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[Rexfelum]

This forum is excellent. A few weeks ago I asked how to find out how to strip prisoners of their armour and weapons when they are caged. The wiki does not tell you how to do this, and it is not at all obvious. The question was answered in two minutes. I am quite happy answering questions and asking them. It's easy to forget things.

I was wondering if it might be a good idea to create a huge text document with most of the FAQs on. Then people can use the search function to look for keywords, which shall direct them towards the correct question and answer. As it stands, it can be difficult to find answers on both the Wiki and the forum. My question above would be a good example , as otherwise people are going to continue to ask the same question.

It is here on the wiki, just hard to find.  No one would think that "captured creatures" was an article name, since most other names are actual in-game concepts like "cage," "goblin," and so on.

And there is this sort of FAQ functionality available on the wiki: just look at the question boxes that appear at the bottom of some pages (I can't find one right now).  However, it isn't being used for much.

--Rexfelum

[Tsarwash]

That page has been much improved since I last looked at it. A wiki is only as useful as the links between pages. I'm not criticising the wiki. I'm suggesting that having most newbie question on one page would make answers easier to find, as you can just use a browser or something to highlight the keywords that you are looking for.

[Shoku]

that the dictionary is a good place to go to find out the first letter of a word.

Slightly off topic, but... THIS THIS THIS!  It always bugged me as a kid when I asked my parents how to spell a word and they told me to go look it up in a dictionary.  I was always like: But  the dictionary is arranged alphabetically and I won't know where to look if I can't spell it!

/rant

You should probably include a few 'helpful hints' that are given out time and time again because people don't even know to ask (and not just new people, either).

For example: d-b-d aka mass dump.  You know, so you don't have to designate each stone for dumping by hand, or have to go into the zstocks menu and designate all stones of a certain type to be dumped?  Yeah,  that d-b-d.

Also: Reserved barrels.  In the stocks menu, you can reserve barrels so that they will be kept empty instead of being used for general storage.  This way it's very, very difficult to run out of barrel for emergency booze production.

Now that I'm an older smartass I'd know well enough to go off on my own for a bit and then come back and tell them it's not in the dictionary. "I looked through every br word and it's nowhere to be found." "It doesn't start with br" "Why would I need to know that?"

This forum is excellent. A few weeks ago I asked how to find out how to strip prisoners of their armour and weapons when they are caged. The wiki does not tell you how to do this, and it is not at all obvious. The question was answered in two minutes. I am quite happy answering questions and asking them. It's easy to forget things.

I was wondering if it might be a good idea to create a huge text document with most of the FAQs on. Then people can use the search function to look for keywords, which shall direct them towards the correct question and answer. As it stands, it can be difficult to find answers on both the Wiki and the forum. My question above would be a good example , as otherwise people are going to continue to ask the same question.

It would be too difficult to actually make it so that people new enough to have those problems knew the compilation was there and then if we really went overboard trying to make it visible (stickied thread just linking to it for example) we could have some outrage that people weren't bothering to look in the FAQ.

[forumist]

"What do I do with all these socks lying around my fortress?"  100 Exp

Sell them.

I wasn't clear: I meant socks and such that are owned by dwarves and that they are refusing to pick up.  The solution, according to most people, is magma.

Is giving the dwarves rooms with cabinets a valid alternate solution ? Or does the problem happen even if the dwarves own cabinets ?

And for dropping the creatures in a pit without them escaping, I finally found a post saying that the solution is to build the animal stockpile just next to the pit so that the creature doesn't have time to escape.

Careful: the stockpile helps, sure, but installing the cage itself next to the pit gives the creature the minimum time.  Or, well, installing the cage inside the pit gives zero time.

What do you mean by "installing". Building it ?

I just tried this:

aaaaaa
pppppp
pppppp

a = animal stockpile
p = pit


The cages are just next to the pit, since the stockpile is just one tile wide.
I assigned a draltha to the pit, Urist McAnimalHandler arrived and let the draltha escape.
Fortunately nobody was hurt.

Maybe, for some reason, Urist decided to pit the draltha at a tile opposite to the cage instead of chosing the closest pit tile.

If the real safe solution is to build the cage in the pit and realease the creature using a lever, it's a bit tedious: for every captured creature, you have to build the cage and link it to a lever.