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[ral]

Been working on this guide and figured I'd ask people here for feedback.

Link to guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899235556

[Shonai_Dweller]

Great guide. Here's some stuff I thought of while reading:

1) Should maybe avoid saying things like civilian alerts are missing from "the premium version". They are just as missing in the free version as the premium. Makes it seem like premium is some different game. "Pay for less features!" aint a great advertisement.

2) Your note on tombs is a bit odd. The game never used to work anything like this. So to say "this is how it used to work and the bug will be fixed to make it work this way again" is kind of wishful thinking. Indeed it isn't even a bug. Just a really annoying result of having tomb setting be the same as bedroom setting (but with no "dormitory" option).

3) Bedrooms. You say "Smooth the walls, carve the walls" at the end but to really "bedroom like a master" you need to smooth and carve the floor before putting beds and cabinets down as dwarves will ignore areas covered by furniture. (And if you're making a pretty noble room, statues will block dwarves altogether so you'll end up with unsmoothed walls in the corners too potentially).

4) Barracks. Separate storage and sleeping area is a nice design. But the diagram seems to imply that you can't use a single barracks zone to do all functions (sleep, store, train). Which you can. Think this comes from yet another mythological "how to really get your military to work" non-existent bug workaround guide.

5) Oh, man you've linked to that completely cr*p "advanced marksdwarf guide" on the wiki which goes into great detail on how to work around bugs that were fixed about 10 years ago and completely messes up your archer dwarves. "Marksdwarf won't train if you give them a barracks and will use their crossbows as clubs" - absolute lie. Never mind, not your fault...

6) "a long travel distance for a well bucket can be slow". Not sure this is actually true? At least not to any noticeable degree.

7) "Except for the hospital, Locations are a newer game mechanic so expect some weird unintended behavior and bugs." - The hospital as a Location was introduced in 50.01 (was previously a zone, like a pasture) so is actually the newest type of Location. Others have had a long time to work through bugs.

(If you build a hospital from a dorm room, won't regular non-sick dwarves go sleep in it? Or do they avoid it once it's a Hospital Location? - never tried making it from a Dorm zone. Usually use a meeting area).

[Blue_Dwarf]

(If you build a hospital from a dorm room, won't regular non-sick dwarves go sleep in it? Or do they avoid it once it's a Hospital Location? - never tried making it from a Dorm zone. Usually use a meeting area).

They don't seem to be using it if they have their own room.

[ral]

Ok, I fixed #1

#2: Regarding tombs, you used to be able to just put down coffins and enable them. I would think at some point there would be a better option to create a mass tomb without having to enclose each coffin with walls or click tomb zones one by one, but I don't really know so I removed that.

#3: ok fixed that

#4: I tried to mention that in the text but I think I want to redo the screenshot for this at some point anyway. I've noticed cabinets and chests not getting used for equipment storage and I'm wondering if they actually need one armor stand per squad member and maybe one weapon stand per squad member too. So I'm still a little unsure about some stuff here.

#5: Ok, I removed that

#6: It might not be anymore. This is based on me remembering stuff from 10 years ago when it did seem to take one or more ticks per z-level to raise the bucket. It was pretty obvious if the well was 30+ levels above an underground lake or something, but I haven't tried long distances like that in a long time.

#7: fixed that

I didn't seem to notice them using a dormitory hospital as a sleeping area when I tried it but maybe I just had rooms for them all.

[el Indio]

One thing i would really like to see is a more in-depth 'Manage Work Orders' section.  Setting conditional work orders can be quite tricky.

3) Bedrooms. You say "Smooth the walls, carve the walls" at the end but to really "bedroom like a master" you need to smooth and carve the floor before putting beds and cabinets down as dwarves will ignore areas covered by furniture. (And if you're making a pretty noble room, statues will block dwarves altogether so you'll end up with unsmoothed walls in the corners too potentially).

Dwarfs will smooth/engrave floors beneath beds, chests, cabinets, coffins, slabs, weapon racks, armour stands, musical instruments, tables and chairs.  They won't smooth beneath statues, bookcases and pedestals/altars. 

[Shonai_Dweller]

Tombs used to be:

Step 1: Build coffin
Step 2: Select coffin (once it's been placed)
Step 3: Select use for burial.

Now tombs are:
Create a tomb 1x1 zone.
Place a coffin
(Or the other way around, as you like).

So, actually easier. But, awfully frustrating.
Making some kind of tomb location where you could just place tombs like hospital beds, would, yes be preferred. But that's a qol addition, not a bug fix. And would be much better than anything we had before.

#4 Yeah, I think only Sleep and Train is actually working. Cabinets don't seem to be used in 50.0x either. Think they were working before. Armor stands, yeah, nothing. I place them in the wishful thinking that I'll be prepared when they're fixed one day...

[Shonai_Dweller]

One thing i would really like to see is a more in-depth 'Manage Work Orders' section.  Setting conditional work orders can be quite tricky.

3) Bedrooms. You say "Smooth the walls, carve the walls" at the end but to really "bedroom like a master" you need to smooth and carve the floor before putting beds and cabinets down as dwarves will ignore areas covered by furniture. (And if you're making a pretty noble room, statues will block dwarves altogether so you'll end up with unsmoothed walls in the corners too potentially).

Dwarfs will smooth/engrave floors beneath beds, chests, cabinets, coffins, slabs, weapon racks, armour stands, musical instruments, tables and chairs.  They won't smooth beneath statues, bookcases and pedestals/altars.

Oh, good. Guess I never noticed that change when it happened. Nice to know.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

Just read the first two "chapters". The references are a good and helpful idea. But on the other hand. The next chapter telling people "how to have fun" and not be a "noob" as well as putting some spoilery references and low hanging fruits... Well I stopped there.
I do not think dwarf fortress needs any garekeeping or elitism. Everybody is welcome and should play as they wish, if you want to write a guide, good. But please do it in a more considerate way.
That is only my opinion on it, take what you like.

[ral]

I do not think dwarf fortress needs any garekeeping or elitism. Everybody is welcome and should play as they wish, if you want to write a guide, good. But please do it in a more considerate way.
That is only my opinion on it, take what you like.

Well the "elitism" is just kind of a joke. The section on difficulty settings mentions that you can just do what you want and set everything up the way you want, including disabling attacks and anything else like that.