Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[durt101]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't want this to rot! Is there a way I can assign someone to haul this specific item, like give that task priority?

[geoduck]

Did you try putting a peasant just on food-hauling duty?

[Stargrasper]

Food hauling is REALLY low priority...as in, the dwarves would sooner let their food rot and then starve to death over hauling food to the stockpile literally a square away...

geo's right.  Assign someone, anyone, to ONLY food hauling.  You don't have to leave them there, but if the job needs to get done, force someone to do it.

[durt101]

After failing twice to haul it in time with every single one of my dwarves assigned only to food hauling, I forbid everything but it and it worked.
I love this game, I really do. But sometimes I fucking hate it.

[Grendus]

I have the same problem (seriously, I have a thread about it on the front page). Dwarves will only haul food if they have nothing better to do, Toady has plans to change this via custom priorities before the game is actually released.

In the meantime, this problem will eventually be dealt with on it's own as your fortress grows. Once you can spare about 30 dwarves to do nothing but haul crap, there won't be anything left to haul but the food. One really good suggestion from the other thread was to build the kitchen in the middle of the prepared food stockpile. Since deconstructing buildings is a much higher priority task and food will not rot in the stockpiles, you can destroy them before they rot and designate a food stockpile underneath them, then either relocate the kitchen or remove the stockpile and wait for your dwarves to move it to the proper one. Being put in the stockpile will reset the rot timer I believe, so you probably won't lose it in that time.

Frustrating no?

[LegacyCWAL]

You can also put a garbage dump zone on top of a food stockpile and order the food to be dumped.  Then reclaim it and you've got stockpiled food.

[Sphalerite]

It has been my experience that jobs are prioritized in part based on where they are on the map.  Given two jobs of equal priority, the westernmost one will be done first.  In my experience if you place your kitchen on the westernmost edge of your fortress, the dwarves will prioritize removing food from the kitchen above other food-hauling jobs such as moving plants or seeds around.

[Albedo]

Interesting theory, and not one I would refute - I'll have to try it next time.

You have to make sure you have a stockpile that accepts Prepared Meals (a < u >, iirc, in the customizing menu).  PM's are not sorted by ingredients, so you can have a custom food stockpile that accepts no foods except PM's.  (I put mine directly adjacent/under my Dining Hall.)

The don't take "wear", so not being in barrels is not a problem.