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[Arceius]

Everything started off fine at first, my carpenters would gather wood, and build things just fine. Then all of a sudden, they stop working. Specifically they won't go get any wood, for that matter, NO ONE will. I tried assigning every Dwarf in my fortress to collect wood and none of them would do it. I tried deleting my designation and redoing it in several different spots but it seems no matter what I do I can't get the to get off their lazy butts and chop some wood!

Coincidentally other odd things are going on, such as I seem to be making ale fine (there are no error messages) yet I can't find it, and my kitchen won't make anything for lack of "solid unrotten food items" despite the three cows I just butchered for the purpose (getting rid of the messages that is). Nothing has gone horribly wrong yet but at this rate my Dwarfs are going to stop eating and die. FUN it may be, but I'd rather get massacred by Goblins.

Could this be some sort of glitch with version 31.14, or am I just missing something else I can try to get it to work?

[Zaik]

There's no telling with a new version, however your first problem *sounds* like you told dwarves to ignore wood in the orders menu.


Hit o and look for the "Dwarves all (gather/ignore) wood" and make sure it is set to gather.

Your second problem sounds like the same as the first one. I assume you have a food stockpile, however none of it is getting there. What is *most likely* happening is you set dwarves to ignore food as well. Same menu, set them to gather food.

Your booze is probably sitting under the Still. Hit t and hover over it to check. Your meat never got gathered, and rotted under the butcher's shop. Plants don't rot even if they aren't on a stockpile at the moment, unless that got fixed with .14, so you'd be able to brew just fine, but it'd sit there under the Still forever if not gathered.

[Arceius]

My ale is indeed underneath my still. I must have not looked right (I remember trying to look there >_>). However, both my food and wood orders are set to "gather."

[Zaik]

Hmm....

You do have food and wood stockpiles, right? If you do, then the only thing i can think of is you hid a ton of stone and made your stockpile there, then they moved stuff to every open spot and ignored the rest due to stone behind there.

You can check that by pressing d-b-h, all the hidden stuff will show up then, and you can unhide it with H from there.

I just made that mistake with a siege ammo stockpile the other day. Took forever to figure out why the stockpile would only hold 6 arrows.

[Arceius]

I'm not exactly sure why "hidden" stuff would matter, or what exactly that would do. As far as I know you don't actually need a wood stockpile to chop wood, in fact I know for a fact you don't. They just chop the wood and leave it there (it was even done earlier in the life of this fortress). As for the food, I know I have the food on a stockpile (I was able to find that stuff) and I have plenty of Plump Helmets for cooking, or I assume I do, seeing as I don't know how many you actually need. I have over 10 and I'm cooking the simplest meal possible.

Can you explain a bit about what "hidden" stuff does?

[Zaik]

Oh, if you're having trouble chopping wood then i have no idea. I do now chopping wood isn't a super high priority job, so if you're keeping your woodcutter busy with hauling and carpentry jobs they will ignore it for quite a while. Also if for some reason your woodcutter lost his axe or had woodcutting turned off(or both), he'd ignore it. You can check that by hitting v and hovering over him, then hitting i to check his inventory and p-l to check his jobs.


Anyway, you would have had to hide the stone yourself. I do it without thinking about it anymore. If you make a stockpile in a place that already had stone from digging in it, your dwarves won't be able to put anything in the spaces that have stone in them. If you hid the stone, you might have forgot it was there(I do it all the time) and though it looks like you have stockpile space none of the dwarves will actually put anything in them.

[Arceius]

I have exactly 5 Dwarfs in my fortress that haul, and only because they have no other jobs. Woodcutting is turned on, there was no stone on top of this stockpile (I only started finding stone after the area my wood stockpile is in, which is technically above it), and my dwarf very clearly says he has no job (and I tried to to get everyone to do it but they wouldn't even if they too had no jobs), I can't do any carpentry because they stopped chopping wood (I only noticed when my carpenter stopped Carpentering for lack of wood)... and... I can't find his axe. Hrm. That might be the problem.

How might one go about locating a lost axe, and for that matter, can axes break and I missed the message?

[Zaik]

They can't break, however there's a million things that could cause him to drop it. Having been drafted to the military and put on active or given a station/kill order, being attacked and having a hand removed, random bugginess, anything.

That said, if he has woodcutting enabled, if there is an unforbidden axe anywhere on the map not built into a trap or equipped by another dwarf he will make a beeline for it, so if he doesn't have one that means it's gone. Most likely he dropped it for who knows what reason and a thief or animal stole it. If you had any wood left at all, you could make him a training axe, or set up an extremely basic metal industry(smelter+forge) and use any weapons grade metal to make him an axe, however you'd need 1 fuel to get it started...and you have no wood to make charcoal, hich you could have just made a training axe with to begin with. If you have easily accessible magma you can make a metal axe there, otherwise you're pretty much waiting for a caravan to bring you wood or an axe.

[Arceius]

I was afraid of that... looks like I'm waiting for a caravan. What do you want to bet something goes horribly wrong that needs wood to fix before a caravan arrives? (providing, or course, that I figure out how to trade what I need on the first try >_>)

[Arceius]

I have obtained wood by hacking apart my wagons with my dwarfs bare hands and the production of wood continues. Huzzah!

Thank you for the help Zaik.
May your beard grow long, and your still never falter.