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[Specialist290]

'Ello all, new player to the game. Managed to finally get a fortress up and running after checking out the Wiki.

Anyway, I have a question:  When ordering up a build in a workshop (such as a door, a chair, etc.), is it possible to specify the material it's made from if there's more than one type of wood / rock / metal available? Thanks in advance

[Untelligent]

Although there's no easy way to do it, there ARE ways to get them to use the rock you want.

1) Lock the dwarf in a room with a workshop and a stockpile that only allows one specific type of rock.

2) Some guy made a smelter "reaction" mod that added all types of stone to the economic stone list, essentially allowing you to mark any stone as usable or not usable. I don't know where you'd find it, though, and you'd have to gen a new world for it to work.

[Skanky]

A less resource intensive way is to make a stockpile above/below the workshop in question and have that store only the rock type you want things to be made from. While your mason will grab whatever happens to be closest when first going to the workshop, they will then start using the rock in the stockpile above or below as that is considered closest. This method gives you above 90% items in the correct material. For wood, replace rock with wood and mason with carpenter, the same applies.

For metal items, I believe you specify what they are made from at the start ie: iron sword or steel shield.

[Lormax]

You can use the idea Skanky proposed (2 stockpiles, one above, one below), then build hatch covers over the stairs to lock out the stockpile you don't want the dwarf using.

[Specialist290]

Thanks for the advice, guys I'll be sure to try out a few of these once I have an opportunity.

Of course, right now I'm still trying to adjust to the inability to micromanage every little thing... The Civilization series of games has somewhat spoiled me in that regard :p I'm trying to resist the temptation to reboot the game when my dwarves do seemingly the opposite of what I want them to do, and so far I've largely succeeded. Whether or not I'll be able keep going after making my own stupid mistakes, however, is still up in the air :p

Then again, "Losing is fun!", so I suppose a little experimenting won't hurt anything too much