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[Tobit]

I am a new player and for the first time I have built what I think is a pretty solid fortress. I have 16 dwarves right now, with plenty of room to expand. I am concerned about security. Some of my dwarves have weapon skills, and I have got a nice little iron smelting and crafting operation going. I tried to organize my dwarves into burrows but it seems like they are now restricted in where they move. Do I have to set up a different burrow on each level of my fortress? Do burrows actually help with defense?

How far do you have to dig to get to those caverns that I hear people talk about?

[sdrawkcabcM tsirU]

The way I usually use burrows is only in emergency situations. If there's a gobbo ambush or a FB loose in a cavern, the burrow gets activated to make all dwarves rush for the entrance(s) ASAP. Active squads of soldiers with an order will ignore burrows, to they typically get activated at the same time.

[NecroRebel]

Burrows' whole point is that they restrict where dwarves can move, or, more accurately, they prevent dwarves from taking jobs outside the burrow that they are assigned to.



Burrows can include multiple z-levels, just so long as there's at least one way to a different z-level. Unlike other painting tools, such as the mining designator for instance, the burrow painting tool even allows you to paint across multiple z-levels at once.



Burrows can be helpful with defense, used properly. When used with an alert, civilian dwarves won't leave the burrow at all. This can be used to prevent them from running out into a dangerous region to pick up somebody's lost sock, which keeps them safer. IIRC, though, the alert burrow supersedes and overrides any non-alert burrows that may exist, so for instance if you've got a mason who you only want to use stones from a particular workshop and use burrows for that, once the alert is on he'll go anywhere in the alert burrow.

To set a burrow to an alert, make the burrow, enter the (m)ilitary screen, the (a)lerts subscreen, scroll to the alert you want to restrict dwarves to the burrow during, scroll to the burrows list on the right, scroll to the burrow to which you want to restrict dwarves to during the alert, and hit ENTER. You can then go to the alert's name and activate it with ENTER to restrict dwarves to that burrow; only one burrow may be active at once.



Caverns are at least 5 z-levels below ground, in my experience. That is the most specific information that can be given. The first cavern might be 5 z-levels below, or it might be 50. The cavern after that might be 1 z-level below the bottom of the first, or it might be 20 further down. Same with the third cavern, with the magma sea yet further below that. Dig down, and you're 99.9% certain to find them eventually. If you manage to hit semi-molten rock without seeing any caverns or magma, you've gone too far down, but you'd have to be very (un)lucky to do that.

[Tobit]

Thanks for the response, I deleted all the burrows I set up and the dwarves went back to work. But my fortress has had two weird things happen to it. A dwarf has claimed the one mason workshop, and one of my 3 miners has been possessed. But I got some more migrants, and they are the exact skills I wanted with a Butcher/animal trapper. I already have some donkeys I want to slaughter, and I have tied up one and put the foal in an iron cage. How do I command my butcher to kill them?

And an elven caravan has come, how do I keep the peace with them?

[NecroRebel]

The dwarf that claimed the mason's workshop and the possessed miner are one and the same. That's a Strange Mood you've got there. At this point, one of two things will happen.

The first possibility is that the dwarf will go around your fort gathering a number of assorted materials, between 2 and 12 or so, and bringing them to the workshop. Once all the materials are gathered, that dwarf will "begin a mysterious construction," and some time afterwards an artifact will be made. Artifacts are highly valuable items of surpassing quality.

The second possibility is that you don't have one or more of the materials the dwarf wants, in which case he'll gather some of the materials, then sit in his workshop. If you (q)uery the workshop, you'll get a hint as to what materials he wants. If you produce or otherwise acquire suitable materials, he'll go get them and continue with making the artifact. Otherwise, he'll go insane.

If he goes insane, he'll stop responding to all commands and won't do the necessary things to keep himself alive anymore, causing him to gradually starve to death. If he begins "running around babbling," he will, in addition, start walking around and tossing his clothes off. If he goes melancholy, he'll start moving very slowly, and will attempt to jump off any cliffs that you may have available (including down any well shafts). If he goes berserk, he will attempt to murder any creature he sees, including other dwarves, and will have to be put down. Regardless, he's now useless and will soon surely die.



To slaughter animals, you need a butcher's workshop. Once you've got that built and an animal designated for slaughter, the butcher will do the rest.



Elves aren't difficult to keep the peace with. Don't kill them, don't steal their goods, don't let them die. While they don't come in the current version without modding, they also will send diplomats who ask that you limit your tree-cutting. If you get such a diplomat coming, don't let them die, either, agree to their request for a lumber limit, and then don't exceed it.

However, since elves are mostly useless pansies, you may find it cathartic to murder them in amusing ways, such as by repeated application of wooden spikes.

[Tobit]

The crazy dwarf built an artifact hematite coffer, is there a way to inspect it? I use the "k" command but there is no inspect option.

I have other questions if you don't mind answering them:

I built my trade depot, and the merchants come. I order my dwarves to carry all the chert scepters, amulets, whatever the hell I have scrapped together; my Broker has access to the depot, and yet he still doesn't trade and the trade option is grayed out. I removed all other of jobs he can do, yet he never works. With the dwarven caravans I did negotiate and the trade went through (I think), but with the elven caravan it never worked out.

I want to cover my mines with flooring, and I did accomplish it in some places. But my dwarves constantly cancel the orders because there is stone on the ground. The stupid thing is it is the same type of stone that the flooring is supposed to be made out of.

[NecroRebel]

The coffer is probably inside the mason's workshop's inventory still. Use the building i(t)ems cursor to see that inventory, +-*/ to scroll to the coffer, then ENTER to bring up the item's screen. Alternatively, use the artifacts screen (the hotkey is l IIRC) to see it.



You have to (r)equest the trader to come to the depot, then have the trader come to the depot, before you can trade. Once the trader is there, you can (t)rade to bring up the trade screen, then select all of the items you want from the caravan and all of the items you want to trade them, then (t) again to trade them. Do NOT (o)ffer items! That is essentially you giving the items you have selected on your side to the caravan as a gift and you'll get nothing in return for them.

You probably neglected to actually trade with the dwarven caravan if you didn't do all that stuff above. The dwarven caravan comes with a trade liaison, who makes a trade agreement with you, which allows you to tell the next caravan what to bring next year.



First off, I should say that covering your mines with plain-stone flooring is mostly pointless. It doesn't actually add value if you're putting constructed stone floors over natural stone floors of the same material and prevents you from engraving it. I'd recommend against it; if you want to get the more attractive floor tile graphic, get an engraver, which is a dwarf with the Stone Detailing labor, active, then (d)esignate the floors for (s)moothing.

Second, your dwarves aren't cancelling the orders, but rather they're suspending them. There's a difference. The reason why they're doing this is because they try to build the floors out of a specific stone, which isn't the one that is on that particular tile. The stone that is on that particular tile is instead reserved for use for another tile, probably one further south and to the right, and your dwarves will absolutely refuse to move a stone that is reserved for use since if they did they'll lose track of it.

This information is probably too advanced for your understanding, but part of the reason why this happens is because when you set a large area of constructions to be built at once, it doesn't actually designate them all at once. It designates the one at the bottom-right first, and you choose the material for that one at that time, then it designates the next one up. When your dwarves go to build it, though, they go for the last one designated for construction (the top-left one) first, which might well have the material for the earlier-designated constructions underneath it, so they suspend the construction since they can't move the thing. If you don't understand that, don't worry overmuch, but it's an explanation for why that occurs.



Also, did you notice that you said that you had other questions, but then proceeded to not ask any more questions? 

[Tobit]

Damnit I am playing dwarf fortress, I have no time for punctuation!