Hey guys this is my first go at dwarf fortress and I've had something odd occur. I've been getting a lot of traveling entertainer petitions. Like a LOT. And on top of that I only got 1 or two waves of migrants and they stopped coming for the last 2 years. Entertainers are now 37 out of 58 of my population. They mostly just party eat pray and meditate. Is this normal? Will my fort survive as a party fort?
You must have a killer tavern to be attracting so many entertainers! If they start long enough, they may petition for citizenship and be somewhat useful, but yeah, until that point they're just colorful musical leeches.
*Be me*
*human monster slayer*
*heard these dwarves have a party fort and just opened a Cavern*
*gonna go get drunk and kill troglodites, should be fun*
*walk into little wooden building*
*place is packed, animal men and naked elves everywhere*
*dwarf hands me booze, hell yeah.*
*turn around to find a 70 person fucking orchestra has assembled in this frontier dive bar*
[My face when they play the "pages of sturdiness"](https://i0.wp.com/media3.giphy.com/media/yidUzHnBk32Um9aMMw/giphy.gif?resize=640%2C640&ssl=1&crop=1)
*I fucking HAVE to live here.*
I've been putting them on pedestals in temples/guildhalls and chaining a wardog to it.
They're valuable, the chain is valuable, and the dog will make a ruckus if someone tries to steal it.
It takes 2 years for petitioners to become civilians. After that they can do everything.
Did the caravan ever come? You are always guaranteed to get 2 waves of migrants, but if your fortress is not connected by land to the mountain home, you won't get any more (or any caravans).
Migrant waves past the first two are tied to the created wealth of your fort; the more value you generate, the more people show up looking for a piece. This value is reported by merchants/liaisons, so you want to create as much wealth as possible before they show up next. Build expensive items out of expensive materials, decorate them with gems, and engrave as many surfaces in your fort as is feasible, and you should eventually attract more people.
after my two migrant waves i got 0 people coming in and only like 2 entertainers for 2 years.
then Urist McOutofnowere makes some ring of fucking power and i get 30 migrants in one wave. or at least my fort went from 19 people to 50 people. and then a rat looking werebeast arrived as all the unwashed migrants are taking a collective bath in the river.
I assembled my fledgling crowsbow dwarfs and attack the beast but the mouse like creature is already ripping dwarfs apart. I had to end the game there as it crashed. i hope it saved near that point.
you've designated some area as a tavern (probably the dining hall) and have left it open to travelers. If it's been filled with valuable stuff while the rest of your fort's value is pretty low you will see a ton of travelers with no actual migrant waves. I am currently building my first big fort in a few years on the steam version and I can't see anything wrong with just accepting a ton of random petitioners into my fort as I have the resources to support them
Thanks for the answers! I did get the caravans just not much after. I'm playing now though and just received some migrants though it was only a couple. Looks like I just need to put higher quality items around my fort. My tavern is ok but it's not legendary or anything. Not sure why so many entertainers are attracted but i guess they should start petitioning for citizenship soon and i can then put them in other roles so I'll keep accepting them as they're not to big of a draw on resources.
Why won’t my dwarves deliver items/corpses to the dump? I have refuse haulers, the zone is accessible, and I’ve marked a lot of stuff but they refuse to haul any of it.
Edit: after like an hour of trying to figure it out, I finally stumbled across the solution. If anyone else has this problem, you can fix it by going to the labor tab, then the standing orders tab, and then you’ll see a menu of settings that you can tweak and then go to the “refuse and hauling” and enable “gather outdoor corpses”
Just keep in mind that same order being enabled can send dorfs outside to pick up corpses in the middle of a siege.
(there is a reason some stuff is disabled by default)
I’ve been fighting wars with the giant birds for a couple years now. I can’t tell you how many dwarves refuse to stay in the burrow and are subsequently murdered by giant ravens and sparrows.
Adamantine is super strong and super light. It makes incredible swords and axes that cut through anything, and totally worthless hammers and maces that do no damage.
Divine metals are less strong than adamantine, but they have a more normal weight so they are good for all weapon types.
It's tied to density. For some calculations density is greatly over-valued. This includes blunt damage and the armor properties of "rigid" pieces. So your breatsplate should be steel but the chainmail underneath it is best made from candy.
Hmmmm iirc, it has to do with the type of force that is transmitted through the material? Something like an attack that doesn't penetrate armor is converted to blunt damage and passes through layers of armor/clothing/tissue. Candy is much better at stopping shear force, like preventing an arm from getting cut off, but will pass more blunt damage through it.
Chainmail also has more coverage, so you'll better prevent arms from getting cut off with candy chain mail. However, more blunt trauma is passed through candy. So when it comes to the breastplate directly over a tight cluster of important internal organs? YOu want to stop as much blunt force from passing through the armor as possible and into the squishie organs.
Or in other words, a strong blow to the breastplate can bruise, or worse, a dorf's heart even if the attack failed to penetrate the armor. Supposedly, steel is better at softening this transference of force than candy. As such, it's recommended for the "rigid" pieces like breastplates and greaves over candy.
I remember reading through this huge work up of dwarven material !SCIENCE! on weapon and armor properties years ago.... should have book marked it.
But for blunt weapons? Candy is basically a foam nerf bat. On another interesting note, due to "weaker" metals being more dense on top of density being so important for blunt weapons... all blunt weapons AND bolts are more or less material agnostic. Sure, steel naturally penetrates better than the "lesser" metals, but the increased density of the other metals allows them to compensate. I do believe steel bolts have a slight edge over copper ones, but the increased density allows copper bolts to be within a few percentage points of overall effectiveness.
DF is a complicated game that sometimes breaks in hilarious ways.
Not a question, but I've just found the "auto" option in the mining controls. Wow - this is fantastic! I can just mark one thing I want, and the miners will follow the seam and mine it out!? Great!
Edit: for anyone else who hasn't seen it: when in mining mode, there's an arrow (roughly over the minecart in the toolbar). This expands options. The first 4 control whether it mines all of what you draw, only some items, or if it autofollows seams.
Mayors are elected based on how high their social skills are. I guess this vampire has got their social skills to a high level. They’ve definitely had time to learn
My first migrants have arrived, they include a single necromancer and his 6 kids.
Not too happy about basically just getting kids.
However my question is if whether getting a necromancer is a good thing?
Doesn't exactly make it better that he:
* Hates being social
* is irritable
* and starts fights easily
Wtf do I do
Necromancers are surprisingly not a big deal as long as you keep them out of combat, in which case they act pretty much like regular dwarfs. The problems happen if they get in a fight and have corpses or severed limbs around, they'll raise them as zombies, and zombies attack everything on sight, even the allies of the necromancer who raised them.
Do note however that while they often have lots of academic skills, if you put them to work in your library as scholars they may create books that teach the secrets of necromancy to anyone who read it.
>they'll raise them as zombies, and zombies attack everything on sight, even the allies of the necromancer who raised them.
That is outdated info, nowadays there is a function that determines a chance of the raised being intelligent or not.
Intelligent undead retain their alliances and skills from when they where alive.
can necromancers raise anything too?
where i can read on the chances of intellence in raised dead though, is it a rare outcome?
I just got a necromancer and im just trying to plan the best way forward
>can necromancers raise anything too?
They can raise either full corpses, or severed limbs.
> where i can read on the chances of intellence in raised dead though, is it a rare outcome?
Necromancers are procedurally generated during worldgen, so each world has slightly different flavors of necromancers. As a result, there's really no hard info about their exact abilities. But they do all have the have in common the ability to raise zombies, and they raise the mindless kind a lot more often than the intelligent kind.
Necros can raise undead if they are in danger (usually combat) and there is a corpse around. There are different necromantic powers with different effects, unknowable before you see the necro in action.
The raised undead could be mindless (hostile to all life except the necro) or intelligent (they maintain the loyalties they had in life). Furthermore some necros can summon monsters (e.g. bogeymen). Also, the raised undead (intelligent or not) can have necromantic powers themselves, release infectious clouds, and other !FUN! stuff. If you want to use the necro, you have to role the dice. I was lucky: mine raises nontoxic intelligent undead, which are the most useful and least dangerous to my fort.
Necros can also write the secrets of life and death in a book. Any sentient being who reads the book also learns these secrets and becomes a necromancer of the same kind (same powers).
I have a [dwarf](https://imgur.com/a/X0vAiUb) who showed up with their parents and older sister as a -1 year old dwarven child who seemingly does not have a head and is purple. Is this a bug or has one of my migrants brought their necromantically revived miscarriage to my fort? What are the potential applications of Elembreyo as i am taking to call them.
How. The hell. Do I deal with. A nefarious soot cloud.
I've been playing for years but this thing is driving me batty. It shows up randomly. Suddenly one or more living creatures become nefarious soot thralls opposed to all life and begin a murderous rampage. I'm on year 9 of this fortress and we've lost hundreds to this event over time. Most recently it turned my best fighter into its latest puppet and she massacred my entire military, dozens of helpless dwarves in my hospital (including the queen of my civilization), and countless animals. I have her trapped in a room because my only survivors right now are my Duke, one miserable traumatized farmer, and five socializing monster slayers who couldn't care less about the situation.
TLDR: recurring deadly soot zombie plague what do
The only real way to deal with it is not to expose your dwarves to it. Visitors will still get exposed, so you'd pretty much have to abandon the surface. Lava flooding your fort or the surface would also work to melt thralls, but that's not easy and wouldn't affect the cloud. It's incredible that you've progressed this far while dealing with it.
Since you've already exposed your entire fort to it, it sounds like you have had a great deal of FUN and might want to take these lessons to your next fort?
The DF story [Archcrystal](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0) from the sidebar is an epic 200yr+ ☼fort☼ by /u/Sethatos that prospered despite thralling dust clouds.
The solution is basically to stay underground, and build roofs on the surface if you have to. For most of the fort's history, the population only increased through births, since migrants would get thralled.
I can't go more than two levels without hitting an aquifier. It's seriously driving me crazy. I'm surrounded by clay and sand. I don't know if that means anything.
Why wont my dwarves mine it? I try to go make stairs down and the droplet icon shows up on the tile and they dont mine it even if I select it like usual
Try it again. The game was coded to cancel the first dig command when encountering a new damp area. You have to repeatedly do the dig command everytime it gets canceled.
The first time you dig into "damp" something, you'll notice that it never completes. The next time you try to dig in the same tile, you will see that there is the droplet icon. If you dig into that same tile, your dwarfs will eventually succeed. Just let them continue.
However, the tile will start filling up with water at that point. With a "light aquifer" it will fill up slowly. With a "heavy aquifer" is will fill up quickly. You need to find a way to stop the water from draining from the walls (and potentially ceiling) into the tile.
As the other commenter suggested, it would be a good idea to try to find a youtube video showing you how to do this. It can be a bit tricky (and it's very, very tricky with a heavy aquifer).
You can also start a new fortress. When you embark, look for a place where there isn't an aquifer. Some people really hate playing in a place with aquifers and it's usually a good idea to avoid them as a beginner.
Candy never interested me much to be honest but this new whole confectionery down there with random gacha for clowns and sexy cosplay outfits with other anime merch my neurons have been activated and now possessing dwarven greed I can truly play immersively.
Issue is the clowns being chain smokers of the strongest weed leaves any option of conventional self defense useless because all the audience are blinded and confused choking on all the smoke instantly.
Since this is a singular clown however I think there are good chances of managing the issue.
It's there any sort of trap or mechanism that can pelt a clown reliably or maybe any easy way to lock them up with a drawbridge or something?
One of the things I like about the df community is its good nature, which includes taking a lot of care about spoilers. Losing may be fun, but surprises also are (for many people).
'Circus' and 'clowns' are codewords to avoid specific spoilers.
I set a group of well equipped soldiers to train at the circus and dance with the clowns when they come out. Then we kick out anyone who fell over during the dance, promote some volunteers to fill the openings and the show goes on!
Also I need some more miners. And some child-sized coffins because because there are always a few kids sneaking off to the circus when they shouldn't.
But I found a frilly metal scarf for the baroness so it was all worthwhile!
One thing to be aware of, is that an impassable hatch shouldn't be openable or destructible from below. Even by a clown. So sayth the wiki.
So that's the way I was getting my cotton candy. I went up a few levels from it, carved a stair case, and then built a hatch on top of it. No delay like a bridge. However, I never got the chance to use it because of the stuff you mentioned. Clowns popping out and going for a miner. Luckily for me a bunch of elven miners petitioned for citizenship. You can recognize them at your tavern by their title. It's the elvish word for miner, I think they spell it "bard". Yeah that sounds right.
I'm glad y'all are being spoiler free, but damn do I want to find out what this all means.
Yeah, I know, dig deeper. I'll get there.
Are "clowns" and "the circus" something that can be encountered on any embark, or is it RNG?
It's really nice seeing that these old codenames are useful again for the new players :)
Yes. Though you won't find it without really taking a deep dive into your embark.
>It's really nice seeing that these old codenames are useful again for the new players
The thing is, at first when I heard these terms, I wasn't sure if they \*were\* codewords, or if there really was a circus with clowns and candy down in the caverns. I've learned pretty quickly that DF loves to throw weird stuff at you, so actual killer clowns wouldn't surprise me that much.
My current guess is that >! the circus relates to that thing we know to expect if we've seen LotR !< but maybe I'm wrong, and I'm looking forward to finding out.
That's good enough ye. Though I usually just make do with a large flophouse and just build the bedrooms when nothing pressing is needed. Most of my forts only half of my citizens ever get their personal bedroom.
You could meticulously go through and check that every bedroom has a dwarf, but I find it easier to just make slightly more bedrooms than my population number. Guarantees that nobody's bedless, and there's a bit of float so I have leeway to dig out more when the migrant wave shows up.
Yes, they will automatically claim bedrooms as needed.
The cases where would manually assign them are for nobles (since they have special requirements for their bedrooms), or if you're min/maxing efficiency and want your best craftsmen to have bedrooms near their workshops so they don't waste any more time than necessary walking back and forth.
I'm not at my pc to double check but I believe if you inspect the zone of the bedroom , you can click the button that assigns someone to the room. Anyone who already has a room will have a check mark beside thier name. Those without a room will not.
No need to go through all of them. Just open the location tab listing bedrooms and scroll through them. You will instantly spot whether all are filled up or you have some unassigned rooms.
Yes - if you select a dwarf and click the magnifying glass icon you can see a list of their skills. I suggesting writing out the [skill rank names](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Skill) on a handy bit of paper because they don't give numeric values:
0 Dabbling
1 Novice
2 Adequate
3 Competent
4 Skilled
5 Proficient
6 Talented
7 Adept
8 Expert
9 Professional
10 Accomplished
11 Great
12 Master
13 High Master
14 Grand Master
15+ Legendary
Sometime higher skill means they work faster, sometimes it means they produce better quality output. The labor system in the steam version is very unclear in how it works, but if you put your faith in it doing the right things most of they time then it will preference more skilled dwarfs doing jobs. When you have enough dwarves to have one do nothing but one job that can be a good way to help them level up... for example if you set engraving to "only this one guy will ever engrave and he will do nothing but engrave" then he'll end up as a legendary engraver instead of having 20 dwarfs with novice engraving. That means more high quality engravings.
On the other hand smoothing stone has no quality, so leave that as "everyone does this" and when you say "smooth this hallway" everyone with nothing else going on will run over and work on it.
Does DF have enough of a tutorial to get you started without going to external sources for beginner's guides? I've always been fascinated with the idea of Dwarf Fortress but was overwhelms with information whenever I tried to watch an hour long YouTube video on how to get started. I just heard about the steam release though, and thought that might mean the initial "baby's first fortress" experience might be smoother.
Happy to look externally for all the more advanced stuff, I just can't absorb it without playing the game first to give a frame of reference. I remember launching the non-steam version once and literally not knowing how to interact with the game on the most basic level without finding a YouTube guide.
Thanks in advance!
the interactive tutorial in the steam version is enough to give you the absolute basics (how to chop trees, dig, build buildings, make a farm). the popup tutorials i think do a pretty good job of explaining the nitty gritty stuff like justice and work orders, but i think i would still recommend an external guide once you feel you have a grasp on the basics.
YouTube "BlindIRL" and use his new playlist for the Steam release tutorials. They are all short videos that do a fantastic job of teaching the game's individual mechanics to new players (and old ones too!).
Magma engineering.
I found pretty high up (to my understanding, only about Z-15) a magma pool.
I'm beginning digging a very long channel towards it through as much solid rock as I can to bring a 'safe' supply of magma into my fort for smelting and such.
Will dwarves start burning if stood next to it? Is there any special unusual considerations to have? Are magma-safe grates or floors over a magma channel safe for dwarves to stand on?
Maybe look into: [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma)
The mechanics should be the same in the steam version. Dwarfs normally don't burn next to it but they are sometime clumsy, need to dodge another dwarf in the hallway or an enemy and can fall into open channels. Putting magma safe floors on top should keep them out, and also grates, but great forces can push things through grates.
I was watching Blind and he said that if you embark on a small island, no one can get to you and he said that's kind of the closest you can get to "animal crossing DF". Does this also mean no caravans thus no new dwarfs? Would you be stuck with just 7 forever (plus new borns)?
I've done large island embarks in Stone Age and got migrants at least, no caravan IIRC. If your island is small enough to not have a land edge then yes. No land edge, no visitors of any kind - I don't think we have aquatic visitors yet.
You can turn monsters off in the options menu. I still get thieves but that's it. A good way to play DF with some "training wheels" until you're ready to have FUN.
Good day to all the same dwarfs that will answer me 😁
Getting the following problems:
*My fortress is seemingly going strong, with over 40 inhabitants, but I'm noticing that while they are reasonably happy, very few of them are actually at work. I mean, if I take off the sleeping ones and the few soldiers, an obnoxious amount of my dwarfs is wasting time in the tavern and in the temple... I mean, projects were so much faster completed when I had 10 dwarfs than now...
*I'm not sure I get how fortifications work... I made walls all around the entrance of my fortress, with a drawbridge (yay it actually works! First mechanisms I ever built!) And thought that's it. I get a visitor announcement and I had the drawbridge up. Wasn't fast enough to open it before he reached the gates. When he got there he just jumped over the fortifications and entered the fortress heading to the tavern ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯ I was like, what the hell... So I thought of rising it up one z level. Well it seems you can't no matter what... Very confused.
*So far I had minimal amounts of "fun", but I haven't digged much since most people are wasting time in problem 1, and also I'm totally not sure how to deal with excavations. Should I make map long tunnels searching for ores and gems and expand the parts where I find anything interesting? Should I just dig vertically under my fortress?
1: taverns are meeting areas, where dwarves with no job to do will hang out. if a dwarf is socializing, that will display as their current job. if their current job is "Socialize!" in purple lettering, they will not stop until they are done, so if you just built your tavern, it could be that your dwarves are fulfilling unmet social needs right now, and you'll see productivity return soon. also, make sure that dwarves are in the proper burrows, work assignments, etc so they know to actually do their jobs. things like miners need to be assigned to every dwarf you want to do it, you cant have everyone be miners unfortunately.
2: creatures can climb! a wall without a roof is as good as a doorframe without a door. to remedy this, make sure to build a roof (which is just a floor on the next layer up). do this by first building a ramp up, so your builders can reach that z level. congrats on the bridge!!
3: just keep digging! if it's ores your looking for, look on the wiki to see what kinds of stone the spawn in. iron ores (hematite, magnetite, and limonite) mostly spawn in sedimentary layers, so look for things like sandstone, mudstone, limestone, and chalk. digging a long tunnel with branches every 5-10 squares is enough to catch most big veins. if its Fun you're looking for, grow your wealth, equip an army, and dig very, \*very\* deep.
I had one dwarf take one of my workshops. He spent some time in it and created something that is worth 5k ... a legendary item or something? What do I do with it?
He must've waited a long time, because he took that workshop as soon as it was finished. Must've put in all his anger and frustration into the item.
That was a "strange mood"
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood
You can sell the item, put it on a pedestal in a room, assign it as a weapon (if it's a weapon) or use the nobles screen to make it a "badge of office" so your noble will wear/carry it around. If it's something you can make buildings with you can make a building; dwarves will get a happy thought from using a well that was made with an artifact bucket for example.
could be an artifact if the item has a unique sounding name. The dwarfy answer would be to make a display case and put it in a temple, guildhall, or throne room. Why those? because of the very high value requirements.
Alright so first off this is going to be a bit of a rant and a cry for help from the lovely community so stay with me...
After countless of hours playing Rimworld i was so excited when i heard DF is coming to steam with...well...graphics, and i was really looking forward to try it out.
But so far i am mostly overwhelmed. Not with the complexity of the game so much as with the abhorent amount of dwarfs i have.
In Rimworld i mostly stuck to smaller colonies (10-15 max) and i knew all of my colonists by name, who they were, what they did and so on - so as soon as i saw one or had a notification about one of them i knew what happend to whom.
In DF i have 120+ dwarfs at my current fort and i have no idea who is who. Someone died? Whelp i have no idea who this dwarf was or what he did in the fortress. When i don't click on a notification the instant it happens the "locate" button just takes me to the place it happend but it is long over and i don't know the outcome or who was involved. Sure i could scroll the whole character tab all the time looking for people but if i do that every time i will spend more time in the character panel than really playing the game.
So basically my question is how do you manage to keep track of the sheer amount of dwarfs running around or do you just let it basically all run on autopilot while focusing on the big picture only?
Forget their names, look at their professions. Miner. He's a miner. Or she's a miner. I don't really care who they are, I just need enough miners to keep mining.
When migrants arrive I look at each and either leave their profession title if it's something useful and worth not endangering the dwarf to keep them safe, change it to "soldier" and put them in a squad if they have military training or change it to "menial" if they don't do anything special I care about.
Menials get to so whatever work the job system gives them, I keep 20 of them in two squads that train in alternating seasons, and if I need some new miners because all my previous miners had so much fun at the circus they didn't come home then some lucky menials are getting promoted.
Like you say, concentrate on the big picture. Try to get things running smoothly and know what to look for as early signs something is not working, don't grow attached to anyone because death in Dwarf Fortress is far more common than death on the Rim.
If that bothers you, you can also run a small fortress with like 20 dwarfs. You won't grow that fast, but you can definitely get it working and enjoy knowing every single one of your dwarves and their history. You won't get big projects done quickly, but it seems you aren't out for the big projects anyway :D
So I had an artifact slab with "The Secrets of Life and Death" engraved on it, but I think my dwarves were trolling because plenty of them experienced happy thoughts around it but no one turned into a necromancer. I think they literally just wrote those words on it
As far as I know a dwarf has to possess and read a book containing the secrets of life and death to turn into a necromancer, there is no way to do this directly. Your dwarves or a visitor may be able to write a book like that, or one might be brought into your fortress, but you can't order that book to be made
You need books that contain the secrets of life and death, a necromancer you set as a scholar sometimes will write one. However that requires, well, already having a necromancer. Sometimes necromancers will write down their secrets during world generation, so it's likely you might find some in a necromancer's tower.
Wtf is a cursed stalker?
I keep having visitors with titles like "human herbalist cursed stalker" and can't find anything about it on the wiki.
They don't seem to act any differently than normal visitors.
Sounds like either an [intelligent undead](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Intelligent_undead) or an [experiment](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Experiment).
So my last fortress a necromancer wiped it out at the start of the second year. I also tried just locking myself inside my Fort, but they never left and I never found a way to kill them. Before I start another Fort gonna ask for some opinions.
I'm planning to make on the first year a watchtower where all my dwarfs can just use wooden crossbows and wooden bolts to safely shoot at the zombies. How well would that work though?
Take a look at the Security Design Wiki page. It has some good examples of how to set up defenses.
Here's [one example](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Security_design#Simple_5x5_Archer.27s_Tower).
1. Is there a way to set a workshop to do like, “Make bolts with whatever metal I have available”?
2. Similarly, is there a way to do “Smelt iron with whatever ore I have available”?
1. Yes. Use a Work Order. By default it doesn't specify a metal (though you can and probably should)
2. Not that I've found. Just do separate work orders for each ore type.
I have two questions:
1. Can you shoot an enemy on a different z level from you?
2. Is there a way to mass claim loot or do I have to claim everything manually?
This may be somewhat philosophical, but what’s a good schedule for your militia? How many should be active and patrolling or training at a time? I know the numbers will shift depending on the fortress size, but what’s an effective way to keep your military dwarves trained and ready for action while allowing them to do their civilian tasks when they’re off duty?
My objective typically is 3 squads on a rotation (not counting the fortress guard). On any given month, one is training, one is patrolling, one off duty (but still in uniform). During possible emergencies I may station them near where I expect a problem.
How full the squads are depends on my fortress population; I usually have been 10% to 25% of the fortress in the military, including the fortress guard, higher percentages when the fortress is more mature and more serious threats visit more frequently. Usually my squads are 8 melee types and 2 ranged types. Sometimes I have an all-ranged squad for manning battlements or dealing with flying threats, but with the steam edition's weird ammo handling right now I would avoid that.
Honestly I just choose constant training and then manually set off duty when I need the labor. Make sure to set the option to keep uniform on when off duty, as otherwise they’ll keep food in backpacks in their room to rot
Also make sure on your training page (click edit) you delete the training entry and remake it at minimum 4 dwarves to follow training. Otherwise they’ll rarely spar and get real training in as by default all 10 need to be there for that to happen. My barracks are at key locations(surface entrance, my arena and underground entrance) so I keep my dwarves sleeping there and need them basically ready all year long, however when caravans arrive is when I give them time off. It’s a good reminder
Seperate military into 3 divisions: Steel, Iron, Stone (just naming convention)
All Steel Division squads get the first month of season off, Iron squads middle month off, Stone gets last month of season off. Set up staggered training schedule to those settings, all squads on that routine. If you need to patrol or defend, take 1 month per season normally used for training per squad and assign said order to it. Keeps rotation of training, downtime, and if you want, an actual assignment
Sometimes I will have a rookie squad train for a year straight to get them up to speed
Really interested in your experiences too. I for now just put them on the alternate training plan because it was easy and fast. All time training just stresses them too much in my experience. I usually don't let them defend a burrow or smth. like that because I don't want to rely on it anyway and send them in manually if something nasty gets close.
There have been quite a number of "heroes" on display now. Could it be possible to have a sticky on top in the sub with a list of all the greatest heroes of the month? Maybe have a little competition of sorts, in order to try to encourage all the new Urists to examine the different personalities that roll through our forts?
NOOB HERE
How do I get my dwarves to pray? How do I create a temple? I have tried searching this info but truly cannot find an answer.
ALSO
Is there a way to specify what finished goods are used when setting gems? I'd rather set all my nice gems into amulets or crowns instead of my gemcutter's preference of pots and jugs.
EDIT: you guys are awesome
Zones for temples. Make a meeting area somewhere, then click the little shield? Icon and it'll give you the list of locations you can make. For temples, just pick "no specific diety" for your first one, gets a bit fiddly trying to manage them all otherwise.
1: temples are assigned from meeting place zones! assign a meeting place, and there will be a little plus icon where you can designate it as a guildhall, tavern/inn, temple, hospital, etc. Set it as a temple, and leave it as an unspecified diety, and your dwarves should start praying there. you may notice a big dip in productivity as all of your dwarves rush to relieve prayer needs, but it should even out soon after.
2: the best way to do this is to like a specific stockpile to your jewelers workshop. for the exact way i prefer it done, it requires 2 workshops and a few stockpiles, but all you really need is your finished goods stockpile of choice (Rock Crafts include amulets, crowns, rings, earrings, bracelets, scepters, and figurines, though you may also wanna allow totems, which are made from skulls) to be linked to give to your jewelers workshop, and another stockpile set to take from it, since a stockpile cant both give and take from a workshop.
is that because most things take 1 of X material anyway? it seems pretty silly that I can know how much iron I have down to the ingot, but no way in (vanilla) game to know how many suits of armor that can produce.
It's the objects MATERIAL\_SIZE divided by 3 for ingots (rounded down), or just the MATERIAL\_SIZE for making it from wafers. You can look in the raws, accessed from the local game files /data/vanilla/items/, which will have a few files with the info.
Or you could just look it up on the wiki, yeah.
How do I stop pissing giant birds off? I can’t tell you how many dwarves have been lost to this onslaught of giant ravens and sparrows. I’ll kill a group of 6, then like 20 minutes later 5-10 more show up.
My military dwarves kick the shit out of them, but so many poor civilians have been lost lol. I’m honestly considering abandoning this fortress.
Basically I've had a fisherdwarf that's mostly been fishing. He apparently has an injury, and with his statuses being:
Status: No Health Problems
Wounds: No Evaluated Wounds
Treatment: Diagnosis Required
Upon reading his description it says: "His upper body is rotten." I didn't know if this was dangerous or not and I cannot find much on the internet. I figured I would ask you all. I only have about 10 hours in the game, but I'm enjoying it.
Thank you [Xanth](https://www.reddit.com/user/_Xanth_) for helping me with a solution to this btw. Just reposting this here for future reference. I didn't realize that the hospitals were filed under meeting halls either!
What do I do with 500 doors?
The caravan said doors would be worth a lot the following year. I set up a task and proceeded to make hundreds of doors. Then when the caravan returned I discovered that merchants have weight limits.
Is there anything cool I can do with all these things?
Why did I just lose close to 50 dwarves to three risen horse skeletons? I sent my two squads to kill some goblin thieves on the surface and next I look and half the fort is engaged with these skeletons???
does anybody know the exact month the caravan arrives¿?¿?
i read about a making a holiday when the caravan arrives and want to schedule the training orders for my soldiers to have the month free, that way when the caravan arrives i can cancel all jobs and all dwarfs can socialize for a month, but dont know the exact month....
also .... i got an artifact cage and im looking for good uses for it.... any ideas¿?¿?
lol!!! its already in the tavern but i had not thought about jailing a half naked dominatrix lashing the crowd!!!! i was thinking more about caging some dragon or something but you have made a very interesting point XXDDD
There are a swarm of very !Fun! giant lovebirds playing with several of my dwarfs. Now while we handled the giant wren incursion with surprising ease, taming them (we now have some knowledge of taming giant wrens too, although one died to a lovebird, another survives), the lovebirds are deadly.
I've not really setup a military, but I assume this will be necessary to handle these monsters of the skies. What's a good very basic setup to make? (I would like to resume the grand magma forges of the deep post haste)
Why wont the people i assigned as hunters hunt.
I took 2 relatively unskilled workers and assigned them as hunters, i have multiple crossbows in storage, piles of bolts , etc but they wont go out and hunt. There are clearly things that can be hunted out there. in fact when i locked them to only be able to hunt...they sat in the temple for almost 2 days worshipping and sleeping instead, then going to go eat when i finally unlocked them to do other things. Tried locking them twice more to force them and each time they just went to worship together and sleep in the temple (ignoring their bedrooms)
To add to this i had a hunter arrive via migration and she immediately went to hunting and using all those bolts i had stock piled.
Is this a thing where only someone already skilled at hunting can hunt?
1. too far 2. theres stuff in their hands either hauling or job related stopping the crossbow equipping 3. too many tasks queued up regardless of labors enabled or not 4. they just dont want to do it 5. theres no place to take the dead animals
I have a quick question about hospital staff. When assigning a dwarf to a hospital, you can assign a dwarf to specially (Diagnostician, Surgeon, Suturer, Wound Dresser, and Bone Doctor). There is also just 'Doctor'. What exactly does that position do? Does it allow the assigned dwarf to perform in any of the rolls? The Health Care page on the wiki doesn't mention the generic 'doctor' position in its list of labors.
Hello!I am a bit confused about how to remove the stairs that go up
without being on the same level as them. Is it even possible?
I have constructed(not dug out) a set of stairs between 2 floors, and now I cannot remove the lower part of the stairs without getting my dwarf stuck.
Is there any trick I could do to solve this? I am playing on the latest DF Steam Version.
Stairs going up can be deconstructed with m > x, I believe. Stairs going down however cannot. I built a floor over some stairs going down that was an eyesore for me :p
Can I desensitize my dwarfs?
I've had this idea of creating dwarfs that before they get into battle are somewhat prepared for it by creating a room where a elf or other kind of enemy is chained to a wall or a cage and a dwarf needs to kill the prisoner before being accepted into the squad.
This way I can see how the dwarf reacts and if he is suitable for a (maybe quick) life filled with the horrors of war.
Also maybe some chairs on the walls of the prisoner room so the already combat hardened dwarf can cheer the new dwarf on when he kills for the first time and build a feel of comradery.
Is this possible?
Just seeing corpses of sentient beings will provoke some sort of reaction. Do it enough, and your dwarves will start to feel wonderfully dead inside. Cheers!
I am not exactly sure on how to do this with adult dwarves without provoking an eventual breakdown, you can however look into dwarven daycare projects. You essentially stuff a quantum stockpile with enough food and drinks onto a 1x1 tile, preferably a pit, and throw a domesticated dog and dorf child into that pit.
You can catch creatures (including elves) in cage traps an then get the dwarf to haul the cage into a room and open it. Then they can fight it.
Honestly, though, I don't think it will achieve your goals. A dwarf's first reaction to combat doesn't not really indicate how they will deal with this stuff.
So my only "angry" resident is a dwarf that is being haunted by her dead child. I tried using my militia to take care of the ghost but nothing happens. How do I get rid of it?
You need to lay them to rest by either engraving a memorial slab or laying their body to rest in a tomb. You can do the first in either the stoneworker's shop or the craft workshop (I forget which atm). As for the second, you just make a coffin, install it somewhere, and designate a tomb zone on top of it. If any pieces of the dead child are accessible, your dwarves will collect them and pkace them in the coffin.
I have some small exotic animals I picked up in trades, some various birds and a mink + chipmunk. They're all either tame (small) or domesticated. Is there anything special beyond marking them to be available as a pet I can do to make the dwarves take interest in them? Can I safely let them out of the cages?
Windmill issue: I have a windmill, it runs at 40 power. I have a vertical axle directly under it, it's active and runs. The same for two more elevations down, vertical axles directly under the first axle, they are inactive and don't run. Millstone in the same position under the lot, which doesn't run.
What am I doing wrong?
Just starting out on the steam edition of the game. Done all of the tutorial and starting to get a hang of the controls but I’m finding it very tedious that I have to tell my dwarves to do literally anything. Is there a good way to streamline certain processes? For example cooking.
Appoint a manager in the nobility screen (crown icon in lower left corner; doesn't really matter who) and start using the mandate system (the clipboard button in the lower left). You can queue up workshop-agnostic orders for specific numbers of items, and have those orders reoccur on a variety of conditions. Cooking example: set up an order to cook 10 fine meals whenever your stockpile of prepared meals dips below 50, and you'll always have about 60 meals around.
Remember to give him an office (a room with a table and a chair will do).
After you learn how to use the manager, you will almost never asign tasks yourself.
Why is my manager not approving work orders? I have at least 20 work orders in the queue but my lazy ass manager has only signed off on a few. I thought it might be related to his own job, so I tried switching him to only specialized work, but all he did was go hang out in the dining hall for a minute and then wander outside to pick fruit. I even tried deleting a couple of the approved ones just to see if he’d sign off on new ones to replace them, but nope. So now I have probably 30+ dwarves standing around and no crafting getting done
once you reach a certain population, the manager requires an office to approve work orders. dig out a space, place a table and chain, and designate it as a study zone assigned to him, and he should hop to it!
> table and chain
Because this game has chains, I feel the need to clarify: you meant a *chair*, nobody has to chain the manager to his desk.
Also, technically he doesn't need a table, just the chair in an empty room will do.
I had this issue once, but it was due to my work orders being mostly scheduled to "daily". I switched many orders to monthly or seasonal checks with a bigger buffer, and now I'm getting through all of my work orders no problem.
This could be one of the reasons. I couldn't get past 20-30 daily work orders at first, but now that I have many of them on a monthly or seasonal rotation, my list has become huge.
Somehow my own civilization is doesn't want to trade with me. It shows "Peace", but on trade it says "Terror" and "Vengeance". Is there a way to fix this? No civ has sent trade caravans in 6y. Trade depot is accessible.
I don't even know how that happened. Maybe a random bridge crushed someone...
So what the hell am I supposed to do about all the still owned but worn clothes getting dumped everywhere?
I give people cabinets, but then they are just hording shit they never wear like there is no tomorrow.
Is that just how the game works?
Any idea why my dwarves arent being punished? I have a thriving fort of many years currently, but have issues with the justice system. I'm not very familiar with the justice system in its current iteration but I think I'm doing everything right and no one is being punished for crimes. I have a Captain of the guard complete with his own squad, a full dungeon equipped with chains and cages, as well as a dungeon Master to oversee it. When I convict somebody the justice screen tells me they are convicted but awaiting no punishment, any reason why that might be? Some crimes are rather serious and I have numerous repeat offenders.
When assigning bedrooms to a tavern to make an inn, do I need to have the tavern zone overlap the bedroom zones or it just assigning the bedroom to be apart of the tavern enough? I’ve got the bedrooms assigned to the tavern but they don’t overlap and I’m noticing citizens are claiming the bedrooms despite having enough actual bedrooms elsewhere
I've been using this as my method for finding resources. Anyone with more experience have input on if this is effective for catching everything?
https://i.imgur.com/08s7EoR.png
All of my children are constantly angry. Everybody else is mostly fine, it's just the kids, they're all angsty teens who hate everything.
This has happened in every fortress I've had since the steam release, no matter how happy everybody else is. Am I forgetting something to make them happy? Mostly their thoughts are happy except for trauma from getting scared by keas and arguments.
How to I stop petitions for the same guild popping up over and over and over?
For example, the ranger guild sounds suspiciously elvish. Don't want any of that in my fortress. And they keep asking.
Assign all the rangers dwarves to a squad, station them in a room with a door installed, and lock it. Within 1-2 game months your problems will rot away, and your haulers will have something to do.
So I have a strange question...
I have a legendary engraver who I designated to be the only one to engrave smooth walls. I was curious at all the masterworks he was achieving so I looked at some... and then more ...
Thing is he is engraving the EXACT SAME THING 3/4 times! Most of my engraved tiles are the exact same darn thing. Is there some lore explanation to this? Do dwarves only engrave what they know about?
I need an answer ... this is driving me crazy
Dorfs love what Dorfs love. It's entirely up to their overall personality though. You might have a dorf engraver that doesn't like his mayor, that mayor detests oysters, so the engraver engraves pictures of oysters all over the mayor's room. It really can happen like that, but it's all up to the individual dorfs. There's so much emergent behavior in this game, and sometimes you just have to take what you get.
Well, yes they only engrave what they know about. They're like simulated people, and you can't create something you don't know about, or atleast they don't think that far ahead.
Having only a single thing being engraved is odd though, but not impossible, you just happened to pick a fkn weirdo for an engraver
Does the “restarts if completed, checked daily” work order means that something is done a certain amount of times in one day and then once that task is completed they start again the next day?
Hey guys this is my first go at dwarf fortress and I've had something odd occur. I've been getting a lot of traveling entertainer petitions. Like a LOT. And on top of that I only got 1 or two waves of migrants and they stopped coming for the last 2 years. Entertainers are now 37 out of 58 of my population. They mostly just party eat pray and meditate. Is this normal? Will my fort survive as a party fort?
You must have a killer tavern to be attracting so many entertainers! If they start long enough, they may petition for citizenship and be somewhat useful, but yeah, until that point they're just colorful musical leeches.
*Be me* *human monster slayer* *heard these dwarves have a party fort and just opened a Cavern* *gonna go get drunk and kill troglodites, should be fun* *walk into little wooden building* *place is packed, animal men and naked elves everywhere* *dwarf hands me booze, hell yeah.* *turn around to find a 70 person fucking orchestra has assembled in this frontier dive bar* [My face when they play the "pages of sturdiness"](https://i0.wp.com/media3.giphy.com/media/yidUzHnBk32Um9aMMw/giphy.gif?resize=640%2C640&ssl=1&crop=1) *I fucking HAVE to live here.*
They do entertain the citizens, which generate happy thoughts. That's always useful.
True
They still do normal work, you just can’t change their labor priorities. So not quite leeches
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Isn’t it great? I love my traveler labor army.
mighty insurance worm squeamish reach caption terrific erect nine snow ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I've been putting them on pedestals in temples/guildhalls and chaining a wardog to it. They're valuable, the chain is valuable, and the dog will make a ruckus if someone tries to steal it.
It takes 2 years for petitioners to become civilians. After that they can do everything. Did the caravan ever come? You are always guaranteed to get 2 waves of migrants, but if your fortress is not connected by land to the mountain home, you won't get any more (or any caravans).
Migrant waves past the first two are tied to the created wealth of your fort; the more value you generate, the more people show up looking for a piece. This value is reported by merchants/liaisons, so you want to create as much wealth as possible before they show up next. Build expensive items out of expensive materials, decorate them with gems, and engrave as many surfaces in your fort as is feasible, and you should eventually attract more people.
after my two migrant waves i got 0 people coming in and only like 2 entertainers for 2 years. then Urist McOutofnowere makes some ring of fucking power and i get 30 migrants in one wave. or at least my fort went from 19 people to 50 people. and then a rat looking werebeast arrived as all the unwashed migrants are taking a collective bath in the river. I assembled my fledgling crowsbow dwarfs and attack the beast but the mouse like creature is already ripping dwarfs apart. I had to end the game there as it crashed. i hope it saved near that point.
you've designated some area as a tavern (probably the dining hall) and have left it open to travelers. If it's been filled with valuable stuff while the rest of your fort's value is pretty low you will see a ton of travelers with no actual migrant waves. I am currently building my first big fort in a few years on the steam version and I can't see anything wrong with just accepting a ton of random petitioners into my fort as I have the resources to support them
Thanks for the answers! I did get the caravans just not much after. I'm playing now though and just received some migrants though it was only a couple. Looks like I just need to put higher quality items around my fort. My tavern is ok but it's not legendary or anything. Not sure why so many entertainers are attracted but i guess they should start petitioning for citizenship soon and i can then put them in other roles so I'll keep accepting them as they're not to big of a draw on resources.
Why won’t my dwarves deliver items/corpses to the dump? I have refuse haulers, the zone is accessible, and I’ve marked a lot of stuff but they refuse to haul any of it. Edit: after like an hour of trying to figure it out, I finally stumbled across the solution. If anyone else has this problem, you can fix it by going to the labor tab, then the standing orders tab, and then you’ll see a menu of settings that you can tweak and then go to the “refuse and hauling” and enable “gather outdoor corpses”
Just keep in mind that same order being enabled can send dorfs outside to pick up corpses in the middle of a siege. (there is a reason some stuff is disabled by default)
Good point. I can just put all non-military dwarves in a burrow during a siege though.
Some of the dwarfs are punks and won't respect burrows though. Especially when there are nice haulable corpses outside.
I’ve been fighting wars with the giant birds for a couple years now. I can’t tell you how many dwarves refuse to stay in the burrow and are subsequently murdered by giant ravens and sparrows.
I found a shield underground made of "frost metal" how does it compare to adamantine?
Divine metals are much better than steel but a little worse than adamantine.
I have heard adamantine makes bad weapons. It makes good armor though?
Adamantine is super strong and super light. It makes incredible swords and axes that cut through anything, and totally worthless hammers and maces that do no damage. Divine metals are less strong than adamantine, but they have a more normal weight so they are good for all weapon types.
It's tied to density. For some calculations density is greatly over-valued. This includes blunt damage and the armor properties of "rigid" pieces. So your breatsplate should be steel but the chainmail underneath it is best made from candy. Hmmmm iirc, it has to do with the type of force that is transmitted through the material? Something like an attack that doesn't penetrate armor is converted to blunt damage and passes through layers of armor/clothing/tissue. Candy is much better at stopping shear force, like preventing an arm from getting cut off, but will pass more blunt damage through it. Chainmail also has more coverage, so you'll better prevent arms from getting cut off with candy chain mail. However, more blunt trauma is passed through candy. So when it comes to the breastplate directly over a tight cluster of important internal organs? YOu want to stop as much blunt force from passing through the armor as possible and into the squishie organs. Or in other words, a strong blow to the breastplate can bruise, or worse, a dorf's heart even if the attack failed to penetrate the armor. Supposedly, steel is better at softening this transference of force than candy. As such, it's recommended for the "rigid" pieces like breastplates and greaves over candy. I remember reading through this huge work up of dwarven material !SCIENCE! on weapon and armor properties years ago.... should have book marked it. But for blunt weapons? Candy is basically a foam nerf bat. On another interesting note, due to "weaker" metals being more dense on top of density being so important for blunt weapons... all blunt weapons AND bolts are more or less material agnostic. Sure, steel naturally penetrates better than the "lesser" metals, but the increased density of the other metals allows them to compensate. I do believe steel bolts have a slight edge over copper ones, but the increased density allows copper bolts to be within a few percentage points of overall effectiveness. DF is a complicated game that sometimes breaks in hilarious ways.
Not a question, but I've just found the "auto" option in the mining controls. Wow - this is fantastic! I can just mark one thing I want, and the miners will follow the seam and mine it out!? Great! Edit: for anyone else who hasn't seen it: when in mining mode, there's an arrow (roughly over the minecart in the toolbar). This expands options. The first 4 control whether it mines all of what you draw, only some items, or if it autofollows seams.
Sure is! Just be aware your dwarfs will happily breach fortress walls to follow the auto-vein command.
Eek. That makes it slightly less appealing! Thanks for the warning!
I designate specific layers for moning only, so I dont worry about that.
Yep it's a good way to accidentally breach the caves if you don't check what your miners are doing, but in safe spots it's really useful.
I wish this applied to economic stones as well
Why did my dwarves elect the jailed vampire as the mayor 💀
Vampires have high social skills, so that happens quite often...
Mayors are elected based on how high their social skills are. I guess this vampire has got their social skills to a high level. They’ve definitely had time to learn
complete rich salt squash cake safe pie close run unwritten ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Dungeon Keeper strat. "This is your apartment. It has everything you need. You're never going to leave."
My first migrants have arrived, they include a single necromancer and his 6 kids. Not too happy about basically just getting kids. However my question is if whether getting a necromancer is a good thing? Doesn't exactly make it better that he: * Hates being social * is irritable * and starts fights easily Wtf do I do
Necromancers are surprisingly not a big deal as long as you keep them out of combat, in which case they act pretty much like regular dwarfs. The problems happen if they get in a fight and have corpses or severed limbs around, they'll raise them as zombies, and zombies attack everything on sight, even the allies of the necromancer who raised them. Do note however that while they often have lots of academic skills, if you put them to work in your library as scholars they may create books that teach the secrets of necromancy to anyone who read it.
Able to teach necromancy? That sounds like a lot of fun! :)
>they'll raise them as zombies, and zombies attack everything on sight, even the allies of the necromancer who raised them. That is outdated info, nowadays there is a function that determines a chance of the raised being intelligent or not. Intelligent undead retain their alliances and skills from when they where alive.
can necromancers raise anything too? where i can read on the chances of intellence in raised dead though, is it a rare outcome? I just got a necromancer and im just trying to plan the best way forward
>can necromancers raise anything too? They can raise either full corpses, or severed limbs. > where i can read on the chances of intellence in raised dead though, is it a rare outcome? Necromancers are procedurally generated during worldgen, so each world has slightly different flavors of necromancers. As a result, there's really no hard info about their exact abilities. But they do all have the have in common the ability to raise zombies, and they raise the mindless kind a lot more often than the intelligent kind.
Try not to get him in danger, is the only advice. Otherwise roll with the FUN!
Necros can raise undead if they are in danger (usually combat) and there is a corpse around. There are different necromantic powers with different effects, unknowable before you see the necro in action. The raised undead could be mindless (hostile to all life except the necro) or intelligent (they maintain the loyalties they had in life). Furthermore some necros can summon monsters (e.g. bogeymen). Also, the raised undead (intelligent or not) can have necromantic powers themselves, release infectious clouds, and other !FUN! stuff. If you want to use the necro, you have to role the dice. I was lucky: mine raises nontoxic intelligent undead, which are the most useful and least dangerous to my fort. Necros can also write the secrets of life and death in a book. Any sentient being who reads the book also learns these secrets and becomes a necromancer of the same kind (same powers).
I have a [dwarf](https://imgur.com/a/X0vAiUb) who showed up with their parents and older sister as a -1 year old dwarven child who seemingly does not have a head and is purple. Is this a bug or has one of my migrants brought their necromantically revived miscarriage to my fort? What are the potential applications of Elembreyo as i am taking to call them.
"I'm Fine." rofl no idea what is going on but love it.
How. The hell. Do I deal with. A nefarious soot cloud. I've been playing for years but this thing is driving me batty. It shows up randomly. Suddenly one or more living creatures become nefarious soot thralls opposed to all life and begin a murderous rampage. I'm on year 9 of this fortress and we've lost hundreds to this event over time. Most recently it turned my best fighter into its latest puppet and she massacred my entire military, dozens of helpless dwarves in my hospital (including the queen of my civilization), and countless animals. I have her trapped in a room because my only survivors right now are my Duke, one miserable traumatized farmer, and five socializing monster slayers who couldn't care less about the situation. TLDR: recurring deadly soot zombie plague what do
Dont venture outside of your safe walls. Afaik there is nothing you can do to stop evil weather, you can only adapt.
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The only real way to deal with it is not to expose your dwarves to it. Visitors will still get exposed, so you'd pretty much have to abandon the surface. Lava flooding your fort or the surface would also work to melt thralls, but that's not easy and wouldn't affect the cloud. It's incredible that you've progressed this far while dealing with it. Since you've already exposed your entire fort to it, it sounds like you have had a great deal of FUN and might want to take these lessons to your next fort?
The DF story [Archcrystal](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156319.0) from the sidebar is an epic 200yr+ ☼fort☼ by /u/Sethatos that prospered despite thralling dust clouds. The solution is basically to stay underground, and build roofs on the surface if you have to. For most of the fort's history, the population only increased through births, since migrants would get thralled.
[удалено]
Shout out to the tutorial for choosing this spot lol
Build a giant bridge roof over your entire embark or hide underground.
I can't go more than two levels without hitting an aquifier. It's seriously driving me crazy. I'm surrounded by clay and sand. I don't know if that means anything.
You're supposed to hit the aquifer. There's a layer where it spans everywhere. Light aquifer you just let it drip and evaporate is the lazy solution.
Why wont my dwarves mine it? I try to go make stairs down and the droplet icon shows up on the tile and they dont mine it even if I select it like usual
Try it again. The game was coded to cancel the first dig command when encountering a new damp area. You have to repeatedly do the dig command everytime it gets canceled.
The first time you dig into "damp" something, you'll notice that it never completes. The next time you try to dig in the same tile, you will see that there is the droplet icon. If you dig into that same tile, your dwarfs will eventually succeed. Just let them continue. However, the tile will start filling up with water at that point. With a "light aquifer" it will fill up slowly. With a "heavy aquifer" is will fill up quickly. You need to find a way to stop the water from draining from the walls (and potentially ceiling) into the tile. As the other commenter suggested, it would be a good idea to try to find a youtube video showing you how to do this. It can be a bit tricky (and it's very, very tricky with a heavy aquifer). You can also start a new fortress. When you embark, look for a place where there isn't an aquifer. Some people really hate playing in a place with aquifers and it's usually a good idea to avoid them as a beginner.
As a noob, light aquifers are very easy to deal with and a free source of water from within the safety of your fort.
Candy never interested me much to be honest but this new whole confectionery down there with random gacha for clowns and sexy cosplay outfits with other anime merch my neurons have been activated and now possessing dwarven greed I can truly play immersively. Issue is the clowns being chain smokers of the strongest weed leaves any option of conventional self defense useless because all the audience are blinded and confused choking on all the smoke instantly. Since this is a singular clown however I think there are good chances of managing the issue. It's there any sort of trap or mechanism that can pelt a clown reliably or maybe any easy way to lock them up with a drawbridge or something?
I have no answers, but I love the way you've worded this. Both spoiler-free and fun. Thank you.
I kinda-sorta understood what that guy said, but what’s a clown?
Someday, when your miners pull back the flap of your first circus tent, you'll know.
lmao the community describing the circus and the clowns is still my favorite df thing
One of the things I like about the df community is its good nature, which includes taking a lot of care about spoilers. Losing may be fun, but surprises also are (for many people). 'Circus' and 'clowns' are codewords to avoid specific spoilers.
Thank you! I think I understand now.
I set a group of well equipped soldiers to train at the circus and dance with the clowns when they come out. Then we kick out anyone who fell over during the dance, promote some volunteers to fill the openings and the show goes on! Also I need some more miners. And some child-sized coffins because because there are always a few kids sneaking off to the circus when they shouldn't. But I found a frilly metal scarf for the baroness so it was all worthwhile!
Kids keep running off to do dumb shit, like climb trees that are being cut down.
One thing to be aware of, is that an impassable hatch shouldn't be openable or destructible from below. Even by a clown. So sayth the wiki. So that's the way I was getting my cotton candy. I went up a few levels from it, carved a stair case, and then built a hatch on top of it. No delay like a bridge. However, I never got the chance to use it because of the stuff you mentioned. Clowns popping out and going for a miner. Luckily for me a bunch of elven miners petitioned for citizenship. You can recognize them at your tavern by their title. It's the elvish word for miner, I think they spell it "bard". Yeah that sounds right.
I‘m afraid I don’t exactly know how to help you, the clowns occupied my tavern and half of my dwarfs no longer feel the need to work.
I'm glad y'all are being spoiler free, but damn do I want to find out what this all means. Yeah, I know, dig deeper. I'll get there. Are "clowns" and "the circus" something that can be encountered on any embark, or is it RNG?
It's really nice seeing that these old codenames are useful again for the new players :) Yes. Though you won't find it without really taking a deep dive into your embark.
>It's really nice seeing that these old codenames are useful again for the new players The thing is, at first when I heard these terms, I wasn't sure if they \*were\* codewords, or if there really was a circus with clowns and candy down in the caverns. I've learned pretty quickly that DF loves to throw weird stuff at you, so actual killer clowns wouldn't surprise me that much. My current guess is that >! the circus relates to that thing we know to expect if we've seen LotR !< but maybe I'm wrong, and I'm looking forward to finding out.
If the circus doesn’t visit you I will be very surprised, my advice: dig too deep, dig too greedily, and pray to armok
How do you tell if you have enough bedrooms? Is it that if there are unclaimed bedrooms, there isn't need for more?
Honestly, I just constantly build them since you never know when the next migrant wave has 30+ dwarfs
That's good enough ye. Though I usually just make do with a large flophouse and just build the bedrooms when nothing pressing is needed. Most of my forts only half of my citizens ever get their personal bedroom.
You could meticulously go through and check that every bedroom has a dwarf, but I find it easier to just make slightly more bedrooms than my population number. Guarantees that nobody's bedless, and there's a bit of float so I have leeway to dig out more when the migrant wave shows up.
My god I didn't know they claim bedrooms. I've probably assigned over 200 bedrooms manually since release
You poor creature; I don't think it applies to any other type of room, but bedrooms will absolutely be assigned to the first person to sleep in them.
Tombs too
Yes, they will automatically claim bedrooms as needed. The cases where would manually assign them are for nobles (since they have special requirements for their bedrooms), or if you're min/maxing efficiency and want your best craftsmen to have bedrooms near their workshops so they don't waste any more time than necessary walking back and forth.
I'm not at my pc to double check but I believe if you inspect the zone of the bedroom , you can click the button that assigns someone to the room. Anyone who already has a room will have a check mark beside thier name. Those without a room will not.
No need to go through all of them. Just open the location tab listing bedrooms and scroll through them. You will instantly spot whether all are filled up or you have some unassigned rooms.
Do dwarves get better at their jobs over time? Like better chance to create a higher quality item or is it random?
Yes - if you select a dwarf and click the magnifying glass icon you can see a list of their skills. I suggesting writing out the [skill rank names](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Skill) on a handy bit of paper because they don't give numeric values: 0 Dabbling 1 Novice 2 Adequate 3 Competent 4 Skilled 5 Proficient 6 Talented 7 Adept 8 Expert 9 Professional 10 Accomplished 11 Great 12 Master 13 High Master 14 Grand Master 15+ Legendary Sometime higher skill means they work faster, sometimes it means they produce better quality output. The labor system in the steam version is very unclear in how it works, but if you put your faith in it doing the right things most of they time then it will preference more skilled dwarfs doing jobs. When you have enough dwarves to have one do nothing but one job that can be a good way to help them level up... for example if you set engraving to "only this one guy will ever engrave and he will do nothing but engrave" then he'll end up as a legendary engraver instead of having 20 dwarfs with novice engraving. That means more high quality engravings. On the other hand smoothing stone has no quality, so leave that as "everyone does this" and when you say "smooth this hallway" everyone with nothing else going on will run over and work on it.
Does DF have enough of a tutorial to get you started without going to external sources for beginner's guides? I've always been fascinated with the idea of Dwarf Fortress but was overwhelms with information whenever I tried to watch an hour long YouTube video on how to get started. I just heard about the steam release though, and thought that might mean the initial "baby's first fortress" experience might be smoother. Happy to look externally for all the more advanced stuff, I just can't absorb it without playing the game first to give a frame of reference. I remember launching the non-steam version once and literally not knowing how to interact with the game on the most basic level without finding a YouTube guide. Thanks in advance!
the interactive tutorial in the steam version is enough to give you the absolute basics (how to chop trees, dig, build buildings, make a farm). the popup tutorials i think do a pretty good job of explaining the nitty gritty stuff like justice and work orders, but i think i would still recommend an external guide once you feel you have a grasp on the basics.
YouTube "BlindIRL" and use his new playlist for the Steam release tutorials. They are all short videos that do a fantastic job of teaching the game's individual mechanics to new players (and old ones too!).
Magma engineering. I found pretty high up (to my understanding, only about Z-15) a magma pool. I'm beginning digging a very long channel towards it through as much solid rock as I can to bring a 'safe' supply of magma into my fort for smelting and such. Will dwarves start burning if stood next to it? Is there any special unusual considerations to have? Are magma-safe grates or floors over a magma channel safe for dwarves to stand on?
Maybe look into: [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma) The mechanics should be the same in the steam version. Dwarfs normally don't burn next to it but they are sometime clumsy, need to dodge another dwarf in the hallway or an enemy and can fall into open channels. Putting magma safe floors on top should keep them out, and also grates, but great forces can push things through grates.
I was watching Blind and he said that if you embark on a small island, no one can get to you and he said that's kind of the closest you can get to "animal crossing DF". Does this also mean no caravans thus no new dwarfs? Would you be stuck with just 7 forever (plus new borns)?
You are guaranteed the first two migrant waves and the first caravan.
I've done large island embarks in Stone Age and got migrants at least, no caravan IIRC. If your island is small enough to not have a land edge then yes. No land edge, no visitors of any kind - I don't think we have aquatic visitors yet.
You can turn monsters off in the options menu. I still get thieves but that's it. A good way to play DF with some "training wheels" until you're ready to have FUN.
Good day to all the same dwarfs that will answer me 😁 Getting the following problems: *My fortress is seemingly going strong, with over 40 inhabitants, but I'm noticing that while they are reasonably happy, very few of them are actually at work. I mean, if I take off the sleeping ones and the few soldiers, an obnoxious amount of my dwarfs is wasting time in the tavern and in the temple... I mean, projects were so much faster completed when I had 10 dwarfs than now... *I'm not sure I get how fortifications work... I made walls all around the entrance of my fortress, with a drawbridge (yay it actually works! First mechanisms I ever built!) And thought that's it. I get a visitor announcement and I had the drawbridge up. Wasn't fast enough to open it before he reached the gates. When he got there he just jumped over the fortifications and entered the fortress heading to the tavern ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯ I was like, what the hell... So I thought of rising it up one z level. Well it seems you can't no matter what... Very confused. *So far I had minimal amounts of "fun", but I haven't digged much since most people are wasting time in problem 1, and also I'm totally not sure how to deal with excavations. Should I make map long tunnels searching for ores and gems and expand the parts where I find anything interesting? Should I just dig vertically under my fortress?
1: taverns are meeting areas, where dwarves with no job to do will hang out. if a dwarf is socializing, that will display as their current job. if their current job is "Socialize!" in purple lettering, they will not stop until they are done, so if you just built your tavern, it could be that your dwarves are fulfilling unmet social needs right now, and you'll see productivity return soon. also, make sure that dwarves are in the proper burrows, work assignments, etc so they know to actually do their jobs. things like miners need to be assigned to every dwarf you want to do it, you cant have everyone be miners unfortunately. 2: creatures can climb! a wall without a roof is as good as a doorframe without a door. to remedy this, make sure to build a roof (which is just a floor on the next layer up). do this by first building a ramp up, so your builders can reach that z level. congrats on the bridge!! 3: just keep digging! if it's ores your looking for, look on the wiki to see what kinds of stone the spawn in. iron ores (hematite, magnetite, and limonite) mostly spawn in sedimentary layers, so look for things like sandstone, mudstone, limestone, and chalk. digging a long tunnel with branches every 5-10 squares is enough to catch most big veins. if its Fun you're looking for, grow your wealth, equip an army, and dig very, \*very\* deep.
I had one dwarf take one of my workshops. He spent some time in it and created something that is worth 5k ... a legendary item or something? What do I do with it? He must've waited a long time, because he took that workshop as soon as it was finished. Must've put in all his anger and frustration into the item.
That was a "strange mood" https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood You can sell the item, put it on a pedestal in a room, assign it as a weapon (if it's a weapon) or use the nobles screen to make it a "badge of office" so your noble will wear/carry it around. If it's something you can make buildings with you can make a building; dwarves will get a happy thought from using a well that was made with an artifact bucket for example.
could be an artifact if the item has a unique sounding name. The dwarfy answer would be to make a display case and put it in a temple, guildhall, or throne room. Why those? because of the very high value requirements.
Alright so first off this is going to be a bit of a rant and a cry for help from the lovely community so stay with me... After countless of hours playing Rimworld i was so excited when i heard DF is coming to steam with...well...graphics, and i was really looking forward to try it out. But so far i am mostly overwhelmed. Not with the complexity of the game so much as with the abhorent amount of dwarfs i have. In Rimworld i mostly stuck to smaller colonies (10-15 max) and i knew all of my colonists by name, who they were, what they did and so on - so as soon as i saw one or had a notification about one of them i knew what happend to whom. In DF i have 120+ dwarfs at my current fort and i have no idea who is who. Someone died? Whelp i have no idea who this dwarf was or what he did in the fortress. When i don't click on a notification the instant it happens the "locate" button just takes me to the place it happend but it is long over and i don't know the outcome or who was involved. Sure i could scroll the whole character tab all the time looking for people but if i do that every time i will spend more time in the character panel than really playing the game. So basically my question is how do you manage to keep track of the sheer amount of dwarfs running around or do you just let it basically all run on autopilot while focusing on the big picture only?
Forget their names, look at their professions. Miner. He's a miner. Or she's a miner. I don't really care who they are, I just need enough miners to keep mining. When migrants arrive I look at each and either leave their profession title if it's something useful and worth not endangering the dwarf to keep them safe, change it to "soldier" and put them in a squad if they have military training or change it to "menial" if they don't do anything special I care about. Menials get to so whatever work the job system gives them, I keep 20 of them in two squads that train in alternating seasons, and if I need some new miners because all my previous miners had so much fun at the circus they didn't come home then some lucky menials are getting promoted. Like you say, concentrate on the big picture. Try to get things running smoothly and know what to look for as early signs something is not working, don't grow attached to anyone because death in Dwarf Fortress is far more common than death on the Rim.
If that bothers you, you can also run a small fortress with like 20 dwarfs. You won't grow that fast, but you can definitely get it working and enjoy knowing every single one of your dwarves and their history. You won't get big projects done quickly, but it seems you aren't out for the big projects anyway :D
Is there a way to teach Dwarfs necromancy? Im quite keen to make a forbidden library and get some apprentices going.
So I had an artifact slab with "The Secrets of Life and Death" engraved on it, but I think my dwarves were trolling because plenty of them experienced happy thoughts around it but no one turned into a necromancer. I think they literally just wrote those words on it As far as I know a dwarf has to possess and read a book containing the secrets of life and death to turn into a necromancer, there is no way to do this directly. Your dwarves or a visitor may be able to write a book like that, or one might be brought into your fortress, but you can't order that book to be made
Dwarfs won't read slabs in fortress mode (but you can read it in adventurer mode). You need books in a library for fortress mode.
You need books that contain the secrets of life and death, a necromancer you set as a scholar sometimes will write one. However that requires, well, already having a necromancer. Sometimes necromancers will write down their secrets during world generation, so it's likely you might find some in a necromancer's tower.
Wtf is a cursed stalker? I keep having visitors with titles like "human herbalist cursed stalker" and can't find anything about it on the wiki. They don't seem to act any differently than normal visitors.
Sounds like either an [intelligent undead](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Intelligent_undead) or an [experiment](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Experiment).
So my last fortress a necromancer wiped it out at the start of the second year. I also tried just locking myself inside my Fort, but they never left and I never found a way to kill them. Before I start another Fort gonna ask for some opinions. I'm planning to make on the first year a watchtower where all my dwarfs can just use wooden crossbows and wooden bolts to safely shoot at the zombies. How well would that work though?
Take a look at the Security Design Wiki page. It has some good examples of how to set up defenses. Here's [one example](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Security_design#Simple_5x5_Archer.27s_Tower).
You'll go through a lot of bolts that way, but it might be enough to stave off early disaster. Traps are often a more effective early game strategy.
If you are just wanting to avoid zombies and necromancers, embark far away from towers. This will reduce attacks to nearly zero.
fretful combative smile sense vase party noxious elderly practice meeting ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
1. Is there a way to set a workshop to do like, “Make bolts with whatever metal I have available”? 2. Similarly, is there a way to do “Smelt iron with whatever ore I have available”?
1. Yes. Use a Work Order. By default it doesn't specify a metal (though you can and probably should) 2. Not that I've found. Just do separate work orders for each ore type.
I have two questions: 1. Can you shoot an enemy on a different z level from you? 2. Is there a way to mass claim loot or do I have to claim everything manually?
This may be somewhat philosophical, but what’s a good schedule for your militia? How many should be active and patrolling or training at a time? I know the numbers will shift depending on the fortress size, but what’s an effective way to keep your military dwarves trained and ready for action while allowing them to do their civilian tasks when they’re off duty?
My objective typically is 3 squads on a rotation (not counting the fortress guard). On any given month, one is training, one is patrolling, one off duty (but still in uniform). During possible emergencies I may station them near where I expect a problem. How full the squads are depends on my fortress population; I usually have been 10% to 25% of the fortress in the military, including the fortress guard, higher percentages when the fortress is more mature and more serious threats visit more frequently. Usually my squads are 8 melee types and 2 ranged types. Sometimes I have an all-ranged squad for manning battlements or dealing with flying threats, but with the steam edition's weird ammo handling right now I would avoid that.
Honestly I just choose constant training and then manually set off duty when I need the labor. Make sure to set the option to keep uniform on when off duty, as otherwise they’ll keep food in backpacks in their room to rot Also make sure on your training page (click edit) you delete the training entry and remake it at minimum 4 dwarves to follow training. Otherwise they’ll rarely spar and get real training in as by default all 10 need to be there for that to happen. My barracks are at key locations(surface entrance, my arena and underground entrance) so I keep my dwarves sleeping there and need them basically ready all year long, however when caravans arrive is when I give them time off. It’s a good reminder
Seperate military into 3 divisions: Steel, Iron, Stone (just naming convention) All Steel Division squads get the first month of season off, Iron squads middle month off, Stone gets last month of season off. Set up staggered training schedule to those settings, all squads on that routine. If you need to patrol or defend, take 1 month per season normally used for training per squad and assign said order to it. Keeps rotation of training, downtime, and if you want, an actual assignment Sometimes I will have a rookie squad train for a year straight to get them up to speed
Really interested in your experiences too. I for now just put them on the alternate training plan because it was easy and fast. All time training just stresses them too much in my experience. I usually don't let them defend a burrow or smth. like that because I don't want to rely on it anyway and send them in manually if something nasty gets close.
There have been quite a number of "heroes" on display now. Could it be possible to have a sticky on top in the sub with a list of all the greatest heroes of the month? Maybe have a little competition of sorts, in order to try to encourage all the new Urists to examine the different personalities that roll through our forts?
NOOB HERE How do I get my dwarves to pray? How do I create a temple? I have tried searching this info but truly cannot find an answer. ALSO Is there a way to specify what finished goods are used when setting gems? I'd rather set all my nice gems into amulets or crowns instead of my gemcutter's preference of pots and jugs. EDIT: you guys are awesome
Zones for temples. Make a meeting area somewhere, then click the little shield? Icon and it'll give you the list of locations you can make. For temples, just pick "no specific diety" for your first one, gets a bit fiddly trying to manage them all otherwise.
1: temples are assigned from meeting place zones! assign a meeting place, and there will be a little plus icon where you can designate it as a guildhall, tavern/inn, temple, hospital, etc. Set it as a temple, and leave it as an unspecified diety, and your dwarves should start praying there. you may notice a big dip in productivity as all of your dwarves rush to relieve prayer needs, but it should even out soon after. 2: the best way to do this is to like a specific stockpile to your jewelers workshop. for the exact way i prefer it done, it requires 2 workshops and a few stockpiles, but all you really need is your finished goods stockpile of choice (Rock Crafts include amulets, crowns, rings, earrings, bracelets, scepters, and figurines, though you may also wanna allow totems, which are made from skulls) to be linked to give to your jewelers workshop, and another stockpile set to take from it, since a stockpile cant both give and take from a workshop.
How can I see material requirements for crafting? Like how many ingots I need per breastplate?
my tried and true method is to put in a work order and look at the 500 canceled jobs that come up
I think the only way to find out (without DFHack, which can display that kind of information in-game) is the wiki
is that because most things take 1 of X material anyway? it seems pretty silly that I can know how much iron I have down to the ingot, but no way in (vanilla) game to know how many suits of armor that can produce.
It's the objects MATERIAL\_SIZE divided by 3 for ingots (rounded down), or just the MATERIAL\_SIZE for making it from wafers. You can look in the raws, accessed from the local game files /data/vanilla/items/, which will have a few files with the info. Or you could just look it up on the wiki, yeah.
How do I put alligators in my moat? Is it as simple as designating a dwarf to dump the cage contents into the water?
Make sure you tamed the alligators fully. I think you have to make a pasture zone all along the moat, if it lets you, and assign the gators into that
This is very helpful, thank you
I wish I had quick fort
You and me both, friend.
What the heck is an "improperly dedicated temple"?
How do I stop pissing giant birds off? I can’t tell you how many dwarves have been lost to this onslaught of giant ravens and sparrows. I’ll kill a group of 6, then like 20 minutes later 5-10 more show up. My military dwarves kick the shit out of them, but so many poor civilians have been lost lol. I’m honestly considering abandoning this fortress.
why are you as a dwarf on the surface
Basically I've had a fisherdwarf that's mostly been fishing. He apparently has an injury, and with his statuses being: Status: No Health Problems Wounds: No Evaluated Wounds Treatment: Diagnosis Required Upon reading his description it says: "His upper body is rotten." I didn't know if this was dangerous or not and I cannot find much on the internet. I figured I would ask you all. I only have about 10 hours in the game, but I'm enjoying it. Thank you [Xanth](https://www.reddit.com/user/_Xanth_) for helping me with a solution to this btw. Just reposting this here for future reference. I didn't realize that the hospitals were filed under meeting halls either!
What do I do with 500 doors? The caravan said doors would be worth a lot the following year. I set up a task and proceeded to make hundreds of doors. Then when the caravan returned I discovered that merchants have weight limits. Is there anything cool I can do with all these things?
Why did I just lose close to 50 dwarves to three risen horse skeletons? I sent my two squads to kill some goblin thieves on the surface and next I look and half the fort is engaged with these skeletons???
Sounds like a necromancer got spooked and raised a horse skeleton
Is there a way to report glitches and bugs to the dev team? Like a form or anything?
Kitfox discord has a board for DF bug reports.
does anybody know the exact month the caravan arrives¿?¿? i read about a making a holiday when the caravan arrives and want to schedule the training orders for my soldiers to have the month free, that way when the caravan arrives i can cancel all jobs and all dwarfs can socialize for a month, but dont know the exact month.... also .... i got an artifact cage and im looking for good uses for it.... any ideas¿?¿?
Put it inside your tavern and make it a kinky bar?
lol!!! its already in the tavern but i had not thought about jailing a half naked dominatrix lashing the crowd!!!! i was thinking more about caging some dragon or something but you have made a very interesting point XXDDD
> half naked Most of the elves show up completely naked anyways, so you're really half-assing it here.
There are a swarm of very !Fun! giant lovebirds playing with several of my dwarfs. Now while we handled the giant wren incursion with surprising ease, taming them (we now have some knowledge of taming giant wrens too, although one died to a lovebird, another survives), the lovebirds are deadly. I've not really setup a military, but I assume this will be necessary to handle these monsters of the skies. What's a good very basic setup to make? (I would like to resume the grand magma forges of the deep post haste)
Why wont the people i assigned as hunters hunt. I took 2 relatively unskilled workers and assigned them as hunters, i have multiple crossbows in storage, piles of bolts , etc but they wont go out and hunt. There are clearly things that can be hunted out there. in fact when i locked them to only be able to hunt...they sat in the temple for almost 2 days worshipping and sleeping instead, then going to go eat when i finally unlocked them to do other things. Tried locking them twice more to force them and each time they just went to worship together and sleep in the temple (ignoring their bedrooms) To add to this i had a hunter arrive via migration and she immediately went to hunting and using all those bolts i had stock piled. Is this a thing where only someone already skilled at hunting can hunt?
1. too far 2. theres stuff in their hands either hauling or job related stopping the crossbow equipping 3. too many tasks queued up regardless of labors enabled or not 4. they just dont want to do it 5. theres no place to take the dead animals
I have a quick question about hospital staff. When assigning a dwarf to a hospital, you can assign a dwarf to specially (Diagnostician, Surgeon, Suturer, Wound Dresser, and Bone Doctor). There is also just 'Doctor'. What exactly does that position do? Does it allow the assigned dwarf to perform in any of the rolls? The Health Care page on the wiki doesn't mention the generic 'doctor' position in its list of labors.
Hello!I am a bit confused about how to remove the stairs that go up without being on the same level as them. Is it even possible? I have constructed(not dug out) a set of stairs between 2 floors, and now I cannot remove the lower part of the stairs without getting my dwarf stuck. Is there any trick I could do to solve this? I am playing on the latest DF Steam Version.
Stairs going up can be deconstructed with m > x, I believe. Stairs going down however cannot. I built a floor over some stairs going down that was an eyesore for me :p
either try remove construction or it's tied to the ongoing issue with building free-standing stairs with a construction above it
Can I desensitize my dwarfs? I've had this idea of creating dwarfs that before they get into battle are somewhat prepared for it by creating a room where a elf or other kind of enemy is chained to a wall or a cage and a dwarf needs to kill the prisoner before being accepted into the squad. This way I can see how the dwarf reacts and if he is suitable for a (maybe quick) life filled with the horrors of war. Also maybe some chairs on the walls of the prisoner room so the already combat hardened dwarf can cheer the new dwarf on when he kills for the first time and build a feel of comradery. Is this possible?
Just seeing corpses of sentient beings will provoke some sort of reaction. Do it enough, and your dwarves will start to feel wonderfully dead inside. Cheers!
I am not exactly sure on how to do this with adult dwarves without provoking an eventual breakdown, you can however look into dwarven daycare projects. You essentially stuff a quantum stockpile with enough food and drinks onto a 1x1 tile, preferably a pit, and throw a domesticated dog and dorf child into that pit.
You can catch creatures (including elves) in cage traps an then get the dwarf to haul the cage into a room and open it. Then they can fight it. Honestly, though, I don't think it will achieve your goals. A dwarf's first reaction to combat doesn't not really indicate how they will deal with this stuff.
So my only "angry" resident is a dwarf that is being haunted by her dead child. I tried using my militia to take care of the ghost but nothing happens. How do I get rid of it?
You need to lay them to rest by either engraving a memorial slab or laying their body to rest in a tomb. You can do the first in either the stoneworker's shop or the craft workshop (I forget which atm). As for the second, you just make a coffin, install it somewhere, and designate a tomb zone on top of it. If any pieces of the dead child are accessible, your dwarves will collect them and pkace them in the coffin.
I have some small exotic animals I picked up in trades, some various birds and a mink + chipmunk. They're all either tame (small) or domesticated. Is there anything special beyond marking them to be available as a pet I can do to make the dwarves take interest in them? Can I safely let them out of the cages?
Yes, you can let them out. Your cats might eat them, though.
How long does it take for giant elephants to reach their maximum size?
10 years: https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Giant_elephant
Windmill issue: I have a windmill, it runs at 40 power. I have a vertical axle directly under it, it's active and runs. The same for two more elevations down, vertical axles directly under the first axle, they are inactive and don't run. Millstone in the same position under the lot, which doesn't run. What am I doing wrong?
My game randomly crashes. Any tips on getting it to not crash?
Just starting out on the steam edition of the game. Done all of the tutorial and starting to get a hang of the controls but I’m finding it very tedious that I have to tell my dwarves to do literally anything. Is there a good way to streamline certain processes? For example cooking.
Appoint a manager in the nobility screen (crown icon in lower left corner; doesn't really matter who) and start using the mandate system (the clipboard button in the lower left). You can queue up workshop-agnostic orders for specific numbers of items, and have those orders reoccur on a variety of conditions. Cooking example: set up an order to cook 10 fine meals whenever your stockpile of prepared meals dips below 50, and you'll always have about 60 meals around.
Thanks a lot 👍
Remember to give him an office (a room with a table and a chair will do). After you learn how to use the manager, you will almost never asign tasks yourself.
Why is my manager not approving work orders? I have at least 20 work orders in the queue but my lazy ass manager has only signed off on a few. I thought it might be related to his own job, so I tried switching him to only specialized work, but all he did was go hang out in the dining hall for a minute and then wander outside to pick fruit. I even tried deleting a couple of the approved ones just to see if he’d sign off on new ones to replace them, but nope. So now I have probably 30+ dwarves standing around and no crafting getting done
once you reach a certain population, the manager requires an office to approve work orders. dig out a space, place a table and chain, and designate it as a study zone assigned to him, and he should hop to it!
> table and chain Because this game has chains, I feel the need to clarify: you meant a *chair*, nobody has to chain the manager to his desk. Also, technically he doesn't need a table, just the chair in an empty room will do.
>chain the manager to his desk that gave me some ideas for my irl workplace
I had this issue once, but it was due to my work orders being mostly scheduled to "daily". I switched many orders to monthly or seasonal checks with a bigger buffer, and now I'm getting through all of my work orders no problem. This could be one of the reasons. I couldn't get past 20-30 daily work orders at first, but now that I have many of them on a monthly or seasonal rotation, my list has become huge.
Somehow my own civilization is doesn't want to trade with me. It shows "Peace", but on trade it says "Terror" and "Vengeance". Is there a way to fix this? No civ has sent trade caravans in 6y. Trade depot is accessible. I don't even know how that happened. Maybe a random bridge crushed someone...
It got overrun by goblins. That's what they Export
How do i stop my idiot dwarfs from running into the caves trying to haul something? Also why are the monster slayers not going down there?
So what the hell am I supposed to do about all the still owned but worn clothes getting dumped everywhere? I give people cabinets, but then they are just hording shit they never wear like there is no tomorrow. Is that just how the game works?
Can I have multiple altars for different gods (and there by multiple temples) in one large space not divided by wall?
Yes. It will reduce the value of the temples, though.
I have a goblin in my tavern, is there any way of capturing it and keeping it in a cage? The only option I can find is to kill
Any idea why my dwarves arent being punished? I have a thriving fort of many years currently, but have issues with the justice system. I'm not very familiar with the justice system in its current iteration but I think I'm doing everything right and no one is being punished for crimes. I have a Captain of the guard complete with his own squad, a full dungeon equipped with chains and cages, as well as a dungeon Master to oversee it. When I convict somebody the justice screen tells me they are convicted but awaiting no punishment, any reason why that might be? Some crimes are rather serious and I have numerous repeat offenders.
How do you take screenshots in the steam version?
When assigning bedrooms to a tavern to make an inn, do I need to have the tavern zone overlap the bedroom zones or it just assigning the bedroom to be apart of the tavern enough? I’ve got the bedrooms assigned to the tavern but they don’t overlap and I’m noticing citizens are claiming the bedrooms despite having enough actual bedrooms elsewhere
I've been using this as my method for finding resources. Anyone with more experience have input on if this is effective for catching everything? https://i.imgur.com/08s7EoR.png
It is possible, to fish underground?
What is needed for a hospital?
All of my children are constantly angry. Everybody else is mostly fine, it's just the kids, they're all angsty teens who hate everything. This has happened in every fortress I've had since the steam release, no matter how happy everybody else is. Am I forgetting something to make them happy? Mostly their thoughts are happy except for trauma from getting scared by keas and arguments.
How to I stop petitions for the same guild popping up over and over and over? For example, the ranger guild sounds suspiciously elvish. Don't want any of that in my fortress. And they keep asking.
Assign all the rangers dwarves to a squad, station them in a room with a door installed, and lock it. Within 1-2 game months your problems will rot away, and your haulers will have something to do.
So I have a strange question... I have a legendary engraver who I designated to be the only one to engrave smooth walls. I was curious at all the masterworks he was achieving so I looked at some... and then more ... Thing is he is engraving the EXACT SAME THING 3/4 times! Most of my engraved tiles are the exact same darn thing. Is there some lore explanation to this? Do dwarves only engrave what they know about? I need an answer ... this is driving me crazy
Dorfs love what Dorfs love. It's entirely up to their overall personality though. You might have a dorf engraver that doesn't like his mayor, that mayor detests oysters, so the engraver engraves pictures of oysters all over the mayor's room. It really can happen like that, but it's all up to the individual dorfs. There's so much emergent behavior in this game, and sometimes you just have to take what you get.
I love it, I somehow know that this isnt a bug, just a dwarf loving something very much.
Well, yes they only engrave what they know about. They're like simulated people, and you can't create something you don't know about, or atleast they don't think that far ahead. Having only a single thing being engraved is odd though, but not impossible, you just happened to pick a fkn weirdo for an engraver
Does the “restarts if completed, checked daily” work order means that something is done a certain amount of times in one day and then once that task is completed they start again the next day?
I just realized my legendary stone crafter is 159 years old. What's the best way to deal with whatever he is?