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[catote]

Here's my list of most annoying questions, now 4 days into DF.
Bear over with me, if this has been answered before. I didn't find it, and I have been reading WIKI and QA for like hours now.
Feel free to help out with - preferably - simple answers!

1. On (U)nit list screen, some dwarves blink. Why is that?
2. Can I equip armor for hunters. Leather armor is available. I know about (Unit) Screen, (c) Zoom-cre, with a list equipment. But cannot find a way to change it. I know there are options in military screen, but this is for hunting.
3. Can I change equipment for picks/crossbows for diggers/hunters, while I buy/make better equipment.
4. Is there a way to center screen on cursor. It's annoying to (k) Look into a problem, and needing to (q) Set things differently, and having to move the cursor once more.
5. Is it true that mobs can/will breake down wall, but not attack me through the initial terrain. So I should avoid digging more than one entrance?
6. Is it normal that my Broker will not come to Trade. I need to remove his digger ability (since I have endless digging jobs scheduled)?
7. Are jobs done FIFO. I have those endless digs planned. But suddenly just need 1 Channel for a Well. Any workaround?
8. Does better quality pickaxes in fact improve digging speed?
9. Can I control my dwarves to put items in barrels/bins instead of one per ground. I know about max barrels/bins. But have a mix of single-items and barrels in my stockpile.
10. When a stockpile has been set to (t) Take from ... How can I see this has in fact been done (like tomorrow when Id like to check it all out again...)?
11. I make a 1x3 central stairway. I see Videos with 3x3.
12. When I d,h [Channel] it removes just the top layer of earth and creates an upslope on the level below. How do I get rid of those, when I want to dig like a Moat to trap enemies?
13. There are stockpiles for Refuse and Corpses. But under Refuse "copses" are also an option. Same type of corpses, or different ones? My Refuse pile is now full of corpses.
14. Quern, Mill seeds/nuts to paste. What's input for this out of my cavern crops, Rock Nuts? And do I get my seed back when making paste, was this perhaps taken care of in the Farmers Workstop, when I processed the Quarry Bush?
15. When my jeweller (e)ncrust with Gems. How do I *know* what items have been encrusted, so I can track them down and put them to good use. Can I even select placed items to be improved, like a status in the mayers office? Same applies for Craftman's Workstop with Decorate.
16. I know a Workstop become "cluttered" if there's no stockpile for the output. Is there any way to see, if/when this happens. In fact simply to see WHAT items a workstop holds. Particularly true for sand/clay in GlassFurnace/Kiln.
17. Is there a way to prioritize a job, like pulling the lever to the drawbridge, or those small jobs that most be done before further construction can be carried out, like stairs?
18. My new Tomb assigned to my mayer with 8 Coffins. Will others dwarves use them too, or did I just make a mistake?

Any answers will be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

[dwarf_granada]

1- The blinking dwarf are legendary, have the highest skill.


18 - As far i know, when you assing a tomb to someone, the only coffin that will be useable is the one you designed as tomb.

[Garath]

Here's my list of most annoying questions, now 4 days into DF.
Bear over with me, if this has been answered before. I didn't find it, and I have been reading WIKI and QA for like hours now.
Feel free to help out with - preferably - simple answers!

1. On (U)nit list screen, some dwarves blink. Why is that?
2. Can I equip armor for hunters. Leather armor is available. I know about (Unit) Screen, (c) Zoom-cre, with a list equipment. But cannot find a way to change it. I know there are options in military screen, but this is for hunting.
3. Can I change equipment for picks/crossbows for diggers/hunters, while I buy/make better equipment.
4. Is there a way to center screen on cursor. It's annoying to (k) Look into a problem, and needing to (q) Set things differently, and having to move the cursor once more.
5. Is it true that mobs can/will breake down wall, but not attack me through the initial terrain. So I should avoid digging more than one entrance?
6. Is it normal that my Broker will not come to Trade. I need to remove his digger ability (since I have endless digging jobs scheduled)?
7. Are jobs done FIFO. I have those endless digs planned. But suddenly just need 1 Channel for a Well. Any workaround?
8. Does better quality pickaxes in fact improve digging speed?
9. Can I control my dwarves to put items in barrels/bins instead of one per ground. I know about max barrels/bins. But have a mix of single-items and barrels in my stockpile.
10. When a stockpile has been set to (t) Take from ... How can I see this has in fact been done (like tomorrow when Id like to check it all out again...)?
11. I make a 1x3 central stairway. I see Videos with 3x3.
12. When I d,h [Channel] it removes just the top layer of earth and creates an upslope on the level below. How do I get rid of those, when I want to dig like a Moat to trap enemies?
13. There are stockpiles for Refuse and Corpses. But under Refuse "copses" are also an option. Same type of corpses, or different ones? My Refuse pile is now full of corpses.
14. Quern, Mill seeds/nuts to paste. What's input for this out of my cavern crops, Rock Nuts? And do I get my seed back when making paste, was this perhaps taken care of in the Farmers Workstop, when I processed the Quarry Bush?
15. When my jeweller (e)ncrust with Gems. How do I *know* what items have been encrusted, so I can track them down and put them to good use. Can I even select placed items to be improved, like a status in the mayers office? Same applies for Craftman's Workstop with Decorate.
16. I know a Workstop become "cluttered" if there's no stockpile for the output. Is there any way to see, if/when this happens. In fact simply to see WHAT items a workstop holds. Particularly true for sand/clay in GlassFurnace/Kiln.
17. Is there a way to prioritize a job, like pulling the lever to the drawbridge, or those small jobs that most be done before further construction can be carried out, like stairs?
18. My new Tomb assigned to my mayer with 8 Coffins. Will others dwarves use them too, or did I just make a mistake?

Any answers will be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

1: They are elite in their field
2: no

3: hunters/diggers, don't know. Material doesn't matter for digging though.
4: no
5: no, not in norml DF

6: yeah, screw brokers, allow "anyone will trade", it won't hurt if you have enough to trade
7: for building it's LIFO, digging and such follows a different routine.
8: No
9: Nope

11: It has to do with highly trafficked areas and dwarfs having to move around one another. Find whatever you are comfortable with. I'm doing fine with 2x2
12: Yes, that is what channeling does. There is a (d) - (?forgot what) option to remove up ramps and stairs. Be carefull not to remove stairs.
13:
14: quarry bushes are made to leaves and nut. You can plant the nuts or mill them to oil/paste. Milling them destroys the seeds. Most people prefer animal fat for tallow for soap

15: placed items won't be improved. Improved items will gain an additional quality modifier in the name. It's hard to influence what will be improved, less now with the new workshop mechanics

16: (t)
17: disable jobs on dwarfs
18: unless you allowed the coffins to actually accept anything (default no), no problem. Why you did this is Urists guess

final edit:
a lot of this can be found on the wiki.

[Headhanger]

Wow. That's a lot of questions. I'll answer what I can and leave the rest to those better-equipped to come up with answers.

Also, the wiki can answer a few of these questions. Make it your first port of call .

1 ) They're LEGENDARY at one of their skills.
2 ) No. Unless you draft them into the military, make them wear their uniform (i.e. armour) when they are not on duty, and never ask them to train or patrol.
3 ) Nope. Unless you use the above military trick. Even then, I don't think you can assign different picks.
4 ) I don't think so.
5 ) I don't think walls can be destroyed. Doors, yes. But walls, even constructed walls, I think are okay. You can wall-in Forgotten Beasts and such.
6 ) Specialise your broker. Either that, or disable all of his labours when the caravan arrives (he will probably go eat, drink, sleep, and then go on break immediately, but that's just bad luck/timing).
7 ) I don't know about digging, but construction jobs are done in reverse order. So, the last job you order will get done first. For digging, I think the dwarves choose what to do first. And something about digging from the east.
8 ) I don't think so - so far as I know, the better quality just increases their worth and makes them better as weapons.
9 ) You might not have enough barrels, pots, and/or bins, or your dwarves just haven't gotten around to putting barrels and bins in those stockpiles.
10) I think you can by (q)uerying the stockpile, but I haven't done this in a while. Using notes is helpful here.
11) I don't know what the question is.
12) You can clear ramps (d > z) or make your channel at least three blocks wide. Bear in mind your ramp-clearing miners will need a way out of the channel unless you want to drown/starve/melt them on purpose.
13) As far as I know, refuse corpses are from butchered animals. The corpses stockpile is an open-air graveyard - not very nice. Some people use them for pets I guess.
14) The wiki knows all. You will get your seeds when you mill and/or process plants. Also see this useful and elegant chart.
15) I don't think there is any way of tracking the encrusting of gems (yet). You can put a stockpile right next to the jeweller's workshop and fill it with the items you want decorating - jewellers and craftsdwarves will typically decorate the closest items. Not always, but most of the time.
16) I think the button is (t) to view items in a room. It also lets you view the details of things like statues after they are built.
17) For lever-pulling, there are stories of people keeping a noble trapped in his/her own suite where everything is provided for him/her, but he/she can never leave. The suite is full of levers. This means that the noble never has anything to do and will never attend any parties. If he/she is a vampire then they'll never have to eat or drink either. That means they are more likely going to be free to pull levers as soon as you request it. Other than that, there is no way to prioritise these jobs.
18) I am not sure on this one. I think you can check each coffin or sarcophagus individually. If you can change it "for burial" "not for burial" or whatever, then it's free, otherwise it's part of the mayor's tomb.

Bloody hell. I bet I click Post and someone else has already posted before me.

Edit: Or two people... FFFFFUUUUUUU-

[Garath]

Wow. That's a lot of questions. I'll answer what I can and leave the rest to those better-equipped to come up with answers.

Also, the wiki can answer a few of these questions. Make it your first port of call .
Bloody hell. I bet I click Post and someone else has already posted before me.

Edit: Or two people... FFFFFUUUUUUU-

yeah, and some of your info is wrong

Wow. That's a lot of questions. I'll answer what I can and leave the rest to those better-equipped to come up with answers.

Also, the wiki can answer a few of these questions. Make it your first port of call .

1 ) They're LEGENDARY at one of their skills.
2 ) No. Unless you draft them into the military, make them wear their uniform (i.e. armour) when they are not on duty, and never ask them to train or patrol.
3 ) Nope. Unless you use the above military trick. Even then, I don't think you can assign different picks.

1: elite. skill 10, not legendary, skill 15+
2: still no. mining, hunting and woodcutting have their own uniform that cancels any military uniform while not on active duty. When on active duty they first spend a lot of time gettng their uniform I think.

[sisok]

I got a noob question: where are the best places to look for armor merchants in adventure mode? In towns all I see are shops for bone carvings, cloth, food, or 'general' goods (which tend to just be the other three things anyway)

[Garath]

I got a noob question: where are the best places to look for armor merchants in adventure mode? In towns all I see are shops for bone carvings, cloth, food, or 'general' goods (which tend to just be the other three things anyway)

not

atm, towns rarely have useful merchants. Go to keeps or such (center of town) they usually have usable stuff. In the future, for adventure questions, sometimes you get better/faster response over in the adventure forum

[Sutremaine]

1. On (U)nit list screen, some dwarves blink. Why is that?

They have 15 or more levels in a skill. Sometimes they get this through hard work, sometimes through getting lucky with a strange mood. If you've had one of these, you'll know. The game likes to pause and zoom and make a huge fuss at every step of the process.

2. Can I equip armor for hunters. Leather armor is available. I know about (Unit) Screen, (c) Zoom-cre, with a list equipment. But cannot find a way to change it. I know there are options in military screen, but this is for hunting.

No. Hunters (and miners and woodcutters) have their own fixed equipment lists, and the uniform for hunters is leather armour and a ranged weapon + quiver. If you want to take down animals with dwarves in full armour, you need to use soldiers and directly order them to kill wildlife.

3. Can I change equipment for picks/crossbows for diggers/hunters, while I buy/make better equipment.

Once you have better equipment available, you can disable the relevant jobs for each dwarf and then make sure only the desired equipment is available when you reactivate the job. All picks mine equally well and do equally well against unarmoured opponents (such as animals), so the only reason to upgrade your picks is for situations in which your miner gets caught by armoured opponents. Leather armour is kind of rubbish regardless of quality modifiers, but crossbow quality makes a difference.

5. Is it true that mobs can/will breake down wall, but not attack me through the initial terrain. So I should avoid digging more than one entrance?

No enemies can destroy walls that have been built, but they can destroy the pseudo-buildings that exist after you decide where you want the wall and what you want it to be made from but before the dwarf finishes the building job. The same goes for any other kind of construction. You can make as many entrances as you like, so long as you can defend them. There's nothing inherently special about the first one you make.

6. Is it normal that my Broker will not come to Trade. I need to remove his digger ability (since I have endless digging jobs scheduled)?

Trading is fairly low-priority for dwarves. Mining is a bad choice of secondary job for a broker for several reasons, but any other job can distract the broker. Create a burrow centred on the trade depot (see the wiki for how to create burrows), and assign the broker to it when you want trading done.

7. Are jobs done FIFO. I have those endless digs planned. But suddenly just need 1 Channel for a Well. Any workaround?

Jobs in general are loosely FILO, with mining jobs preferring to start at the top and left, starting with the lowest z-level. If you have a bunch of tiles designated and really need somebody to work on a particular tile right now, burrow them there.

8. Does better quality pickaxes in fact improve digging speed?

See 3 (no).

9. Can I control my dwarves to put items in barrels/bins instead of one per ground. I know about max barrels/bins. But have a mix of single-items and barrels in my stockpile.

No, they'll do it when they feel like it.

10. When a stockpile has been set to (t) Take from ... How can I see this has in fact been done (like tomorrow when Id like to check it all out again...)?

[q] over the stockpile. That info is at the bottom of the screen.

11. I make a 1x3 central stairway. I see Videos with 3x3.

1x3 gives dwarves three different tiles to move between when traversing levels, 3x3 gives them nine.

12. When I d,h [Channel] it removes just the top layer of earth and creates an upslope on the level below. How do I get rid of those, when I want to dig like a Moat to trap enemies?

[d], [z] to remove ramps. Don't forget to leave an escape route for when all the ramps are gone.

14. Quern, Mill seeds/nuts to paste. What's input for this out of my cavern crops, Rock Nuts? And do I get my seed back when making paste, was this perhaps taken care of in the Farmers Workstop, when I processed the Quarry Bush?

Just rock nuts. The paste is made by crushing the whole seed, so while you do get the seed back it is no longer in a plantable form.

15. When my jeweller (e)ncrust with Gems. How do I *know* what items have been encrusted, so I can track them down and put them to good use. Can I even select placed items to be improved, like a status in the mayers office? Same applies for Craftman's Workstop with Decorate.

Items cannot be encrusted twice with the same material, and once they have at least one decoration they appear as +<<-items->>+ instead of -items- (the + and - are quality modifiers, which are applied separately to the base item and the decoration). Items that are part of a building cannot be decorated. It's impossible to directly mark a particular item, but you can narrow down the gemsetter's choices through making the gem workshop take only from a stockpile set to accept the exact things you want decorating, possibly forbidding individual items within the stockpile if you can't get the stockpile settings precise enough.

16. I know a Workstop become "cluttered" if there's no stockpile for the output. Is there any way to see, if/when this happens. In fact simply to see WHAT items a workstop holds. Particularly true for sand/clay in GlassFurnace/Kiln.

Workshops can get cluttered until they start dragging down your FPS through the sheer number of items inside, so practically speaking they can hold an infinite amount of items. To check on clutter you can [t] over a workshop, and if it's cluttered then you get an indicator next to the workshop name.

17. Is there a way to prioritize a job, like pulling the lever to the drawbridge, or those small jobs that most be done before further construction can be carried out, like stairs?

Only by minimising distractions.

[catote]

Thank you Grenada, Garath, Headhanger and Sutremaine.
It was very helpful. I do read wiki alot. But wiki is often too technical for me, here in the beginning.
And it often does not say what's NOT possible.

[sisok]

I got a noob question: where are the best places to look for armor merchants in adventure mode? In towns all I see are shops for bone carvings, cloth, food, or 'general' goods (which tend to just be the other three things anyway)

not

atm, towns rarely have useful merchants. Go to keeps or such (center of town) they usually have usable stuff. In the future, for adventure questions, sometimes you get better/faster response over in the adventure forum

thanks, yeah I was looking for somewhere to ask there but I saw the word 'Newbie' and decided to set up my chair _/

[Snaake]

15. When my jeweller (e)ncrust with Gems. How do I *know* what items have been encrusted, so I can track them down and put them to good use. Can I even select placed items to be improved, like a status in the mayers office? Same applies for Craftman's Workstop with Decorate.

Items cannot be encrusted twice with the same material, and once they have at least one decoration they appear as +<<-items->>+ instead of -items- (the + and - are quality modifiers, which are applied separately to the base item and the decoration). Items that are part of a building cannot be decorated. It's impossible to directly mark a particular item, but you can narrow down the gemsetter's choices through making the gem workshop take only from a stockpile set to accept the exact things you want decorating, possibly forbidding individual items within the stockpile if you can't get the stockpile settings precise enough.

To be as specific as you want with what to encrust, you could set a stockpile (1x1 is enough) that gives to the encrusting workshop (remember to have a cut gem pile also do this, or also enable cut gems here), but has take only from links on (and no take links). Then remove all other garbage dumps from your fort, create a garbage dump on that stockpile, and dump the furniture you want encrusted there (optionally also the gems you want used, if you enabled cut gems for the stockpile). Unforbid the dumped stuff, and you've now selected the next encrusting jobs. Probably easiest just to use the dumping to specify the furniture, though. Remember to also decorate with Dragon bone and stud with some expensive metal, for maximum pimpage.