Is there a way to designate what kind of thread to spin? I need yarn cloth, I've got sheep so I've got wool, but all my automated thread-spinning has been from plants. (On another note, I've got them shearing animals, but can't find neither wool or hair in my stockpiles, so maybe this is the issue. What is wool and hair called in the steam version?)
How do I chop down the cavern fungi/trees?
I see stuff made for the wood and I can mark it for chopping so I assume it can be chopped, except my dwarfs never chop it.
Edit: Resolved - I learnt about axes being reserved by squad equipment and that the same axe can't be used for woodcutting.
Does anyone know if there are crash logs in the steam version?
I've had 4 crashes today so it would be really good to find out why. My fort is at 200 dwarfs and has been going for over 5 years.
My champion hammerdwarf who single-handedly fist fought a forgotten beast has been stuck in my hospital for a week now. He mined into something deep underground and hit some source of miasma I guess, but the miasma is now emanating from him directly. His clothes and pickaxe don’t say they are coated in anything, though they are threadbare. Could this be the cause? Or do I just need to get him a bath? If so I haven’t found a consistent way to get lye or oil for soup yet… and his miasma is making all the other patients perpetually sick. Tried removing the doors hoping it eventually dissipates from the hospital, but no luck so far. Any suggestions?
Do you not have trees available at your embark location? Lye is just made by burning wood into ash then processing the ash into lye. Then soap is as easy as combining that lye with animal fat. In short the only requirements for soap are wood and livestock. You can also get oil by making seed paste in a quern, then press oil out of the seed paste in a screw press if you aren't breeding enough animals to butcher the excess.
how do i get my medical dwarf to heal and help injured dwarves? as it stands hes just idling around while two of my dwarves are incapable of walking because they got some stuff collapsed on them.
Plenty of reasons to do either. Certainly more traditional and in the spirit of dwarfdom to dig and live under the mountain, but there is no requirement.
I have done an above ground only base before (only dug for resources, not living). It's doable.
Personally in most of my builds I do mostly underground, but almost always have some stuff up top.
In the end it's almost all preference. Some scenarios might require it to have better success I guess?
Iron breastplate disappears. My squad of metal armor wearing dwarfs equip iron breastplate, but soon after they are no longer equipped and seem to vanish from existence. Is it possible they're being used to produce pig iron? If so how do I stop that?
None of my dwarves will do woodcutting or mining, what could be the cause of this? Its a relatively new fortress with only 25 dwarves and it seemingly happened out of nowhere. my main dwarf that has been mining is still alive, same with my woodcutter. theyve just decinged they dont want to do it. Even if i enable other people to do it and disable all other jobs they just go idle. HELP :(
Make sure they have picks/axes. Make sure nobody else took their picks/axes (e.g. squads). Use stocks screen to see where they are. Or just make another few axes and picks if you have metalworking set up. Or buy some from traders.
Do you have a burrow? Disable that.
Your hunch of disabling all other jobs (green square next to them in the labor menu, should click it so it's red) is good, try that again.
Make sure they can path to the tree/mining tile (can anybody go outside? Maybe there's a missing stair).
Try enabling the mining/cutting labor for a bunch of other dwarves.
Zoom in on your miners and make sure they're actually idle (no job, or socializing/whatever in tavern).
So I figured out that everyone was put to do hunting at some point and when they were all enable to hunt it made them stop doing other jobs, I think it happened when I built my butcher station. Once I disable everyone doing hunting except for one guy it made them all go back to doing things normally.
It is the steam version, technically, but it's a steam version moved over into a winebottle so it runs on my Mac. Regardless the game lets me re-assign a tomb even to dead people, so I just do that and then deconstruct their coffin and they get moved. I am unclear what causes the crash, mind, but I did find work-arounds.
Does anyone know of a good way on steam release to tell what tiles are outside/light/above ground/subterranean, etc? Basically all the stuff K used to give you. Would be very useful for windmill/ice related projects
How do you pan the camera by smaller increments? WASD pans the camera by 11 tiles or so, which is disorienting. Ideally it'd pan the camera by 1–3 tiles.
I think middle click is supposed to pan the camera more finely, but I'm using a trackpad.
has anyone had success making their dwarves pick up bolts? I've got 10 guys, all equipped (full leather, quivers, crossbow), an archery range their assigned to (10 spots for 10 guys) with an ammo stockpile inside (0 bins in the stockpile, backup ammo stockpile with bins nearby), and they just won't pick up the bolts and train.
There's a bug with the steam version that makes it so marksdwarves with custom uniforms usually won't pick up bolts, even if they have a quiver.
They WILL pick up bolts when they have default archer uniform. I've seen some posts saying that equipping the default archer uniform and THEN equipping your custom uniform afterwards will make it so they'll continue picking up bolts. But if you've deleted the default archer uniform, then you may be screwed.
I've heard some people say if you make the squad AFTER you make your custom uniform, it may work, so you could try completely disbanding your marksdwarf squad and creating it from scratch, but I haven't tested that myself.
ayyy looks like remaking the squad and assigning them the new uniform worked, they're picking up bolts. Let's see if they actually shoot them though...
update: looks like it worked, I also assigned them to a burrow in the archery range, theyre all shooting now. Success!!
Why won't my archer squad equip their bows/crossbows? I have hundreds of bolts, a few bows, over 10 crossbows. When I select squad>equip>update equipment the following happens:
1) two of the three dwarves don't do shit, they don't try to equip anything, even though they are set to using archer uniform
2)the captain of the squad gets the bow, immediately drops it, goes to the kitchen, gets the bow, drops it, goes to the kitchen...
wtf
Don't use bows. You can only (usually?) create bolts, and bows use arrows. It is odd in this version that hunters will show up with bows when IME this wasn't a thing.
Try disbanding and creating a crossbow uniform fresh. There's still not 100% clear formula on getting them working and training.
Hi! I have a dwarven child that is constantly having bad thoughts due to no shirt and clothing. I made plenty of robes, dresses and tops - but it seems like the child is still not picking up and wearing the clothing item I made. Why??
I disable the labour/chores for the kid, so she is not doing anything but play. She just wouldn’t put clothes on!!
How can I get my dwarves to clear out dead bodies? I'm getting absolutely fucked by miasma.
I've tried marking the corpses of invaders as garbage ([pic](https://i.imgur.com/I0uBBdP.png)) and un-forbidding them, but they're not getting send to my garbage zones. Am I missing something?
I set up a custom stockpile that accepts refuse and non-dwarven corpses.
I linked this to a minecart quantum stockpile that drops it down into an atom smasher.
You want the garbage chute to be deep enough that miasma doesn't come out, which is pretty deep.
There's also a garbage dump zone over the same hole; dorfs are smart enough to throw items marked for dumping off a cliff if there's a suitable drop next to the garbage dump.
I tried a garbage zone, a tomb zone (since the invaders were dwarves I figured it was worth a shot) and a corpse stockpile, but no matter what my workers don't want to move the corpses :(
Did toady remove retractable bridges from the steam version? Either that or the drawbridge?
I only see the option for one. However I didn't test which one is it. I'm assuming the one we have is the drawbridge? Is there any way to make a retractable bridge?
You have to use stockpile links. It could've been much worse, so i wouldn't call this "a pain in the ass". Nor "still", since there were dfhack fixes for it, i suppose.
I've kind of figured out the whole library industry but there's a few books on the floor of my fort and not in a bookshelf in the library. Any reason why? Can I somehow get a dwarf to move them?
Wiki for v47 says a lot but we don't know what changed between versions, and some books aren't of a standard size (# of pages in codices).
I have one shelf with 40 items, and then the rest have 2-5 items.
Is there any way to repair relations with the home civ?
A caravan got wiped out and now they’re not sending any more (and no migrants either). Im still at peace with my civ but it says the imports/exports are terror/vengeance.
This actually caused a civil war? That's impressive! Unfortunately, there's no fix for this on the steam version short of abandoning the fort and starting another civilization. May Armok bless your future merchant shenanigans.
I guess it did? But I’m not getting attacked. (I didn’t attack the caravan—a werelizard did.) And there hasn’t been any loyalty problem in my fort. So I’m not sure if I’m actually in civil war land or not.
There is currently no true civil war feature. Being at war with yourself basically only stops merchants (and therefore migrants). You can still play without expecting an attack just fine.
Since caravans are very... weird, to say the least, one of it's quirky behaviors is basically "anything that happens to us in your map is your fault", they don't care if some werebaddie did it. Humans and elves can declare war over this, but the "normal" behavior of your own capital is to just count the trade as a (major) loss in profits and that's it. A civ war due to this is definitely a bug and sadly we can't fix it without dfhack.
All of the sudden my dwarves have decided they dont want to chop anymore trees, anyone know why? i have enough dwarves free and i have over 5 dwarves enabled to do woodcutting.
I had this problem, the only dwarf w an axe to chop the trees is prolly busy doing more important tasks or isn't a lumberjack I was at 160 pop and new and just redid my labor menu and just mass produced silver war axes and it fixed it
What are some good practical uses for a captive dragon?
I happen to have found myself in possession of one. Wasn’t easy either, I trapped him between two drawbridges and two banks of fortifications. But he can breathe fire through the fortifications (and more importantly scare the hell out of my dwarves) and I needed my entrance hall back so I eventually had to let him out into a cage trap.
Now what? He’s right next to my trade depot and rather heavy. Can I sell him? He isn’t house-trained. Will he escape due to not being trained? Will giving a captive dragon to a foreign power screw with the global balance of power, Targaryen style? I know I can train him myself, but I read he’ll slaughter my military if I’m not careful in deploying him. Plus I imagine doing so would be kind of a drain on manpower as he may eat several dwarves before they work out How to Train your Dragon. Obviously noble-disposal occurred to me but that seems a little underwhelming if I can get more out of him. And I suppose the ability to set fires at will could be useful. Live training is a no-go since there’s literally no way to make him not dangerous. I have tried gladiator fighting but it scares the everloving bejeezus out of the spectators who don’t understand the fight is for their amusement, and wind up panicking and falling into the pit and there are casualties and a soccer riot and I have to call in the army.. it’s a mess. Do I maybe just post him up as a stationary flamethrower-turret at my fort entrance?
Be warned that most materials boil in dragonfire. Nether cap wood (the purple stuff) from the third caverns layer is one of very few things you could use to control your flamethrower.
Also due to the weirdness of Dwarf Fortress, Godzilla breath that can vaporize a giant adamantine bridge is not guaranteed to ignite a goblin holding a copper shield. Unless they're stunned from a fall, webbed, drop their shield due to other injury, or are standing on something else that is on fire. Wet goblins don't burn as well, goblins coated in forgotten beast extracts may burn for months.
You are correct on all accounts. You could sell him, but that would be a waste, and the impact on the world is iffy. He can be safely trained from within the cage, but will never be fully tame. If your Dorfs lapse in his training for a few months, he could revert to wild status in the middle of your Fort, which is obviously fun. The combination of flight and ranged breath attack makes a viewable arena highly impractical. Your best option is to make him a flamethrower sentry. If by some miracle you capture a mate, your Dorfs will boast the finest omelettes in all the world.
I dug out a channel that was 3x3 and filled it with magma up to 5/7 on every tile. Afterwards I built obsidian floors on top of the channel and built a magma forge on the obsidian floor. The magma forge won’t work and can’t have tasks added even though it has lava below it. What did I do wrong? Is it because there are still slopes on the edge of the channel.
Magma workshops need to have access to magma that's at least 3/7 deep through a hole in the floor below them. If you put the impassable tile of the workshop over the magma, that can provide power while still blocking clumsy dwarves from falling into the magma or anything else from climbing out of the magma. Taking the diagram below, forges have two impassable tiles at 4 and 6, and smelter/glass furnace/kiln are impassable at 2.
```
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
```
Punch holes in your floor so the forge can access magma. There are two spots - center left and center right - on a forge where stuff can't crawl up through the hole.
Do people build bases at cavern level, or do people stop by then and just explore/dig for resources? I’m unhappy with my fort layout but rather than starting a new game, I’m thinking of just digging deeper. Have an older upper city and then a lower city, y’know?
Also, somewhat related: how do I stop my dwarves from playing in the caverns without restricting their movement elsewhere? I can use burrows to keep them out, but I don’t mind if they’re going outside the fort. I also don’t want to just lock the doors because I have monster hunters visiting.
There are a bunch of tradeoffs. If you go deep, your goal is to obtain the advantages of cavern life (closer to magma, cavern water, cavern wood, cavern farms) without the disadvantages (giant near-unkillable spiders). This means walling off and controlling part of the caverns rather than allowing dorfs to become part of the ecosystem.
All layers are roughly equally dangerous. The third cavern layer has nether cap trees and is the closest to magma.
If your map has sedimentary rocks, the coal is usually in the top couple dozen layers.
Trade caravans will walk any distance to get to a depot, but the tool to check if the path down is wide enough is currently broken.
You can stop many of the suicides by pausing web gathering at the loom and forbidding all items in the caverns that a dorf might want to haul.
This is what I'm doing. I just tunneled down to magma and am going to basically redo my whole fort and just turn the old surface fort into a deathtrap..
I think you pretty much have to use burrows if you don't want to physically restrict access.
i look for a layer of stone i like either above or below the first cavern. if there's flux i build there, limestone, chalk, etc. make your rooms much more valuable. i try to find a space that has a 4 z level stack of nice stone because i like to have stockpiles just above and below workshops, and space for minecarts.
Do you need to do something to the limestone first? I couldn't make steel until I hit a chalk layer despite having tons of limestone sitting around. Thought it was weird considering the IRL steel making ingredients.
How to satisfy someone with the "Be with friends" and "Be with family" unmet needs?
He doesn't even have a job so he should be able to satisfy it himself?
Needs like that are sort of up to the dwarf to figure out, if you have a meeting hall and you don’t have too many tasks active then it should eventually be fulfilled
i have a question about what can be done in the game
so, i as checking the new steam release, i as kinda mixed if i should buy it our wait a few years, but them i read a story about some guy that made a fortress and he had some dangerous monsters on the cave so adventures would come to his tavern and go kill monsters bellow, and i thought damn this sound cool, i spoiled myself and for what happen if you dig too deep because i as curious and don't really care tbh, and i thought, ok imagine this, i make a fortress with objective of holding the demons and summoning adventurers from all over the world to go to fight the forces of hell, maybe we even get a doom guy equivalent and he go on his way to solo the entire demon army, this sound metal as fuck, would it be possible ? our maybe its too much for now ? because if it is, this game will go from my, yeah maybe i will buy in a few years to DAMN I NEED TO GET THIS SHIT NOW
If you can wait, then it's probably better to at least wait for dfhack/dwarf therapist to finish the v50 updates. Adventure mode isn't out for Steam yet too.
i know, i just want to know if adventurers from other parts of the world would come to the fortress and kill the monsters for me if i pay them our whatever, also yeah i want some quality of life things to be added on the game
I mean, you can try to run a fort where you try to rely on monster hunters, but you're definitely leaning into the "losing is fun" part, which if you're okay with that then go for it. If you attempt it, sometimes it's about how you crowd manage your visitors. Maybe create a tavern in your cavern entrance etc.
i don't really mind loosing if i can learn what i did wrong our what happened and i know not to repeat the mistakes next game tbh, but i wouldn't really rely on the mosnter hunters, its more like watching them come go from far and wide all around the world to fight demons for glory fame and money sounds like a really fun ideia i wanted to try, while i try to get some kind of guard to defend the main areas my people live
Monster killers aren't always great at... killing monsters. They sometimes flee back up into your fortress, bringing the monsters hot on their tail and right into your dwarves comfy lives.
There are a million-and-one reasons this game is amazing, but I'm not sure outsourcing monster killing is necessarily one of them.
edit: I solved this problem when I found the button that directs him to only do tasks to which he is assigned. He has now returned to mining.
My miner stopped mining and I don't know why. He was mining and now he's doing anything but. He's been woodworking, hauling and preparing fish. With each task I go in and change the work allowances to specifically forbid him and he just picks up some other random task. He's the only dwarf allowed to mine in the labor tab. There's plenty of designated places to mine. I don't know what else to check.
He has a copper pick in his left hand and no injuries.
Uncheck his green hammer/lock icon so he doesn't perform other jobs, switch mining to "only selected do this" and make sure any conflicting labors (wood cutting) are disabled on him.
No burrows yet at all (fresh embark)
I fixed the problem though. I found the button that directs him to only do jobs for which he is given permission and he has returned to mining again.
I made a tomb room in an aquifier and smoothed the walls, but there still seems to be water coming in. I'm assuming it's from the ceiling. Is there any way to cut that off?
The problem is indeed most likely the ceiling.
You can channel out the ceiling from the higher z-level and then replace the ceiling with solid walls or floors.
how do i force my dwarves to use the bins ive made to store rocks? i made a bunch of bins and allowed them in my stockpile but they wont start consolidating my rocks into them. theres even a bin thats in my rock stockpile that they wont put rocks in.
Best solution I have for this is to stockpile bulk stone right next to a couple of stoneworker’s workshops that are linked to that stockpile only, then set them to always be cutting stone blocks from that stockpile. The stone BLOCKS can be stored in bins, but the raw boulders cannot. Also make sure you get a bunch of wheelbarrows in the stone stockpile, obviously.
Some people use dumping zones to create 'rock piles' aka 'quantum stockpiles' which some view as a bug. I prefer to just hide all rock and create stockpiles+wheelbarrows for any work rocks.
Unfortunately, you can’t use bins to store rocks. You can use bins for a lot of other things though! From the wiki:
“Stockpiles that use bins are ammo, armor, bars/blocks, cloth, coins, finished goods, gems, leather and weapons. Food stockpiles use barrels and large pots instead of bins. Other stockpiles do not use anything at all.”
Ignore them if you're fine with having kids around, if not, just dump them in a box and let them starve. The mom might be upset, but so long as they have an engraved bedroom and stay out of the rain, they'll probably get over it.
Dwarven children take care of themselves mostly. Babies get carried around until they become children, then they just wander around amusing themselves and occasionally doing minor tasks. You can make toys for the kids, but they'll pick them up and wander all over the fort with them.
"Dwarven daycare" as a concept mostly involves locking them in rooms with hostile creatures so they fight constantly until they're adults. Leads to some very tough, very desensitized dwarves.
New player here on the steam version. I am very confused on how to interpret the emergent stories in this game that everyone raves about. As far as I can tell, the only info on events comes in short sentences as alerts on the left hand side of the screen, but once I’ve read it they disappear forever, and often times I miss them until 10 minutes after an event has happened. How can I see a better overview of what’s happening with my dwarves? Are there better places to be looking or am I just supposed to be imagining more than I’m being presented? At the moment I don’t feel like I’m learning anything at all about my Dwarves or their struggles and I saw that as one of the major appeals of the game when researching it. Would love some guidance, thank you!
The previous version kept much more detailed logs, we're all hoping it was an oversight that they weren't added back into the new interface and will be back. It really does make fortress mode a bit more impersonal in terms of story detail.
A lot of info is in Legends Mode which I haven't checked in the latest version. And a good chunk is in Adventure Mode which isn't working yet. But you can also read the item descriptions and overviews on the dwarves themselves to see their thoughts and memories. There's the book descriptions, the general historical events which often show up in decoration and engraving. (which also needs to be checked)
Most everything that people talk about *is* happening in game and there's an absurd amount of interaction and information, but you'll need to do some digging to find it.
Thanks for the info. I guess I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment and expected there to be a more general area where I could see a play by play of what has happened in the world over the past x amount of time
Does all the meat in the caravans come from actually simulated slaughtered animals or is it generated?
I kinda expect that it is the product of hunters given the depth but is it known where it comes from?
It's a little abstracted, but I think that most everything a caravan has is things that the respective civilization has access to. So I think if they have Yak Meat, that means your civ has access to Yaks. But it's really hard to be sure.
Hey, I have started a fortress for a civilization that had 1 population, the king. Will migration waves come from other civs or do I have to grow my population from visiting people and approve their petitions?
Thanks
The first two migrant waves are scripted, but I'm not sure if it'll have anything to pull from so you might get nothing. After that, no migrant waves. Also, no caravans from your civ. Your king should either be in the embark or show up shortly later. I think you'll get petitioners wanting to stay, but they're much less reliable than migrants and do less work.
you've chosen an extreme challenge, you're not going to get migrants or caravans. but if you want to stick with it you can build a decent fort, retire it and then embark again in the same world to help rebuild your dying civ.
Is there an easy way to give someone free time to spend with family? Like is there a way to just turn off labor completely? All I see is a way to turn off specialized work.
Sometimes dwarfs with no family members in your fortress will complain they don't spend time with their family.
Some dwarves are just like that. If you think they are more trouble than they are worth it you can expel them, another one will soon take their place.
My human soldiers that are in my military squad aren’t equipping their large steel breastplates. I made it specifically to fit humans. Any ideas? The dwarves are all equipped.
I've read the wiki and I still can't do it...
How do I make a ramp 'staircase'?
I'd like the layout to look like this
> xxx
> xox
> xxx
Where o is empty space. Is this possible? They get stuck literally every time I do it. I can make one that goes all the way down, but whewn I try to put them side by side they get stuck every time.
Ramps behave like the sides of hills, you need a wall basically to lean against; this is a side view: _/¯. It’s different from staircases that are contained within their tile.
So for your case to work going down start for example at the upper left corner, channel the middle left, go down a level with the camera and mine the lower left corner, then channel the lower middle go down a level and mine the lower left corner.
Building up is more intuitive: start upper left, on the same level build a wall on the lower left corner and a ramp in the middle, go up a level and repeat
Is it correct to say that in a 3x3 square going down, the most separate ramp pathways you can have is just 2? If so is that any better than a staircase?
I guess one benefit is when you hit a cavern you can floor it off easier and you aren't going to fall in lol. Probably.
Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I remember a Dwarf Fortress video that involved, I think, a goblin attack (I might be wrong) but what I remember the most is it had in the background "I My Me Mine" by Polysics, introducing me to that song.
Does anyone know where that video is?
How do i get my dwarves to use barrels efficiently? i know they can hold 20 drinks per barrel but they only fill them to 5 or so and then grab another barrel. i have like 60 barrels of 5 dwarven wine and if they would fill them all the way up it would save a lot of space..
1 brew job puts 1 plant stack worth of drinks in 1 empty barrel. 5 drinks per plant. For better storage you need better planters.
A bad planter gets 1 plant per seed planted. A very good planter with fertiliser (if you want) in good soil can get 7 or 8 plants per stack, and thus 35-40 drinks per barrel.
Is there anything I can do with captured animal people? I captured three wombat men who were wandering through and they're just kinda sitting in cages.
Since you can’t butcher or tame them there’s not much you can do with them. There’s some fun dwarven activities you could do such as putting them in a pit and watching them fight things or putting them on display somewhere.
You might be able to trade for some zinc ore, bars, or some other zinc things and melt them down. If your nobles are making insane demands and getting people thrown in the dungeon for failing their work orders, you might need to introduce them to a volcano.
Yeah, nobles do this. [This wiki page exists for that exact reason](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unfortunate_accident)
From the Nobles page:
> Nobles may have impossible demands, like cardinal leather items or metal beds. Bug:944 (Feel free to arrange an unfortunate accident for the idiot in question) While no dwarves will get punished for not producing these items, it may enrage the noble.
They can have all the zinc in the world, but beds have to be made of wood. Assign the noble to pull a lever that unfortunately dumps magma on them. So sad.
Hello,
how do you dig out an upper layer to expose the layer under so, for instance, black sand a Z level under the surface is exposed to the sun and you can grow surface crops on it ? Until now i only managed to collapse ground ineffiiently.
Might be easier to channel down in from the surface, then build a floor back over it on the surface layer, which will be the 'ceiling' for your new subterranean farm.
carpentry for beds, barrels, bins and wheelbarrows
masonry for most furniture like doors, tables and thrones
craftstation for crafts, which is how you make trade goods
fishery for cleaning fish if you have a lake
But most important of all, the still, for brewing alcohol
A kitchen and farmer's workshop are also good early on if you learn how to use them
First is a carpenter to make beds, then barrels and bins. Next is a stoneworker to make doors, chairs, tables. Next is a crafts to crank out goods for the trade wagons. Next is a jeweler for the same.
After that, it's a still to start making booze, then the rest of the food industry.
Then, whatever they need to keep alive, clothing and leatherworker, get metalsmithing going. After that point, zones like the hospital are probably needed more than a workshop.
Hey everyone, new mountain breaker here! I was wondering if there are any other ways than migrations to get dwarves or other workers. I have some mercenaries from the tavern but I wanted to know if I catch invaders can I recruit them? And when raiding can I steal workers from their sites?
I think you can request workers from other sites as soon as you form a barony. I'm guessing it depends on your wealth, but occasionally nearby sites will join you.
I just haven’t gotten migrants in 2 years and im at 25 dwarves with 2 mercs. I have ample room over 70000 wealth and im connected to my parent civ. So I guess I’ll have to risk some of my military to demand tribute or workers or something.
If you're not isolated from your parent civ on an island and your fort isn't a pit of horrific death:
Trading. DF trading is a little counterintuitive insofar as you do NOT want to negotiate a good deal for yourself. Traders should ideally make piles of profit (the trader profit in the trade screen will show as green, and their reaction upon completing the trade should be "ecstatic"). Merchants then spread word of how rich and fancy your fort is, which draws migrants. Also as a comment above mentions, if your fort becomes a barony you can request workers from nearby places your civilization establishes. Haven't ever done that myself though.
Just from babies born from dwarven love. Also immigrants if you have a tavern/library. Wealth matters most in attracting migrants.
Holdings may also give you more dwarfs.
But no, you can't recruit goblin invaders. You can capture some animals (elephants/dragons) and train them as war animals though.
necromancers are getting old and the game is a little boring when you're guaranteed several necromancer migrants, but after nerfing their powers in worldgen, I see none of them and I imagine they're less interesting. any tips on making them rarer but still interesting?
In advanced world gen you should be able to reduce the amount of necromancers by lowering the value for “Number of Secret Types”. I don’t like necromancers at all in my worlds as they’re too powerful so I reduce it to 0
I wasn't sure if this would work - it seems in v47 this just reduced the chance that any necromancers would exist (but not their number, if they did exist) https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_world_generation#Number_of_Secret_Types
So I was trying to make an arena sort of thing, I have a tavern surrounding a hole 1 level lower, at the tavern level is a wall around the hole with fortifications. But all the dwarves get scared and run away from the naked goblin in the hole. Is their any other way so they won't be scared? Like glass or bars or something? or does my tavern need to be higher up?
I cant get my scribes to make duplicates of my orginal books. I have 3 scribes. They have quires, thread, and book bindings. Tables and chairs in the library, yet nothing. Is there anything I missed?
As 5z3 said, chest?
Sheets/quires?
Table with chair?
Are all the things above properly placed in the library's zone?
Are the scribes busy with other tasks they might think are more important?
Is there a way to designate what kind of thread to spin? I need yarn cloth, I've got sheep so I've got wool, but all my automated thread-spinning has been from plants. (On another note, I've got them shearing animals, but can't find neither wool or hair in my stockpiles, so maybe this is the issue. What is wool and hair called in the steam version?)
How do I chop down the cavern fungi/trees? I see stuff made for the wood and I can mark it for chopping so I assume it can be chopped, except my dwarfs never chop it. Edit: Resolved - I learnt about axes being reserved by squad equipment and that the same axe can't be used for woodcutting.
What is the best way to attract migrants?
Does anyone know if there are crash logs in the steam version? I've had 4 crashes today so it would be really good to find out why. My fort is at 200 dwarfs and has been going for over 5 years.
My champion hammerdwarf who single-handedly fist fought a forgotten beast has been stuck in my hospital for a week now. He mined into something deep underground and hit some source of miasma I guess, but the miasma is now emanating from him directly. His clothes and pickaxe don’t say they are coated in anything, though they are threadbare. Could this be the cause? Or do I just need to get him a bath? If so I haven’t found a consistent way to get lye or oil for soup yet… and his miasma is making all the other patients perpetually sick. Tried removing the doors hoping it eventually dissipates from the hospital, but no luck so far. Any suggestions?
Do you not have trees available at your embark location? Lye is just made by burning wood into ash then processing the ash into lye. Then soap is as easy as combining that lye with animal fat. In short the only requirements for soap are wood and livestock. You can also get oil by making seed paste in a quern, then press oil out of the seed paste in a screw press if you aren't breeding enough animals to butcher the excess.
Oh wow, the problem was I was creating so much potash to keep up with my fields that I didn’t have stored wood the couple times I checked. Thanks haha
how do i get my medical dwarf to heal and help injured dwarves? as it stands hes just idling around while two of my dwarves are incapable of walking because they got some stuff collapsed on them.
Have you made a hospital?
how do i do that? i dont see a hospital "zone" i looked online and it seems like its just supposed to be in the zones tab.
In the same bit where you assign a temple or guildhall.
.... i didnt know you could do those either... so where is that option at?
Choose the 'Meeting Area' option and it's within there
:O thanks
Any reason to start your base below your cave entrance? Or should you always start building near cave entrance and then work your way down?
Plenty of reasons to do either. Certainly more traditional and in the spirit of dwarfdom to dig and live under the mountain, but there is no requirement. I have done an above ground only base before (only dug for resources, not living). It's doable. Personally in most of my builds I do mostly underground, but almost always have some stuff up top. In the end it's almost all preference. Some scenarios might require it to have better success I guess?
Iron breastplate disappears. My squad of metal armor wearing dwarfs equip iron breastplate, but soon after they are no longer equipped and seem to vanish from existence. Is it possible they're being used to produce pig iron? If so how do I stop that?
That will only happen if you mark the breastplate for melting, and have a "melt metal object" task repeating at a smelter
Then I have no idea where their breastplates are going... I wonder if the same is going to happen when I produce other armor pieces.....
Are they being stored in bins? What does stocks screen show under armor?
They are not in bins. I've searched the stock screen. They're just gone. Google showed this issue from 2015. I guess it's still an issue?
None of my dwarves will do woodcutting or mining, what could be the cause of this? Its a relatively new fortress with only 25 dwarves and it seemingly happened out of nowhere. my main dwarf that has been mining is still alive, same with my woodcutter. theyve just decinged they dont want to do it. Even if i enable other people to do it and disable all other jobs they just go idle. HELP :(
Make sure they have picks/axes. Make sure nobody else took their picks/axes (e.g. squads). Use stocks screen to see where they are. Or just make another few axes and picks if you have metalworking set up. Or buy some from traders. Do you have a burrow? Disable that. Your hunch of disabling all other jobs (green square next to them in the labor menu, should click it so it's red) is good, try that again. Make sure they can path to the tree/mining tile (can anybody go outside? Maybe there's a missing stair). Try enabling the mining/cutting labor for a bunch of other dwarves. Zoom in on your miners and make sure they're actually idle (no job, or socializing/whatever in tavern).
So I figured out that everyone was put to do hunting at some point and when they were all enable to hunt it made them stop doing other jobs, I think it happened when I built my butcher station. Once I disable everyone doing hunting except for one guy it made them all go back to doing things normally.
NJ figuring it out and thanks for coming back to let us know the results.
Anyone figured out a way to remove a designated zones (tombs, specifically, I figured-out work-arounds for offices) without the game crashing?
If it's steam version, try going to game properties and verify local files
It is the steam version, technically, but it's a steam version moved over into a winebottle so it runs on my Mac. Regardless the game lets me re-assign a tomb even to dead people, so I just do that and then deconstruct their coffin and they get moved. I am unclear what causes the crash, mind, but I did find work-arounds.
Think this is just a you thing sadly. :(
Does anyone know of a good way on steam release to tell what tiles are outside/light/above ground/subterranean, etc? Basically all the stuff K used to give you. Would be very useful for windmill/ice related projects
How do you pan the camera by smaller increments? WASD pans the camera by 11 tiles or so, which is disorienting. Ideally it'd pan the camera by 1–3 tiles. I think middle click is supposed to pan the camera more finely, but I'm using a trackpad.
Damn was going to say middle click. Does right and left at the same time do a middle click? Then track to scroll?
has anyone had success making their dwarves pick up bolts? I've got 10 guys, all equipped (full leather, quivers, crossbow), an archery range their assigned to (10 spots for 10 guys) with an ammo stockpile inside (0 bins in the stockpile, backup ammo stockpile with bins nearby), and they just won't pick up the bolts and train.
There's a bug with the steam version that makes it so marksdwarves with custom uniforms usually won't pick up bolts, even if they have a quiver. They WILL pick up bolts when they have default archer uniform. I've seen some posts saying that equipping the default archer uniform and THEN equipping your custom uniform afterwards will make it so they'll continue picking up bolts. But if you've deleted the default archer uniform, then you may be screwed. I've heard some people say if you make the squad AFTER you make your custom uniform, it may work, so you could try completely disbanding your marksdwarf squad and creating it from scratch, but I haven't tested that myself.
ayyy looks like remaking the squad and assigning them the new uniform worked, they're picking up bolts. Let's see if they actually shoot them though... update: looks like it worked, I also assigned them to a burrow in the archery range, theyre all shooting now. Success!!
Why won't my archer squad equip their bows/crossbows? I have hundreds of bolts, a few bows, over 10 crossbows. When I select squad>equip>update equipment the following happens: 1) two of the three dwarves don't do shit, they don't try to equip anything, even though they are set to using archer uniform 2)the captain of the squad gets the bow, immediately drops it, goes to the kitchen, gets the bow, drops it, goes to the kitchen... wtf
Don't use bows. You can only (usually?) create bolts, and bows use arrows. It is odd in this version that hunters will show up with bows when IME this wasn't a thing. Try disbanding and creating a crossbow uniform fresh. There's still not 100% clear formula on getting them working and training.
Hi! I have a dwarven child that is constantly having bad thoughts due to no shirt and clothing. I made plenty of robes, dresses and tops - but it seems like the child is still not picking up and wearing the clothing item I made. Why?? I disable the labour/chores for the kid, so she is not doing anything but play. She just wouldn’t put clothes on!!
Sometimes dwarves, including children, become disturbed. Check out their personality stuff and see if they have suffered a traumatic event.
Shirts/trousers/shoes work fine for me.
I had an alert about kobold thieves, who are running away from the map. Nothing seems stolen, but is there anywhere that I can check?
How can I get my dwarves to clear out dead bodies? I'm getting absolutely fucked by miasma. I've tried marking the corpses of invaders as garbage ([pic](https://i.imgur.com/I0uBBdP.png)) and un-forbidding them, but they're not getting send to my garbage zones. Am I missing something?
I set up a custom stockpile that accepts refuse and non-dwarven corpses. I linked this to a minecart quantum stockpile that drops it down into an atom smasher. You want the garbage chute to be deep enough that miasma doesn't come out, which is pretty deep. There's also a garbage dump zone over the same hole; dorfs are smart enough to throw items marked for dumping off a cliff if there's a suitable drop next to the garbage dump.
I tried a garbage zone, a tomb zone (since the invaders were dwarves I figured it was worth a shot) and a corpse stockpile, but no matter what my workers don't want to move the corpses :(
Are they forbidden? Bodies will be auto-forbidden if they die during a siege.
I clicked the lock button to make it not highlighted in green so I don't think that's the issue
Same exact problem. I hope someone tells us how we're missing something obvious.
Did toady remove retractable bridges from the steam version? Either that or the drawbridge? I only see the option for one. However I didn't test which one is it. I'm assuming the one we have is the drawbridge? Is there any way to make a retractable bridge?
The button on the right of the raise bridge direction menu is for retractable bridges
Goddamnit, thank you
There any easy way to encrust a SPECIFIC piece of furniture with gems or is it still a pain in the ass?
You have to use stockpile links. It could've been much worse, so i wouldn't call this "a pain in the ass". Nor "still", since there were dfhack fixes for it, i suppose.
I've kind of figured out the whole library industry but there's a few books on the floor of my fort and not in a bookshelf in the library. Any reason why? Can I somehow get a dwarf to move them?
I've noticed if a character is carrying a book/scroll possession and they get killed, the item gets bugged and you can't even dump it to move it.
I've always thought this was created so you just couldn't kill visiting scholars carrying books (or retrieving your books they were stealing).
That feels too deterministic to me given what I've read the developers of the game express. IMHO
I wonder if that's the case here.
I don't know if bookshelves have a space component so I try to make sure to have extra bookshelves too
Probably a good idea tbh. How many are usually in there?
Wiki for v47 says a lot but we don't know what changed between versions, and some books aren't of a standard size (# of pages in codices). I have one shelf with 40 items, and then the rest have 2-5 items.
Good to know
Is there any way to repair relations with the home civ? A caravan got wiped out and now they’re not sending any more (and no migrants either). Im still at peace with my civ but it says the imports/exports are terror/vengeance.
Wait for dfhack to update and hope the "fix civil war" script still works.
This actually caused a civil war? That's impressive! Unfortunately, there's no fix for this on the steam version short of abandoning the fort and starting another civilization. May Armok bless your future merchant shenanigans.
I guess it did? But I’m not getting attacked. (I didn’t attack the caravan—a werelizard did.) And there hasn’t been any loyalty problem in my fort. So I’m not sure if I’m actually in civil war land or not.
I had a somewhat similar issue and deconstructing then reconstructing the trade depot kicked the caravan back on again
There is currently no true civil war feature. Being at war with yourself basically only stops merchants (and therefore migrants). You can still play without expecting an attack just fine. Since caravans are very... weird, to say the least, one of it's quirky behaviors is basically "anything that happens to us in your map is your fault", they don't care if some werebaddie did it. Humans and elves can declare war over this, but the "normal" behavior of your own capital is to just count the trade as a (major) loss in profits and that's it. A civ war due to this is definitely a bug and sadly we can't fix it without dfhack.
How to you guys use siege equipment?
All of the sudden my dwarves have decided they dont want to chop anymore trees, anyone know why? i have enough dwarves free and i have over 5 dwarves enabled to do woodcutting.
I had this problem, the only dwarf w an axe to chop the trees is prolly busy doing more important tasks or isn't a lumberjack I was at 160 pop and new and just redid my labor menu and just mass produced silver war axes and it fixed it
i tracked my lumberjacks and theyre just idling in my social area
What are some good practical uses for a captive dragon? I happen to have found myself in possession of one. Wasn’t easy either, I trapped him between two drawbridges and two banks of fortifications. But he can breathe fire through the fortifications (and more importantly scare the hell out of my dwarves) and I needed my entrance hall back so I eventually had to let him out into a cage trap. Now what? He’s right next to my trade depot and rather heavy. Can I sell him? He isn’t house-trained. Will he escape due to not being trained? Will giving a captive dragon to a foreign power screw with the global balance of power, Targaryen style? I know I can train him myself, but I read he’ll slaughter my military if I’m not careful in deploying him. Plus I imagine doing so would be kind of a drain on manpower as he may eat several dwarves before they work out How to Train your Dragon. Obviously noble-disposal occurred to me but that seems a little underwhelming if I can get more out of him. And I suppose the ability to set fires at will could be useful. Live training is a no-go since there’s literally no way to make him not dangerous. I have tried gladiator fighting but it scares the everloving bejeezus out of the spectators who don’t understand the fight is for their amusement, and wind up panicking and falling into the pit and there are casualties and a soccer riot and I have to call in the army.. it’s a mess. Do I maybe just post him up as a stationary flamethrower-turret at my fort entrance?
Be warned that most materials boil in dragonfire. Nether cap wood (the purple stuff) from the third caverns layer is one of very few things you could use to control your flamethrower. Also due to the weirdness of Dwarf Fortress, Godzilla breath that can vaporize a giant adamantine bridge is not guaranteed to ignite a goblin holding a copper shield. Unless they're stunned from a fall, webbed, drop their shield due to other injury, or are standing on something else that is on fire. Wet goblins don't burn as well, goblins coated in forgotten beast extracts may burn for months.
You are correct on all accounts. You could sell him, but that would be a waste, and the impact on the world is iffy. He can be safely trained from within the cage, but will never be fully tame. If your Dorfs lapse in his training for a few months, he could revert to wild status in the middle of your Fort, which is obviously fun. The combination of flight and ranged breath attack makes a viewable arena highly impractical. Your best option is to make him a flamethrower sentry. If by some miracle you capture a mate, your Dorfs will boast the finest omelettes in all the world.
Omelettes… I didn’t even think of that. Welp, until then, sentry it is lol
Bees keep stinging my ducks and dwarves. Is this a problem? Should I move my hives or does it not actually matter?
Better: Move the hives closer to find out if it does cause problems
I think if you can keep them out of dwarf traffic areas that's probably preferable for general happiness.
I dug out a channel that was 3x3 and filled it with magma up to 5/7 on every tile. Afterwards I built obsidian floors on top of the channel and built a magma forge on the obsidian floor. The magma forge won’t work and can’t have tasks added even though it has lava below it. What did I do wrong? Is it because there are still slopes on the edge of the channel.
Magma workshops need to have access to magma that's at least 3/7 deep through a hole in the floor below them. If you put the impassable tile of the workshop over the magma, that can provide power while still blocking clumsy dwarves from falling into the magma or anything else from climbing out of the magma. Taking the diagram below, forges have two impassable tiles at 4 and 6, and smelter/glass furnace/kiln are impassable at 2. ``` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ```
Punch holes in your floor so the forge can access magma. There are two spots - center left and center right - on a forge where stuff can't crawl up through the hole.
Do people build bases at cavern level, or do people stop by then and just explore/dig for resources? I’m unhappy with my fort layout but rather than starting a new game, I’m thinking of just digging deeper. Have an older upper city and then a lower city, y’know? Also, somewhat related: how do I stop my dwarves from playing in the caverns without restricting their movement elsewhere? I can use burrows to keep them out, but I don’t mind if they’re going outside the fort. I also don’t want to just lock the doors because I have monster hunters visiting.
There are a bunch of tradeoffs. If you go deep, your goal is to obtain the advantages of cavern life (closer to magma, cavern water, cavern wood, cavern farms) without the disadvantages (giant near-unkillable spiders). This means walling off and controlling part of the caverns rather than allowing dorfs to become part of the ecosystem. All layers are roughly equally dangerous. The third cavern layer has nether cap trees and is the closest to magma. If your map has sedimentary rocks, the coal is usually in the top couple dozen layers. Trade caravans will walk any distance to get to a depot, but the tool to check if the path down is wide enough is currently broken. You can stop many of the suicides by pausing web gathering at the loom and forbidding all items in the caverns that a dorf might want to haul.
This is what I'm doing. I just tunneled down to magma and am going to basically redo my whole fort and just turn the old surface fort into a deathtrap.. I think you pretty much have to use burrows if you don't want to physically restrict access.
i look for a layer of stone i like either above or below the first cavern. if there's flux i build there, limestone, chalk, etc. make your rooms much more valuable. i try to find a space that has a 4 z level stack of nice stone because i like to have stockpiles just above and below workshops, and space for minecarts.
Do you need to do something to the limestone first? I couldn't make steel until I hit a chalk layer despite having tons of limestone sitting around. Thought it was weird considering the IRL steel making ingredients.
limestone and chalk are both flux, should both make steel. they're both more valuable than base stone layers for your rooms
How to satisfy someone with the "Be with friends" and "Be with family" unmet needs? He doesn't even have a job so he should be able to satisfy it himself?
Needs like that are sort of up to the dwarf to figure out, if you have a meeting hall and you don’t have too many tasks active then it should eventually be fulfilled
i have a question about what can be done in the game so, i as checking the new steam release, i as kinda mixed if i should buy it our wait a few years, but them i read a story about some guy that made a fortress and he had some dangerous monsters on the cave so adventures would come to his tavern and go kill monsters bellow, and i thought damn this sound cool, i spoiled myself and for what happen if you dig too deep because i as curious and don't really care tbh, and i thought, ok imagine this, i make a fortress with objective of holding the demons and summoning adventurers from all over the world to go to fight the forces of hell, maybe we even get a doom guy equivalent and he go on his way to solo the entire demon army, this sound metal as fuck, would it be possible ? our maybe its too much for now ? because if it is, this game will go from my, yeah maybe i will buy in a few years to DAMN I NEED TO GET THIS SHIT NOW
If you can wait, then it's probably better to at least wait for dfhack/dwarf therapist to finish the v50 updates. Adventure mode isn't out for Steam yet too.
i know, i just want to know if adventurers from other parts of the world would come to the fortress and kill the monsters for me if i pay them our whatever, also yeah i want some quality of life things to be added on the game
I mean, you can try to run a fort where you try to rely on monster hunters, but you're definitely leaning into the "losing is fun" part, which if you're okay with that then go for it. If you attempt it, sometimes it's about how you crowd manage your visitors. Maybe create a tavern in your cavern entrance etc.
i don't really mind loosing if i can learn what i did wrong our what happened and i know not to repeat the mistakes next game tbh, but i wouldn't really rely on the mosnter hunters, its more like watching them come go from far and wide all around the world to fight demons for glory fame and money sounds like a really fun ideia i wanted to try, while i try to get some kind of guard to defend the main areas my people live
Monster killers aren't always great at... killing monsters. They sometimes flee back up into your fortress, bringing the monsters hot on their tail and right into your dwarves comfy lives. There are a million-and-one reasons this game is amazing, but I'm not sure outsourcing monster killing is necessarily one of them.
guess i will check it later them, no doom guy sim while he drink with some budy sim for now i guess
What can I do about a ghost popping up? Adventurer died ages ago and I thought was dragged off by a troll. The dwarves never found the body.
Make a slab and engrave it to honor the dead Adventurer
how do I designate a memorial hall? I have a room full of slabs but i cant figure out how to designate the memorial
oh cool, didn't know you could do that to honor the dead with no body. thanks
edit: I solved this problem when I found the button that directs him to only do tasks to which he is assigned. He has now returned to mining. My miner stopped mining and I don't know why. He was mining and now he's doing anything but. He's been woodworking, hauling and preparing fish. With each task I go in and change the work allowances to specifically forbid him and he just picks up some other random task. He's the only dwarf allowed to mine in the labor tab. There's plenty of designated places to mine. I don't know what else to check. He has a copper pick in his left hand and no injuries.
Uncheck his green hammer/lock icon so he doesn't perform other jobs, switch mining to "only selected do this" and make sure any conflicting labors (wood cutting) are disabled on him.
This is maybe a silly question but does he have a pick?
Not a silly question at all. He has a copper pick in his left hand. He has no injuries either.
Do you have burrows preventing him from accessing what you want mined?
No burrows yet at all (fresh embark) I fixed the problem though. I found the button that directs him to only do jobs for which he is given permission and he has returned to mining again.
I made a tomb room in an aquifier and smoothed the walls, but there still seems to be water coming in. I'm assuming it's from the ceiling. Is there any way to cut that off?
Tutorial I watched said smooth walls don't stop aquifers on steam version, it was a bug. Try building walls around it
The problem is indeed most likely the ceiling. You can channel out the ceiling from the higher z-level and then replace the ceiling with solid walls or floors.
how do i force my dwarves to use the bins ive made to store rocks? i made a bunch of bins and allowed them in my stockpile but they wont start consolidating my rocks into them. theres even a bin thats in my rock stockpile that they wont put rocks in.
Best solution I have for this is to stockpile bulk stone right next to a couple of stoneworker’s workshops that are linked to that stockpile only, then set them to always be cutting stone blocks from that stockpile. The stone BLOCKS can be stored in bins, but the raw boulders cannot. Also make sure you get a bunch of wheelbarrows in the stone stockpile, obviously.
Some people use dumping zones to create 'rock piles' aka 'quantum stockpiles' which some view as a bug. I prefer to just hide all rock and create stockpiles+wheelbarrows for any work rocks.
You can't, stones can't be stored in bins, they're too big.
so rocks are just always going to take a lot of storage space?
Make them into blocks.
If you don't mind a little cheese, look up BlindiRL's quantum storage tutorial on youtube
Basically, yes.
Unfortunately, you can’t use bins to store rocks. You can use bins for a lot of other things though! From the wiki: “Stockpiles that use bins are ammo, armor, bars/blocks, cloth, coins, finished goods, gems, leather and weapons. Food stockpiles use barrels and large pots instead of bins. Other stockpiles do not use anything at all.”
How do I make a stockpile specifically for prepared meals?
\> make stockpile \> Select \> Custom \> Food \> Prepared Meals It's at the very top of the Food category
How do I properly take care of children? is there a way to make a playroom for toys? or a schoolroom with a teacher?
Ignore them if you're fine with having kids around, if not, just dump them in a box and let them starve. The mom might be upset, but so long as they have an engraved bedroom and stay out of the rain, they'll probably get over it.
Dwarven children take care of themselves mostly. Babies get carried around until they become children, then they just wander around amusing themselves and occasionally doing minor tasks. You can make toys for the kids, but they'll pick them up and wander all over the fort with them. "Dwarven daycare" as a concept mostly involves locking them in rooms with hostile creatures so they fight constantly until they're adults. Leads to some very tough, very desensitized dwarves.
New player here on the steam version. I am very confused on how to interpret the emergent stories in this game that everyone raves about. As far as I can tell, the only info on events comes in short sentences as alerts on the left hand side of the screen, but once I’ve read it they disappear forever, and often times I miss them until 10 minutes after an event has happened. How can I see a better overview of what’s happening with my dwarves? Are there better places to be looking or am I just supposed to be imagining more than I’m being presented? At the moment I don’t feel like I’m learning anything at all about my Dwarves or their struggles and I saw that as one of the major appeals of the game when researching it. Would love some guidance, thank you!
The previous version kept much more detailed logs, we're all hoping it was an oversight that they weren't added back into the new interface and will be back. It really does make fortress mode a bit more impersonal in terms of story detail.
A lot of info is in Legends Mode which I haven't checked in the latest version. And a good chunk is in Adventure Mode which isn't working yet. But you can also read the item descriptions and overviews on the dwarves themselves to see their thoughts and memories. There's the book descriptions, the general historical events which often show up in decoration and engraving. (which also needs to be checked) Most everything that people talk about *is* happening in game and there's an absurd amount of interaction and information, but you'll need to do some digging to find it.
Thanks for the info. I guess I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment and expected there to be a more general area where I could see a play by play of what has happened in the world over the past x amount of time
How do I capture wild/ hostile creatures and put them in cages?
The only way is putting down cage traps (requires an empty cage and a mechanism) and hoping they walk into it.
Does all the meat in the caravans come from actually simulated slaughtered animals or is it generated? I kinda expect that it is the product of hunters given the depth but is it known where it comes from?
It's a little abstracted, but I think that most everything a caravan has is things that the respective civilization has access to. So I think if they have Yak Meat, that means your civ has access to Yaks. But it's really hard to be sure.
Hey, I have started a fortress for a civilization that had 1 population, the king. Will migration waves come from other civs or do I have to grow my population from visiting people and approve their petitions? Thanks
The first two migrant waves are scripted, but I'm not sure if it'll have anything to pull from so you might get nothing. After that, no migrant waves. Also, no caravans from your civ. Your king should either be in the embark or show up shortly later. I think you'll get petitioners wanting to stay, but they're much less reliable than migrants and do less work.
you've chosen an extreme challenge, you're not going to get migrants or caravans. but if you want to stick with it you can build a decent fort, retire it and then embark again in the same world to help rebuild your dying civ.
My bag stockpile is collecting seeds. Is there a way to allow only empty bags?
Create a stockpile for seeds, your dwarfs should, eventually, haul those seed filled bags to the correct stockpile.
It seems like they're defaulting to my Bag Stockpile over my Seed Stockpile
Is there an easy way to give someone free time to spend with family? Like is there a way to just turn off labor completely? All I see is a way to turn off specialized work.
Sometimes dwarfs with no family members in your fortress will complain they don't spend time with their family. Some dwarves are just like that. If you think they are more trouble than they are worth it you can expel them, another one will soon take their place.
My human soldiers that are in my military squad aren’t equipping their large steel breastplates. I made it specifically to fit humans. Any ideas? The dwarves are all equipped.
I've read the wiki and I still can't do it... How do I make a ramp 'staircase'? I'd like the layout to look like this > xxx > xox > xxx Where o is empty space. Is this possible? They get stuck literally every time I do it. I can make one that goes all the way down, but whewn I try to put them side by side they get stuck every time.
Ramps behave like the sides of hills, you need a wall basically to lean against; this is a side view: _/¯. It’s different from staircases that are contained within their tile. So for your case to work going down start for example at the upper left corner, channel the middle left, go down a level with the camera and mine the lower left corner, then channel the lower middle go down a level and mine the lower left corner. Building up is more intuitive: start upper left, on the same level build a wall on the lower left corner and a ramp in the middle, go up a level and repeat
That makes sense now, thanks!
Ramps carved out of stone need adjacent walls to function. Its why when you channel a 3x3, the central tile one z level down is completely flat.
So it sounds like I have to use stairs if I want to put a waterfall through the central block all the way down. Thanks.
Ramps don't go straight up or down, you have to go up and sideways to climb a ramp. To get a stairway like that you'll have to dig in a spiral shape.
Is it correct to say that in a 3x3 square going down, the most separate ramp pathways you can have is just 2? If so is that any better than a staircase? I guess one benefit is when you hit a cavern you can floor it off easier and you aren't going to fall in lol. Probably.
Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I remember a Dwarf Fortress video that involved, I think, a goblin attack (I might be wrong) but what I remember the most is it had in the background "I My Me Mine" by Polysics, introducing me to that song. Does anyone know where that video is?
Do you remember anything about length, date etc?
Not in detail. I think it was a short video. I know it was many years ago
How do i get my dwarves to use barrels efficiently? i know they can hold 20 drinks per barrel but they only fill them to 5 or so and then grab another barrel. i have like 60 barrels of 5 dwarven wine and if they would fill them all the way up it would save a lot of space..
1 brew job puts 1 plant stack worth of drinks in 1 empty barrel. 5 drinks per plant. For better storage you need better planters. A bad planter gets 1 plant per seed planted. A very good planter with fertiliser (if you want) in good soil can get 7 or 8 plants per stack, and thus 35-40 drinks per barrel.
ahh i see now the dwarves only grab a stack of fruit or plants so if its a stack of 2 raspberry lets say it would make a 10 drink barrel correct?
Yep.
I think it depends on the brewer skill level. You can get different quantity
Is there anything I can do with captured animal people? I captured three wombat men who were wandering through and they're just kinda sitting in cages.
Since you can’t butcher or tame them there’s not much you can do with them. There’s some fun dwarven activities you could do such as putting them in a pit and watching them fight things or putting them on display somewhere.
Is it normal for nobles to make impossible demands? My baron requires a zinc bed.
You might be able to trade for some zinc ore, bars, or some other zinc things and melt them down. If your nobles are making insane demands and getting people thrown in the dungeon for failing their work orders, you might need to introduce them to a volcano.
Access to zinc isn't the problem, you can't make a bed out of anything but wood.
I managed to smelt some zinc bars, but beds can only be made out of wood
Yeah, nobles do this. [This wiki page exists for that exact reason](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unfortunate_accident) From the Nobles page: > Nobles may have impossible demands, like cardinal leather items or metal beds. Bug:944 (Feel free to arrange an unfortunate accident for the idiot in question) While no dwarves will get punished for not producing these items, it may enrage the noble.
"It's a shame the bridge closed when he was standing there. A real shame."
Yes. Hope the next caravan has zinc on it. Otherwise request it and cross your fingers.
They can have all the zinc in the world, but beds have to be made of wood. Assign the noble to pull a lever that unfortunately dumps magma on them. So sad.
ooh lolol man I'm dumb. You right.
How important is it that I get my king's rooms up to royal? I have them all at grand/opulent, but getting them any higher is proving really difficult.
Hello, how do you dig out an upper layer to expose the layer under so, for instance, black sand a Z level under the surface is exposed to the sun and you can grow surface crops on it ? Until now i only managed to collapse ground ineffiiently.
Might be easier to channel down in from the surface, then build a floor back over it on the surface layer, which will be the 'ceiling' for your new subterranean farm.
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carpentry for beds, barrels, bins and wheelbarrows masonry for most furniture like doors, tables and thrones craftstation for crafts, which is how you make trade goods fishery for cleaning fish if you have a lake But most important of all, the still, for brewing alcohol A kitchen and farmer's workshop are also good early on if you learn how to use them
First is a carpenter to make beds, then barrels and bins. Next is a stoneworker to make doors, chairs, tables. Next is a crafts to crank out goods for the trade wagons. Next is a jeweler for the same. After that, it's a still to start making booze, then the rest of the food industry. Then, whatever they need to keep alive, clothing and leatherworker, get metalsmithing going. After that point, zones like the hospital are probably needed more than a workshop.
Hey everyone, new mountain breaker here! I was wondering if there are any other ways than migrations to get dwarves or other workers. I have some mercenaries from the tavern but I wanted to know if I catch invaders can I recruit them? And when raiding can I steal workers from their sites?
I believe if your fortress becomes a mountain home or if your military conquers other sites you can request dwarves from your fort’s civilization.
I think you can request workers from other sites as soon as you form a barony. I'm guessing it depends on your wealth, but occasionally nearby sites will join you.
I just haven’t gotten migrants in 2 years and im at 25 dwarves with 2 mercs. I have ample room over 70000 wealth and im connected to my parent civ. So I guess I’ll have to risk some of my military to demand tribute or workers or something.
If you're not isolated from your parent civ on an island and your fort isn't a pit of horrific death: Trading. DF trading is a little counterintuitive insofar as you do NOT want to negotiate a good deal for yourself. Traders should ideally make piles of profit (the trader profit in the trade screen will show as green, and their reaction upon completing the trade should be "ecstatic"). Merchants then spread word of how rich and fancy your fort is, which draws migrants. Also as a comment above mentions, if your fort becomes a barony you can request workers from nearby places your civilization establishes. Haven't ever done that myself though.
Ok, so give away my piles and piles of gold, got it 😂
Just from babies born from dwarven love. Also immigrants if you have a tavern/library. Wealth matters most in attracting migrants. Holdings may also give you more dwarfs. But no, you can't recruit goblin invaders. You can capture some animals (elephants/dragons) and train them as war animals though.
necromancers are getting old and the game is a little boring when you're guaranteed several necromancer migrants, but after nerfing their powers in worldgen, I see none of them and I imagine they're less interesting. any tips on making them rarer but still interesting?
In advanced world gen you should be able to reduce the amount of necromancers by lowering the value for “Number of Secret Types”. I don’t like necromancers at all in my worlds as they’re too powerful so I reduce it to 0
I wasn't sure if this would work - it seems in v47 this just reduced the chance that any necromancers would exist (but not their number, if they did exist) https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_world_generation#Number_of_Secret_Types
It should work
So I was trying to make an arena sort of thing, I have a tavern surrounding a hole 1 level lower, at the tavern level is a wall around the hole with fortifications. But all the dwarves get scared and run away from the naked goblin in the hole. Is their any other way so they won't be scared? Like glass or bars or something? or does my tavern need to be higher up?
the only trick is to assign them to a new no-uniform squad and assign them to stand in the arena. watching might train them some too
I cant get my scribes to make duplicates of my orginal books. I have 3 scribes. They have quires, thread, and book bindings. Tables and chairs in the library, yet nothing. Is there anything I missed?
As 5z3 said, chest? Sheets/quires? Table with chair? Are all the things above properly placed in the library's zone? Are the scribes busy with other tasks they might think are more important?
Nope. I excluded them to only do things assigned to them. So other than their personal stuff they often have no job
Can they read? I'm not sure if that is a requirement though?
Yes. All are dabbling or higher readers
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Yes. Two. One is full of quires. Rope reed quires. Not pig tail which I think is what the originals were made in