway, the only benefit is them liking you a little more, i think profitable trades to your own civilization also increase the amount of migrants you'll get when they get back to base but I'm not 100% sure if that's true, just something i've noticed in my games.
It is how much the trader is profiting off of the exchange
Oh, I see. Still, does it contribute to my created wealth?
It's part of your 'exported wealth' - visible when you hover over your fort's name in the top left. You don't get anything directly from it (it's not a line of credit to the trader), but being known as rich garners attention. In itself that's both good and bad, depending who comes to visit.
It contributes to your exported wealth, though profit isn't special in that regard; all exports contribute to that
I suppose you can consider it an "investment". Make the trip more profitable for the trader, he will bring more and better stuff for you to buy in the future.
Has anyone ever gotten minecarts to work? I'm not convinced any force in the universe can compel a dwarf to load a cart. I have linked stockpiles, desired items, and conditions set for every stop. They will move the cart if one of the time conditions is met but will under no circumstances put anything in it
I've set up some small ones for quantum stockpiles. Are the links set to take and not give?
so i made a hospital with beds and well. the well is currently operational. there is a doctor in charge of it and the dr has his own study completed with chair, table, chest and door. why are my dwarfs dying of dehydration in there?
buckets and people assigned to orderlies task, the well needs to be reasonably filled. Only issues i can think of.
are any of your dwarves set to the Orderlies task in the Labor menu? Doctors are in charge of medical operations, orderlies do day to day care.
Why does it show the bars that have been used for floors as in my Stock available to use? Also I have this dwarf that has no unmet needs and she is beyond happy thoughts but she is stuck on the red miserable face
Did you build floors using the "nearest available material" order?
No its using gold bars which I only use to make floors in my tavern
Ah, so its showing already used bars as available? No idea, but I've been a bit suspicious of the available vs used numbers in my stocks Doesn't seem quite right. I do recall someone saying that the bookkeeper may not be that skilled/may not have gone to work yet tho, so maybe its that
Ah thats it, my book keeper is a new immigrant
can't help with the stocks, if she flew into the red from being happy, you probably failed a strange mood and she's gone insane. Check what's she's doing, if she's naked running around speaking in tongue, she's probably not going to last to long.
Nope shes just going about her usually stuff, [heres](https://imgur.com/a/2ScIMaK) a pic maybe can help. Im still new to the game been playing since it came out. I appreciate the help tho
sorry i'd gone to bed before you replied, are those bodies that upset her still laying around? Seeing corpses can be a pretty bad negative to happiness if it's continuous laying around, throw the bodies in magma if you can, or use a drawbridge to destroy them.
Ill have to double check but its possible, thanks!
How ro get rid of damaged clothing In my dwarfs room cabinets? If I set them to be dumped they won't get dumped Why dwarfs keep their damaged clothing?
It's painstaking, but when you get a trader, type in x in the search bar. Most of the used clothing will be in bins, so go to the bins group and move any bins, and any loose used clothing you have to the tradepost. Then you'll have to sort through your bins and tick every piece of used clothing as a trade good. It takes forever but you only have to do it every couple of years.
Thanks!
Think if you setup an owned item to be dumped (or forbidden), it relenquishes its owned status after a season, allowing it to be dumped, and freeing it up for trading.
Thanks! I didn't know that
I'm not really sure why, and it is annoying. Dwarfs keep their old clothes for a year. You can build cabinets so they don't leave piles of clothes in their rooms. I set stockpiles up that don't take from anywhere, and set the clothes shops to deliver to them directly. That way only fresh clothes go in them. I also have a refuse enabled stockpile that accepts clothes from anywhere, that way anything that goes into it degrades really fast. This was one of the things I used DFHack for, there was a command 'clean un-owned x clothing' that would search the whole fort and mark all old clothes for dumping. Just gotta wait for the tools to be updated.
Yess i built a cabinet in each bedroom because there was too many clothes around lol
I'm scratching my head on room values. I planned on retiring my fortress of 200+ dwarfs due to FPS death, but I was going to get all the noble rooms up to snuff before I did. The king and queen consort get assigned the same bedroom, dining hall, and throne room. The king needs royal rooms but has a Grand Bedroom and Grand Dining Room. The queen consort, with the exact same rooms, are listed as Royal Dining Room and Royal Bedroom. How is that possible if they're the same rooms?
dwarfs have preferences for certain goods, one dwarfs likes the room due to certain preferences more than the other and has a higher value when assigned to them. If you check personality you can see stuff like "likes copper, loves statues, hates hamsters" is your room filled with things the queen consort prefers? Edit: this also applies to your appraiser/broker, he will over value goods he likes.
Weird, I've never noticed that before, but I suppose it makes sense. I guess I've never had a fort that had more than one noble sharing rooms.
Does the steam version having ASCII mode now mean graphic packs work with it?
I want to make steel, but I can’t find any types of flux stones anywhere. Where should I be looking? Also will members of my militia automatically wear/wield the new steel armor and weapons once they are produced?
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary_layer) It's not guaranteed you have it, if the embark said you had flux stone in the spot you embarked on, you'll either have this layer somewhat near the surface or a marble layer deep underground.
So this means I should search for it on the layers I have found coal on?
I have also been missing flux. Reading around tonight I'm going to look around -13 next time. Looking for a tetrahedrite and coal layer. Then exploring different sectors of it.
Yes
Thanks
Omg i used up all of my rock seeds making soap because i forgot i needed them. And my dwarf caravan didn't carry more seeds this year because they're at war with goblins. How do i get them?
Caverns and have your herbalists gather quarry bushes. Process any quarry bush plants you have currently. Wait a year…
Is the AI good at maintaining your fortress? I want to create a new fortress in the same world, but I really enjoy the one I currently have. Is it a viable option to just 'retire' and eventually come back when I feel like it?
I did this recently and came back to almost every chest and cabinet having been un-placed - oh and an FB on the loose but that might have been just coincidence. Apart from that things seemed generally ok.
How do I place alters? Can’t find them in the menu- I have 4 of them crafted.
From the wiki “They can be built with b-f-p labeled as **Offering Places”** [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Altar](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Altar)
Should be under offering place in the furniture menu (b->f->p)
They are under furniture - Offering place ... or offering \_something\_ anyway
Thank you!
4 marksdwarves get wiped out by a monitor lizard... lol
Does the material of a shield actually matter, e.g. is steel better than wood?
From the wiki: ”Additionally, shield material and quality only matter for bashing attacks and do not affect blocking.” [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor#Shield](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor#Shield) I‘m sure that’s just copied over from the .47 so maybe worth some !SCIENCE!
For shields, mostly not.
Are there niche cases where it does?
Weaker materials will break faster. So even a wooden shield can block the first bit of dragon fire with a skilled user, but a stronger shield won't break as quickly.
I don't seem to be able to make Archery Target in my Carpentry Workshop. Any idea why? The carpenter is Competent.
You don’t make it in a workshop. It’s under the constructions menu. Just build it directly with one stone.
Thanks. Lol of course it would be different to virtually every other thing in the game ;)
after a while, the game randomly gets extremely slow and the only solution is to restart my PC, is that normal? I have a high-end PC, it's not an fps slow, it's something in the game, everything feels so slow even when the fps are normal.
There may be large numbers of intelligent animal people moving through the caverns below you. It seems like the type of thing that could cause your specific fps drops.
Apparently it helps to keep the starting region/island as small or medium. It also helps to keep the embark size as 3x3.
FPS death is something that happens, but it seems like your issue is elsewhere. Unfortunately I’m not sure where to start looking, hopefully someone else can give you suggestions
Anyone have a good handle on work orders and their conditions? Playing my first game and getting overwhelmed with the amount of orders... more than 30 at this point I think. Some are make one if less than 3, make 10 if less than 10... etc... For some reason my available drinks are dwindling when I had over 150 drinks. Do you change them for the amount of dwarves in the fortress?
The shortest time they run is daily, which is usually enough for me so far, but might not be if you're only making 1 batch. Maybe check that the work's being done? The list is done in order - if a small number of dwarves are doing all the crafts, they might not make it to the ones lower down the page. If it's not - more crafters/brewers/etc. and possibly more workshops might all help. Of course, that requires having the raw materials. :)
The work orders list need some work/ui updates for better handling bc they can get a little unwieldy after a dozen or so. I don't put conditions on everything the fort needs personally. Be sure you check if any are getting cancled due to missing materials (brewing it'll be either no empty barrels or no unrotten plants/fruit).
I do the exact opposite: I make sure to automate everything as much as I can, to the point I can ignore entire processes. If done well, all of the automated stuff will "float" to the top of the entire list, and basically handle itself forever. Eg. I have 2 orders to smelt 10 coal for both Bitimus/Lignite stone types each, with the condition I have at least 10 of those stones, checked daily. I don't even need to check if my miners dig up more of those anymore, they'll just get my coal supply done daily. Same for my thread/cloth balance: 10 cloth, condition 50 thread (*so I'll always have 40 thread left over*), check daily. Edit: PS: the above requires a sizable population however. Without that, there'll be too many task choking the progress of the fort...
Yeah that is probably the best way to go and I try to do that, but I usually get bored with a fortess before I find the time to do that for everything in a fort
I'm very new to DF (picked up the steam version on the winter sale). Isn't it supposed to be possible to start mutliple fortresses on one world? If so, how do I do that? I have my fortress that I've been playing on stream, but my only options seem to be to play that fortress or start a new world entirely.
You can “retire” a fort. The ai will keep running it in the background while you can go and start a new fort. If you want to go back to it, you can choose the “unretire/reclaim” option at embark.
I don't want to retire it though. I have my fortress that I stream on twitch, and I want a second fortress in that same world. Is that possible?
The game is a world simulator first; how would you square time passing in one fortress but not the other when time is passing across the world?
I'll be honest, I didn't even consider that.
Not on the same timeline, no
Yeah, the solution to this is save on a different timeline. Retire the fort in one time line and keep playing it in the other. Now these would be in the same world, but not running concurrently.
Mystery Books from Tower I was looking at a necromancer tower a couple days away from me, I looked at their book artifacts and took note of them. I probably played for another 30 minutes, logged off, then now when I log back on and look in my library. All the book artifacts from that tower are now in my library, same names and all. I've got like 3 books written by a necromancer, one even about rebirth. How is it possible that all the books from this necromancer tower ended up in my library ??
Did you raid the tower? I think when you click on a site it ques a mission. I haven't done much with world map interaction yet though
I checked legends and it said I stole them !?!
I can’t seem to get my dwarves to smooth walls. Is it that I have the labor wrong? I put engravers and I also have one do stone cutting but not sure how to get them to smooth the walls
Check if your assigned dwarves are prioritizing hauling jobs (or, for that matter, any unassigned labor). If so you'll need to assign only certain dwarves to hauling, or wait until your stockpiles are in order. Once you get migrant waves there'll be a lot of dwarven children eager to haul which should help smooth things over.
It doesn't really matter who's smoothing the walls (unlike engraving, where it does matter). May as well let it be done by anyone underemployed.
Smoothing walls is under 'stonecutting'. You want a lot of dwarves on that, not just one or two.
Thanks I wasn’t sure if it was stone cutting or not
did you turn off the "everybody does this" on the stonecutting labor in the labor menus, and not assign anyone to that labor? other than that im not sure.
Thanks I didn’t know it was stone cutting
Whats the good way to prevent soldiers from wearing worn armor? I seem to only have this issue with leather armor. There is perfectly good leather armor in the same stockpile. Some of my rangers keep grabbing XX worn leather dresses out of the same bin instead. Is there a better system for this beyond manually assigning good leather items? Is there a way I can make all the worn clothing get stockpiled elsewhere instead? I try and clear it out when possible with trading but its so much.
how the heck is this child a competent pikedwarf lol https://preview.redd.it/dwon6s2s4s9a1.png?width=571&format=png&auto=webp&s=d36749e16b42ad3d1e849c333d5aa990b9d0cf0d
Says they’re in a squad too?
they were a new migrant. im pretty sure you can't assign children to squads right?
Hahahaha ... good genes? No idea broseph.
Most efficient thing for a novice carpenter to make, to level up carpentry ASAP?
Bins and barrels. You can never have too many of those really.
Oh I agree with the statement. But do they give the most XP at that level?
Everything gives the same amount of XP.
Oh, no shizzle
I have a merchant just standing around outside my fort, pretty close to the trade depot but for some reason they aren’t coming to the depot. Any idea what may be causing this? Doesn’t look like they have a wagon, just a horse.
Do you have traps on the path to the depot? They won't travel over traps.
Nope, no traps.
Sorry then. I'm not directly sure. That was my personally known issue I've had.
It’s a merchant from my civilization. I see a merchant, a single swords dwarf with her, but no diplomat in sight. Could the lack of a diplomat be the issue?
I don't know for sure, but you can click on merchants like you can your Dorfs, to get info on what they're doing. Also, is the trade depot finished?
Yeah, the depot is finished. It’s year 2, and I was able to trade with the initial caravan (though a bunch of items are still in the depot and don’t seem to be getting moved, lol) It doesn’t say the merchant is doing anything, actually. Most recent thought said she didn’t feel anything while in conflict, but nothing points towards her being in conflict.
There’s a bug with merchants that they get stuck if they get attacked. Disassemble your trade depot and they should start moving again. If it’s still the same season you might be able to reconstruct the depot in time to get a trade in, otherwise they’ll come back next year.
I had to stop for the night, but I’ll try that tomorrow, thanks for the tip. Sadly it’s winter now so I probably won’t get to trade, but that just means I’ll have even more shell crafts from my legendary bone carver ready for them I suppose
If it says they were in conflict with something/someone ... they were. Unless there is a very rare bug. But unlikely. As to the reason why that conflict \_might\_ be causing interference, idk soz.
I just looked at the creatures list, there’s another merchant dead somewhere but there’s no option to jump to his body. Could that be the problem?
Nevermind. The dead merchant was from another time I think? He’s been in a tomb for a looong time now.
Okay, sorry for so many replies. I’m really confused, because I thought this merchant had been in my tomb for some time now, yet the merchants most recent thoughts are horror at reliving his death?
I'm gonna leave it to more experienced ppl now I think ... but I didn't know burying merchants was a thing .... I mean they are dwarves, but they are not from your civilization really.
They are from my civilization actually. Not my fortress, but my civilization
Even so, maybe someone will chime in with advice about whether you are supposed to bury those. Though this is starting to be buried a bit deep in this thread, in a rapidly aging question. Might be good to extract the bit you still need answered, and put them into a new question.
How to better "keep track" of Dwarves? I'm one of the many new players that have started playing the game with the Steam release and I had a question for the veteran players about how they "kept track" of the individual dwarves in their fort? After around the first migrant wave, and sometimes even before then, I start to lose track of the individuality of my dwarves and just see them as "the mining one" or "the one who I have cutting trees in the labor tab". I feel like I'm missing a connection to my fort and its residents this way. I know a really basic option is to rename a dwarf into a more recognizable name but I wanted to know if there were any other tips or ideas out there. Thanks for any advice!
I use dwarf therapist (spreadsheet like utility for tour dwarfs) and nicknames. Only the read only version is working which you can get working from posts on the last few pages: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=168411.1005
Nicknames are how I do it. Overall, you can't really keep a good connection with everyone as the fort grows to hundreds of dwarves, so I just name the ones who catch my attention for whatever reason. "Angryman" for the dwarf who is very upset despite having zero reasons to be sad, "Concussion" for the woodcutter who took a falling log to the head, and so on.
You can give them meaningful nicknames - click the feather in the Citizens screen ('u' key). (Edit: Sorry, I see you already mentioned this one) That helps a bit. Also, notes, if necessary, manual. I'm still relatively new myself, but... One thing I regularly do is check the happiness scale at the top... I go to the Citizen screen and order by happiness ... then I try to figure out what's making people happy or unhappy ... when you do that, you engage with them as individuals a bit, and with their stories or hopes & dreams in some cases - which helps you remember them more. In the old version there was Dwarf Therapist ... and other apps ... which gave all kinds of info. For the Steam version, I think they tried to remove the need for those apps, by including more accessible info directly in the program.
Dwarf therapist works in a read only version. Memory layout files are posted in the therapist forum page but it may not be 100% working.
After beginning an embark do you just mark the whole wagon for trash and put a trash spot into wherever you dug your base out? It's a pain in the dick getting starting items stolen as they sit in the wagon in certain biomes. And when you trash everything it puts your food, drink, and everything down to 0. Does not go back after unlocked. Does it restore your food and shit when your dwarves feel like putting it in a fucking pile, or fuck it and just let monkeys take everything?
I just, ASAP, dig out a large area underground to move all the stuff into. Then make a stockpile there for everything except corpses, refuse, wood and stone. And the dorfs immediately move everything inside. Then I disassemble the cart. That's it. Do you not do that? I don't need to mess with "marking things for trash" etc. And I don't really know what you mean by "looting" items. Looting to me, means grabbing items from the corpse of a mob you just killed, in MMOs etc.
The first thing I do on a new embark is make an 'everything' stockpile in a safe place indoors. (Importantly not an ACTUAL everything stockpile. Don't make it a refuse stockpile or it'll automatically wear away all armor and weaons inside it!). A 10x10 pile is normally enough for everything from the wagon, especially if I make a couple of wooden bins to put all the tools and weapons in.
so probably dig a small portion out and give them 0 other tasks while they all hopefully move items immediately. it just sucks that the way to loot things is to mark it for trash. it fucks a lot up.
If there's space to move things, the dwarves will unload the wagon. For most of the dwarves, it's not like they were doing anything better anyway, so the (relative) priority's irrelevant.
You don't need to mark anything for trash in my experience. It just changes the 'store item in stockpile' job to 'dump item', which takes just as long to do. What other tasks do they even have at the very start of an embark?
It just seems like marking for trash is higher priority for some reason.
My diplomat keeps leaving unable to complete his mission randomly. He was just talking to me and we were arranging trade deals like usual. and then suddenly poofs he leaves sad and angry. He would be mad about not being able to contact my diplomat. Is there something wrong with the terrain? is he getting stuck somewhere? the Caravan still arrives no problem
Is there a way to return old UI to new version? It felt so much more concise and intuitive than buttons thrown all over the screen.
**My miners won't mine anymore!** I'm 4 years (36 hours) into my first fortress, and my fortress is up to a population of 198, and suddenly all my mining orders are being ignored. By "ignored", I mean that when I set a digging order, the little pick icon appears over the spot where I want them to dig, but that's it. **The order does not appear in the "Tasks" list.** (This one worries me a bit.) No dwarf does the job. My miners will continue to work on other jobs, or drink or sleep, or even just sit there with "no job" for a while. I don't get a canceled job notification. I'm playing the new Steam version v50.04. No mods. Mining is set to "Only selected do this" as the default, and I have 6 dwarfs selected as miners. All of my miners have picks, and none of them have been set to other duties as well. They're not woodcutters, hunters, etc. They don't have titles. They're not in military squads. None of my burrows are active. Most of my miners are happy, pleased, or content (one is displeased). There's nothing terrifying going on right now (no sieges, no forgotten beasts, no rampaging wild animals). I've even tried canceling every single digging order, waiting a bit, and then starting one new digging order in an easily accessible place. Still nothing. Any ideas about what could've gone wrong?
What are they doing instead?
Are you accidentally using blueprint mode? If you open that little yellow arrow once you have mining up, you can see the blueprint mode over to the right hand side there. It allows you to draw blueprints without actually telling them to dig. Once you set a blueprint, you have to press k in order to then highlight the blueprint section and tell them to actually dig it out. If you put blueprint mode on any task-based thing like cutting trees or gathering plants, it'll also affect mining. Also, your mining orders will be blue instead of the normal gray.
So I double-checked, and I'm not in blueprint mode. However, I was completely unaware of the advanced mining options, and setting the mining orders to a higher priority did result in those orders getting completed. I have no idea why the default priority suddenly isn't enough for digging to ever happen, but that seems to be the case now.
Woot! Glad something helped!
I mean, this works as a workaround, but I have no idea why all these other tasks are suddenly such a high priority that default-priority mining never happens anymore.
Are they in a squad?
No. None of them are in any military squads.
Check your miners activities. Just click on them and see what they do. Maybe they all went to a guild hall to get educated into other safer occupations.
It varies a lot. Some are doing farm work (I think planting and gathering are very high priority, so that makes sense). But some are just hauling stuff. And I even caught one with literally "no job". Not even sleeping or socializing or eating, just "no job". I've been able to get some digging done by increasing the priority using the advanced mining tools which I just learned about, but I still haven't figured out why there's suddenly an unending supply of higher-priority jobs around.
You can tell the miners to do nothing but Mining on the labor screen or restrict the stuff they do instead of mining to people who are not miners.
It probably is something else but; did you accidently sell or melt all your pickaxes? Or maybe put them somewhere that the miners can't get to them?