Print

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

[beech]

Hi!
New to DF, and I realize this is probably asked a lot...I did look, nothing jumped at me.

The walk-through, when talking about Dining Rooms, suggests placing several tables.  It gives some math...fine. 

What it doesn't explain--do you make each of those tables a "Dining Room" of its own, or do you select one in the middle and make it's coverage area cover all the other tables?

Also, a crafter of mine made a masterpiece (actually, I remember it saying artifact, but that can't be right, can it?) Iron Barrel.  I don't know how to find this, what to do with it, or if I should do anything with it.  I didn't have him making barrels, which is adding to my confusion.

Another--when looking at the Job management screen, I see a column "Validated" and it has a check, or an X.  Not sure what these represent.  I do know that I've had "Make Rock Pot" with a check next to it for about an hour, and it doesn't make them.  Not sure to figure out how to find what's preventing something from working for me.  (Again, Newb...)

One other thing--love the walk through.  Someone spent a lot of time on that, and I thank you!  One thing I noticed--it just kind of stops, and I get it.  What I'm not sure about, though, is how quickly do I start to try and cover all the other "things" that go with building a fortress?  Do I need to build a tannery, loom, mill, etc, as fast as possible, or do I have tome to grow?

I'm up to 62 dwarfs, and I'm still trying to get a forge to work (at least, to work where I understand what's going on).

Thanks for putting up with some newb questions.  Looking forward to taking my fortress to the next level (and having a little less fun).

[Linkxsc]

1. GL man

2, on dining rooms, generally you make a room with several tables and chairs, and your set 1 table to the dining room and use +/- to size it over the available room. The more furniture that the room encompasses, the higher "quality" the room will be. Also smoothing/engraving walls and floors helps the value of the room and will give eaters more happy thoughts.

3, an artifact iron barrel eh. Well theres a good chance that someone came by and grabbed it and filled it with beer or food. Periodically dwarves will get in strange moods where they attempt to make artifacts (look strange mood up on the wiki). Occasionally they'll make kinda worthless things. If you get an artifact statue or somethign and place it in a good area of your fort, everyone passing it will become happier. They'll also often make things that have nothing to do with their profession, so your woodworker might suddenly forge you an artifact longsword from having no skill in weaponmaking.

4. After 20 dwarves, when using a manager. he periodically has to go to his office to validate tasks. The validated means that its checked, and in time some dwarf will start working on that task. The red X means he hasn't checked it off yet, and the task won't happen until he goes to his office and gets the orders sorted out.

Also the "make rock pot" thing, maybe you didnt have anyone with the proper labor. Or you didnt have a workshop. Or perhaps there were other tasks ahead of that that were also taken up by the same labor, so that dwarf was doing other things.

On the when to start doing "other" things. they really depend on your situation. Usually I start off growing plump helmets, and quarry bushes (from rock nuts). And will have 1 farmers workshop processing the QBs. After a couple migrant waves, I expand my farming a bit to cover pigtails and wheat. Usually i'll have a lot of quarry bushes and plump helmets. About half as much as either of them in pigtails and cave wheat. (pigtails can get important because you make clothes with them, also important bags).

The butchery is onyl important if you're doing a lot of animal farming or hunting, Often people will bring some chickens or turkeys with them on embark because they're cheap, nest boxes are easy to make. And they can easily provide a constant supply of food, and a nice supply of leather/meat every year or 2.
Quickly though, tannery is only needed if you have a butchery. Mill isn't very important early on (you can use cave wheat straight for beer) loom and clothier are needed for if you're getting a lot of pig tails from your farms.

5. Grats on making it to 62, my first couple forts died around 30-40 (i didn't have farming pegged down).

As far as forging. Get lots and lots of wood, make lots of charcoal. And then look at the wiki on what kind of bars the different ores make. Iron comes from magnetite, hematite, and some other one off the top of my head. Train your weapon/armor/metal smiths on cheaper materials like copper and bronze first (if available). After they make it to higher skill then have them equip your army with iron (or steel if you can), and let the metalcrafter start making gold/silver stuff to trade with.

[VerdantSF]

Rock pots are made with the stonecrafting skill at a Craftsdwarf workshop, not a Mason workshop.  I've made that mistake a couple of times .

[beech]

Rock pots are made with the stonecrafting skill at a Craftsdwarf workshop, not a Mason workshop.  I've made that mistake a couple of times .

And that would indeed be the problem.  Doh!

Thanks!

And thanks to Linkxsc for the detailed reply on all the questions!!!

[Larix]

3, an artifact iron barrel eh. Well theres a good chance that someone came by and grabbed it and filled it with beer or food. Periodically dwarves will get in strange moods where they attempt to make artifacts (look strange mood up on the wiki). Occasionally they'll make kinda worthless things. If you get an artifact statue or somethign and place it in a good area of your fort, everyone passing it will become happier. They'll also often make things that have nothing to do with their profession, so your woodworker might suddenly forge you an artifact longsword from having no skill in weaponmaking.

No, the skills (profession) of a dwarf _determine_ the skill used for making an artefact, that basic choice isn't random: a mason will make a piece of rock furniture, a metalsmith will make a piece of iron furniture (which i think includes your iron barrel), a glassmaker will make a highly random glass item (anything from a bed to an amulet). When you get an artefact longsword, that means the best mood-related skill the dwarf had was weaponsmithing. A random choice is only made when a dwarf without any mood-relevant skills is chosen to make an artfact - in those cases one of the three 'crafting' skills stonecrafting, woodcrafting and bonecarving will be chosen.

Regarding dining rooms: as has been said, making one large dining room encompassing many chairs and tables is best. Any chair within such a room can be used by hungry dwarfs to take their meal, and everyone eating within the boundaries of this dining room will gain the full happiness benefit of the room (the bigger the room is and the more furniture it contains, the more valuable and happiness-inducing it is). Remember that every chair should have an adjacent table and that each table should ideally have only one adjacent chair. Dwarfs only look for an empty chair, and if there's no directly adjacent table _or_ the table's in use by another eater, they'll eat their meal from their lap instead of going to a free table and complain about a 'lack' of tables.

[Broken]

The barrel is not useless: You can use it to make an epic ashery. For example, make an ashery in the middle of the dining room and the value of the
barrel will increase the quality.

Is really weird, i know.

[Linkxsc]

The barrel is not useless: You can use it to make an epic ashery. For example, make an ashery in the middle of the dining room and the value of the
barrel will increase the quality.

Is really weird, i know.

Yeah I'd still probably prefer an artifact statue or table for that role. However what could be pretty neat.

If you could set up barrels in dining rooms specifically as drink storage (kinda to make a bar on the side that would also buff the quality of the room) and if dwarves drank from the artifact barrel, if they'd get another happy thought from how great of a barrel it was.