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[BoogieMan]

I have plenty of leather so I am going to swap my civilians into leather clothing so it doesn't wear out as quick. However, I was wondering - what leather clothing will civilians wear and not wear on their own?

For example, I imagine they choose the standard named things like trousers and a tunic with no issue, but will civilians ignore leather high boots and only wear leather shoes? Leather shirts but not leather armor? What about more optional items like caps, cloaks, hoods, etc?

[Thisfox]

Your mileage my vary, but I find with my dorfs:

• They will choose to wear a hood, but not a helm or cap on their head.
• They will choose to wear gloves and mittens, but not gauntlets on their hands.
• They will choose to wear a shirt (if your world supports shirts) or tunic or robe, or dress, or cloak on their torso. Or some or all of these at once...
• They will choose to wear trousers but not leggings, skirts, kilts etc on their legs.
• They will only choose to wear shoes and socks on their feet.

Dresses robes, kilts, etc are all ongenderlocked. I've had plenty of male dorfs happily romping around in a leather dress. I like this about the game I'm always frustrated by a group of dorfs who won't wear or make or know that shirts are a thing, though. Apparently they aren't universally invented.

Irrelevant fact: If you buy stuff from the caravans to wear, the human-sized (large) and elf-sized clothing doesn't fit. But you're planning on making not buying, so you can ignore that problem.

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I understand, civilians will not wear armor, and, furthermore, armor is the thing that's except from wear wear (but not combat wear), while all clothing is subjected to it. In addition to that, organic items are subjected to wear over time, so after 20 or so years your initial bags have been worn enough to reach "x" level.

Many types of clothing and armor are "common" in the mountain entity raws, which means that dwarven civs usually are able to make them, but they sometimes can be absent (if you're extremely unlucky you can make neither high nor low boots).

As skirts, kilts, etc. are items of clothing, I would have expected civilian dorfs to wear them when available, as well as exotic items such as face veils. However, I haven't performed any investigation into it.

Goblin and elven gear are compatible with dorfs, while human ones are too large for dorfs (but, obviously, suitable for your humies if you go for a multi racial fortress). Since dorfs are unable to make underwear, those articles of clothing have to be recovered from invaders or bought from elven caravans (and as I've engaged in trying to satisfy the dwarven demand for these items as well as I can, I'm completely convinced dorf wear items from both sources).

A big cause for kids playing on top of the corpses of slain goblins is that they went there to pick up "new" blood soaked underwear (since there's a constant shortage). Once that task is done, they're prone to decide it's time to play, and they decide to play where they happen to be at the time of the decision, go collect a toy, and return to the battlefield to play with the toy (and drop it there when done playing, for the next kid to pick it up and get a dose of corpse trauma).

[Shonai_Dweller]

They're a bit useless as armour, but civilians will wear masks, including metal ones. Useless fact of the day...

[BoogieMan]

Thanks for the replies!

Does leather clothing degrade slower than those made from cloth or silk?

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for the replies!

Does leather clothing degrade slower than those made from cloth or silk?

Not from being worn. I believe that rate is the same for everything (including adamantine clothing). I don't think the rate of degradation due to age is different either: I believe both cloth/silk and leather bags get worn at the same rate.

[Splint]

The one exception to the armor thing mentioned by Thisfox is caps, which can be made of silk, cloth, leather, or metal. This can cause some issues with military gear as it's not uncommon for Urist to decide his pig tail cloth counts as a helmet if he's not told to strip off his work clothes before donning his armor, due to caps having the [SHAPED] token. The metal ones work just as well as normal helmets. The soft ones... Well, the leather ones are at least sufficient for preventing a broken skull during a sparring match if your guys decide to practice their Pankration.

Granted it feels like it doesn't matter given how easily spinal tissue is damaged in the game, but it's something to be mindful of if your civ can make them (obviously caps made of soft materials are also subject to wear.)

[anewaname]

In the body location charts of the armor wiki page, civilians will not wear anything that has a 1 or more in the Armor Level column (so, no high boots or leather armor or metal caps, but yes to leather/cloth/wool caps).

When choosing what clothing items to craft, I look at a list of what clothing items a migrant or starting-seven dwarf brought to the fort. I doubt the dwarfs care about this, but if all my new dwarfs arrive with dresses and not shirts, I only craft dresses for the upper_torso. By reducing the variety of items the fort produces, I hope to reduce the clothing clutter.

[PatrikLundell]

:
When choosing what clothing items to craft, I look at a list of what clothing items a migrant or starting-seven dwarf brought to the fort. I doubt the dwarfs care about this, but if all my new dwarfs arrive with dresses and not shirts, I only craft dresses for the upper_torso. By reducing the variety of items the fort produces, I hope to reduce the clothing clutter.

That approach only works until invaders bring other items of the correct size.

[recon1o6]

Does that mean adamantine cloth items count as armour?

Actually has anyone tested the effectiveness of cloth materials for protection? (looking at cloaks and socks with high boots)

[Splint]

Does that mean adamantine cloth items count as armour?

Actually has anyone tested the effectiveness of cloth materials for protection? (looking at cloaks and socks with high boots)

No it means they count as clothes and thus suck for any kind of defense and wear out even though logic dictates they shouldn't. Basically they suck and are only good for wasting a finite resource.

Leather can sometimes stop stuff - while not scienced I know from combat in the wild it does a good job of stopping crappier materials if the guy swinging it isn't much bigger than a human, and that once you reach a certain size, even plain clothing can put serious wear on iron weapons. I've regularly seen leather cloaks stop scratches from some animals, and deflect fall damage or reduce it to brusing.

A leather helmet and chest piece may also be the difference between broken ribs/dead soldiers if someone gets thrown during a sparring match and something skids. Source: A quad I couldn't afford to armor up was training. one of them threw the sergeant and broke his wrist. He gets out of the hospital, heals up, guy throws the sergeant again during a spar, breaks a bunch of ribs. Sergeant recovers, comes back, and wrestles the guy and throws him. Dude who kept injuring the sergeant died as a result of his head skidding across the floor.

The broken ribs and skulls stopped when I issued them some leather armor.

[anewaname]

Actually has anyone tested the effectiveness of cloth materials for protection? (looking at cloaks and socks with high boots)

I don't know if there has been testing, but look at it like this... In fortress mode, dwarf's get so little protection from clothing that it will never be the reason that goblin's sword was stopped. The combat report might show "blocked by clothing" but there were other factors that were not listed; maybe the weapon's momentum was already reduced by an outer armor layer or the goblin was so tired they could barely lift their sword.

But when your military wears their armor all the time, having some clothing under armor is important because it gives them happy thoughts.

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Can I mod shield to be usable for civilians?

[anewaname]

No. The decision to pick up and wear an item of the "Shield" type, is in the code, not in the raws.

You could put all of your dwarfs into the military, even if they never train, with an "over clothing" uniform including a shield. They will carry a shield on their back, so when that dwarf is being attacked by a beast, that dwarf's squad can be told to kill that beast and the dwarf will immediately equip their shield, allowing them better odds to survive while other dwarfs rush to assist.