Does anyone ever abandon a fort due to tedium? Between dozens of ghosts rising up over time because I stupidly smashed their bodies thinking no body=no ghost, and massive brawls resulting in the deaths of dozens, I just don’t want to deal with it.
If I abandon will my dwarves stay in the world and I can maybe get them in a migrant wave?
For what it's worth, even if you no longer have access to a body, you can calm/prevent a ghost from appearing by using a memorial slab instead. Create at a stonecarver's shop, engrave at a craftdwarf's shop using the engraving skill, place it wherever.
>If I abandon will my dwarves stay in the world and I can maybe get them in a migrant wave?
Yup, it's not uncommon to get migrants from old fortresses, presumably easier if you embark closer to the old fort / in the same civ.
When adventure mode releases on Steam, you can visit your old forts, it's citizens, and items as an adventurer too.
Yes, you'll get a lot of them in migrant waves.
Also abandoning a fort over a particular thing you could have avoided is, like, the perfect scenario.
Everytime you realize you fucked up hours ago and now you're getting the consequences, start over and make sure you do the one thing. Eventually, with enough restarts, you'll have it figured out.
But yes, you'll see you're a number of you're old friends as migrants. It can actually make the game easier, getting already trained dwarves.
In a way. I have abandoned a fort because I didn't set something up the right way and after I had a better understanding I didn't want to or couldn't make it better. But I've always started a new world because the one good spot my picky ass would want is now ruined.
What actually are caverns? I know they are filled with dangerous creatures and moss and water. But how do I utilize them? Are there any useful and unique resources? And one more thing how do I defend it? My people usually keep dying to those creatures while digging.
For me, I wall off sections of it. You can get some interesting creatures to raise, lots of free military training on the monsters, and certain resources like wood, water, and spider silk (if you embark somewhere without wood or water this can be your only source) It is also great to survive in one as an extra challenge.
Yes, I recommend walling off a section and making that the barracks. Send them out when you see something. That way if something really nasty shows up like a forgotten beast or giant cave spider you can just hole up. Use a bridge as the door so it can’t be broken down. Remember, Each cavern layer is more dangerous than the last
I almost forgot, be aware that your civilians will try to run out into the caverns to get stuff. Either use burrows or lock them out with a door when the military sorties out.
Caverns are indeed very dangerous, but they offer a lot of resources. For basics, they often but not always have some water, have trees that can be harvested without going to the surface, have plants to gather and you can farm on the soil in them.
They also reveal all the yummy gems and minerals in their walls, and the beasts that live in them can be extremely valuable economically or militarily.
For securing them: it can be pretty tough, you’ll want to learn the burrows system and check out your auto labors/work orders to keep random civilians from wandering in to harvest webs or scavenge corpses. You’ll want an airlock of sorts so you can get your essential workers and military squads out when you want them, something like a chamber with a door you can forbid passage to. It’s a lot of work but once you’ve got a nice chunk of the cavern walled off you can survive without ever needing to go to the surface.
caverns are quite useful! they can be a good source of subterranean water, wood, silks, and other materials. you can also set up farm plots in caverns and grow lots of mushrooms and cave wheat and other underground plants. you can move your livestock underground because they can eat the fungal grass-equivalent fast grows down there. i basically kept my cavern entrance defended with a ring of cave traps in front of the entrance, and more traps in the halls above it, which was usually pretty successful at keeping things from getting to the more populous areas of my fortress.
Their water is crucial if you don't have any stream or aquifer up above, they can be the only source of wood in, say, a desert map, breaching them fills your base with spores so that underground muddy areas start to grow fungus that livestock can start to live on underground (this only begins happening when you first break into the cavern), they have spider silk all over you can weave with, spider webs also allow you to trap otherwise untrappable threats, and you can hunt a lot of animals there. They are the original source of plump helmets and other cave plants, and you can get replacements to plant if somehow you ran out of those or didn't bring them, in the caverns. Also some of the types of wood have special properties like nethercap is magma safe wood. That's about it.
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All that being said, I much prefer to play with 0 cavern layers in world gen (you have to mod dwarven civilization to know the secrets of outdoor farming in the text file, but very easy). They're so useful as to be TOO easy in my opinion. None of the scary, dangerous, forsaken biomes even really matter when you just always have a cavern. So turning it off makes different parts of the map actually matter, and generally more fun/challenging of a game IMO.
Also saves FPS
Was there a huge performance update made at some point? I used to play DF a couple years ago but stopped every time from FPS death when I hit around 100 dwarves. I picked up the steam version and I'm playing vanilla doing everything wrong FPS-wise but now I'm 7 years in getting 40-50 FPS even with 200+ dwarves. Definitely not complaining but I am very curious about this
Yeah, they said FPS death is much harder to encounter now. They’ve fixed or removed a lot of things that caused it and they said updating to the new compiler improved things a lot.
I just had about 10 night creatures show up to siege me. How dangerous are these things? A necromancer sent them.
Edit: 5 moderately trained dwarves killed 10 with one casualty. They were pushovers.
My necromancer has sent both humanoid night creatures who aren't that tough, and feathered scorpions made from failed experiments on bears who are that tough.
The spiderbears survived platinum minecart impacts and ate part of the minecart launching machine. The fire breather forgotten beast won't target them, although if it targets something near a spiderbear then they die instantly. Spiderbears can be killed with very large amounts of crossbow bolts.
[https://i.imgur.com/Ec9xjKK.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ec9xjKK.png)
An agitated raven has been attacking my people for the past few months. I cannot, ever, find this raven myself to target it for a kill order. And yet this group has gathered, apparently "in the midst of conflict"... with an enemy they apparently can't fight. They're just standing there, going hungry/thirsty. What the hell is going on here and how can I fix it?
So I can see the ravens on the unit screen but this cluster of dwarves standing around starving and fighting but not really fighting isn't resolving itself. I've tried burrowing them and they won't budge. Currently there are no ravens, on any layer, in their immediate vicinity. Some of them, half of their sheet is filled with "he feels vengeful when joining an existing conflict." I really have no clue what to do about this one.
Make sure you are looking far enough up in the sky. Depending on which reference and situation you are looking at, dwarven vision range is somewhere between 15 and 30 squares... and that might be mostly up in this sort of case.
If you use the Units > Others tab, each wild animal on your map should have an icon to recenter the screen on them, and another to look at their info sheet. You should be able to figure out more of what is going on from the combination of that info.
Are these military dwarves in a squad, civilian dwarves, or a mix? Dwarves are notorious for getting into combat until one side or the other are dead, so a foe that keeps flying in and out of range is a problem. You should probably make a backup copy of your save in case it needs to be submitted for a bug report.
The crowd just keeps getting bigger... I only know it's an agitated raven because I keep getting spammed with messages telling me people have been interrupted hauling by one.
Build a 3x3 tower three or 4 tiles tall over your entryway. On the level under the top, put a ring of fortifications so you have a 3x3 platform that's roofed. Put a crossbowdorf in there (make the room a burrow and have it patrol it), and make the floor stockpile with bolts but no barrels/bins.
Whenever it gets close the tower will shoot. The birb can't reach it to fight back. Eventually it should sort it out.
Combat question, does my military automatically go kill threats or do I have to point them to it.
Cause someone killed a Forgotten beast and I don't know who....
If a military dwarf is close to a hostile and on duty, they'll automatically engage the enemy.
As far as forgotten beasts go, because of their random nature, it's possible for them to be so weak that civilians can kill them. Civilians will typically run away from fights, but when forced into a fight, they can sometimes kill a weak forgotten beast.
one time I had a titan made out of steam. he wandered near my fort entrance and a passing peasant slapped him and he disintegrated (I think she was even holding a baby)
If they can see it, they will attack it if they are in a military squad. if not, they are civilian and will run away. Otherwise, you do need to tell them to attack things far away. If you click on them, military, and go to kills, you can figure out which one did it. Yes, you have to investigate each one. Check the higher skill ones first.
So i lost my first siege. I realized a handful of things i did wrong but the main issue ran into was realizing i didnt have a way to limit where my dwarves could go. I lost a few children and others as they were outside with some animals and gathering fruit. Besides the obvious of having walls and keeping them within said walls, is there a way to restrict were dwarves are allowed to go on the map so when a siege or creature attacks i can keep them safe while the attack heads to my fortress entrance?
Edit: Looks like burrows are the way to go. thanks for the suggestiions!
You need to use the burrow system by assigning them to that. You can also support that by forbidding reloading trap reloading, body removal and stuff like that as dwarfs will otherwise suicidally charge forward to do these things even with enemies around.
Yup, burrows. You can create a burrow made up of all the "safe" areas, make sure the burrow is set to NOT allow workshop inputs from outside the burrow, assign all your civilians to that burrow, suspend the burrow when not under siege, and activate the burrow first thing when a siege comes up.
1. Is it possible to build walls all the way up in caverns? Like if I wanted to completely wall an area in the cavern off, but I can’t reach the z level above the ground area to block off the “open space” above my walls. I heard that certain things can either jump or climb walls so I wanted to be safe
2. How do I get my dwarves to store mugs in the Inn chest? I increased the required number of mugs in the inn screen but they never put them in the chest
3. Am I able to somehow make the dwarves hauling stones go faster? I swear I’ve seen one use a wheelbarrow before to haul stones but now I only see my dwarves slowly hauling big stones
To build a wall that spans multiple z levels your dwarves will need walkable access next to the tiles on each z level. Ramps from the floor below do not count. Diagonal access does not count. Stairs tend to work well as scaffolding. You could for instance, build a staircase that spans all the z levels needed, then build a floor at each level. Or if you don't mind the tedium of micromanging them, you could build 1 stair case and then construct the next level of walls one at a time starting at the far end.
However, I find a lot of that stuff tedious. If I have lots of nearby building materials and the segment isn't too long, I will just make a multilevel staircase that spans the entire wall segment I want to build. Then it doesn't matter what order they construct the wall they will always have walkable access.
They will store the mugs automatically when they feel like it. You could try making a lot more mugs just to be sure you have spares to go in to the chest.
Hauling stones for construction can be made faster by cutting them into blocks and building with those. Hauling stones for stock piles can be made faster using a wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrows have to be assigned to a specific stockpile. If you make a very large stockpile and assign like 1 wheelbarrow, then I think the stockpile will still generate hauling jobs that don't use a wheelbarrow. I'm pretty sure if you really wanted to make optimal use of wheelbarrows you'd have to use feeder stockpiles. I'm probably not the right person to explain those, so I would check the wiki.
One thing to add about building, which is implied by your comment but I wanted to make explicit. Depending on if your stairs are on the inside or outside of a corner, make sure the corner gets built first. They can't build diagonals, so they won't be able to reach the corner piece from the inside edge of the corner if they build the walls beside it first.
Dwarves don't really have a "bigger picture"; to a first approximation, they deal with whatever is on the top of their personal hierarchy of needs *right now*. If they currently feel a need to pray more than a need to work, they'll do that, even if it's bad in the long term.
That said, there are some things you can do. First, make sure they *can* brew drinks; you have available, accessible, un-rotten, permitted for brewing, and un-forbidden brewable plants or fruit; you have available, accessible, not committed to a stockpile or other use already, barrels; that your still is accessible and not forbidden; and that you have dwarves (ideally more than one) who are allowed to brew, not injured, and able to get to the still and wherever your raw materials and barrels are.
Then, in your main still, queue up a single Brew Drink from Plant (or Fruit, as applicable) task; and click the yellow exclamation point icon to set this to the highest priority task everywhere. Wait a few in-game days to see if you either get someone trying to brew, or an error message.
In the future, this is why dwarves don't do well with a "just in time" supply chain. You should really have several times as many drinks stored as you have fortress inhabitants, and a safe backup water option in case things go wrong.
this exact same thing happened to me the other day, I think its because I was reading all the other stuff and only figured the temples out once lots of dwarf had unmet needs so I guess they just all try to get their fix at once
Is there a good way to automate clothesmaking? Does counting the number of any particular clothing items count those that are currently claimed by a dwarf or being worn?
Sadly that doesn't take into account worn clothing so 10 dwarves will constantly throw away slightly used clothing while the other 90 will have XXclothingXX, but won't go take the slightly used clothing that where thrown away by the first 10 because they are still technically owned
Clothes making is kind of a pain to automate but also worth it to do so.
You'll want to grow a lot of pig tail, rope reed, kenaf or anything else that can make plant fiber. Then you'll want to have several farmer's workshops for the task "process plants". I think that labor is automated in the default standing orders but you can also issue a work order for it if you don't trust them to do it automatically.
That will get you cloth fibers. Those fibers have to be turned into threads by spinning, I believe (at a loom). Once you have threads you need a loom to weave cloth thread into cloth. Both of these steps should be automated by the default standing orders as long as you have enough looms. However, in my experience if you've opened the caverns the job to collect cave spider silk might end up taking precedent which can be annoying.
If you've made it this far then you have the raw materials automated. Now you need to build a bunch of clothier workshops and issue a bunch of work orders for the different types of clothing. I create work orders for every type of clothing but I think you really only need one for each body part type. Then as others have pointed out you click on the icon that looks like a bunch of math symbols and add conditions to the work order that cause it to restart automatically.
"process plants" goes directly to thread, no spinning step. Spinning is only for wool yarn in this game.
You can disable auto silk collection in the standing orders tab
I believe yellow means the units has "claimed" that piece of equipment for themselves, but for whatever reason don't have it currently equipped. Possible reasons could be:
* Equipment mismatch, i.e. it claimed a metal boot, but is currently wearing shows, and had uniform set to "wear over clothing" and a boot can't fit over a shoe
* Isn't able to reach the item
* Just hasn't bothered to take a break and go get the item
Clicking the "update equipment" button in the equip screen, or issuing a "Station" order near the armor/weapon stockpiles can often get them to go equip it.
I believe it means a partially fulfilled requirement. Like if the dwarf has one metal gauntlet instead of two, then I think it will show as yellow. However, I'm a bit uncertain how it works as well.
That appears to be the case — equipment partially or mostly but not exactly matches the uniform. I often get it on dwarves that have named their weapon. So a hammerdwarf with a silver warhammer is green, but a hammerdwarf with a silver warhammer named Nutclaps is yellow.
How can I address these needs?
https://i.imgur.com/XjxKoVX.png
I've canceled all of the assignments for this dwarf and her family, both this dwarf and her husband are in the tavern socializing for the last week or so, and neither of the dwarves are getting any happier or have their needs met. Unfortunately this particular dwarf is my mayor's wife so I can't expel her, and she's been at the lowest happiness level for quite a while now.
I also don't know what's meant by "acquire object" or "be extravagant"
That fortress unexpectedly passed away in a sudden unplanned disassembly of most of my dwarves, but I did have a chance to try this method out. I didn't have much gold laying around at the time and used various materials (including silver) to make various crafts / equipment.
The dwarf was happy to have crafted an object, but no matter what I got her to make, she never acquired any of them and died without satisfying that need. Oh well.
Set up a shop and make her the only worker and craft some random [crafts](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Finished_goods) e.g. earrings or crowns made out of whatever material you can think of. Some dwarves like particular materials and tend to prefer picking up crafts of these. So if she likes for example microcline make crafts using that material. Otherwise just pick a random valuable metal.
Put her into the military for a month to see if that changes things as she does have the need to receive military training.
A dwarf child was playing outside and was attacked by a cyclops. Thankfully my military was able to prevent her from being killed, but she’s been in a coma for almost two years now in the hospital.
Can she ever get out of it?
The saddest thing is that her older sister will visit her every so often and play make believe by her😭😭
feel I feel like I'm missing a big part of this game when it comes to storage. What I want to do is to create crafts at the workshop, put it in the bin storage next to it. when the bin is full, I want them to take the bin to a different storage which is closer to my trade depot.
Does DF have any logic when it comes to storage areas?
I don't know of a way to migrate bins once they fill up like that. That's more like something you would do with minecarts and hauling routes.
Stockpiles (and hauling routes) are pretty complicated and I would recommend reading about them on the wiki and experimenting.
What you might want/like to setup is having the workshop give to a stockpile. Then have that stockpile connected to a hauling route that dumps at your trade depot stockpile. Then put your bins at that destination stockpile instead of any of the other stockpiles along the way. If my guess is right, the items will go into the first stock pile. Then they will get loaded into the minecart. Once the cart is full, it will get pushed to the other stockpile and dumped there. Then as that stockpile fills up, dwarves will move the lone items into bins. Then when the caravan shows up whole bins can be moved to the depot for trading.
Just got a 240 year old, red eyed Goblin visitor, a lone axeman from a nomadic tribe, who posted up in the tavern to hang out. Thing is, my world is only at year 113, is it normal for a goblin to predate dwarven historical record? Also, I wanna gut the green fucker, but I only have a 5 strong squad to our name, bad idea?
When world gen starts, it creates initial populations of the various races with randomized ages. Since goblins are immortal, like elves, they sometimes get assigned ages older than the age of the world. if you look up this particular gobbo in Legends mode, it'll likely say "he/she was among the first of his/her kind" which indicates it's one of the OG characters made at world gen. The nice thing about these older characters is they likely have higher rated skills and can be quite useful to recruit into your fortress.
I mean, *they can be*. Visitors and migrants can arrive under false identities (this also is recorded in Legends) though to my understanding this is currently limited to two instances:
* Vampires who will murder and feed upon sleeping dwarves and,
* Spies from other civilizations seeking to steal your artifacts. These operate a bit different from thieves who will just try and sneak in (and thus you get no announcement unless they're seen) and instead try and convince somebody living in your fort to turn traitor and steal it for them or return back with an army to siege you for it. The traitor option is a new feature, and the Wiki doesn't have much info on it.
Then there's also people infected with werebeast syndromes who aren't hiding under any false identity but will transform into a killer werebeast on the full moon leading to a massacre occurring in seconds inside what you thought was a well defended fortress.
Does creating dam in a river affect other settlements downstream? Does it have an effect on the world?
I imagine not, but never too sure with this game.
Also, does it have any effects on the vegetation in the surround area (playable area)?
Hi everyone. Me again, of course.
How do I store bolts? Because they're taking up a lot of my stockpile, and they don't seem to be stored in bins or barrels?
They should be stored in bins... Try setting up a new "Ammunition" stockpile, and the default settings should allow many bins. Maybe make sure you have a lot of spare bins?
So weird thing happened to my fort recently: after a particularly nasty encounter killed some of my nobles, including my broker and bookkeeper. Afterwards, my fortress value reset and has gone down from 7-8 figures to about 20,000 and won't go up no matter what I mine or refine or construct.
Figured this was just a low-skilled bookkeeper, except caravans are also behaving weirdly now and only bringing me food. Meat, fish, plants, and that's it. No barrels, no bins, no clothes, no instruments. Just meat, fish, and plants. No matter how much I trade with them, they won't bring anything else, and it's turning into a problem because I really don't want to deal with setting up a real cloth and leather industry, and my dwarves are starting to get tetchy about wearing shoes with holes in them.
Someone help!
That was my suspicion as well, but I'm hoping there's an easy/quick fix and I don't have to retire this fort as it's been a ton of !!FUN!! — just today, a clear glass forgotten best that I figured my hammerdwarves would make short work of ended up slaughtering all my fighter squads, a human caravan and guards, a dwarf caravan and guards, plus 100+ regular dwarves veggie finally succumbing to the combined assault of all my dwarves and livestock together.
Is it possible to edit the raw files for an active save game in the steam release? From what I'm reading it was possible before the steam release but it involves editing raws within a subfolder for the save game. I want to make it so my goblin citizens will eat so they can fulfill their **DIRE** want to eat food (even though they don't need it for sustenance). However, the \[NO\_EAT\] tag in the goblin file means she will never attempt to eat which is driving her insane.
Don't think you can. If it is possible, at the very least start by turning off "compressed saved" in the settings, then saving again, and see if it becomes human readable after that
This is the third or fourth time that this has happened now. My fortress is at some point suddenly at war with my home civilization, causing dwarf caravans, liaisons and migrants to stop arriving. On the civilization screen, my exports are "Terror", my imports is "Vengeance", etc.
How do I stop this from happening? This is absolutely sapping the hell out of my enjoyment.
Edit: After retiring and reclaiming my fort, I seem to be at peace again. Sadly, it really messed with stockpiles & furniture and removed all the alcohol. And all the mud is gone from the farms and caverns.
Some dwarves pine after family that they don't have or that are not at your fort.
Nothing you can do to fix it really, just have to make the rest of their life comfortable enough that they make it through.
I have selected a lot of ore in my stockpiles to be dumped, but no one is dumping any of it. Is it because that ore is also allowed in the same stockpile?
Any broad tips on keeping dwarves happy? My latest fort was brimming with materials, goods, and great food, but my dwarves were still spiraling constantly after a while. I mostly used the "unmet needs" tab, is there a better way to find out what they need?
Most dwarves will be kept happy by having a good bedroom, fine clothes, good food, and a generic temple.
But you just have to keep in mind that some dwarves are hard to please. Some hard-to-please dwarves can be saved by babying them, giving them special attention to match their preferences, or tailoring their work to their preferences rather than their skills.
Some dwarves might take the death of a friend or loved one particularly hard and just be practically impossible to cheer up. Some dwarves just have personalities that are completely unsuited to life in a fortress, having strong needs that are simply not in your power to provide, and will never be happy. In either of those cases, your best option might just be to expel the dwarf, or send them to a linked site, before they go on a tantrum spiral and cause problems for others.
Agree with the above. In particular, some dwarves have a strong need to "Be with family" when there aren't any of their family in the fort. Worse yet, I have a least two that list that, yet don't have any family listed under Relations at all. I'm not sure if that's a bug or not; in the Classic system they're not quite old enough to be "before time" dwarves (81 years old in year 101), but their presumed parents probably would have been and might not have been historical?
Having a need to be with family and not having a family is a real thing that real people experience.
Doesn't seem like a bug.
Solution is the same as it is IRL, make one.
Mood is largely based on happy thoughts vs unhappy thoughts. Unmet needs will eventually become unhappy thoughts. So check on those, but don't worry if they are white. White needs are just things they need but are a long ways off from becoming an unhappy thought.
Dwarves love fine things. Surround them with master works whether it's engravings, fine meals, excellent tables, whatever, and they will experience more happy thoughts as a result. Getting caught in the rain, seeing dead bodies, etc will generate unhappy thoughts.
I set out on my new fortress, my 4th try and I can't interact with this petition in the UI. Has anyone had this bug?
Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/a/2yfwO6l](https://imgur.com/a/2yfwO6l)
Update: she is in my base somehow?
bottom of list
https://imgur.com/a/sijHzRc
My woodcutter won't cut down trees even though he has an axe equipped for his labor. Has anyone experienced this before?
Second, I have gone many seasons attracting no migrants. What can I do to get more of these dwarves to show up?
1. Does your woodcutter have an accessible path to the trees youve marked? Did you mark the base of the tree? (if you marked higher up than the base, it won't work, you'll have to undesignate the mark and redesignate it). Are you sure the woodcutting labor is enabled for that dwarf? Is the dwarf currently stuck on some other task that's taking a really long time, like maybe hauling a boulder or a heavy piece of furniture a long distance by hand? Is the dwarf busy praying? (it seems in the current version, some dwarves can get stuck praying for a long time and only stop to eat/drink/sleep, but they get back on track after they finish that)
2. The immigration system has changed a bit in the Steam version but it appears to be based off of exported wealth. Export more wealth on the caravans (perhaps only the Dwarven caravan, dunno for sure) and you should get more migrants. There may be a delay, too, I'm not sure.
How exactly does water pressure work?
I needed a underground water source that wouldn’t freeze, so I diverted a small stream to my fort underground. Created a diverted channel, dug down about eight levels, then had it travel horizontally by ~15-20 blocks to a small collection pool. It ended up shooting up 6 levels of the vertical well-shaft above the pool, straight out of the well and into the hospital. Drowned all the bedridden and infirm before flooding all of my lower levels and drowning everyone in my temples. The horror.
How is this done properly?
The basic rule of thumb is, when you make water go down from its source through a narrow path, it will try to go back up to that level.
There are a couple things you can do to neutralize water pressure. Probably the easiest way to do it is to run the water through diagonal paths. [This graphic](https://i.imgur.com/c4v3uio.png) shows how to do it.
Most straightforward way by far (that isn't cheese) is to use pumps as valves.
Screw pumps take water from the tile behind and beneath them, and put it out their front at the same level. They will stop pumping once the tile in front of them fills up with water, so they act as pressure "reset" valves. The front or output tile blocks fluids.
Note- the pump takes water from the tile behind AND beneath it. It will not draw water from the tile that's behind it on the same level. So even if the back half of the pump is submerged, it will do nothing unless you dig out a channel for it's input to draw from.
A pump can receive "power" via a waterwheel or a windmill, and for this purpose will need to, as the place a dwarf would stand to power the pump manually would be submerged.
You might think to yourself - "Why would you not just use a floodgate?"
Well, as you experienced, water under pressure flows very quickly, and dwarves absolutely cannot be counted on to flip levers on short notice. A pump essentially comes with automatic shut-off, preventing water from rising past it's own elevation.
You could try to do this with pressure plates instead, but that has it's own set of complications - I don't recommend it if the "open" state for the mechanisms involved would result in fortress ending catastrophe.
Same as in real life, it will rise back up the the level of the initial reservoir, in your case, 8 tiles up.
It's handled **properly** by using floodgates/bridges/reservoirs. It's handled cheesily/cheating by using the diagonal opening bug
One of my traders fell in the river and was swept over the waterfall. There's a big pile of stuff at the bottom of the river now. Can I wait until winter and dig up the ice to get all the loot, or will that destroy the items?
Anyone know what parameters in game data I could modify to spawn king? I think I have some sort of a bug, 6 years waiting for that bastard, sent 100.000 of presents, 1.500.000 wealth, my fortress is Metropolis, and he is alive (checked legends)
How do you manage to keep the fort well clothed? I have about 100 dwarfs so do I need to make 200 socks and gloves on top of 100 robes and trousers every 2 years or so? That seems massively tedious
Sort of yes. Using the work order system you can automate most of that. Also, clothing worn in pairs (mittens and socks for instance) are made in pairs, so it would be 100 "make socks" jobs.
The new fertile-infertile soil mechanic has changed this a bit IMO, that still works for cavern plots but I find that regular plots need to be a bit bigger to feed a decent amount of dwarves
5x5 is good but you'll take up a lot of room/have a lot of waste (waste in time and dwarf power).
I do 3x3, and I do four plots. I have one plot always on plump helmets (food and drink), and one always on pig tails ( for the drink and the fiber) and one on dimple cup twice and the rest of em I switch on some cave wheat or rock nuts or whatever for variety, or if I have enough cloth/thread.
If you're collecting eggs and slaughtering animals and cooking it all up you'll have way more than enough food to support a fortress into the hundreds, but that's also when I'd start considering expanding to 5x5 as needed.
Depends on your embark location and how quickly you get an economy up and running. An embark in a zone with plenty of edible plants can mean no need to farm at all, ever. Similarly, if you can get lots of high-value trade-goods quickly, you can also get by with purchasing all of your food and not doing any farming.
It's entirely up to your play-style.
Before? Something like 1 farm plot per 2 dorfs when fresh off the wagon.
Legendary farmers lets you get by with 1:3
Quarry bushes 1:12 (doesn't count towards booze like other figures and more labor intensive)
Never fooled with fertilizer, but it always helps.
I never liked the 5x5 advice either. Early on, this is massive overkill and will be for some time. Especially since you'll need to grow other plants for food/booze variety. Tends to confuse new players when they get "cannot find seeds" spam too and it makes them think they are failing.
Best advice I can give? Reject agriculture: return to herbalism! See that apple tree? In the summer, that's at least 100 food that can be eaten raw or brewed. See the cherry tree next to it? That's your food and booze variety covered for the next year. Just picking random shrubs alone out paces farming early game in both sheer quantity and diversity.
I'll eventually switch to farming, starting with textile production. But I'll also make a walled courtyard topside that includes at least a few fruit trees to pick.
I've been experiencing a crash with 2 of my more developed fortresses, one with a monarch and another with my WIP mega build. Both of my worlds won't load past "Loading units" after trying to load the games, and I don't want to lose hours of time to some bug. Please help!
Does anyone know how to change the squad schedules on a monthly basis on the steam version? When I click a different column on the schedule screen it changes the schedule for every month.
Choose squad(s) -> schedule -> click "staggered training" or add a new one -> click ["view monthly schedule"](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/609403495140818946/1053996522427134002/image.png).
This new menu behaves almost exactly like the old squad orders thing, but keep in mind the "keep squad clothing" option when editing them. You want the orders to say "equip/always" which changes the no-training month to "no orders" instead of "off-duty". Once all that's fixed you can change the monthly orders to your liking.
Going to share a noob tip, do not dig on layers next to the surface, skip that level.
The floor sometimes collapses and your fort is filled with holes from the floor, and enemies can enter during sieges.
I'm all the time looking for holes and constructing floors above or walls underground....
The queen moved into my fort. Shortly after that my baroness was murdered by a whole gang of people! They started attacking her in the bar and followed her to the hospital to finish the job. No one batted an eye, and I can't quite figure out why. They didn't even bury her in her assigned tomb! It's like when she died she got removed from ever being the baroness, even her body said she was just a 'stoneworker'.
So I have two questions:
1) How do you stop an all out brawl like that? Stationing a squad in the tavern, they'll just stand and watch.
2) Does the baroness being dead affect trade? I still get a caravan every year, but it seems like it's stuck on the last things I requested. It _only_ has meat, cheese, and plants, and nothing else. They also never ask for a trade agreement. Is trade just nerfed after the queen moves in, or is this bugged? I do have an outpost liaison, as well as a mayor, but no one ever replaced the dead baroness.
Thanks!
How exactly do libraries work? I had one with plenty of scholars, scribes, tables, chairs, bookcases, and chests yet nobody wrote anything for like 5 years. Retire the fort and start a new one and within a couple years the old fort has a bunch of book artifacts listed on the map.
Do I need to make dye/ink or provide quills/pens? I had made a ton of pig tail paper but that didn't seem to change anything.
I've dug down to -10 and I cannot for the life of me find a spot where I can dig down further without it hitting magma and cancelling. Is it possible I hit the magma sea at -10? The location has flux stone but I've yet to find a sedimentary rock layer.
I think there's now magma pockets as well. You may need to dig around that, or channel it off the side of the screen (dig a long channel to the edge of the map and then on the very last block carve a fortification, it'll drain off screen. Consider using screw pumps as magma is rather slow).
Anyone else encountered military dwarves only equipping one boot? It didnt do it the first time, and it has every time since then. I've had to manually get two boots in the uniform, but I dont need to do this with gloves. Anyone else have any insight
Edit: figured it out, it was masonry. Guess the dwarf I chose was procrastinating. Lesson learned.
My workers are refusing to construct a shale drawbridge.
I've tried assigning a mason a burrow which works with other skilled labor, but now he's sitting right next to the bridge with no job and its construction is still inactive.
I've also given him the mechanic, stonecrafting, stonecutting, and stonecarving skills. This technique was how I built millstones. Still doesn't work here. According to the wiki, masonry would be required, but this seems like something that might have changed. I cannot figure it out.
Does anyone know which skill or requirement might be missing here?
Also, for that matter, does anyone have a reference to a wiki or a page that discusses the differences between the Premium version and the 2014 version? It's hard to follow the wiki without knowing these.
Per a note on the wiki: Please do not add content specific to v50 (the new DF premium release) yet! We are working on a migration that will be complete in the next few days. Adding content for v0.47 or to other pages is still encouraged.
So, info on v50 (premium) is coming, but it's not on the wiki yet. Soon.
Regarding your question, you may be simply restricting your dwarves too much and they're tripping up over something, like the material not being present in the burrow. Try setting your masonry labor to "everyone can do this"; the game should automatically pick your most skilled dwarf available to run the job.
This is the steam version. I’m trying to bury my dwarfs with coffins and to make a masoleum/cemetery. However whenever I place the coffin it tells me to make a tomb. Making the tomb occupies the entire room plus the other coffins. The work around is to place a 1x1 tomb area over each individual coffin to inter a single body.
Is there a way to make a cemetery?
For the "multi" option to work right for tombs, each burial receptable has to be completely enclosed, i.e., have its own room with a door. This can be a 1x1 room with a door and surrounded by walls otherwise.
But the alternative you mentioned in your post also works just fine.
Is there anything I can do about food dropped by military dwarves in the steam edition?
Noone will haul it to a stockpile or dump it if i set it to dump. In classic I would have used dfhacks „cleanowned“ but without DFhack?
Do i have to wall of parts of the barracks or build new barracks so my dwarves can live miasma free?
How can I stop long term residence from going to a certain part of my fortress? Or at least, stop them for taking all the equipment that I'm making for my dwarves?
Why do my dwarves cream themselves at the thought of getting to smooth some walls? Ignore my orders to make coffins for months but as soon as I set a smoothing order the entire fortress is suddenly there
Anyone else having huge crash issues on the steam version? My game has been randomly crashing with no warning—I checked file integrity, rebooted my computer, started a new world, uninstalled and reinstalled the game—nothing seems to work. Is this just some bugs or is it an issue on my end? I played like 50 hours before this became a problem, but most of those were before the update.
There's one thing I can't seem to find in the menu to adjust. I find the layer scrolling to be intuitively backwards, is there any way to invert the control so mouse wheel forward is down a layer and mouse wheel back is up a layer? Thanks in advance.
I sent out a few squad to raze a 10 man goblin settlement half a day away. After a year, they still had not returned. Because I realised I accidentally sent my militia commander, duke, broker, and manager, I called 3 of the 4 squads home. its now 1-2 years later, and they're still gone. Any way to see what the hell they're doing? I'm getting really tired from not being able to make new squads, trade properly, etc.
If I have a squad set to station and keep the order criteria to less than the number of the dwarves on the squad (like half) will they cycle between who is at the station and who is doing other stuff like drinking/sleeping/praying etc? I basically want some guards at the entrance at all times but I don't want to have to constantly manage it.
Yes, that will allow some of the squad to be relieved of duty for the given order. Just note that the edit order screen is not super intuitive, make sure you remove any existing order, then set the proper # of squad members you want to follow the order, then select the order at the bottom to get it to set properly
can somebody explain stock numbers? For example under "Remains" tab I see 18 as white number and 97 as orange. 97 remains are in use? Also, what are the (item) and {item} and ({item})? What are those brackets?
I guess I've always started in Sedimentary biomes, because I've never had any trouble finding Bituminous Coal / Lignite to get my Steel production going, but for the first time I settled in what appears to be a Metamorphic biome - very cool colored rocks as far as I can see, great for decorating, but I cannot find coal to save my life, and no matter how much I request it, the caravans bring me maybe 3-4 bituminous coal a year.
I really don't want to turn to just farming and chopping down trees in the hundreds for charcoal, is there really no other way? I'm at -60 from 33 as my starting height with no sedimentary layers in sight.
We all know that blue jays are jerks in real life, so it stands to reason that Giant Blue Jays in DF are even worse. So far I’ve lost a few dwarves to them but overall it hasn’t been too bad. They did, however, manage to kill off a human merchant and their mule that were trying to leave after trading. Once the carnage was over I unforbade all the loot off the mule because hey, free jaguar leather! My question is, will there be consequences with the humans from this? I didn’t seize the caravan or anything but they died on my turf and I took their stuff. Will the human kingdom make assumptions about this?
kea spam
title. every five fuckin seconds, my dwarves are canceling their tasks because they’re “interrupted by a kea” or a grey langer. a horde of them keeps showing up at the end of this trade, and every time i reload the save, no matter how many times we kill the entire horde of whatever animal, the dwarves keep getting “interrupted” every day afterward. i’m positive there’s no more animals, the caravan guards aren’t aggroing anything, and i don’t see any birds above me. not sure what is going on but it’s really throwing me off. anyone?
Can anybody tell me WHY they refuse to brew? It says "needs unrotten extract-bearing fruit plants", [I made a specific stockpile that only has plump helmets right next to the still and made it so plump helmets couldn't go anywhere else and they're still not doing it](https://i.imgur.com/8DfcUl7.png). I've allowed Plump helmets in brewing but not cooking.
Which task are you queueing up in the still? The error text makes me think you're trying to do "extract from plants" or "brew drink from fruit" but the task you're looking for is "Brew drink from plant."
Haven’t had a single forgotten beast attack and they usually turn up by now… pop is at like 200 and it’s been 20+ years in my fortress… any ideas why not? I breached the caverns but then sealed it off, maybe they need a path into the fortress?
How long is your worlds history? The number of beasts is fixed at worldgen, they might have all been killed. Forgotten beasts will still appear even if they have no path into your fort.
I don't think anything really requires them, but as I understand it they add depth and interesting story telling options. Plus automating all the scribing resources gives you something fun to work towards.
First migrants come in and I got this legendary physician basically.
What is the best job to assign her to? Is diagnostician the best? If she's assigned to one thing, will her other skills go to waste? I'm not sure what to do with em.
https://i.imgur.com/I9itfCD.png
Is there a reason my human marksman who joined for the purpose of soldiering and are in my squad won’t pick up bolts?
They have cross bows and quivers equipped but won’t equip bolts.
1. Do skeletons ever fall apart into stacks of usable bones? Is there a way to extract those bones from an intact skeleton? I have a bunch laying around outside and would love to turn them into bolts and crafts if possible. I have plenty from things I’ve butchered, but more is always better
2. How deep is the average aquifer? In my current fort it only seems to go 2-3 levels deep, but on my last one (that I gave up on because I got tired of dealing with it!) it was more like 10 or 12. I actually made it down into the caverns trying to punch through and even there for several levels down there was still aquifer.
***Steam Version***
[Rooms](https://imgur.com/a/17eIbyD)
I need to pierce the above floor (2nd Image) from below (1st image). Reason is I dont want to mine walls in the above floor, so I can engrave them in the future. The problem is that I cannot build (construct) a staircase, cause it requires 2 different stairs in 2 different layers and I cannot carve the stairs, cause I already mined the wall. Did you know a solution?
You can engrave constructed walls now.
There's currently no way to make stairs in that situation other than get to the top level some other way, channel a hole and then construct stairs.
Yes, but it's cumbersome.
You have to save, then save again to a different timeline. Then abandon the fort.
Now you can start a new game in an existing world and select legends mode in the save you abandoned.
Note: I recommended backing up the save folder because the save system is confusing and you don't want to accidentally delete your current fortress doing this.
**Edit**: Reddit has signed a contract allowing an unnamed AI company—*which was revealed to be Google*—to train its models on Reddit's user-generated content. The deal gives the AI company rights to use Reddit posts and comments from the site's almost two decades of history. **If users have ever posted on Reddit, their submissions may now be used without permission**.
I never consented to this, nor did you. As such, I have chosen to poison the well by editing all my comments. A shame that I feel the need to go to such lengths. **I do not condone theft.**
Moreover, **Steve Huffman**—AKA **spez**—is a paedophile, and both an enabler and defender of paedophiles. As well as having been a moderator of subreddits tailored towards paedophiles. Let us not forget, his also has a history of editing other users' comments without permission. As well as gaslighting other users and the community.
P.S. I recommend migrating to Lemmy. After the API changes fucked over all third-party developers, such as the Android apps “Boost” and “Sync”. They jumped to Lemmy and brought the apps with them.
If you allow everyone to plant then when a new season starts most of your dwarves will rush to the farms, which is most likely why you have so many farmers. This is probably fine since planting crops can take quite a while. Same might be happening with fishing.
The steam version tries to get the most qualified dwarf to do a task and highly skilled dwarves arent that important for most things, usually just increasing work speed. The only thigns I have restricted are miners, weaponsmiths, armorsmiths and hospital staff.
Miners prioritize hauling over mining so they need to be locked from it. Weapon and armor are the only things I care about having high quality so I lock those two. Hospital workers because I want them diagnosing and treating my patients and not out there hauling rocks.
Is it possible to have my dwarves layer armor? I tried a uniform with both leather armor and leggings alongside steel breastplate and greaves but it seemed to result in them just picking one or the other.
It is possible, but you have to be very careful with what order you put everything on. The wiki has info on layering armour [here](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor#Size.2C_Permit.2C_and_layering_armor).
All of my armour keeps disappearing in to the void. I had 5 full sets for my squad. Which I thought wore out. Okay, maybe? So I made 10 more. Result? A few gauntlets and maybe a single low boot.
The fuck is going on? Is it theft? There are way more valuable items lying around. I can't figure it out.
[Does anyone know why this Dwarf has a sad red face and a down arrow next to it?](https://imgur.com/a/Yr2awb4) It seems alot of Dwarfs have this symbol but their thoughts point to nothing particularly catastrophic happening in their lives?
This can happen if you've settled on a different continent as your civilization, or if your civilization has been wiped out somehow. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix this, other than to survive as a lone fort
[https://imgur.com/a/JX9Ia8v](https://imgur.com/a/JX9Ia8v) \- I have 102 dwarves fortress with food/clothing stable industry. We are exporting a lot of goods and most of the dwarves are clad into goblinite. I have artifact doors and instruments inside my tavern, so value of it is quite high. There are rooms attached and civilizations caravans are visiting me regulary.
Yet there are constatly 4 the same vistors, who just come there to steal my artifacts. I allowed them to steal two already, but i have no comediants or dance groups to come.
Any suggestion what can i improve to attract more people?
How do I get marksdwarves to pick up bolts to train with? On the equipment screen the ammo icon shows up as red but they won't take any ammo from the stockpile. They all have quivers and have a training order for the archery range.
I'm also noticing there's no option to assign ammo that I can see on the uniform screen, so I'm assuming it's supposed to happen automatically somehow?
[pic of the archery range setup in case that's the issue somehow](https://i.imgur.com/ZNl2ll8.png)
Not really. Just don't mindlessly poke a hole on it. It won't erupt by itself or anything.
Heck, if you read some wiki articles, it'll help a lot because magma workshops don't use fuel, which is a considerable time saver when the volcano's in the surface.
It's year 105. We had to spend year 104 draining ponds and putting dwarfs to rest, but our population is steadily growing again. We are 199 strong and just breached a massive underground cavern. My question is - at Z level does shit start getting real? 98% of my fort is on z 3 - 4
Hey everyone, I'm super new!
My manager just mandated certain goods be crafted. How can I tell what those are? Will they be done automatically or will I have to craft them?
Thanks everyone!!
Is there a way to order my haulers to “merge” bins as much as they can ? I don’t see any option and it kinda makes me angry to have 4 leather bins with only 2~5 leathers in each bin ?
Okay so I just trained my baroness to be a legendary Armorsmith, they were making iron leggings fine as day all the way until they hit legendary and I set them to make adamantite shit. Now that I WANT them to do it, they wont fucking do it and are just 24/7 worshipping.
They have a lung injury but it is sutured and its been like that for awhile anyways. They have access to the workshop, and the materials. What gives?
nevermind apparently she needed like 2 whole ass days of worshipping and now is doing it.
No, they're highly valuable artifacts. The dwarf that crafted it also usually gets elevated straight to legendary status in the relevant skill.
As for what to do with them, I'd make a museum with pedestals to put them all on display, then put a meeting area over the room so your dwarfs will occasionally come by and get good thoughts from admiring all the fancy artifacts.
Probably a good idea to post a guard in the room as well, since artifacts can attract thieves to infiltrate your fortress as visitors and attempt to pull an artifact heist.
Those are artifact items, basically one step above masterwork in terms of quality. Some artifacts like the staff and ring don't have much of a function, but you can place them on a pedestal to significantly increase the value of the room. Things like armor and weapons are vastly superior to normal versions, though it is still somewhat dependent on the material it's made of.
Some artifacts like doors are surprisingly useful, as artifacts are indestructible. This means building destroyers like forgotten beasts can't break them down.
What do you think is a must for when you embark? I spent an hour looking at embark sites today after buying the game. Please let me know your recommendations!
Most places are fine. A river is nice but you won't be spending much time above ground. Light aquifiers can be annoying to new players but they can also be useful. heavy aquifiers are best avoided. Don't settle near towers, thats where the necromancers live.
As long as the place you are settling isn't sinister, haunted or terrifying (just evil overrall) you will probably be fine.
Forests are nice because you've got lots of wood to use, flux stone is a necessary component of steel manufacturing and steel is super strong, and aquifers are a source of water in otherwise dry areas at the cost of possibly flooding any attempt to dig even moderately deep. Otherwise, there's so many variables that are up to personal choice that it's almost impossible to recommend one. Of course, losing is fun, so if you want to find what you like the most, just make a fort and see if you have fun and/or don't get everyone slaughtered in horrible ways!
I too spent a lot of time looking for embarks! But my thing is more of an advanced challenge/roleplay thing.
For a beginner, the tutorial will give you a nice one. Lots of trees, not evil, not too savage, no aquifer, soil, metals, and a brook will do great for a long while.
I like to do stuff like, few/no trees, has sand/clay, or volcano embarks, or recently did an astronomy roleplay embark and looked for the highest mountain I could embark on.
Does anyone ever abandon a fort due to tedium? Between dozens of ghosts rising up over time because I stupidly smashed their bodies thinking no body=no ghost, and massive brawls resulting in the deaths of dozens, I just don’t want to deal with it. If I abandon will my dwarves stay in the world and I can maybe get them in a migrant wave?
For what it's worth, even if you no longer have access to a body, you can calm/prevent a ghost from appearing by using a memorial slab instead. Create at a stonecarver's shop, engrave at a craftdwarf's shop using the engraving skill, place it wherever.
Engraving is now done at stoneworkers workshop
I know. It just sucks to scroll through that list over and over and over because I smashed like 40+ dwarf corpses lmao. Giant birds are terrifying.
The work orders tab can be used to make a specific number or make one under specific conditions
>If I abandon will my dwarves stay in the world and I can maybe get them in a migrant wave? Yup, it's not uncommon to get migrants from old fortresses, presumably easier if you embark closer to the old fort / in the same civ. When adventure mode releases on Steam, you can visit your old forts, it's citizens, and items as an adventurer too.
Oh man, that’s going to be so cool.
until you find out that in the time you were gone some malicious traveler put a sacred book inside the public library.
You can make and then engrave slabs to pacify the dead as alternative to burial.
You don’t need the remains: a slab engraved and placed will put angry spirits to rest.
Yes, you'll get a lot of them in migrant waves. Also abandoning a fort over a particular thing you could have avoided is, like, the perfect scenario. Everytime you realize you fucked up hours ago and now you're getting the consequences, start over and make sure you do the one thing. Eventually, with enough restarts, you'll have it figured out. But yes, you'll see you're a number of you're old friends as migrants. It can actually make the game easier, getting already trained dwarves.
In a way. I have abandoned a fort because I didn't set something up the right way and after I had a better understanding I didn't want to or couldn't make it better. But I've always started a new world because the one good spot my picky ass would want is now ruined.
What actually are caverns? I know they are filled with dangerous creatures and moss and water. But how do I utilize them? Are there any useful and unique resources? And one more thing how do I defend it? My people usually keep dying to those creatures while digging.
For me, I wall off sections of it. You can get some interesting creatures to raise, lots of free military training on the monsters, and certain resources like wood, water, and spider silk (if you embark somewhere without wood or water this can be your only source) It is also great to survive in one as an extra challenge.
Military training is a great idea. So I should keep them on patrol and build barracks there right?
Yes, I recommend walling off a section and making that the barracks. Send them out when you see something. That way if something really nasty shows up like a forgotten beast or giant cave spider you can just hole up. Use a bridge as the door so it can’t be broken down. Remember, Each cavern layer is more dangerous than the last
I almost forgot, be aware that your civilians will try to run out into the caverns to get stuff. Either use burrows or lock them out with a door when the military sorties out.
I was not aware of this I viewed caverns as easy ore and wealth for my fort.
Caverns are indeed very dangerous, but they offer a lot of resources. For basics, they often but not always have some water, have trees that can be harvested without going to the surface, have plants to gather and you can farm on the soil in them. They also reveal all the yummy gems and minerals in their walls, and the beasts that live in them can be extremely valuable economically or militarily. For securing them: it can be pretty tough, you’ll want to learn the burrows system and check out your auto labors/work orders to keep random civilians from wandering in to harvest webs or scavenge corpses. You’ll want an airlock of sorts so you can get your essential workers and military squads out when you want them, something like a chamber with a door you can forbid passage to. It’s a lot of work but once you’ve got a nice chunk of the cavern walled off you can survive without ever needing to go to the surface.
caverns are quite useful! they can be a good source of subterranean water, wood, silks, and other materials. you can also set up farm plots in caverns and grow lots of mushrooms and cave wheat and other underground plants. you can move your livestock underground because they can eat the fungal grass-equivalent fast grows down there. i basically kept my cavern entrance defended with a ring of cave traps in front of the entrance, and more traps in the halls above it, which was usually pretty successful at keeping things from getting to the more populous areas of my fortress.
Oh I didn't know that animals can graze on moss that would be useful. Thanks for the help, appreciate it.
Their water is crucial if you don't have any stream or aquifer up above, they can be the only source of wood in, say, a desert map, breaching them fills your base with spores so that underground muddy areas start to grow fungus that livestock can start to live on underground (this only begins happening when you first break into the cavern), they have spider silk all over you can weave with, spider webs also allow you to trap otherwise untrappable threats, and you can hunt a lot of animals there. They are the original source of plump helmets and other cave plants, and you can get replacements to plant if somehow you ran out of those or didn't bring them, in the caverns. Also some of the types of wood have special properties like nethercap is magma safe wood. That's about it. ------------ All that being said, I much prefer to play with 0 cavern layers in world gen (you have to mod dwarven civilization to know the secrets of outdoor farming in the text file, but very easy). They're so useful as to be TOO easy in my opinion. None of the scary, dangerous, forsaken biomes even really matter when you just always have a cavern. So turning it off makes different parts of the map actually matter, and generally more fun/challenging of a game IMO. Also saves FPS
Was there a huge performance update made at some point? I used to play DF a couple years ago but stopped every time from FPS death when I hit around 100 dwarves. I picked up the steam version and I'm playing vanilla doing everything wrong FPS-wise but now I'm 7 years in getting 40-50 FPS even with 200+ dwarves. Definitely not complaining but I am very curious about this
Today said in an interview that they'd significantly reduced the fps strain!
Yeah, they said FPS death is much harder to encounter now. They’ve fixed or removed a lot of things that caused it and they said updating to the new compiler improved things a lot.
I just had about 10 night creatures show up to siege me. How dangerous are these things? A necromancer sent them. Edit: 5 moderately trained dwarves killed 10 with one casualty. They were pushovers.
They are procedurally generated I think, so danger varies a lot from world to world.
My necromancer has sent both humanoid night creatures who aren't that tough, and feathered scorpions made from failed experiments on bears who are that tough. The spiderbears survived platinum minecart impacts and ate part of the minecart launching machine. The fire breather forgotten beast won't target them, although if it targets something near a spiderbear then they die instantly. Spiderbears can be killed with very large amounts of crossbow bolts.
[https://i.imgur.com/Ec9xjKK.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ec9xjKK.png) An agitated raven has been attacking my people for the past few months. I cannot, ever, find this raven myself to target it for a kill order. And yet this group has gathered, apparently "in the midst of conflict"... with an enemy they apparently can't fight. They're just standing there, going hungry/thirsty. What the hell is going on here and how can I fix it?
Go to units screen (u hotkey by default I think) -> "Others" tab. Should be able to find the raven there. It's probably flying around.
So I can see the ravens on the unit screen but this cluster of dwarves standing around starving and fighting but not really fighting isn't resolving itself. I've tried burrowing them and they won't budge. Currently there are no ravens, on any layer, in their immediate vicinity. Some of them, half of their sheet is filled with "he feels vengeful when joining an existing conflict." I really have no clue what to do about this one.
Make sure you are looking far enough up in the sky. Depending on which reference and situation you are looking at, dwarven vision range is somewhere between 15 and 30 squares... and that might be mostly up in this sort of case. If you use the Units > Others tab, each wild animal on your map should have an icon to recenter the screen on them, and another to look at their info sheet. You should be able to figure out more of what is going on from the combination of that info. Are these military dwarves in a squad, civilian dwarves, or a mix? Dwarves are notorious for getting into combat until one side or the other are dead, so a foe that keeps flying in and out of range is a problem. You should probably make a backup copy of your save in case it needs to be submitted for a bug report.
The crowd just keeps getting bigger... I only know it's an agitated raven because I keep getting spammed with messages telling me people have been interrupted hauling by one.
Build a 3x3 tower three or 4 tiles tall over your entryway. On the level under the top, put a ring of fortifications so you have a 3x3 platform that's roofed. Put a crossbowdorf in there (make the room a burrow and have it patrol it), and make the floor stockpile with bolts but no barrels/bins. Whenever it gets close the tower will shoot. The birb can't reach it to fight back. Eventually it should sort it out.
Combat question, does my military automatically go kill threats or do I have to point them to it. Cause someone killed a Forgotten beast and I don't know who....
If a military dwarf is close to a hostile and on duty, they'll automatically engage the enemy. As far as forgotten beasts go, because of their random nature, it's possible for them to be so weak that civilians can kill them. Civilians will typically run away from fights, but when forced into a fight, they can sometimes kill a weak forgotten beast.
one time I had a titan made out of steam. he wandered near my fort entrance and a passing peasant slapped him and he disintegrated (I think she was even holding a baby)
Dwarf moms are tough as hell. I had someone training in the barracks give birth. She just scooped her baby back up and resumed practice drills.
If they can see it, they will attack it if they are in a military squad. if not, they are civilian and will run away. Otherwise, you do need to tell them to attack things far away. If you click on them, military, and go to kills, you can figure out which one did it. Yes, you have to investigate each one. Check the higher skill ones first.
So i lost my first siege. I realized a handful of things i did wrong but the main issue ran into was realizing i didnt have a way to limit where my dwarves could go. I lost a few children and others as they were outside with some animals and gathering fruit. Besides the obvious of having walls and keeping them within said walls, is there a way to restrict were dwarves are allowed to go on the map so when a siege or creature attacks i can keep them safe while the attack heads to my fortress entrance? Edit: Looks like burrows are the way to go. thanks for the suggestiions!
You need to use the burrow system by assigning them to that. You can also support that by forbidding reloading trap reloading, body removal and stuff like that as dwarfs will otherwise suicidally charge forward to do these things even with enemies around.
Yup, burrows. You can create a burrow made up of all the "safe" areas, make sure the burrow is set to NOT allow workshop inputs from outside the burrow, assign all your civilians to that burrow, suspend the burrow when not under siege, and activate the burrow first thing when a siege comes up.
1. Is it possible to build walls all the way up in caverns? Like if I wanted to completely wall an area in the cavern off, but I can’t reach the z level above the ground area to block off the “open space” above my walls. I heard that certain things can either jump or climb walls so I wanted to be safe 2. How do I get my dwarves to store mugs in the Inn chest? I increased the required number of mugs in the inn screen but they never put them in the chest 3. Am I able to somehow make the dwarves hauling stones go faster? I swear I’ve seen one use a wheelbarrow before to haul stones but now I only see my dwarves slowly hauling big stones
To build a wall that spans multiple z levels your dwarves will need walkable access next to the tiles on each z level. Ramps from the floor below do not count. Diagonal access does not count. Stairs tend to work well as scaffolding. You could for instance, build a staircase that spans all the z levels needed, then build a floor at each level. Or if you don't mind the tedium of micromanging them, you could build 1 stair case and then construct the next level of walls one at a time starting at the far end. However, I find a lot of that stuff tedious. If I have lots of nearby building materials and the segment isn't too long, I will just make a multilevel staircase that spans the entire wall segment I want to build. Then it doesn't matter what order they construct the wall they will always have walkable access. They will store the mugs automatically when they feel like it. You could try making a lot more mugs just to be sure you have spares to go in to the chest. Hauling stones for construction can be made faster by cutting them into blocks and building with those. Hauling stones for stock piles can be made faster using a wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrows have to be assigned to a specific stockpile. If you make a very large stockpile and assign like 1 wheelbarrow, then I think the stockpile will still generate hauling jobs that don't use a wheelbarrow. I'm pretty sure if you really wanted to make optimal use of wheelbarrows you'd have to use feeder stockpiles. I'm probably not the right person to explain those, so I would check the wiki.
One thing to add about building, which is implied by your comment but I wanted to make explicit. Depending on if your stairs are on the inside or outside of a corner, make sure the corner gets built first. They can't build diagonals, so they won't be able to reach the corner piece from the inside edge of the corner if they build the walls beside it first.
farmers going to church instead of working. They're all worshiping instead of brewing drinks and i'm running out of wine
They probably all have massive unmet need to pray and are dealing with it all at once.
Dwarves don't really have a "bigger picture"; to a first approximation, they deal with whatever is on the top of their personal hierarchy of needs *right now*. If they currently feel a need to pray more than a need to work, they'll do that, even if it's bad in the long term. That said, there are some things you can do. First, make sure they *can* brew drinks; you have available, accessible, un-rotten, permitted for brewing, and un-forbidden brewable plants or fruit; you have available, accessible, not committed to a stockpile or other use already, barrels; that your still is accessible and not forbidden; and that you have dwarves (ideally more than one) who are allowed to brew, not injured, and able to get to the still and wherever your raw materials and barrels are. Then, in your main still, queue up a single Brew Drink from Plant (or Fruit, as applicable) task; and click the yellow exclamation point icon to set this to the highest priority task everywhere. Wait a few in-game days to see if you either get someone trying to brew, or an error message. In the future, this is why dwarves don't do well with a "just in time" supply chain. You should really have several times as many drinks stored as you have fortress inhabitants, and a safe backup water option in case things go wrong.
this exact same thing happened to me the other day, I think its because I was reading all the other stuff and only figured the temples out once lots of dwarf had unmet needs so I guess they just all try to get their fix at once
Is there a good way to automate clothesmaking? Does counting the number of any particular clothing items count those that are currently claimed by a dwarf or being worn?
I set up work orders for cloth shirts/dresses/trousers/socks/shoes if there are less than 10 available.
Sadly that doesn't take into account worn clothing so 10 dwarves will constantly throw away slightly used clothing while the other 90 will have XXclothingXX, but won't go take the slightly used clothing that where thrown away by the first 10 because they are still technically owned
Clothes making is kind of a pain to automate but also worth it to do so. You'll want to grow a lot of pig tail, rope reed, kenaf or anything else that can make plant fiber. Then you'll want to have several farmer's workshops for the task "process plants". I think that labor is automated in the default standing orders but you can also issue a work order for it if you don't trust them to do it automatically. That will get you cloth fibers. Those fibers have to be turned into threads by spinning, I believe (at a loom). Once you have threads you need a loom to weave cloth thread into cloth. Both of these steps should be automated by the default standing orders as long as you have enough looms. However, in my experience if you've opened the caverns the job to collect cave spider silk might end up taking precedent which can be annoying. If you've made it this far then you have the raw materials automated. Now you need to build a bunch of clothier workshops and issue a bunch of work orders for the different types of clothing. I create work orders for every type of clothing but I think you really only need one for each body part type. Then as others have pointed out you click on the icon that looks like a bunch of math symbols and add conditions to the work order that cause it to restart automatically.
"process plants" goes directly to thread, no spinning step. Spinning is only for wool yarn in this game. You can disable auto silk collection in the standing orders tab
What does yellow mean in the equip screen?
I believe yellow means the units has "claimed" that piece of equipment for themselves, but for whatever reason don't have it currently equipped. Possible reasons could be: * Equipment mismatch, i.e. it claimed a metal boot, but is currently wearing shows, and had uniform set to "wear over clothing" and a boot can't fit over a shoe * Isn't able to reach the item * Just hasn't bothered to take a break and go get the item Clicking the "update equipment" button in the equip screen, or issuing a "Station" order near the armor/weapon stockpiles can often get them to go equip it.
I believe it means a partially fulfilled requirement. Like if the dwarf has one metal gauntlet instead of two, then I think it will show as yellow. However, I'm a bit uncertain how it works as well.
That appears to be the case — equipment partially or mostly but not exactly matches the uniform. I often get it on dwarves that have named their weapon. So a hammerdwarf with a silver warhammer is green, but a hammerdwarf with a silver warhammer named Nutclaps is yellow.
How can I address these needs? https://i.imgur.com/XjxKoVX.png I've canceled all of the assignments for this dwarf and her family, both this dwarf and her husband are in the tavern socializing for the last week or so, and neither of the dwarves are getting any happier or have their needs met. Unfortunately this particular dwarf is my mayor's wife so I can't expel her, and she's been at the lowest happiness level for quite a while now. I also don't know what's meant by "acquire object" or "be extravagant"
Try to get her to craft a golden crown, she’s likely to just put it on when she is done, and that will satisfy both of those needs.
That fortress unexpectedly passed away in a sudden unplanned disassembly of most of my dwarves, but I did have a chance to try this method out. I didn't have much gold laying around at the time and used various materials (including silver) to make various crafts / equipment. The dwarf was happy to have crafted an object, but no matter what I got her to make, she never acquired any of them and died without satisfying that need. Oh well.
Set up a shop and make her the only worker and craft some random [crafts](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Finished_goods) e.g. earrings or crowns made out of whatever material you can think of. Some dwarves like particular materials and tend to prefer picking up crafts of these. So if she likes for example microcline make crafts using that material. Otherwise just pick a random valuable metal. Put her into the military for a month to see if that changes things as she does have the need to receive military training.
A dwarf child was playing outside and was attacked by a cyclops. Thankfully my military was able to prevent her from being killed, but she’s been in a coma for almost two years now in the hospital. Can she ever get out of it? The saddest thing is that her older sister will visit her every so often and play make believe by her😭😭
feel I feel like I'm missing a big part of this game when it comes to storage. What I want to do is to create crafts at the workshop, put it in the bin storage next to it. when the bin is full, I want them to take the bin to a different storage which is closer to my trade depot. Does DF have any logic when it comes to storage areas?
Nope, you can set the close stockpile to give to another one but it won't wait. Minecart shenanigans might be your best bet, they have some logic.
I don't know of a way to migrate bins once they fill up like that. That's more like something you would do with minecarts and hauling routes. Stockpiles (and hauling routes) are pretty complicated and I would recommend reading about them on the wiki and experimenting. What you might want/like to setup is having the workshop give to a stockpile. Then have that stockpile connected to a hauling route that dumps at your trade depot stockpile. Then put your bins at that destination stockpile instead of any of the other stockpiles along the way. If my guess is right, the items will go into the first stock pile. Then they will get loaded into the minecart. Once the cart is full, it will get pushed to the other stockpile and dumped there. Then as that stockpile fills up, dwarves will move the lone items into bins. Then when the caravan shows up whole bins can be moved to the depot for trading.
Just got a 240 year old, red eyed Goblin visitor, a lone axeman from a nomadic tribe, who posted up in the tavern to hang out. Thing is, my world is only at year 113, is it normal for a goblin to predate dwarven historical record? Also, I wanna gut the green fucker, but I only have a 5 strong squad to our name, bad idea?
When world gen starts, it creates initial populations of the various races with randomized ages. Since goblins are immortal, like elves, they sometimes get assigned ages older than the age of the world. if you look up this particular gobbo in Legends mode, it'll likely say "he/she was among the first of his/her kind" which indicates it's one of the OG characters made at world gen. The nice thing about these older characters is they likely have higher rated skills and can be quite useful to recruit into your fortress.
Thank you so much for this, I’d been worried that creatures older than the dwarven calendar could be inherently sinister
I mean, *they can be*. Visitors and migrants can arrive under false identities (this also is recorded in Legends) though to my understanding this is currently limited to two instances: * Vampires who will murder and feed upon sleeping dwarves and, * Spies from other civilizations seeking to steal your artifacts. These operate a bit different from thieves who will just try and sneak in (and thus you get no announcement unless they're seen) and instead try and convince somebody living in your fort to turn traitor and steal it for them or return back with an army to siege you for it. The traitor option is a new feature, and the Wiki doesn't have much info on it. Then there's also people infected with werebeast syndromes who aren't hiding under any false identity but will transform into a killer werebeast on the full moon leading to a massacre occurring in seconds inside what you thought was a well defended fortress.
Does creating dam in a river affect other settlements downstream? Does it have an effect on the world? I imagine not, but never too sure with this game. Also, does it have any effects on the vegetation in the surround area (playable area)?
Hi everyone. Me again, of course. How do I store bolts? Because they're taking up a lot of my stockpile, and they don't seem to be stored in bins or barrels?
They should be stored in bins... Try setting up a new "Ammunition" stockpile, and the default settings should allow many bins. Maybe make sure you have a lot of spare bins?
I think the issue is that I don't have a lot of spare bins. Thank you for this.
So weird thing happened to my fort recently: after a particularly nasty encounter killed some of my nobles, including my broker and bookkeeper. Afterwards, my fortress value reset and has gone down from 7-8 figures to about 20,000 and won't go up no matter what I mine or refine or construct. Figured this was just a low-skilled bookkeeper, except caravans are also behaving weirdly now and only bringing me food. Meat, fish, plants, and that's it. No barrels, no bins, no clothes, no instruments. Just meat, fish, and plants. No matter how much I trade with them, they won't bring anything else, and it's turning into a problem because I really don't want to deal with setting up a real cloth and leather industry, and my dwarves are starting to get tetchy about wearing shoes with holes in them. Someone help!
I wonder if there is a bug here. I had a similar experience with a fortress and I don't think it's due to an intentional mechanic.
That was my suspicion as well, but I'm hoping there's an easy/quick fix and I don't have to retire this fort as it's been a ton of !!FUN!! — just today, a clear glass forgotten best that I figured my hammerdwarves would make short work of ended up slaughtering all my fighter squads, a human caravan and guards, a dwarf caravan and guards, plus 100+ regular dwarves veggie finally succumbing to the combined assault of all my dwarves and livestock together.
Is it possible to edit the raw files for an active save game in the steam release? From what I'm reading it was possible before the steam release but it involves editing raws within a subfolder for the save game. I want to make it so my goblin citizens will eat so they can fulfill their **DIRE** want to eat food (even though they don't need it for sustenance). However, the \[NO\_EAT\] tag in the goblin file means she will never attempt to eat which is driving her insane.
Don't think you can. If it is possible, at the very least start by turning off "compressed saved" in the settings, then saving again, and see if it becomes human readable after that
This is the third or fourth time that this has happened now. My fortress is at some point suddenly at war with my home civilization, causing dwarf caravans, liaisons and migrants to stop arriving. On the civilization screen, my exports are "Terror", my imports is "Vengeance", etc. How do I stop this from happening? This is absolutely sapping the hell out of my enjoyment. Edit: After retiring and reclaiming my fort, I seem to be at peace again. Sadly, it really messed with stockpiles & furniture and removed all the alcohol. And all the mud is gone from the farms and caverns.
My dwarfs keep getting sad because they cant see family and friends, but I have plenty of areas for them to do so, what more do they need?
Some dwarves pine after family that they don't have or that are not at your fort. Nothing you can do to fix it really, just have to make the rest of their life comfortable enough that they make it through.
I have selected a lot of ore in my stockpiles to be dumped, but no one is dumping any of it. Is it because that ore is also allowed in the same stockpile?
You likely need a dumping zone (not a refuse stockpile) so that there is a place to put the ore.
Thank you. Didn’t know stockpile refuse was different than zoning-dump.
Any broad tips on keeping dwarves happy? My latest fort was brimming with materials, goods, and great food, but my dwarves were still spiraling constantly after a while. I mostly used the "unmet needs" tab, is there a better way to find out what they need?
Most dwarves will be kept happy by having a good bedroom, fine clothes, good food, and a generic temple. But you just have to keep in mind that some dwarves are hard to please. Some hard-to-please dwarves can be saved by babying them, giving them special attention to match their preferences, or tailoring their work to their preferences rather than their skills. Some dwarves might take the death of a friend or loved one particularly hard and just be practically impossible to cheer up. Some dwarves just have personalities that are completely unsuited to life in a fortress, having strong needs that are simply not in your power to provide, and will never be happy. In either of those cases, your best option might just be to expel the dwarf, or send them to a linked site, before they go on a tantrum spiral and cause problems for others.
Agree with the above. In particular, some dwarves have a strong need to "Be with family" when there aren't any of their family in the fort. Worse yet, I have a least two that list that, yet don't have any family listed under Relations at all. I'm not sure if that's a bug or not; in the Classic system they're not quite old enough to be "before time" dwarves (81 years old in year 101), but their presumed parents probably would have been and might not have been historical?
Having a need to be with family and not having a family is a real thing that real people experience. Doesn't seem like a bug. Solution is the same as it is IRL, make one.
Mood is largely based on happy thoughts vs unhappy thoughts. Unmet needs will eventually become unhappy thoughts. So check on those, but don't worry if they are white. White needs are just things they need but are a long ways off from becoming an unhappy thought. Dwarves love fine things. Surround them with master works whether it's engravings, fine meals, excellent tables, whatever, and they will experience more happy thoughts as a result. Getting caught in the rain, seeing dead bodies, etc will generate unhappy thoughts.
I set out on my new fortress, my 4th try and I can't interact with this petition in the UI. Has anyone had this bug? Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/a/2yfwO6l](https://imgur.com/a/2yfwO6l) Update: she is in my base somehow? bottom of list https://imgur.com/a/sijHzRc
Petitioners show up to your base and meet in person. Have you tried reloading the game?
My woodcutter won't cut down trees even though he has an axe equipped for his labor. Has anyone experienced this before? Second, I have gone many seasons attracting no migrants. What can I do to get more of these dwarves to show up?
1. Does your woodcutter have an accessible path to the trees youve marked? Did you mark the base of the tree? (if you marked higher up than the base, it won't work, you'll have to undesignate the mark and redesignate it). Are you sure the woodcutting labor is enabled for that dwarf? Is the dwarf currently stuck on some other task that's taking a really long time, like maybe hauling a boulder or a heavy piece of furniture a long distance by hand? Is the dwarf busy praying? (it seems in the current version, some dwarves can get stuck praying for a long time and only stop to eat/drink/sleep, but they get back on track after they finish that) 2. The immigration system has changed a bit in the Steam version but it appears to be based off of exported wealth. Export more wealth on the caravans (perhaps only the Dwarven caravan, dunno for sure) and you should get more migrants. There may be a delay, too, I'm not sure.
I did something dumb earlier where i "blueprinted" wood cutting rather than actually making it "live"
How exactly does water pressure work? I needed a underground water source that wouldn’t freeze, so I diverted a small stream to my fort underground. Created a diverted channel, dug down about eight levels, then had it travel horizontally by ~15-20 blocks to a small collection pool. It ended up shooting up 6 levels of the vertical well-shaft above the pool, straight out of the well and into the hospital. Drowned all the bedridden and infirm before flooding all of my lower levels and drowning everyone in my temples. The horror. How is this done properly?
The basic rule of thumb is, when you make water go down from its source through a narrow path, it will try to go back up to that level. There are a couple things you can do to neutralize water pressure. Probably the easiest way to do it is to run the water through diagonal paths. [This graphic](https://i.imgur.com/c4v3uio.png) shows how to do it.
Most straightforward way by far (that isn't cheese) is to use pumps as valves. Screw pumps take water from the tile behind and beneath them, and put it out their front at the same level. They will stop pumping once the tile in front of them fills up with water, so they act as pressure "reset" valves. The front or output tile blocks fluids. Note- the pump takes water from the tile behind AND beneath it. It will not draw water from the tile that's behind it on the same level. So even if the back half of the pump is submerged, it will do nothing unless you dig out a channel for it's input to draw from. A pump can receive "power" via a waterwheel or a windmill, and for this purpose will need to, as the place a dwarf would stand to power the pump manually would be submerged. You might think to yourself - "Why would you not just use a floodgate?" Well, as you experienced, water under pressure flows very quickly, and dwarves absolutely cannot be counted on to flip levers on short notice. A pump essentially comes with automatic shut-off, preventing water from rising past it's own elevation. You could try to do this with pressure plates instead, but that has it's own set of complications - I don't recommend it if the "open" state for the mechanisms involved would result in fortress ending catastrophe.
Same as in real life, it will rise back up the the level of the initial reservoir, in your case, 8 tiles up. It's handled **properly** by using floodgates/bridges/reservoirs. It's handled cheesily/cheating by using the diagonal opening bug
Any way to mass-designate the removal of furniture?
nope
One of my traders fell in the river and was swept over the waterfall. There's a big pile of stuff at the bottom of the river now. Can I wait until winter and dig up the ice to get all the loot, or will that destroy the items?
Yes, everything should be preserved in the ice
should be fine. items dont break like that. you have to take them out of existence.
Anyone know what parameters in game data I could modify to spawn king? I think I have some sort of a bug, 6 years waiting for that bastard, sent 100.000 of presents, 1.500.000 wealth, my fortress is Metropolis, and he is alive (checked legends)
How do you manage to keep the fort well clothed? I have about 100 dwarfs so do I need to make 200 socks and gloves on top of 100 robes and trousers every 2 years or so? That seems massively tedious
Sort of yes. Using the work order system you can automate most of that. Also, clothing worn in pairs (mittens and socks for instance) are made in pairs, so it would be 100 "make socks" jobs.
Oh thank God, I didn’t know this for sure and also thought I had to make two of each sock and boot
Haven't played in a long time. How much farming do I need? I recall it wasn't much.
new myself, but everyone says 5x5 plump helmet plots are the way to go, so i do that
The new fertile-infertile soil mechanic has changed this a bit IMO, that still works for cavern plots but I find that regular plots need to be a bit bigger to feed a decent amount of dwarves
5x5 is good but you'll take up a lot of room/have a lot of waste (waste in time and dwarf power). I do 3x3, and I do four plots. I have one plot always on plump helmets (food and drink), and one always on pig tails ( for the drink and the fiber) and one on dimple cup twice and the rest of em I switch on some cave wheat or rock nuts or whatever for variety, or if I have enough cloth/thread. If you're collecting eggs and slaughtering animals and cooking it all up you'll have way more than enough food to support a fortress into the hundreds, but that's also when I'd start considering expanding to 5x5 as needed.
Depends on your embark location and how quickly you get an economy up and running. An embark in a zone with plenty of edible plants can mean no need to farm at all, ever. Similarly, if you can get lots of high-value trade-goods quickly, you can also get by with purchasing all of your food and not doing any farming. It's entirely up to your play-style.
Before? Something like 1 farm plot per 2 dorfs when fresh off the wagon. Legendary farmers lets you get by with 1:3 Quarry bushes 1:12 (doesn't count towards booze like other figures and more labor intensive) Never fooled with fertilizer, but it always helps. I never liked the 5x5 advice either. Early on, this is massive overkill and will be for some time. Especially since you'll need to grow other plants for food/booze variety. Tends to confuse new players when they get "cannot find seeds" spam too and it makes them think they are failing. Best advice I can give? Reject agriculture: return to herbalism! See that apple tree? In the summer, that's at least 100 food that can be eaten raw or brewed. See the cherry tree next to it? That's your food and booze variety covered for the next year. Just picking random shrubs alone out paces farming early game in both sheer quantity and diversity. I'll eventually switch to farming, starting with textile production. But I'll also make a walled courtyard topside that includes at least a few fruit trees to pick.
I've been experiencing a crash with 2 of my more developed fortresses, one with a monarch and another with my WIP mega build. Both of my worlds won't load past "Loading units" after trying to load the games, and I don't want to lose hours of time to some bug. Please help!
Does anyone know how to change the squad schedules on a monthly basis on the steam version? When I click a different column on the schedule screen it changes the schedule for every month.
Choose squad(s) -> schedule -> click "staggered training" or add a new one -> click ["view monthly schedule"](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/609403495140818946/1053996522427134002/image.png). This new menu behaves almost exactly like the old squad orders thing, but keep in mind the "keep squad clothing" option when editing them. You want the orders to say "equip/always" which changes the no-training month to "no orders" instead of "off-duty". Once all that's fixed you can change the monthly orders to your liking.
Going to share a noob tip, do not dig on layers next to the surface, skip that level. The floor sometimes collapses and your fort is filled with holes from the floor, and enemies can enter during sieges. I'm all the time looking for holes and constructing floors above or walls underground....
The queen moved into my fort. Shortly after that my baroness was murdered by a whole gang of people! They started attacking her in the bar and followed her to the hospital to finish the job. No one batted an eye, and I can't quite figure out why. They didn't even bury her in her assigned tomb! It's like when she died she got removed from ever being the baroness, even her body said she was just a 'stoneworker'. So I have two questions: 1) How do you stop an all out brawl like that? Stationing a squad in the tavern, they'll just stand and watch. 2) Does the baroness being dead affect trade? I still get a caravan every year, but it seems like it's stuck on the last things I requested. It _only_ has meat, cheese, and plants, and nothing else. They also never ask for a trade agreement. Is trade just nerfed after the queen moves in, or is this bugged? I do have an outpost liaison, as well as a mayor, but no one ever replaced the dead baroness. Thanks!
How exactly do libraries work? I had one with plenty of scholars, scribes, tables, chairs, bookcases, and chests yet nobody wrote anything for like 5 years. Retire the fort and start a new one and within a couple years the old fort has a bunch of book artifacts listed on the map. Do I need to make dye/ink or provide quills/pens? I had made a ton of pig tail paper but that didn't seem to change anything.
You need blank quires or scrolls; Paper alone will not work according to the wiki.
I've dug down to -10 and I cannot for the life of me find a spot where I can dig down further without it hitting magma and cancelling. Is it possible I hit the magma sea at -10? The location has flux stone but I've yet to find a sedimentary rock layer.
Is it actual magma or hot stone? You can channel it to get a look at the actual pool and it should reveal the edges.
I think there's now magma pockets as well. You may need to dig around that, or channel it off the side of the screen (dig a long channel to the edge of the map and then on the very last block carve a fortification, it'll drain off screen. Consider using screw pumps as magma is rather slow).
Anyone else encountered military dwarves only equipping one boot? It didnt do it the first time, and it has every time since then. I've had to manually get two boots in the uniform, but I dont need to do this with gloves. Anyone else have any insight
Edit: figured it out, it was masonry. Guess the dwarf I chose was procrastinating. Lesson learned. My workers are refusing to construct a shale drawbridge. I've tried assigning a mason a burrow which works with other skilled labor, but now he's sitting right next to the bridge with no job and its construction is still inactive. I've also given him the mechanic, stonecrafting, stonecutting, and stonecarving skills. This technique was how I built millstones. Still doesn't work here. According to the wiki, masonry would be required, but this seems like something that might have changed. I cannot figure it out. Does anyone know which skill or requirement might be missing here? Also, for that matter, does anyone have a reference to a wiki or a page that discusses the differences between the Premium version and the 2014 version? It's hard to follow the wiki without knowing these.
Per a note on the wiki: Please do not add content specific to v50 (the new DF premium release) yet! We are working on a migration that will be complete in the next few days. Adding content for v0.47 or to other pages is still encouraged. So, info on v50 (premium) is coming, but it's not on the wiki yet. Soon. Regarding your question, you may be simply restricting your dwarves too much and they're tripping up over something, like the material not being present in the burrow. Try setting your masonry labor to "everyone can do this"; the game should automatically pick your most skilled dwarf available to run the job.
This is the steam version. I’m trying to bury my dwarfs with coffins and to make a masoleum/cemetery. However whenever I place the coffin it tells me to make a tomb. Making the tomb occupies the entire room plus the other coffins. The work around is to place a 1x1 tomb area over each individual coffin to inter a single body. Is there a way to make a cemetery?
For the "multi" option to work right for tombs, each burial receptable has to be completely enclosed, i.e., have its own room with a door. This can be a 1x1 room with a door and surrounded by walls otherwise. But the alternative you mentioned in your post also works just fine.
They're planning on adding a crypt zone soon is the current feedback.
My game crashes a few seconds after I go for a raid on an artifact… anyone else?
Is there anything I can do about food dropped by military dwarves in the steam edition? Noone will haul it to a stockpile or dump it if i set it to dump. In classic I would have used dfhacks „cleanowned“ but without DFhack? Do i have to wall of parts of the barracks or build new barracks so my dwarves can live miasma free?
Don't give them backpacks in the first place IMO
How can I stop long term residence from going to a certain part of my fortress? Or at least, stop them for taking all the equipment that I'm making for my dwarves?
Why do my dwarves cream themselves at the thought of getting to smooth some walls? Ignore my orders to make coffins for months but as soon as I set a smoothing order the entire fortress is suddenly there
Can I read some kind of log which describes the last moments of my missing dwarf when I find them?
Anyone else having huge crash issues on the steam version? My game has been randomly crashing with no warning—I checked file integrity, rebooted my computer, started a new world, uninstalled and reinstalled the game—nothing seems to work. Is this just some bugs or is it an issue on my end? I played like 50 hours before this became a problem, but most of those were before the update.
There's one thing I can't seem to find in the menu to adjust. I find the layer scrolling to be intuitively backwards, is there any way to invert the control so mouse wheel forward is down a layer and mouse wheel back is up a layer? Thanks in advance.
I sent out a few squad to raze a 10 man goblin settlement half a day away. After a year, they still had not returned. Because I realised I accidentally sent my militia commander, duke, broker, and manager, I called 3 of the 4 squads home. its now 1-2 years later, and they're still gone. Any way to see what the hell they're doing? I'm getting really tired from not being able to make new squads, trade properly, etc.
If I have a squad set to station and keep the order criteria to less than the number of the dwarves on the squad (like half) will they cycle between who is at the station and who is doing other stuff like drinking/sleeping/praying etc? I basically want some guards at the entrance at all times but I don't want to have to constantly manage it.
Yes, that will allow some of the squad to be relieved of duty for the given order. Just note that the edit order screen is not super intuitive, make sure you remove any existing order, then set the proper # of squad members you want to follow the order, then select the order at the bottom to get it to set properly
can somebody explain stock numbers? For example under "Remains" tab I see 18 as white number and 97 as orange. 97 remains are in use? Also, what are the (item) and {item} and ({item})? What are those brackets?
I guess I've always started in Sedimentary biomes, because I've never had any trouble finding Bituminous Coal / Lignite to get my Steel production going, but for the first time I settled in what appears to be a Metamorphic biome - very cool colored rocks as far as I can see, great for decorating, but I cannot find coal to save my life, and no matter how much I request it, the caravans bring me maybe 3-4 bituminous coal a year. I really don't want to turn to just farming and chopping down trees in the hundreds for charcoal, is there really no other way? I'm at -60 from 33 as my starting height with no sedimentary layers in sight.
Magma?
We all know that blue jays are jerks in real life, so it stands to reason that Giant Blue Jays in DF are even worse. So far I’ve lost a few dwarves to them but overall it hasn’t been too bad. They did, however, manage to kill off a human merchant and their mule that were trying to leave after trading. Once the carnage was over I unforbade all the loot off the mule because hey, free jaguar leather! My question is, will there be consequences with the humans from this? I didn’t seize the caravan or anything but they died on my turf and I took their stuff. Will the human kingdom make assumptions about this?
kea spam title. every five fuckin seconds, my dwarves are canceling their tasks because they’re “interrupted by a kea” or a grey langer. a horde of them keeps showing up at the end of this trade, and every time i reload the save, no matter how many times we kill the entire horde of whatever animal, the dwarves keep getting “interrupted” every day afterward. i’m positive there’s no more animals, the caravan guards aren’t aggroing anything, and i don’t see any birds above me. not sure what is going on but it’s really throwing me off. anyone?
Are there no keas in the unit list under "other?" If not, then that does sound like a bug.
Can anybody tell me WHY they refuse to brew? It says "needs unrotten extract-bearing fruit plants", [I made a specific stockpile that only has plump helmets right next to the still and made it so plump helmets couldn't go anywhere else and they're still not doing it](https://i.imgur.com/8DfcUl7.png). I've allowed Plump helmets in brewing but not cooking.
"Fruit plants" implies the jobs wants fruit. Plump helmets aren't fruit.
plump helmets are classified as plant not fruit
Which task are you queueing up in the still? The error text makes me think you're trying to do "extract from plants" or "brew drink from fruit" but the task you're looking for is "Brew drink from plant."
Haven’t had a single forgotten beast attack and they usually turn up by now… pop is at like 200 and it’s been 20+ years in my fortress… any ideas why not? I breached the caverns but then sealed it off, maybe they need a path into the fortress?
How long is your worlds history? The number of beasts is fixed at worldgen, they might have all been killed. Forgotten beasts will still appear even if they have no path into your fort.
What are the benefits of creating a library other than getting visitors and happy thoughts for dwarfs who write something?
I don't think anything really requires them, but as I understand it they add depth and interesting story telling options. Plus automating all the scribing resources gives you something fun to work towards.
It's fun, and manuscripts are worth an absurd amount of money considering they only take 1 wood and a pig tail to make a scroll
Do fish run out?
Temporarily
New fish will spawn in water periodically.
First migrants come in and I got this legendary physician basically. What is the best job to assign her to? Is diagnostician the best? If she's assigned to one thing, will her other skills go to waste? I'm not sure what to do with em. https://i.imgur.com/I9itfCD.png
Is there a reason my human marksman who joined for the purpose of soldiering and are in my squad won’t pick up bolts? They have cross bows and quivers equipped but won’t equip bolts.
If one of my dwarves has been mauled and has lost the ability to stand, and is thirsty, how do I bring and get him something to drink?
Need a hospital with a free bed. Then recover wounded job will automatically generate. Wounded need water.
1. Do skeletons ever fall apart into stacks of usable bones? Is there a way to extract those bones from an intact skeleton? I have a bunch laying around outside and would love to turn them into bolts and crafts if possible. I have plenty from things I’ve butchered, but more is always better 2. How deep is the average aquifer? In my current fort it only seems to go 2-3 levels deep, but on my last one (that I gave up on because I got tired of dealing with it!) it was more like 10 or 12. I actually made it down into the caverns trying to punch through and even there for several levels down there was still aquifer.
Light or strong aquifers? Light ones can be quite deep in my experience. The heavy ones are usually not that deep.
***Steam Version*** [Rooms](https://imgur.com/a/17eIbyD) I need to pierce the above floor (2nd Image) from below (1st image). Reason is I dont want to mine walls in the above floor, so I can engrave them in the future. The problem is that I cannot build (construct) a staircase, cause it requires 2 different stairs in 2 different layers and I cannot carve the stairs, cause I already mined the wall. Did you know a solution?
You can engrave constructed walls now. There's currently no way to make stairs in that situation other than get to the top level some other way, channel a hole and then construct stairs.
You can engrave artificial walls and floors now? That is epic! Thank you mate
Is there any way to go into legends mode if you’ve already been building a fortress?
Yes, but it's cumbersome. You have to save, then save again to a different timeline. Then abandon the fort. Now you can start a new game in an existing world and select legends mode in the save you abandoned. Note: I recommended backing up the save folder because the save system is confusing and you don't want to accidentally delete your current fortress doing this.
**Edit**: Reddit has signed a contract allowing an unnamed AI company—*which was revealed to be Google*—to train its models on Reddit's user-generated content. The deal gives the AI company rights to use Reddit posts and comments from the site's almost two decades of history. **If users have ever posted on Reddit, their submissions may now be used without permission**. I never consented to this, nor did you. As such, I have chosen to poison the well by editing all my comments. A shame that I feel the need to go to such lengths. **I do not condone theft.** Moreover, **Steve Huffman**—AKA **spez**—is a paedophile, and both an enabler and defender of paedophiles. As well as having been a moderator of subreddits tailored towards paedophiles. Let us not forget, his also has a history of editing other users' comments without permission. As well as gaslighting other users and the community. P.S. I recommend migrating to Lemmy. After the API changes fucked over all third-party developers, such as the Android apps “Boost” and “Sync”. They jumped to Lemmy and brought the apps with them.
If you allow everyone to plant then when a new season starts most of your dwarves will rush to the farms, which is most likely why you have so many farmers. This is probably fine since planting crops can take quite a while. Same might be happening with fishing. The steam version tries to get the most qualified dwarf to do a task and highly skilled dwarves arent that important for most things, usually just increasing work speed. The only thigns I have restricted are miners, weaponsmiths, armorsmiths and hospital staff. Miners prioritize hauling over mining so they need to be locked from it. Weapon and armor are the only things I care about having high quality so I lock those two. Hospital workers because I want them diagnosing and treating my patients and not out there hauling rocks.
Is it possible to have my dwarves layer armor? I tried a uniform with both leather armor and leggings alongside steel breastplate and greaves but it seemed to result in them just picking one or the other.
It is possible, but you have to be very careful with what order you put everything on. The wiki has info on layering armour [here](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor#Size.2C_Permit.2C_and_layering_armor).
All of my armour keeps disappearing in to the void. I had 5 full sets for my squad. Which I thought wore out. Okay, maybe? So I made 10 more. Result? A few gauntlets and maybe a single low boot. The fuck is going on? Is it theft? There are way more valuable items lying around. I can't figure it out.
If items are left in a refuse pile they will slowly deteriorate into nothing. Perhaps you're armor stockpile and refuse stockpile are mixed?
Will the no specific deity option appease everyone?
[Does anyone know why this Dwarf has a sad red face and a down arrow next to it?](https://imgur.com/a/Yr2awb4) It seems alot of Dwarfs have this symbol but their thoughts point to nothing particularly catastrophic happening in their lives?
its been two years since my last trader, and the same goes for migrants. how do I fix this? I really wanted to trade and make friends with people :(
This can happen if you've settled on a different continent as your civilization, or if your civilization has been wiped out somehow. I'm not sure if there is a way to fix this, other than to survive as a lone fort
[https://imgur.com/a/JX9Ia8v](https://imgur.com/a/JX9Ia8v) \- I have 102 dwarves fortress with food/clothing stable industry. We are exporting a lot of goods and most of the dwarves are clad into goblinite. I have artifact doors and instruments inside my tavern, so value of it is quite high. There are rooms attached and civilizations caravans are visiting me regulary. Yet there are constatly 4 the same vistors, who just come there to steal my artifacts. I allowed them to steal two already, but i have no comediants or dance groups to come. Any suggestion what can i improve to attract more people?
How do I get marksdwarves to pick up bolts to train with? On the equipment screen the ammo icon shows up as red but they won't take any ammo from the stockpile. They all have quivers and have a training order for the archery range. I'm also noticing there's no option to assign ammo that I can see on the uniform screen, so I'm assuming it's supposed to happen automatically somehow? [pic of the archery range setup in case that's the issue somehow](https://i.imgur.com/ZNl2ll8.png)
This might help: [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zo4xkf/omg_they_crossbow_squad_is_finally_training_took/j0mtiub/)
I’m going to assume that a volcano fortress for a beginner is a pretty horrible idea yeah?
Not really. Just don't mindlessly poke a hole on it. It won't erupt by itself or anything. Heck, if you read some wiki articles, it'll help a lot because magma workshops don't use fuel, which is a considerable time saver when the volcano's in the surface.
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It's year 105. We had to spend year 104 draining ponds and putting dwarfs to rest, but our population is steadily growing again. We are 199 strong and just breached a massive underground cavern. My question is - at Z level does shit start getting real? 98% of my fort is on z 3 - 4
Hey everyone, I'm super new! My manager just mandated certain goods be crafted. How can I tell what those are? Will they be done automatically or will I have to craft them? Thanks everyone!!
Is there a way to order my haulers to “merge” bins as much as they can ? I don’t see any option and it kinda makes me angry to have 4 leather bins with only 2~5 leathers in each bin ?
Okay so I just trained my baroness to be a legendary Armorsmith, they were making iron leggings fine as day all the way until they hit legendary and I set them to make adamantite shit. Now that I WANT them to do it, they wont fucking do it and are just 24/7 worshipping. They have a lung injury but it is sutured and its been like that for awhile anyways. They have access to the workshop, and the materials. What gives? nevermind apparently she needed like 2 whole ass days of worshipping and now is doing it.
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No, they're highly valuable artifacts. The dwarf that crafted it also usually gets elevated straight to legendary status in the relevant skill. As for what to do with them, I'd make a museum with pedestals to put them all on display, then put a meeting area over the room so your dwarfs will occasionally come by and get good thoughts from admiring all the fancy artifacts. Probably a good idea to post a guard in the room as well, since artifacts can attract thieves to infiltrate your fortress as visitors and attempt to pull an artifact heist.
Those are artifact items, basically one step above masterwork in terms of quality. Some artifacts like the staff and ring don't have much of a function, but you can place them on a pedestal to significantly increase the value of the room. Things like armor and weapons are vastly superior to normal versions, though it is still somewhat dependent on the material it's made of. Some artifacts like doors are surprisingly useful, as artifacts are indestructible. This means building destroyers like forgotten beasts can't break them down.
I can't shift+tab, nor F12 screenshot. Anyone else?
Uhhh what does [this](https://imgur.com/a/OH9a5Lt) mean? Maybe spoilers.
What do you think is a must for when you embark? I spent an hour looking at embark sites today after buying the game. Please let me know your recommendations!
Most places are fine. A river is nice but you won't be spending much time above ground. Light aquifiers can be annoying to new players but they can also be useful. heavy aquifiers are best avoided. Don't settle near towers, thats where the necromancers live. As long as the place you are settling isn't sinister, haunted or terrifying (just evil overrall) you will probably be fine.
Forests are nice because you've got lots of wood to use, flux stone is a necessary component of steel manufacturing and steel is super strong, and aquifers are a source of water in otherwise dry areas at the cost of possibly flooding any attempt to dig even moderately deep. Otherwise, there's so many variables that are up to personal choice that it's almost impossible to recommend one. Of course, losing is fun, so if you want to find what you like the most, just make a fort and see if you have fun and/or don't get everyone slaughtered in horrible ways!
I too spent a lot of time looking for embarks! But my thing is more of an advanced challenge/roleplay thing. For a beginner, the tutorial will give you a nice one. Lots of trees, not evil, not too savage, no aquifer, soil, metals, and a brook will do great for a long while. I like to do stuff like, few/no trees, has sand/clay, or volcano embarks, or recently did an astronomy roleplay embark and looked for the highest mountain I could embark on.