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[Genius Evil]

Does anyone know a good way to boil large quantities of water into steam? I'd like to use it as an alternative to a dwarven water reactor (river water will flow past the waterwheels and then be boiled off), but the wiki lacks adequate information on boiling.

Also:
My dwarves have stopped planting seeds. I have more than 100 unforbidden seeds, and planting jobs are generated, but the only result is that the "Dwarf cancels plant seeds, needs plump helmet spawn" is spammed. It worked in the past -- I'm pretty sure nothing has been changed. At the same time, I noticed one of my stills had stopped working. Any jobs I designate at it result in a "Needs unrotten distillable item" message. However, another still works perfectly. Any ideas on how to fix these problems?

[GavJ]

Does anyone know a good way to boil large quantities of water into steam?

Classic method:
1) Use fancy custom stockpiles to get a lignite or a coal or a charcoal into a fire (and ideally magma)-safe metal bin
2) Light the fuel by submerging the bin in magma for awhile, or whatever. Do this on a bridge for example above your final spot. Or with a small enough amount of magma that you can let it evaporate later.
3) The bin in position will boil any water near it, and the fuel will not get put out since it's inside a bin (DF fire doesn't require oxygen, and fuel doesn't take heat damage). This will burn for something like 9-10 months before needing to be reloaded


If you're lucky enough to have a forgotten beast or other creature of fixed temperature above boiling point you can also just trap them down there and their body will boil water without ever needing reloading.

[samanato]

How are your seed- and plant-stockpiles set up?  The piles might be unlinked to the farm-plots, which unfortunately happens when they're set to give to anywhere else (since you can't link them to the land itself).  It's also very common, that dwarves will take the whole barrel of seeds that your farmers would use, resulting in lots of cancellation spam, which you can work around by setting up two piles (one to gather to, the other for dwarves to use that takes from the gathering pile)

[greycat]

How are your seed- and plant-stockpiles set up?  The piles might be unlinked to the farm-plots, which unfortunately happens when they're set to give to anywhere else (since you can't link them to the land itself).

You can't link a stockpile to a farm plot.

It's also very common, that dwarves will take the whole barrel of seeds that your farmers would use, resulting in lots of cancellation spam, which you can work around by setting up two piles (one to gather to, the other for dwarves to use that takes from the gathering pile)

Yes, this is an extremely common problem.  The dual-stockpile solution is one of the workarounds.  The other is simply to make a medium-large seed stockpile that disallows barrels (and do not permit seeds to be stored in any other stockpiles).  Neither of these workarounds is perfect, but they usually suffice.

If one of the original poster's stills is giving "Needs unrotten distillable item" messages, while another still works properly, then it's probably because the first still is linked to a stockpile that has no (brewable) plants in it, while the second still is either linked to a stockpile that does have plants,  or not linked at all.

[indyofcomo]

How are your seed- and plant-stockpiles set up?  The piles might be unlinked to the farm-plots, which unfortunately happens when they're set to give to anywhere else (since you can't link them to the land itself).

You can't link a stockpile to a farm plot.

I think he means that there is no valid path for the seed to get to the farm plot, not the take/give link mechanic.

[Genius Evil]

Thanks for the advice everybody! Adding another stockpile between the main food stockpile and the farm plots let the dwarves start planting again. However, even after being removed and replaced, with no stockpile links, the still did not work. Another new one in a different location did though. I'm going to try replacing it one more time.

[Sir Crashalot]

The trouble is that your seeds are kept in bags and barrels.
A hauler will often take the whole container just to go and collect a seed to put into it, which is why the farmers have trouble finding them.

Edit: I haven't played DF in a long while so can't remember if there is a workaround, maybe there is a preference that stops haulers from taking containers out of the stores.

[Henny]

Get special seed stockpiles where barrels are set to 0. Ban seeds from any other stockpiles. While there could be cancellation from wanting seeds in a hauled bag, there should be much less with this method.

[MeMyselfAndI]

If you're lucky enough to have a forgotten beast or other creature of fixed temperature above boiling point you can also just trap them down there and their body will boil water without ever needing reloading.

Alternatively, a flammable artifact works well.

[Genius Evil]

It turns out that the stairs leading to the kitchen had been removed during the dining hall's remodeling (I'm not sure exactly how), preventing the dwarves from accessing 120 of my 130 seeds. The still in the kitchen wasn't working because no-one could reach it. Oddly enough, I discovered the missing stairs when my broker died of dehydration in the kitchen booze stockpile... Perhaps he was trying to path to the rest of the fort? Anyway, restoring the stairs got everything working smoothly again. Thanks for the advice!