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[Garath]

After the first year or so, stop fishing anyway. If you don't the goblins will stop it for you by killing the fisherdwarfs.

Your dwarf might be stuck in his job because the river froze while he was fishing, but I'm no expert on this since I don't ever let dwarves fish anymore

[mustafa2812]

Ok thanks for the warning.  Maybe I'll recruit him into the military.  Anyway, I read on the wiki that it's a good idea to hunt with your military but how do I make them kill animals?  And the main animal that I see are two legged rhino lizards.  They seem to die a lot.  Idk how they die, ive never been there to witness it.  But they turn into two legged rhino lizard remains and I don't think i can get any food out of that.  So can i use those for food?  How?  If not how should I obtain food? cause im running low lol.  I slaughtered an ox but I don't have many tame animals as it is and i dont want to kill a cat and eat it O.o

[Finn]

You should read the wiki article on farming.  In the short term you could gather plants.

[Garath]

the lizards are vermin, your cats kill them. When really low on food, dwarfs will start hunting vermin for food. Not only is this inefficient, it also makes them extra unhappy.

Farm lots of plump helmets, don't cook them, let dwarfs eat them or brew them

[Starver]

Fisherdwarfs are very good at fishing despite everything else (except, of course, death).  You can (or you could, at least) remove the Fishing task from a dwarf once he's set his mind to go out there and fish and then find that he's still on the same fishing job a season or two later.

I tend to not ever use them, myself (also hunters, for a similar reason), and rely on gathered (initially) and home-grown produce.  However, if you have a secure pool (above or below-ground[1]) where the fishing has not yet been exhausted (there's always messages like "There are no more fish in the northwestern swamps" to tell you if that's the case) then they do provide a steady supply, but it's slow.  And don't forget that you need to process the fish to make them edible.  (Umm?  I think?  It's been so long since I even bothered, I might actually be wrong about that!)



[1] One thing I used to do if I found an aquifer was to channel into it from above in a secure underground area and make that my fishing area.  No danger of hostiles, or even killer-fish.  (See Carp on the Wiki, I'm sure there's a whole page on that old threat. )

[Garath]

at least carp are less deadly.

most fish need to be processed. exceptions are some shellfish (mussels I'm sure of)

[greycat]

Everyone's got their own approach to the game, so what works for other players may not necessarily work for you.

I don't use hunting or fishing any more.  It's too unpredictable for my taste.  I breed animals (underground pastures, after piercing a cavern and sealing it up), and I farm plants (both above-ground and underground).  The plants become booze and clothing and quarry bush leaves and flour (and the occasional barrel of dwarven syrup).  The animals provide milk (which I make into cheese) and wool (more clothing), and then a few years later, meat and leather and bone bolts and trade goods.

[Garath]

Everyone's got their own approach to the game, so what works for other players may not necessarily work for you.

I don't use hunting or fishing any more.  It's too unpredictable for my taste.  I breed animals (underground pastures, after piercing a cavern and sealing it up), and I farm plants (both above-ground and underground).  The plants become booze and clothing and quarry bush leaves and flour (and the occasional barrel of dwarven syrup). The animals provide milk (which I make into cheese) and wool (more clothing), and then a few years later, meat and leather and bone bolts and trade goods.

you horrible Urist McCheesemaker

[greycat]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/File:DF_Cheese.jpg

[mustafa2812]

ok well I decided to make a farm but it's harder than it looks.  I mined out a cavern area and one level above that, I channeled out an open space.  I designated it as a pond and have plenty of buckets in my stockpile but no dwarves are filling it?  I'm running out of food and have 35 dwarves now.  I hear you can gather plants for food but I designate a huge area of plants to be gathered but it still says that I have Plants: None

[Garath]

does anyone has plant gathering enabled?

don't you have a soil layer below the top? the way you make the farm now doesn't work by the way. Once opened to light, it will always be "above ground". In fact it will work, but only for above ground plants, such as you are now harvesting, probably, and never in a mountain area. Read the wiki on farming and for next time: the first thing to do is start up your farming and after that your brewing. Bedrooms can wait. Digging can wait. Storing stuff from the wagon can wait even, just get that farm going.

[mustafa2812]

I made the farm two layers down and made the channel a layer above that.  It is not exposed to sunlight.  I read the wiki and I did what it said but none of my dwarves are filling the "pond" with water!  I don't really know where to go from here.

[Garath]

there's no shame in abandoning and trying again untill you get the hang of things, though I would advice easier embarks with at least some soil so you can get farms set up in the beginning and then experiment with making farms on rocks. Most people here have had forts die because they needed to practice stuff more, usually more than one (three in my case untill I got past 1 1/2 year, 5 untill I got past the first goblin ambushes). If you do not have at least one soil layer directly below the surface, you probably embarked on a mountain. Very dwarfy, but not the best place to learn stuff.

Now, what you can do. Find a murky pool of a decent size and dig your farms below ground near it, dig a tunnel towards it, but do not breach it. First you need to make sure the water can drain from the farm again where it will evaporate. dig into the mutky pool, wait for the intended farm area to get muddy, let the water drain, wall up the tunnel you made to the murky pool and get ready to farm

[Starver]

Something that I have no idea if is mentioned in the Wiki is that aboveground farms suffers, sometimes, from "stray rock" syndrome.  Your fields are dotted with places undesignatable as a planting area.  But what I do is channel down into the soil (as with previous post, assuming here that you have a soil layers, rather than just a surface) and you get uninterrupted soil.

Underground farming can best be done alongside, in hollowed-out areas of sub-surface soil not uncovered by channelling the ceiling (ground-level) away.  And there are ways and means to make sure that even flying pests (and enemies) cannot interrupt business, but I'm sure they're mentioned.


On the whole, it's honestly easier to make a farm in(/on) soil than to get irrigation onto bare rock.  There's times when it's easy to flood an area (e.g. easy access to an aquifer, river or pond/lake of underground or underground type) but the problem might well be, in that case, that of getting a floodgate or other barrier set up so that you don't over-flood it, and can safely get rid of the excess water straight afterwards.  [Edit: And, yup, Garath's solution works, but beware of the pool replenishing faster than you can drain the water you got from it. ]

(Just one among many of the aspects of fortress management that will doubtless become second-nature to you, in the future, but right now I'd be tempted to suggest you get the 'easy' bits done first and then play around, once you've got a working fortress running.  OTOH, there's nothing like an emergency for forcing analytical thinking. )

AnotherEdit: Do you have buckets?  To spare?

[Garath]

I've never had murky pools fill so fast that they prevented the construction of a wall further on, since dwarfs will happily do that in a small pool of water (1/7 or 2/7 iirc, but I got troubles at 3/7)