Print

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

[Xheia]

My food keeps on rotting in the kitchens (that is, inside the kitchen building). I think both prepared and raw food rots - and it's tough to see 1500-db meals go in the refuse pile. Is there any special/clever way I can deal with this?
I guess I could add more food/refuse haulers, and cut production...
(I do have empty food stockpiles, of course - and a ton of pots.)

Some aside questions:
Can raw food rot while it is being prepared - for example if the cook travels a long way to get the next ingredient?
Even though prepared meals that are larger than 10 parts don't fit in pots, they still won't rot if they're in a stockpile, correct?
I have made my butcher shop outside to reduce miasma - is this a good idea?
Do raw body parts, prepared meat, and prepared food rot at the same rate?

Thanks.

[Girlinhat]

Outdoor butchers and outdoor kitchens are nice to reduce miasma.  q over your food stockpile and disable barrels.  A meal usually won't fit into a barrel so just stockpile them without.  If you're worried about vermin, pasture a cat over the pile.

[Bererez]

I always put my butchers in a room with either a door or with a diagonal entrance to prevent miasma spread. Also make sure you have enough barrels/pots, nearby stockpiles (food and refuse), and some idle dwarves. I run into the this same problem early on because I keep my dwarves too busy.

[kingubu]

I always put my food production outside.  No problems here.

I can't link you a definitive answer, but I believe food (all types) in stockpiles rots much slower (if at all).  Only if it's stuck in the workshop will it rot quickly.  Happens to me sometimes early game when there's not enough haulers.

[i2amroy]

Food in stockpiles will never rot, but it can be potentially destroyed by vermin such as rats if you don't store it in barrels/pots and you get unlucky enough for the rats to roll high enough on their attempts.

[GhostDwemer]

If your food is rotting in your kitchens, one of two things has gone wrong. Either you have filled all available food stockpiles, or your dwarves are otherwise occupied when the food hauling needs to happen.

[ClkWrkJester]

Slow down your butchering too... even if you desperately need a bunch of food, butchering 5 animals will create a ton of meat... but your one cook can only cook it so fast. What I'll do is early on only butcher smaller animals and hunted animals, then when food is scarce, if food is scarce, I'll set up a chain of kitchens, tanneries, and one or two guys cranking out barrels. Turn any entire section of my fort to just getting meat processed as fast as dwarfishly possible. That creates, usually, a huge food surplus and I usually only need to do it during an extended siege before I'm ready to return force with force.

[Dorfimedes]

Food in stockpiles will never rot, but it can be potentially destroyed by vermin such as rats if you don't store it in barrels/pots and you get unlucky enough for the rats to roll high enough on their attempts.

This is basically what I do when I notice there's a huge backlog of meals or meat that needs to be hauled, I have the workshop deconstructed and turned into a food stockpile, then I set the main food stockpile to 'take' from it. My chef usually has all hauling disabled except for food, so he generally puts all the meals in the proper place, barring a badly timed party.

e: Completely missed your other questions. 1) I've never seen this happen before. Rotten body parts seem to stop emitting miasma so I would assume the items go into "stasis" when a dwarf picks them up. 2) Nope, they shouldn't rot if they're in a food stockpile. 3) Sure it is. The unhappy thoughts given to your butcher and every dwarf trying to haul the rotten meat and organs could be the straw that broke the camel's back for a fort that's already been destabilized by death. Diagonal corridors prevent the spread of miasma but don't address the root of the problem. If you're concerned for your butcher's safety, just surround it with walls. It's good to have a nice and safe outdoor area for your dwarves anyway. 4) I can't answer that one, but it would be easy enough to test. Get a couple of idle dwarves to hang outside your food stockpile and order them to dump the food items in question to multiple spots of equal distance from the stockpile, then wait to see which items start to rot first. I imagine they rot at the same rate though.

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

Food in stockpiles will never rot, but it can be potentially destroyed by vermin such as rats if you don't store it in barrels/pots and you get unlucky enough for the rats to roll high enough on their attempts.

Prepared food (meals) does not rot.

[Sphalerite]

Food in stockpiles will never rot, but it can be potentially destroyed by vermin such as rats if you don't store it in barrels/pots and you get unlucky enough for the rats to roll high enough on their attempts.

Prepared food (meals) does not rot.

Untrue.  I have seen prepared meal stacks rot when not moved to a stockpile quickly enough.

[Garath]

basically, plan your works so your hauling labors don't exceed your haulers. I never have any other "big" job going on when I'm doing either a lot of slaughtering or a lot of cooking. Note that a slaughter automatically spawns cook fat jobs at the kitches which generates a lot of labor too.

[Urist Da Vinci]

It appears that alcohol, liquids (including milk!) , sugar, and flour won't decay when left off a stockpile. This is based on a few observations of ambushed caravan remains outside the fort.

Alcohol and plant powder materials don't have [ROTS].

Plant extracts, animal extracts, and blood have the [ROTS] token, so I wonder what's going on there.
Everyone's seen the barrels of gnomeblight or golden salve that sit outside for months after the elven caravan gets ambushed.

[nttea]

Nothing in barrels rot, right? also unless your dwarfs are 100% busy all the time, set a stockpile to only accept prepared food and no barrels! Any vermin consumption is extremely negligible at least if you have a cat around(not pastured) i never tried without

[SixOfSpades]

I've never seen miasma from a Kitchen, only from a Butcher's Shop. When this happens, I examine the contents of said shop, and discover that it's full of forbidden animal parts. So they're rotting not because they're not in barrels, or because my Butcher was too slow, or because there was no stockpile to take them to, etc. . . . they're rotting because the butchered animal was forbidden.

My theory is that my butcher got tired of twiddling his thumbs, & took it upon himself to go to my caged-animal stockpile, open a cage, drag the badger or turkey or whatever to the shop, kill it, and only then notice that the animal was forbidden . . . and then refuse to touch any part of it. I'm not sure if this could be related to the reason behind your Kitchen miasma, but it's a possibility.

[ab9rf]

Food in stockpiles will never rot, but it can be potentially destroyed by vermin such as rats if you don't store it in barrels/pots and you get unlucky enough for the rats to roll high enough on their attempts.

Prepared food (meals) does not rot.

Prepared food will rot on the same terms as meat, plants, cheese, eggs, and fish (raw or prepared).  The only places where food etc. will not rot are, as far as I am aware, in a stockpile, in a trade depot, in the embark wagon, or while being carried by a dwarf or caravan pack animal or wagon or used as a reaction component.  It does not matter if it's in a container: a barrel or pot full of meat left in a corridor will eventually rot.

While you'd expect milk and tallow to rot, it seems that they don't.  This is probably a bug.  Nor do any of the other categories of food, including flours, drinks, seeds, and rock nut paste.  Fat rots no matter where it is, which is why it is important to render it to tallow as quickly as possible.