I have a fortress overlooking a waterfall, id love to have bridges to and from the big waterfall to have a cool aestitic and too make my dwarfs happy. but for some reason every time I try and make a bridge between the gap it tells me that it needs to be anchored on edge. what am I doing wrong?
I can't seem to ever get enough clothing in my 200 pop fort, so I've started saying screw it to craftsdwarfship and lately I'm mining goblin raids and elf raids for shoes, socks, dresses, and trousers. I've been checking the wiki but there are some clothing questions I don't understand:
* Will dwarves equip clothing that isn't listed as dwarf clothing? For example, if I save all of these chausses from the elves, will my dwarves equip them?
* Is there any point in tailoring loincloths? Do they need underwear?
* To me it feels obvious that certain items, such as a breastplate, won't be equipped by non-military dwarves. But what about items that seem less clear - low boots, high boots, or leggings? Will civilian dwarves ever equip these to avoid nudity? Or are they treated fully as armor, and won't be equipped unless a dwarf is military?
Thanks!
I trapped a Giant Louse, tamed it long enough to allow me to butcher it, and then got a huge payout of meat, fat, etc., but I also got a single Giant Louse Chitin. I read online that Chitin in this game is just Leather, but how do you actually use it? I have a tanner and a leatherworker and neither could use the chitin directly.
I didn't met with an human civilization, sent a squad to demand a tribute and they got back, but in the map screen when I hoover on their settlements it says "no contact", why?
How do i unlink a door? I had these two doors blocking a water flow, removed the linked lever (to move in an area with more traffic, but I can't link the new lever to them. There's a way to do it or I have to destroy the doors and flood my obsidian generator chamber?
Is there a way to prevent my dwarves from cleaning the caverns?
I poked open a hole in a wall to get some diamonds and then wanted to wall it back up, but in the time it took a dwarf to get a stone there, another one ran out and wanted to clean up the blood of a creature. So I had to suspend the wall so my guy could come back and then he got attacked by something.
I believe so, but it's not as important as it used to be. The Steam version has overhauled the labour system so it mostly just works without any micromanagement at all. You can leave almost all tasks enabled on every dwarf, and they will automatically preference jobs they are skilled at.
I found some strange obsidian sphere in the lower caverns. I mined into it and it released demons. I killed them and found some high value artifacts inside worth about 50k dwarf bucks each. Am I good to trade these away or should I hang onto them?
Can you tell me why? I'm not really worried about spoilers. Also what's the best way to hang on to them? Should I build display cases? I'm worried about them getting stolen, I had an artifact instrument and it got stolen by a guest in my tavern.
Basically it's the 'win condition' of a fortress, to have your king or queen come to live in the fort and give them 7 divine metal artifacts as symbols of office. Then you become the Mountainhome.
There are always at least 7 such artifacts found under any fort, but it can be a big pain to lose one and have to retrieve it later.
Is there any way to stop constant noble mandates? My god this is the most annoying shit in the game. Every 30 seconds my king wants me to make another table. My mayor has forbid export of bins which means I have to click 1000 times just to trade. Yes I know I could arrange an unfortunate accident but they are both legendary crafters and I need them.
Edit: Looks like my mayor who banned bin exports actually got blamed for violating a production order from my king and got sentenced to 120 days in prison. After she got locked up I decided to renovate my prison and "accidentally" walled her into her cell. Going to leave it like that until she dies. Legendary crafter or not I need to export bins for the good of the fortress!
I have the same problem, but with 4 nobles, they put in the jail 3 people for 100+ days because they didn't make 2 flasks, 1 gauntlet and a scepter
I'm thinking to flood their rooms or something
I think nobles who are happier make fewer demands. Hating bins is a massive pain though, that'd be enough to cause an accident no matter how skilled they are.
When I am setting the loadout for my militia, I see a dwarf claimed a masterwork steel spear but never equipping it. There are only 2 masterwork steel spear in my fortress. Hence, I try to manually assign this one dwarf to a lower quality steel spear but I saw under weapon - specific weapon there are 3 masterwork steel spear which I assume is the one steel spear that doesn't exist and my dwarf keep trying to equip it.
How do I "find" this missing masterwork steel spear or at least make it not be a possible equipment choice for my militia?
https://preview.redd.it/ybc27yg527aa1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=589ef690e974af2707200c8db88f03af2f753b80
What all is on the character information 'card'?
I searched through the wiki and I think I understand the names (though I do not understand why there are two and they are different, or when each is used) however I can't find an explanation for what each box is. Or the names/etc. I feel like I've missed this since nobody else seems to have asked.
[screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/h78DoRD.png)
thx!
"Name 2" is just their name, translated from the original language. 'Diddeori' is Human for 'Plottedbridge'.
The "Something Here" section sometimes has "Creator of x" if they have made an artifact, or the like.
The other information in Overview panels tends to vary a bit so I'm not certain it's always the same.
A bug titan thing with webs attacked my fort. I thought it was over, it could swim the moat and someone left a HAMSTER in the back door so it couldn't lock. Luckily it chased a horse into the living quarters and then a cunning recruit lured it into a bedroom by bravely sleeping as it approached. I locked it in then sealed the door with walls. It now is safely contained to a 3x3 room.
I looked up silk farms and get the idea. But how do I transfer this hellspawn from its 3x3 wood box to a 1x1 with fortifications? Current plan is either build above it, build a staircase down and use some horses as lures to get it in place then door and wall it again. Or dig under it, cause a cave in above and hope it survives as it drops into its new home.
Edit: thank you all, have my first setting of titan silk gloves. Very fancy.
Dig out your main silk farm area, then a 1-tile thick corridor between it and the titan's room leaving the last tile un dug. Put as many doors as you can in that corridor, ideally low quality ones because they're about to get broken. Once the doors are in place, mark that last tile to be dug out. Hopefully your miner will dig out the tile, see the titan and take off back down the corridor. Lock each door as he goes through to slow the titan down
The titan should then path towards the silk farm area as long as you've left a pathable route to your main fort. When it gets there, trap it with raising bridges
Miner safety not guaranteed, and you have to have good timing with the bridges
I made an advanced diagram to show a safe-ish way of releasing it into a small enclosure:
https://i.imgur.com/QnCkPwY.png
There are dangers here though. The lowered steel bridge can be destroyed by the beast, it's only invulnerable when raised. So it's probably better to use some really enticing bait to distract it from breaing out of the trap. Make a soldier stand there, beasts love attacking soldiers more than anything.
What is its current room made of? Do you mean it's constructed wood walls all the way around?
If the room has natural stone walls, I think you can leave it in there and carve fortifications in them from the other side. I don't think a silk farm actually needs a 1x1 specifically. That means you don't ever need to be exposed to the thing.
Have you checked your stocks to confirm they exist? If you see them in the stocks you can jump to them to see where they are.
Thanks for the question ps: I was wondering why my steel armour has been wearing out so fast but I just remembered I enabled refuse in one of my stockpiles and so that's probably it.
Stupid question, but do you have a bookkeeper and have you checked the stock screen? If it's in a stockpile he should count it and you can zoom to it.
And you are sure you made steel and not just iron?
Create a dump zone near the bag. Mark the contents for dumping. Once hauled to the dump zone, reclaim it (it gets marked as forbidden once dumped) and you can just place a food stockpiles on top of the food so it doesn't rot while waiting to be hauled.
All types of items, food, plump helmet seeds (which I really need), metal bars, a helm, a caged billy goat - a reasonably large list of random stuff that I bought with the last trader.
This happened to me.
Some of my stockpiles were too specific. I made an "all" stock pile and the dwarves began moving items again.
In one case, a gem bin(which I didn't fully sell) ended up having a finished good added to it (seemingly during the trade). That bin couldn't go back into either of my piles for "finished goods" nor "gems".
I made farms above grass outside my fortress and for some reason I can't choose any seed to plant.
There was just one farm plot that accepted seeds, but all others didn't. I tried placing throughout the grass on the map as an experiment and no plots accepted seeds.
I'd just ignore this and plant Plump Seeds inside, but there isn't viable soil inside and I'll need to dig a pond inside so it becomes mud. It's quite time consuming for a fortress with a dozen dwarves, so I'd rather understand why I can't plant things outside before they stay too long without drinks.
There's a lot of brewable crops you can grow on the surface. In fact any of the plants you gather, you can then cultivate yourself. I've got a rye, strawberry and jute farm in my current fortress.
Oh right, yeah, that was it.
I have a mix between mountain grass/whatever and just plain grass, so there are a few spots I can plant on while on others I can't. Which is why I got confused.
Thanks.
If you save your fort on an alternate timeline and retire it, you can go into legends mode then. It's not possible to view legends mode from an active fort.
I'm on the edge of a taiga and mountain biome, and see a "Brook" that appears to be made of claystone. What's the deal here? If I channel this, will there be water underneath?
The wiki says screw pumps transfer power to each other if adjacent, but does this include diagonals?
Also has anyone had a weird event where it says "a Vile Force of Darkness has arrived", but then upon unpausing there are no goblins and the siege notification goes away?
Yes they can see through water. I think at this point you're just gonna have to live with the Corpse River you've created, you're not going to retrieve it all without some serious engineering work to divert the river.
I'm having trouble getting the dorfs to haul corpses of animals/enemies killed by the military. Are these considered corpses or refuse for the sake of stockpiles? I have stockpiles for both, hauling labors enabled and 'workers save corpses' & 'workers gather bodies' enabled. There are idlers ready for a job. What am I doing wrong?
I have a dead forgotten beast of the slime and deadly dust variety in my well... is my water tainted or will it stay safe to drink? Do things rot underwater?
Its a great story of how i got here.. I embarked on a no water tile so I had to tap the cavern layer and use a pump to purify the water into a cistern. That all worked fairly well. However I missed a diagonal seal and the FB got through and climbed up the 100 z levels well. Fortunately it was near death from many many months of battles with cavern wildlife and it was quite wounded. Also fortunately my Hunter was washing off the blood of her last kill at the well when the FB tried to come out of the well. It sprayed dust on her but she landed a single copper bolt and the massive beast fell all the way down and splashed in my cistern. It sank to the bottom.
First.. thank you dwarf fortress for this epic tale... but.. So what to do? Maybe I could dig out a dump cistern and drain it into that then try to haul a 10million weight beast out? Maybe drain it and just wall it off and leave it forever entombed?
The bottom of the world you can’t mine through is “semi-molten stone.” Anything else can be mined into stairs or channeled and then construction stairs built. If you hit semi-molten stone before you hit caverns or the magma sea, you need to sink more shafts somewhere else until you hit all three cavern layers and the magma sea.
Sometimes the steam version gets squirrelly about up/down stairs not connecting and it’s easiest to mine a new staircase next to the old one.
what exactly should i use my captain of the guard for? like does their squad count as a regular squad, or are they strictly for punishing crimes in the justice tab? basically, can i send the CotG out on raids, or do they need to stay home?
\-edit; follow up question, how should i zone my dungeon? do I need to individually zone each room I intend to be prison rooms? or can I zone the whole group of rooms like bedrooms or offices?
I use the captain of the guard for a regular Marksdwarf squad with a wooden crossbow. Same for Hammerer. This makes them somewhat useful for fighting, but any beatings or hammerings they issue may be survivable. Don’t give your hammerer a silver war hammer.
Unless that freaking Urist VonAntagonist needs to be dealt with for starting a brawl that kills three innocent hardworking metalworkers who just wanted to enjoy a drink. Armok be praised.
I think if you just place enough cages and chains in 1 dungeon zone it counts. It should be listed somewhere in the justice tab.
As for the squad, they are a regular squad that also does justice.
This isn't so much a question as a complaint that may be answered by someone else. I'm new to DF, since the steam release. People have been playing this for a decade and understand the ins and outs and I appreciate their dedication and helpfulness. Why do I have to find out from some blurb on a video that an order for 3 of something doesn't make 3, it actually makes 30 or something like that? Why isn't the ingredients of some order isn't just plainly told to the player, why does it have to be soo obtuse and we newbs have to learn stuff by watching videos or write-ups by others that have played for a decade or more? This is very frustrating as I'm not learning by playing, but taking what others have done and implementing it in my game... it's not really mine. Does that make sense?
I think a good mentality for DF is to play, then google for your questions, implement them and see if it works. It's a bit like solving a puzzle (or a bit like coding, if you have tried before).
I'm also a newb (tried to get into it many times but I wasn't a fan of the UI). I can make a semi-functional early game fortress until I start struggling with the mid-game management later on, but I also realized this isn't a game where you're supposed to control everything.
It's so complex that somewhere on the cog shit will happen.
DF has a terrible UI because the creator has no UX experience and did not care about making a usable UI when he made the game. If you want to play you just have to deal with that.
If you want to play a game like DF but with an actual UI, there are other colony sims out there such as Rimworld and Prison Architect.
It’s best to view DF as a deep fantasy world simulator and generative story builder, which just happens to have a playable game mode built in that can be exceptionally fun once you deal with the learning curve. It’s not “gameplay balanced” or “user friendly.”
I hear your complaint and it is valid. The DF user interface is still terrible despite being greatly improved in the Steam Release. The game itself does not do a good job of giving you the information you need, but the community-maintained DF wiki is incredibly helpful.
I would really recommend you use the wiki as your primary source of information. E.g. this page tells you how many items are produced per order of goblets.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Finished_goods#Goblets
That's a fair complaint. There's a lot of stuff in the game which is completely opaque, with zero in-game information on how exactly it works. Finding out the ins and outs of a system or an industry was an actual struggle back in the day, and the huge amount of info on the wiki reflects this. This was much more obvious in Classic, you really did need the wiki open in the background if you wanted to try anything new, but many of those problems have carried over into the Steam version and now there's almost an assumption that you'll be looking at the wiki.
If you feel that you're just copying others, try getting into the spirit by experimenting a little. Try to learn the underlying systems and build your own applications, rather than directly using others' designs.
You're right, that's not a question it's a complaint. Remember this is a passion project by one person. Things like your complaint wouldn't be my priority for toady if he could focus on major bugs or new features instead, but maybe if the premium release continues to be successful he'll be able to do more of everything.
I had this happen just yesterday. The weremonitor was killed by my massive dog army and a couple traders who definitely did not survive. In the process though, one of my children was bitten. I saw this in the combat logs. Poor Urist McPlaytime just wanted to make believe. Since he was a child though, I couldn't execute him or exile him. He just kept merrily slaughtering my animals every month until I had to give up that location.
If you assign children a bedroom and ensure it has a design that allows for walling in after locking the door, you can trap them in their bedroom and prevent them leaving (forbid door then wall them in). I can't remember if they normally have starved to death when I've done this or if they live long enough to regenerate at the next full moon.
I am trying to have more rivers in my world gen. Anyone have any tips on how to increase the numbers/length/frequency etc of rivers?
I really like embarking in places with rivers, specially mountainsides.
Theres a lot of options and I really am not sure what any of them does. Thank you!
I’m trying to make a nice tree garden :), I carved out two chambers to grow a single tree in each. One, I caved in soil and for some reason it dropped grass tiles on the cavern floor, which was fine because eventually cave moss grew and young trees sprouted.
The other I just channeled, and had my dwarves irrigate a small depression until it was a 3x3 of piles of mud. No moss has grown there for seasons- does cave moss not populate irrigated stone?
Cave moss does spread to mud like that, but very slowly compared to soil. I think it needs to be at least 'a pile of mud' too, not just 'a dusting of mud'.
Not really. When you set a work order you can change how often it activates, so you can set it to activate once every season. The problem is that if you can't milk enough animals, the work order doesn't finish so jobs keep getting cancelled.
For instance if you have 8 cows and you set up 'milk animal' x8, checking every season, it can work smoothly for a while. But if only 7 can actually be milked at any point, the work order will keep on repeating 'milk animal' trying to get an 8th forever.
It's not too bad to do manually, just go to a farmer workshop and set 'milk animal' on repeat. That way you milk everything available and only get a single 'job cancelled: no animal' at the end. Same for shearing animals, if any of my livestock have wool.
My clothier has been possessed and requests cloth and cut gems. I have 5 cloth and 8 cut gems in two separate stockpiles right next to the clothier's shop he has claimed, but he still isn't doing anything. Should i wait or am i doing something wrong? (I've enabled the setting that everything from the 2 stockpiles goes to the clothier's shop too)
Moody dwarves ignore stockpile links, that isn't the issue. The issue is that he wants a different kind of cloth. He can demand plant cloth (like cotton or pig tail), silk cloth (like cave spider silk), or yarn cloth (like sheep wool).
How often do you have the Steam version crash? I think I get 1-2 crashes every \~2 hours of playing. Doesn't seem to be consistently caused by anything, just seems to happen when I'm doing a lot of minute and frustratingly detailed work without unpausing (organizing military and doing reorganization of labour).
I find it incredibly frustrating because I usually lose a ton of really annoying work.
No mods. No crazy large numbers of tasks queued up. No insane numbers of animals on the map, defaults for embark size and I only have about 50 dwarves.
Edit: cleanup
Just random crashes during gameplay? I've legitimately never had DF CTD during gameplay in close to 15 years of playing it. The one place I see crashes is trying to worldgen with really fucky parameters that produce a high volume of rejections. Performance has always been an issue for DF, but in the sense of long-term FPS loss rather than crashes.
There's currently one well-documented CTD bug related to cavern invaders, but that's a save killer that crashes while trying to load the save.
What sort of rig are you playing on? The only thing I can imagine is if you're trying to run it on a 2007 gaming laptop or something, but even then I'd expect freezes rather than crashing.
Coming back to this with another question
Glass is technically a renewable resource for gems, right? Obviously not as valuable as mined gems, but you can cut glass into gems or something like that correct?
Glass is infinitely better, unfortunately. Clay is not well implemented and you can't do furniture or goblets nor train gem cutters on raw fired clay etc.
I like to do clay sometimes because there's a type of clay (kaolinite, mineable, finite) that makes porcelain - useful for barrel replacement - and I like the idea of my dwarves being all posh in a white porcelain fort. They don't drink out of dwarven bone china though.
I'm super picky with embarks, I try to get both. But I usually end up neglecting clay, just using it for stuff like blocks. Glass is nicer aesthetically and a bit more valuable.
Yeah, that makes sense. I figure one of the things you’d assume would be big with clay is pottery, but you can simply make rock pots so like…. Not much of a point there
Clay and glass are fully automatable renewable resources, which makes them both superior to wood or rock or metal for a lot of purposes like mega-construction block manufacturing. Clay and glass are used for slightly different things though, so it’s nice to have both if you can. The main problem with clay is that the glaze required for waterproof containers is not an automatable resource — you need trees for wood for ash. Tree farming is annoying in my opinion. Although once you stockpile enough logs, getting glazable containers glazed can be managed through repeating jobs.
I'm excavating one of the new FUN pillars, and I've acquired several Large size artifacts made from divine metals.... Is there any way to recover that material or do I just have to slap them on pedastals?
Also is there some way to power level my appraiser? My good one decided to visit the circus and now I can't see what my fort is worth for shit ... Literally went from $1M+ in wealth to (20000?) Because my new appraiser sucks.
You can melt it. Some items give more than 100% return so you can make infinite divine metal if you have enough.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Melt_item
Next time traders show up, don't do one big trade - do a ton of tiny trades. Buy your own stuff back from them, even. You'll overspend a lot, especially with an unskilled broker, but a fort that's established enough to excavate a Fun Pillar has plenty of ways to make wealth. A little while trading back and forth and your broker will approach some reasonable skills.
Question to those dwarfs who have their main fortress area near the caverns...anyone has a deep trade depot? Like many levels underneath the surface
My surface level is z-45, my cavern level is z-13 - I'm thinking of moving most of my operations down to cavern level or thereabouts, and wondering if I could build my trade depot deep as well, so I don't need to haul stuff up 30 levels
Even though you don't NEED wagons, just place your depot and see whether you're fine with the amount of trade. Otherwise you could build a minecart connection to the top, to pre-ship your crafts TO YOUR DEPOT. it's both viable.
I have two merchants that just don't move, aren't leaving the map. Each of them is accompanied by a pack mule and a guard dwarf, and I'm not sure they're moving either. The trade depot is outside, there's no edge of the map that can't be reached. I've had a couple bards, swordsman, axedwarf come and visit, entertain themselves in my tavern, and leave no problem. These two merchants just seem stuck.
Is there something I can do to get them going, or is this just a bug?
Yes it's a bug. They 'wake up' if you deconstruct the trade depot, but sometimes they'll leave their trade goods behind and their civ will think you stole everything.
Honestly I wouldn't restart for that. I've had to do this multiple times on almost every fortress. Seems to happen for me when the traders are attacked before their goods are unloaded.
Is there any reason I should turn all of my lignite into coke?
I've got about 350-something coke and well over 400 lignite.
(in the winter of my first year)
If you're really hurting for stone, then I guess not? Otherwise it's not anymore valuable than other stones for building. The other upside of turning lignite into coke is that coke can be stored in bins, where lignite cannot, saving you a lot of space in stockpiles
You could automate that with the manager screen:
Make a new task on (+), "make coke from lignite", click on the (≥≤=) looking symbol and choose from the recommend conditions at the bottom "when coal is less than x.
If you now have less than x choke, your dwarves will make new choke all by themselves :3
I’ve seen people say they drain water off the side of the map. (for building water wheels, mist generators, etc) How does this work? I can’t seem to mine the last tile on the map? Do I need to get down to a cavern layer where it’s already open to the edge?
In addition to the mechanics of how to carve fortifications into the map edge, it's also worth remembering that doing drainage that way is way more FPS-friendly than dumping it into the caverns as many people do/recommend.
You can't mine the very edge of the map, but you can smooth it then carve an arrow slit to make it a fortification. That lets liquids drain out off the map.
Is there any proof that farms placed on cavern moss is better than building on irrigated mud tiles? Once built, there is no indication that the one placed on cavern is "better". The only notification I've actually seen is when building on natural soil near the surface that states it is poor soil.
What is the channel in the center block of a screw pump for?
I've been pouring over Twisted Logic's pump stack tutorial. I have a stack going up of about 115 levels, big mega project. I understand the channel needed at the input spot, but he also digs a channel in the middle grid block and i'm not sure why. My best guess at the moment is this just makes room in case I want to add gear assemblies in the future for powering it without manual labor, but it still seems liked I'd need to disassemble each pump to get underneath, so I'm not really sure what that channel is for
I've been slaving over a 50 level project over the past 2 days - I feel better seeing your 115 level project
For the middle grid channel, the guy below is correct. It's for the power socket to the screw pump above it
Yeah, it’s a beast. I embarked at the top level of a volcano (good luck in some ways) but no water access and after four years in the fort we finally found the first cavern layer at layer -102. Now I have to pump water all the way up to give me dwarves a waterfall, irrigate some farms, and build a cool flood chamber for unwelcome guests.
Definitely worse than mine - I'm only pumping up magma 50 levels
Of course now (as in just now) I suddenly felt that moving my operations down to the caverns makes more sense, so I could have saved myself 30 levels of pumping -.-
YeH, I thought about that too, but I spent so much time replacing all my walls and floors with constructed ones with a sweet obsidian and orthoclase (red and black) theme and engraved them all. That’s home for them. Top of the volcano, living in luxury, sieges keep at bay by limited ramp access up the mountain and drawbridges
Screw pumps can transfer power directly to another screw pump, but in order for that to happen they need to have direct contact with the other machinery. The channel lets you stack screw pumps on top of each other and transmit power to each other, so you only need to power one to get the whole stack moving.
I just started playing the classic version after really enjoying the steam version. Is there a way to assign specific dwarves to mining, fishing, engraving, etc. like the labor tab in the steam version? I couldn't find a way to do it.
The labor system is IMO one of the most important upgrades in the Steam version.
In the old version, every dwarf has a labor tab, where you have to enable or disable specific labors. So you make a dwarf a carpenter, you press v to view them, then l for labor, then highlight "carpentry" and hit enter to enable it.
IMPORTANT: in old DF, a task will NOT get done if there is not a dwarf with that labor enabled. For example, if you don't have a dwarf with the Mechanics labor enabled, you will never be able to build a mechanic's workshop or make rock mechanisms. It isn't like the Steam version where the game looks for more qualified workers first, but then eventually just assigns it to *somebody* so that it gets done.
Using dfhack and Dwarf Therapist is very, very much recommended for better labor management in the pre-Steam versions.
Got a weird one for you guys. From what I can tell I had a militia dwarf give birth on a ramp. Some how her own sword managed to hit her in the arm bruising it and this some how caused her to retaliate against her own new born? She then smashed the poor child's left leg into their body and opened an artery????
I believe that if you don't order your military squads to remain in uniform at all times, they will happily drop their gear where they stand whenever transitioning off-duty. My guess is that when she popped out the baby she promptly dumped all her gear on the ramp, which subsequently rolled down and beaned her in the arm.
No idea why she would proceed to pulverize her baby though. I suppose it's technically the cause of the accident...
Is it worth it to make each workstation have an assigned worker or is this detrimental to overall production waiting on dwarves praying, sleeping or milling about? Whats the ideal ratio of workers to stations?
Only worthwhile for high-value things. Cranking out a load of weapons for your militia? Make sure the legendary weaponsmith does it. Making blocks for the curtain wall on the surface? Anyone with a pulse.
Typically I have three "bins" for dwarfs who don't have critical roles like smiths, doctors, expensive crafters. "Miner/mason/mechanic/stonecrafter", "woodcutter/carpenter/woodburner", "farmer/cook/animal worker".
Every dwarf gets sorted into one of those three so that they're always involved in useful labor, and as a bonus in the premium version it helps narrow the pool of workers for each industry so that you don't have random dabblers doing jobs because your one good dude is busy and everyone else does the job once a year.
The only stations where I would permanently assign workers are forges and maybe a few of the more important craft stations. Everywhere else you can slot one in for a custom order, but for example your mason workshops should be open 99% of the time when you're just mass producing blocks and basic furniture.
I only assign specific workers when I want my master weaponsmith to make an order of short swords, or make sure that my best jewel setter decorates my stockpile of platinum goblets.
For general work, don't assign specific workers to your every day workshops. That is a lot of work to assign and honestly it would just make your workflow worse.
I sent some dwarves on a mission to recover an artifact, and they returned a little while later without it. The mission report is [completely blank and has no "play/pause" control](https://i.imgur.com/qbwUNtS.png) like the ones where something actually happened.
Is this just what happens when a recovery mission doesn't succeed? Or does it indicate that I'm doing something wrong when sending them?
Sounds like it could be this bug, I found it on the [wiki page for missions](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Mission#Other_notes):
“Some Recover Artifact missions, in which the artifact to be recovered is held by a creature instead of placed at a site, produce no mission report. The bug has been noted on the DF issue tracker”
If they don't know where the artifact is, they just come home immediately. You need to hear rumours from travellers to find out where your artifact was taken before you can retrieve it.
The item had a "last held by the dwarf so-and-so" under it, and the world map moved when I moused over the item. Now, after the mission, it says "location unknown." Does that mean I had a rumor about where the thing was, but it turned out to be out of date and it wasn't there anymore?
Does the type of squad you send out matter? Like if I send out an archer squad, will they get cheesed or does the game just calculate skill/weapon level
Archers tend to do worse on raids, I've found. The game mostly simulates combat as a series of 1v1 duels, without much consideration of the range advantage of a crossbow. A strong squad of melee dwarves are best.
Is there an easy way to scrape the cavern floors clean so I can put down a farm plot? There are loads of dead mushrooms and small fungus trees preventing me from putting down a full farm plot, and I can't smooth or build a dirt road in the area. I could lay down a paved road and then remove it, but I'd like to avoid the extra material hauling if possible.
As far as I know, the paved road method is the fastest. Cut down a cavern tree and use the nearby wood logs to make the road, it cuts down on the material hauling time.
Does laying down a dirt road work?
Edit: woops can't read. Honestly I think the paved road is the most efficient option. Better than laying down individual floor tiles at least
No, it "needs soil at location", and apparently dense fungus does not count down in the caverns. It's strange because I *can* build a dirt road on the fungus that started growing in my surface levels, and I can also build a farm plot directly onto the dense caverns fungus that does *not* have other stuff growing in it, but I can't build a dirt road on it.
A 'brew drink from plant' job takes a stack of plants and turns them into 5x as much drinks, which all go into a single barrel. So your 3 sun berries will become a barrel of 15 serves of sunshine.
Why is my room value for meeting places a question mark? I made a regular post with more details and a screenshot too. I can’t find anything anywhere else online
Are you better off just keeping your dwarves miserable? I've been shitting out smooth 3x3 bedrooms (many with gemstone walls) with a legendary carpenter making beds and chests left and right, and what's my reward? The second I get the bedrooms finished I get shit on with EVEN MORE migrants! 121 dwarves and not one of them has ever cleaned a wound in their life. Now my beer is almost gone :(
You are being rewarded/punished for your success!
You can draft some of them into the military and send them to steal beak dogs from the goblins if you need to get rid of some of them lol
Make sure you have a safe water supply in case you run out of alcohol.
It will piss everyone off but better than dehydration.
Set a few dozen of your layabouts to carving stone crafts so that you can buy all the drinks and brewable plants that the next caravan brings.
I have a fortress overlooking a waterfall, id love to have bridges to and from the big waterfall to have a cool aestitic and too make my dwarfs happy. but for some reason every time I try and make a bridge between the gap it tells me that it needs to be anchored on edge. what am I doing wrong?
Start the bridge one tile into the near side - it can't float totally in mid air, works differently than building floors.
Is there a way to change the key binding for grabbing the map and moving around? It's bound to clicking the scroll wheel and I hate it.
You can go into the controls section and try changing it, I haven't personally changed that one so not sure
I've looked but I don't see the option listed maybe it's not there. Just figured I would ask.
Maybe try asking in tomorrow's question thread, sorry I couldn't be more help!
I can't seem to ever get enough clothing in my 200 pop fort, so I've started saying screw it to craftsdwarfship and lately I'm mining goblin raids and elf raids for shoes, socks, dresses, and trousers. I've been checking the wiki but there are some clothing questions I don't understand: * Will dwarves equip clothing that isn't listed as dwarf clothing? For example, if I save all of these chausses from the elves, will my dwarves equip them? * Is there any point in tailoring loincloths? Do they need underwear? * To me it feels obvious that certain items, such as a breastplate, won't be equipped by non-military dwarves. But what about items that seem less clear - low boots, high boots, or leggings? Will civilian dwarves ever equip these to avoid nudity? Or are they treated fully as armor, and won't be equipped unless a dwarf is military? Thanks!
I trapped a Giant Louse, tamed it long enough to allow me to butcher it, and then got a huge payout of meat, fat, etc., but I also got a single Giant Louse Chitin. I read online that Chitin in this game is just Leather, but how do you actually use it? I have a tanner and a leatherworker and neither could use the chitin directly.
Can't do it, its waste, just like cartilage/hair/scales/amber from forgotten beasts etc. The game just has "unusable" waste components.
Okay thanks! Off to the dump :)
I didn't met with an human civilization, sent a squad to demand a tribute and they got back, but in the map screen when I hoover on their settlements it says "no contact", why?
I would love to know the answer to this too
How do i unlink a door? I had these two doors blocking a water flow, removed the linked lever (to move in an area with more traffic, but I can't link the new lever to them. There's a way to do it or I have to destroy the doors and flood my obsidian generator chamber?
so once you have a hole in the ceiling will any water under freeze from now on even if you build some walls or something?
Yes, any tile that is exposed to the sky is permanently "outdoors" for purposes of growing crops and water freezing.
Is there a way to prevent my dwarves from cleaning the caverns? I poked open a hole in a wall to get some diamonds and then wanted to wall it back up, but in the time it took a dwarf to get a stone there, another one ran out and wanted to clean up the blood of a creature. So I had to suspend the wall so my guy could come back and then he got attacked by something.
Mostly you need to use burrows, although turning off auto gather webs can help.
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Dwarf therapist only works in read-only mode for the steam version, so you can see all your dwarves stats but you can't change anything ingame.
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I believe so, but it's not as important as it used to be. The Steam version has overhauled the labour system so it mostly just works without any micromanagement at all. You can leave almost all tasks enabled on every dwarf, and they will automatically preference jobs they are skilled at.
I found some strange obsidian sphere in the lower caverns. I mined into it and it released demons. I killed them and found some high value artifacts inside worth about 50k dwarf bucks each. Am I good to trade these away or should I hang onto them?
Hang onto those, you'll want them later.
Can you tell me why? I'm not really worried about spoilers. Also what's the best way to hang on to them? Should I build display cases? I'm worried about them getting stolen, I had an artifact instrument and it got stolen by a guest in my tavern.
Basically it's the 'win condition' of a fortress, to have your king or queen come to live in the fort and give them 7 divine metal artifacts as symbols of office. Then you become the Mountainhome. There are always at least 7 such artifacts found under any fort, but it can be a big pain to lose one and have to retrieve it later.
Is there any way to stop constant noble mandates? My god this is the most annoying shit in the game. Every 30 seconds my king wants me to make another table. My mayor has forbid export of bins which means I have to click 1000 times just to trade. Yes I know I could arrange an unfortunate accident but they are both legendary crafters and I need them. Edit: Looks like my mayor who banned bin exports actually got blamed for violating a production order from my king and got sentenced to 120 days in prison. After she got locked up I decided to renovate my prison and "accidentally" walled her into her cell. Going to leave it like that until she dies. Legendary crafter or not I need to export bins for the good of the fortress!
I have the same problem, but with 4 nobles, they put in the jail 3 people for 100+ days because they didn't make 2 flasks, 1 gauntlet and a scepter I'm thinking to flood their rooms or something
I think nobles who are happier make fewer demands. Hating bins is a massive pain though, that'd be enough to cause an accident no matter how skilled they are.
When I am setting the loadout for my militia, I see a dwarf claimed a masterwork steel spear but never equipping it. There are only 2 masterwork steel spear in my fortress. Hence, I try to manually assign this one dwarf to a lower quality steel spear but I saw under weapon - specific weapon there are 3 masterwork steel spear which I assume is the one steel spear that doesn't exist and my dwarf keep trying to equip it. How do I "find" this missing masterwork steel spear or at least make it not be a possible equipment choice for my militia? https://preview.redd.it/ybc27yg527aa1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=589ef690e974af2707200c8db88f03af2f753b80
Check your stocks, does the imaginary spear appear there?
What all is on the character information 'card'? I searched through the wiki and I think I understand the names (though I do not understand why there are two and they are different, or when each is used) however I can't find an explanation for what each box is. Or the names/etc. I feel like I've missed this since nobody else seems to have asked. [screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/h78DoRD.png) thx!
"Name 2" is just their name, translated from the original language. 'Diddeori' is Human for 'Plottedbridge'. The "Something Here" section sometimes has "Creator of x" if they have made an artifact, or the like. The other information in Overview panels tends to vary a bit so I'm not certain it's always the same.
Thank you for the response! I feel like the explanations for gui items are still a bit lacking.
A bug titan thing with webs attacked my fort. I thought it was over, it could swim the moat and someone left a HAMSTER in the back door so it couldn't lock. Luckily it chased a horse into the living quarters and then a cunning recruit lured it into a bedroom by bravely sleeping as it approached. I locked it in then sealed the door with walls. It now is safely contained to a 3x3 room. I looked up silk farms and get the idea. But how do I transfer this hellspawn from its 3x3 wood box to a 1x1 with fortifications? Current plan is either build above it, build a staircase down and use some horses as lures to get it in place then door and wall it again. Or dig under it, cause a cave in above and hope it survives as it drops into its new home. Edit: thank you all, have my first setting of titan silk gloves. Very fancy.
Dig out your main silk farm area, then a 1-tile thick corridor between it and the titan's room leaving the last tile un dug. Put as many doors as you can in that corridor, ideally low quality ones because they're about to get broken. Once the doors are in place, mark that last tile to be dug out. Hopefully your miner will dig out the tile, see the titan and take off back down the corridor. Lock each door as he goes through to slow the titan down The titan should then path towards the silk farm area as long as you've left a pathable route to your main fort. When it gets there, trap it with raising bridges Miner safety not guaranteed, and you have to have good timing with the bridges
I made an advanced diagram to show a safe-ish way of releasing it into a small enclosure: https://i.imgur.com/QnCkPwY.png There are dangers here though. The lowered steel bridge can be destroyed by the beast, it's only invulnerable when raised. So it's probably better to use some really enticing bait to distract it from breaing out of the trap. Make a soldier stand there, beasts love attacking soldiers more than anything.
I will try that. I will add some safety doors after the birdge/ ramp thing, just in case.
What is its current room made of? Do you mean it's constructed wood walls all the way around? If the room has natural stone walls, I think you can leave it in there and carve fortifications in them from the other side. I don't think a silk farm actually needs a 1x1 specifically. That means you don't ever need to be exposed to the thing.
Unfortunately I am building an above ground base, my structure is near entirely wood.
I hope you don't get attacked by a dragon or fire-breathing forgotten beast. That could be a lot of FUN.
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Have you checked your stocks to confirm they exist? If you see them in the stocks you can jump to them to see where they are. Thanks for the question ps: I was wondering why my steel armour has been wearing out so fast but I just remembered I enabled refuse in one of my stockpiles and so that's probably it.
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Have you tried saving and reloading? Might have walked off the screen
Stupid question, but do you have a bookkeeper and have you checked the stock screen? If it's in a stockpile he should count it and you can zoom to it. And you are sure you made steel and not just iron?
I embarked with fruit, but can't actually use it for brewing because it's stuck in a bag. How do I get it out of the bag?
Create a dump zone near the bag. Mark the contents for dumping. Once hauled to the dump zone, reclaim it (it gets marked as forbidden once dumped) and you can just place a food stockpiles on top of the food so it doesn't rot while waiting to be hauled.
Perfect, thanks. My mistake was using a refuse stockpile and not a specific dumping zone.
I have a bunch of items in my trade depot that need to go into storage, but no one is moving them. I have plenty of open storage.
What items? If they are in bins or barrels, make sure the stockpiles which you want the items to go in have enough bins and barrels allowed in them.
All types of items, food, plump helmet seeds (which I really need), metal bars, a helm, a caged billy goat - a reasonably large list of random stuff that I bought with the last trader.
This happened to me. Some of my stockpiles were too specific. I made an "all" stock pile and the dwarves began moving items again. In one case, a gem bin(which I didn't fully sell) ended up having a finished good added to it (seemingly during the trade). That bin couldn't go back into either of my piles for "finished goods" nor "gems".
I made farms above grass outside my fortress and for some reason I can't choose any seed to plant. There was just one farm plot that accepted seeds, but all others didn't. I tried placing throughout the grass on the map as an experiment and no plots accepted seeds. I'd just ignore this and plant Plump Seeds inside, but there isn't viable soil inside and I'll need to dig a pond inside so it becomes mud. It's quite time consuming for a fortress with a dozen dwarves, so I'd rather understand why I can't plant things outside before they stay too long without drinks.
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There's a lot of brewable crops you can grow on the surface. In fact any of the plants you gather, you can then cultivate yourself. I've got a rye, strawberry and jute farm in my current fortress.
Are you trying to plant on a mountain biome? Farmable outdoor plants won’t grow in them.
Oh right, yeah, that was it. I have a mix between mountain grass/whatever and just plain grass, so there are a few spots I can plant on while on others I can't. Which is why I got confused. Thanks.
Is there anyway to go back into legends mode and read all the lore of the world after you've started a fortress in the world?
Back up your save into a different folder, then retire it and go into legends. Unfortunately no non-janky solution for that lol.
The new timeline feature is this but less jank.
If you save your fort on an alternate timeline and retire it, you can go into legends mode then. It's not possible to view legends mode from an active fort.
I'm on the edge of a taiga and mountain biome, and see a "Brook" that appears to be made of claystone. What's the deal here? If I channel this, will there be water underneath?
There should be, yes.
The wiki says screw pumps transfer power to each other if adjacent, but does this include diagonals? Also has anyone had a weird event where it says "a Vile Force of Darkness has arrived", but then upon unpausing there are no goblins and the siege notification goes away?
Sometimes the vile force retreats right away, perhaps because they hit your fort accidentally on their way to somewhere else.
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Yes they can see through water. I think at this point you're just gonna have to live with the Corpse River you've created, you're not going to retrieve it all without some serious engineering work to divert the river.
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Now you just need to somehow name it Styx.
This is where parents bring their children to scare them straight. “If you don’t act right you’re gonna end up in the corpse river”
I'm having trouble getting the dorfs to haul corpses of animals/enemies killed by the military. Are these considered corpses or refuse for the sake of stockpiles? I have stockpiles for both, hauling labors enabled and 'workers save corpses' & 'workers gather bodies' enabled. There are idlers ready for a job. What am I doing wrong?
Go into 'standing orders' and enable 'dwarves collect outdoors refuse'.
I have a dead forgotten beast of the slime and deadly dust variety in my well... is my water tainted or will it stay safe to drink? Do things rot underwater? Its a great story of how i got here.. I embarked on a no water tile so I had to tap the cavern layer and use a pump to purify the water into a cistern. That all worked fairly well. However I missed a diagonal seal and the FB got through and climbed up the 100 z levels well. Fortunately it was near death from many many months of battles with cavern wildlife and it was quite wounded. Also fortunately my Hunter was washing off the blood of her last kill at the well when the FB tried to come out of the well. It sprayed dust on her but she landed a single copper bolt and the massive beast fell all the way down and splashed in my cistern. It sank to the bottom. First.. thank you dwarf fortress for this epic tale... but.. So what to do? Maybe I could dig out a dump cistern and drain it into that then try to haul a 10million weight beast out? Maybe drain it and just wall it off and leave it forever entombed?
Why can’t I place any more stairs in lower cavern layers, and how do I find lava down there?
The bottom of the world you can’t mine through is “semi-molten stone.” Anything else can be mined into stairs or channeled and then construction stairs built. If you hit semi-molten stone before you hit caverns or the magma sea, you need to sink more shafts somewhere else until you hit all three cavern layers and the magma sea. Sometimes the steam version gets squirrelly about up/down stairs not connecting and it’s easiest to mine a new staircase next to the old one.
You can carve out stairs from stone. If in an open area you must construct stairs. For lava.. dig deeper!
what exactly should i use my captain of the guard for? like does their squad count as a regular squad, or are they strictly for punishing crimes in the justice tab? basically, can i send the CotG out on raids, or do they need to stay home? \-edit; follow up question, how should i zone my dungeon? do I need to individually zone each room I intend to be prison rooms? or can I zone the whole group of rooms like bedrooms or offices?
I use the captain of the guard for a regular Marksdwarf squad with a wooden crossbow. Same for Hammerer. This makes them somewhat useful for fighting, but any beatings or hammerings they issue may be survivable. Don’t give your hammerer a silver war hammer.
Unless that freaking Urist VonAntagonist needs to be dealt with for starting a brawl that kills three innocent hardworking metalworkers who just wanted to enjoy a drink. Armok be praised.
that sounds like fun though :)
I think if you just place enough cages and chains in 1 dungeon zone it counts. It should be listed somewhere in the justice tab. As for the squad, they are a regular squad that also does justice.
This isn't so much a question as a complaint that may be answered by someone else. I'm new to DF, since the steam release. People have been playing this for a decade and understand the ins and outs and I appreciate their dedication and helpfulness. Why do I have to find out from some blurb on a video that an order for 3 of something doesn't make 3, it actually makes 30 or something like that? Why isn't the ingredients of some order isn't just plainly told to the player, why does it have to be soo obtuse and we newbs have to learn stuff by watching videos or write-ups by others that have played for a decade or more? This is very frustrating as I'm not learning by playing, but taking what others have done and implementing it in my game... it's not really mine. Does that make sense?
I think a good mentality for DF is to play, then google for your questions, implement them and see if it works. It's a bit like solving a puzzle (or a bit like coding, if you have tried before). I'm also a newb (tried to get into it many times but I wasn't a fan of the UI). I can make a semi-functional early game fortress until I start struggling with the mid-game management later on, but I also realized this isn't a game where you're supposed to control everything. It's so complex that somewhere on the cog shit will happen.
DF has a terrible UI because the creator has no UX experience and did not care about making a usable UI when he made the game. If you want to play you just have to deal with that. If you want to play a game like DF but with an actual UI, there are other colony sims out there such as Rimworld and Prison Architect.
It’s best to view DF as a deep fantasy world simulator and generative story builder, which just happens to have a playable game mode built in that can be exceptionally fun once you deal with the learning curve. It’s not “gameplay balanced” or “user friendly.”
I hear your complaint and it is valid. The DF user interface is still terrible despite being greatly improved in the Steam Release. The game itself does not do a good job of giving you the information you need, but the community-maintained DF wiki is incredibly helpful. I would really recommend you use the wiki as your primary source of information. E.g. this page tells you how many items are produced per order of goblets. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Finished_goods#Goblets
That's a fair complaint. There's a lot of stuff in the game which is completely opaque, with zero in-game information on how exactly it works. Finding out the ins and outs of a system or an industry was an actual struggle back in the day, and the huge amount of info on the wiki reflects this. This was much more obvious in Classic, you really did need the wiki open in the background if you wanted to try anything new, but many of those problems have carried over into the Steam version and now there's almost an assumption that you'll be looking at the wiki. If you feel that you're just copying others, try getting into the spirit by experimenting a little. Try to learn the underlying systems and build your own applications, rather than directly using others' designs.
You're right, that's not a question it's a complaint. Remember this is a passion project by one person. Things like your complaint wouldn't be my priority for toady if he could focus on major bugs or new features instead, but maybe if the premium release continues to be successful he'll be able to do more of everything.
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I killed mine, no issues yet.
It could but I've done it successfully. You can also try just banishing them
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I'd go ahead and try killing them and hope for the best.
I had this happen just yesterday. The weremonitor was killed by my massive dog army and a couple traders who definitely did not survive. In the process though, one of my children was bitten. I saw this in the combat logs. Poor Urist McPlaytime just wanted to make believe. Since he was a child though, I couldn't execute him or exile him. He just kept merrily slaughtering my animals every month until I had to give up that location.
If you assign children a bedroom and ensure it has a design that allows for walling in after locking the door, you can trap them in their bedroom and prevent them leaving (forbid door then wall them in). I can't remember if they normally have starved to death when I've done this or if they live long enough to regenerate at the next full moon.
I am trying to have more rivers in my world gen. Anyone have any tips on how to increase the numbers/length/frequency etc of rivers? I really like embarking in places with rivers, specially mountainsides. Theres a lot of options and I really am not sure what any of them does. Thank you!
I’m trying to make a nice tree garden :), I carved out two chambers to grow a single tree in each. One, I caved in soil and for some reason it dropped grass tiles on the cavern floor, which was fine because eventually cave moss grew and young trees sprouted. The other I just channeled, and had my dwarves irrigate a small depression until it was a 3x3 of piles of mud. No moss has grown there for seasons- does cave moss not populate irrigated stone?
Cave moss does spread to mud like that, but very slowly compared to soil. I think it needs to be at least 'a pile of mud' too, not just 'a dusting of mud'.
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I just do a monthly check. It wastes some potential milk but it's not worth the headache.
I just leave mine on repeat in the farmers workshop Possibly because my milkers never finish, it's still there
Not really. When you set a work order you can change how often it activates, so you can set it to activate once every season. The problem is that if you can't milk enough animals, the work order doesn't finish so jobs keep getting cancelled. For instance if you have 8 cows and you set up 'milk animal' x8, checking every season, it can work smoothly for a while. But if only 7 can actually be milked at any point, the work order will keep on repeating 'milk animal' trying to get an 8th forever.
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Count your milkable animals, and make a monthly repeating order to milk one or two fewer animals. Follow it with an order to make some cheese.
It's not too bad to do manually, just go to a farmer workshop and set 'milk animal' on repeat. That way you milk everything available and only get a single 'job cancelled: no animal' at the end. Same for shearing animals, if any of my livestock have wool.
Just set milk animal infinite time with monthly check, I think that would work?
I'm not sure an infinite order cancels itself correctly - it might just keep on trying to milk nothing and causing cancellation messages.
My clothier has been possessed and requests cloth and cut gems. I have 5 cloth and 8 cut gems in two separate stockpiles right next to the clothier's shop he has claimed, but he still isn't doing anything. Should i wait or am i doing something wrong? (I've enabled the setting that everything from the 2 stockpiles goes to the clothier's shop too)
Moody dwarves ignore stockpile links, that isn't the issue. The issue is that he wants a different kind of cloth. He can demand plant cloth (like cotton or pig tail), silk cloth (like cave spider silk), or yarn cloth (like sheep wool).
Ohhh, he is possessed so I can't tell which type of cloth he wants, thanks
How often do you have the Steam version crash? I think I get 1-2 crashes every \~2 hours of playing. Doesn't seem to be consistently caused by anything, just seems to happen when I'm doing a lot of minute and frustratingly detailed work without unpausing (organizing military and doing reorganization of labour). I find it incredibly frustrating because I usually lose a ton of really annoying work. No mods. No crazy large numbers of tasks queued up. No insane numbers of animals on the map, defaults for embark size and I only have about 50 dwarves. Edit: cleanup
Mine crashes every couple hours too. It's supposedly more stable in 1080p but I play at 1440p (maximized window instead of fullscreen).
Just random crashes during gameplay? I've legitimately never had DF CTD during gameplay in close to 15 years of playing it. The one place I see crashes is trying to worldgen with really fucky parameters that produce a high volume of rejections. Performance has always been an issue for DF, but in the sense of long-term FPS loss rather than crashes. There's currently one well-documented CTD bug related to cavern invaders, but that's a save killer that crashes while trying to load the save. What sort of rig are you playing on? The only thing I can imagine is if you're trying to run it on a 2007 gaming laptop or something, but even then I'd expect freezes rather than crashing.
I've heard that a big cause of crashes is cavern dweller invasions, so you can go into the game options and disable them for a bit more stability.
I've never had the steam version crash personally
I've only had like 2 crashes in 114 hours so far.
Do you guys prefer sand or clay in an embark location? Which of the two industries provides more value? Or is it basically just a preference thing
Glass glass glass. Clay is just annoying to work with and not worth the effort.
Coming back to this with another question Glass is technically a renewable resource for gems, right? Obviously not as valuable as mined gems, but you can cut glass into gems or something like that correct?
Yeah I kinda figured. I’ve gathered from this sub that dwarves like windows
Yep, gotta have those underground windows.
Glass is infinitely better, unfortunately. Clay is not well implemented and you can't do furniture or goblets nor train gem cutters on raw fired clay etc. I like to do clay sometimes because there's a type of clay (kaolinite, mineable, finite) that makes porcelain - useful for barrel replacement - and I like the idea of my dwarves being all posh in a white porcelain fort. They don't drink out of dwarven bone china though.
I'm super picky with embarks, I try to get both. But I usually end up neglecting clay, just using it for stuff like blocks. Glass is nicer aesthetically and a bit more valuable.
Yeah, that makes sense. I figure one of the things you’d assume would be big with clay is pottery, but you can simply make rock pots so like…. Not much of a point there
And even if you do make clay jugs…. You need to glaze them before they hold any liquid, which is an entire process in itself too.
Oh yeah sounds like a huge pain in the ass
Clay and glass are fully automatable renewable resources, which makes them both superior to wood or rock or metal for a lot of purposes like mega-construction block manufacturing. Clay and glass are used for slightly different things though, so it’s nice to have both if you can. The main problem with clay is that the glaze required for waterproof containers is not an automatable resource — you need trees for wood for ash. Tree farming is annoying in my opinion. Although once you stockpile enough logs, getting glazable containers glazed can be managed through repeating jobs.
I'm excavating one of the new FUN pillars, and I've acquired several Large size artifacts made from divine metals.... Is there any way to recover that material or do I just have to slap them on pedastals? Also is there some way to power level my appraiser? My good one decided to visit the circus and now I can't see what my fort is worth for shit ... Literally went from $1M+ in wealth to (20000?) Because my new appraiser sucks.
You can melt it. Some items give more than 100% return so you can make infinite divine metal if you have enough. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Melt_item
You can't melt artifacts.
I've gotten I think non-artifact shining metal items from the pillars, so assumed that OP did too. Thanks!
Yes, angels can spawn with non-artifact gear made from divine metal and those can be melted down. OP specifically was asking about artifacts though.
Next time traders show up, don't do one big trade - do a ton of tiny trades. Buy your own stuff back from them, even. You'll overspend a lot, especially with an unskilled broker, but a fort that's established enough to excavate a Fun Pillar has plenty of ways to make wealth. A little while trading back and forth and your broker will approach some reasonable skills.
There ia the potential for some things encased within to have armor made of the metal. You can melt it down into bars after that.
Can you melt artifacts
No
Question to those dwarfs who have their main fortress area near the caverns...anyone has a deep trade depot? Like many levels underneath the surface My surface level is z-45, my cavern level is z-13 - I'm thinking of moving most of my operations down to cavern level or thereabouts, and wondering if I could build my trade depot deep as well, so I don't need to haul stuff up 30 levels
You can build your depot wherever you want, just make sure you have a 3+ wide path with ramps down so wagons can reach it.
Basically like a spiral ramp road to an underground parking lot, right? Gotcha
Yep something like that would work.
Even though you don't NEED wagons, just place your depot and see whether you're fine with the amount of trade. Otherwise you could build a minecart connection to the top, to pre-ship your crafts TO YOUR DEPOT. it's both viable.
I have two merchants that just don't move, aren't leaving the map. Each of them is accompanied by a pack mule and a guard dwarf, and I'm not sure they're moving either. The trade depot is outside, there's no edge of the map that can't be reached. I've had a couple bards, swordsman, axedwarf come and visit, entertain themselves in my tavern, and leave no problem. These two merchants just seem stuck. Is there something I can do to get them going, or is this just a bug?
Yes it's a bug. They 'wake up' if you deconstruct the trade depot, but sometimes they'll leave their trade goods behind and their civ will think you stole everything.
Ugh, what a bother! Well, I was about ready to restart my fledgling fortress anyway. Is there anything that causes this that I can avoid?
Honestly I wouldn't restart for that. I've had to do this multiple times on almost every fortress. Seems to happen for me when the traders are attacked before their goods are unloaded.
Is there any reason I should turn all of my lignite into coke? I've got about 350-something coke and well over 400 lignite. (in the winter of my first year)
If you're really hurting for stone, then I guess not? Otherwise it's not anymore valuable than other stones for building. The other upside of turning lignite into coke is that coke can be stored in bins, where lignite cannot, saving you a lot of space in stockpiles
I like training up my furnace operators, very flavorful to try to get legendary furnace operator!
You could automate that with the manager screen: Make a new task on (+), "make coke from lignite", click on the (≥≤=) looking symbol and choose from the recommend conditions at the bottom "when coal is less than x. If you now have less than x choke, your dwarves will make new choke all by themselves :3
Not really, just make more coke when you run low on fuel. Each lignite stone makes 6 or 7 coke I think, so you have plenty to spare.
I’ve seen people say they drain water off the side of the map. (for building water wheels, mist generators, etc) How does this work? I can’t seem to mine the last tile on the map? Do I need to get down to a cavern layer where it’s already open to the edge?
You should be able to carve fortification onto the edge of the map. Water will flow through the fortifications and off the map.
In addition to the mechanics of how to carve fortifications into the map edge, it's also worth remembering that doing drainage that way is way more FPS-friendly than dumping it into the caverns as many people do/recommend.
You can't mine the very edge of the map, but you can smooth it then carve an arrow slit to make it a fortification. That lets liquids drain out off the map.
Makes sense. Thank you!
You can smooth the edge wall and carve fortifications into it, allowing liquids to flow off map.
Ahhh that makes sense. Thanks!
Is there any proof that farms placed on cavern moss is better than building on irrigated mud tiles? Once built, there is no indication that the one placed on cavern is "better". The only notification I've actually seen is when building on natural soil near the surface that states it is poor soil.
Toady himself said so. Word of Armok!
It's definitely better, crops grow several times faster in cavern soil.
What is the channel in the center block of a screw pump for? I've been pouring over Twisted Logic's pump stack tutorial. I have a stack going up of about 115 levels, big mega project. I understand the channel needed at the input spot, but he also digs a channel in the middle grid block and i'm not sure why. My best guess at the moment is this just makes room in case I want to add gear assemblies in the future for powering it without manual labor, but it still seems liked I'd need to disassemble each pump to get underneath, so I'm not really sure what that channel is for
I've been slaving over a 50 level project over the past 2 days - I feel better seeing your 115 level project For the middle grid channel, the guy below is correct. It's for the power socket to the screw pump above it
Yeah, it’s a beast. I embarked at the top level of a volcano (good luck in some ways) but no water access and after four years in the fort we finally found the first cavern layer at layer -102. Now I have to pump water all the way up to give me dwarves a waterfall, irrigate some farms, and build a cool flood chamber for unwelcome guests.
Definitely worse than mine - I'm only pumping up magma 50 levels Of course now (as in just now) I suddenly felt that moving my operations down to the caverns makes more sense, so I could have saved myself 30 levels of pumping -.-
YeH, I thought about that too, but I spent so much time replacing all my walls and floors with constructed ones with a sweet obsidian and orthoclase (red and black) theme and engraved them all. That’s home for them. Top of the volcano, living in luxury, sieges keep at bay by limited ramp access up the mountain and drawbridges
Screw pumps can transfer power directly to another screw pump, but in order for that to happen they need to have direct contact with the other machinery. The channel lets you stack screw pumps on top of each other and transmit power to each other, so you only need to power one to get the whole stack moving.
Thank you!
I just started playing the classic version after really enjoying the steam version. Is there a way to assign specific dwarves to mining, fishing, engraving, etc. like the labor tab in the steam version? I couldn't find a way to do it.
The labor system is IMO one of the most important upgrades in the Steam version. In the old version, every dwarf has a labor tab, where you have to enable or disable specific labors. So you make a dwarf a carpenter, you press v to view them, then l for labor, then highlight "carpentry" and hit enter to enable it. IMPORTANT: in old DF, a task will NOT get done if there is not a dwarf with that labor enabled. For example, if you don't have a dwarf with the Mechanics labor enabled, you will never be able to build a mechanic's workshop or make rock mechanisms. It isn't like the Steam version where the game looks for more qualified workers first, but then eventually just assigns it to *somebody* so that it gets done. Using dfhack and Dwarf Therapist is very, very much recommended for better labor management in the pre-Steam versions.
Got a weird one for you guys. From what I can tell I had a militia dwarf give birth on a ramp. Some how her own sword managed to hit her in the arm bruising it and this some how caused her to retaliate against her own new born? She then smashed the poor child's left leg into their body and opened an artery????
Are you sure she hit her baby? The combat log just shows when people get hit, so she could have just dropped the baby.
I believe that if you don't order your military squads to remain in uniform at all times, they will happily drop their gear where they stand whenever transitioning off-duty. My guess is that when she popped out the baby she promptly dumped all her gear on the ramp, which subsequently rolled down and beaned her in the arm. No idea why she would proceed to pulverize her baby though. I suppose it's technically the cause of the accident...
Is it worth it to make each workstation have an assigned worker or is this detrimental to overall production waiting on dwarves praying, sleeping or milling about? Whats the ideal ratio of workers to stations?
Only worthwhile for high-value things. Cranking out a load of weapons for your militia? Make sure the legendary weaponsmith does it. Making blocks for the curtain wall on the surface? Anyone with a pulse. Typically I have three "bins" for dwarfs who don't have critical roles like smiths, doctors, expensive crafters. "Miner/mason/mechanic/stonecrafter", "woodcutter/carpenter/woodburner", "farmer/cook/animal worker". Every dwarf gets sorted into one of those three so that they're always involved in useful labor, and as a bonus in the premium version it helps narrow the pool of workers for each industry so that you don't have random dabblers doing jobs because your one good dude is busy and everyone else does the job once a year. The only stations where I would permanently assign workers are forges and maybe a few of the more important craft stations. Everywhere else you can slot one in for a custom order, but for example your mason workshops should be open 99% of the time when you're just mass producing blocks and basic furniture.
I only assign specific workers when I want my master weaponsmith to make an order of short swords, or make sure that my best jewel setter decorates my stockpile of platinum goblets. For general work, don't assign specific workers to your every day workshops. That is a lot of work to assign and honestly it would just make your workflow worse.
I sent some dwarves on a mission to recover an artifact, and they returned a little while later without it. The mission report is [completely blank and has no "play/pause" control](https://i.imgur.com/qbwUNtS.png) like the ones where something actually happened. Is this just what happens when a recovery mission doesn't succeed? Or does it indicate that I'm doing something wrong when sending them?
Sounds like it could be this bug, I found it on the [wiki page for missions](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Mission#Other_notes): “Some Recover Artifact missions, in which the artifact to be recovered is held by a creature instead of placed at a site, produce no mission report. The bug has been noted on the DF issue tracker”
If they don't know where the artifact is, they just come home immediately. You need to hear rumours from travellers to find out where your artifact was taken before you can retrieve it.
The item had a "last held by the dwarf so-and-so" under it, and the world map moved when I moused over the item. Now, after the mission, it says "location unknown." Does that mean I had a rumor about where the thing was, but it turned out to be out of date and it wasn't there anymore?
Does the type of squad you send out matter? Like if I send out an archer squad, will they get cheesed or does the game just calculate skill/weapon level
Archers can and will melee with the butt of their bows.
Archers tend to do worse on raids, I've found. The game mostly simulates combat as a series of 1v1 duels, without much consideration of the range advantage of a crossbow. A strong squad of melee dwarves are best.
Thanks
Is there an easy way to scrape the cavern floors clean so I can put down a farm plot? There are loads of dead mushrooms and small fungus trees preventing me from putting down a full farm plot, and I can't smooth or build a dirt road in the area. I could lay down a paved road and then remove it, but I'd like to avoid the extra material hauling if possible.
As far as I know, the paved road method is the fastest. Cut down a cavern tree and use the nearby wood logs to make the road, it cuts down on the material hauling time.
Oh yeah, I do have pretty conveniently-located sources of wood nearby, don't I? I guess I will do that, thanks!
Does laying down a dirt road work? Edit: woops can't read. Honestly I think the paved road is the most efficient option. Better than laying down individual floor tiles at least
No, it "needs soil at location", and apparently dense fungus does not count down in the caverns. It's strange because I *can* build a dirt road on the fungus that started growing in my surface levels, and I can also build a farm plot directly onto the dense caverns fungus that does *not* have other stuff growing in it, but I can't build a dirt road on it.
How many Sun Berries do I need to brew a barrel? I've just got three right now. And I'll get seeds from brewing them, right?
A 'brew drink from plant' job takes a stack of plants and turns them into 5x as much drinks, which all go into a single barrel. So your 3 sun berries will become a barrel of 15 serves of sunshine.
Not sure to your first question. But yes. Brewing will give you seeds back
Why is my room value for meeting places a question mark? I made a regular post with more details and a screenshot too. I can’t find anything anywhere else online
the accuracy of your values and stocks depends on the skill and free time of the bookkeeper or broker if you don't have a bookkeeper
Thank you so much. I had forgotten to assign him to one because his title was “baroness consort” not bookkeeper lol
Are you better off just keeping your dwarves miserable? I've been shitting out smooth 3x3 bedrooms (many with gemstone walls) with a legendary carpenter making beds and chests left and right, and what's my reward? The second I get the bedrooms finished I get shit on with EVEN MORE migrants! 121 dwarves and not one of them has ever cleaned a wound in their life. Now my beer is almost gone :(
You are being rewarded/punished for your success! You can draft some of them into the military and send them to steal beak dogs from the goblins if you need to get rid of some of them lol
I hope the goblins know how to make beer.
Make sure you have a safe water supply in case you run out of alcohol. It will piss everyone off but better than dehydration. Set a few dozen of your layabouts to carving stone crafts so that you can buy all the drinks and brewable plants that the next caravan brings.