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[Greiger]

Really?  I liked the tornado.  I liked having a reason to build even my internal walls out of sturdier stuff than wood.  And even then a nice little act of God Cassandra now and then can keep things spiced up.  Hope there's an option to turn it back on or add it back to the story pool.

I had an interesting decision to make a bit ago where a tornado spawned on my prison and it was a rush to rescue and treat all the prisoners in a bunch of sleeping spots hastily placed in the rec room.  That was Fun!  Capital F Fun!  The good kind of Fun I play DF for.

[Sirus]

So I just picked this up, and I'm liking it so far. I'll probably mod it at some point.

For now though, any secret tips for beginners? I went through the tutorial, and I picked up some of the basics, but I can see there's still a lot to learn.

[martinuzz]

So I just picked this up, and I'm liking it so far. I'll probably mod it at some point.

For now though, any secret tips for beginners? I went through the tutorial, and I picked up some of the basics, but I can see there's still a lot to learn.

Difficulty increases with population size. Be picky about whom you recruit, go for quality over quantity.

[gimlet]

OK 4 random tips:
- if you're in a climate with any kind of warm summer, get at least a small freezer up and running pretty quickly mainly to store meat, meals and corpses waiting to be butchered.  Harvested rice and stuff will last a little while without refrigeration, but you'll want a bigger freezer up after a while so you don't have to worry.  Leave some room for this when you're planning.  Double wall it if you're in a hot climate, with airlocks to keep temp drops from pawns going through doors.  (airlock is door-space or 2-door)

- make your kitchen efficient.  A small room with just a stove, chair and light - 3x3 is good.  Ideally next to the freezer so you'll get some cooling.  Put 2 2 tile stockpiles to either side of the working tile (the circle).  Set the left one to raw meat & milk, the right one to raw veg.  Make them higher than normal priority.  Set the bill to "drop after making" instead of "haul to stockpile" and the material radius to very low.  Now your cook can work really fast by using materials from those nearby stockpiles instead of constantly making long trips to get one meals worth of materials.  Build a stool to the left and right of the working tile and he'll even go a bit faster because he won't need to bend to pick up.  Keep it clean to cut down on food poisoning.

- Unless you need to do it to clear land, it's tricky to pick trees to chop and berry bushes to harvest because to be most efficient you want to select only fully mature/ready to harvest ones.  Highlight a decent sized growing zone around your base (I pretty much do everything except already-zoned stockpiles and farms), set it to "no sow", and your pawns will auto-select fully mature trees and berry bushes to harvest.   Don't make it too huge at first or they'll spend all their time doing it, just keep expanding it if/when you need more. 

- If you have animals, restrict them to fairly near home so they don't wander to the edges of the map and get killed by a hungry predator.  When you do see a predator sort of near the base, especially if it's hungry, draft your shooters and kill it.  If you wait, eventually one of them will get the jump on one of your animals or pawns and maul them before you can respond.  Almost invariably it's your best doctor that gets taken down :p

[Blue_Dwarf]

So I just picked this up, and I'm liking it so far. I'll probably mod it at some point.

For now though, any secret tips for beginners? I went through the tutorial, and I picked up some of the basics, but I can see there's still a lot to learn.

The most important beginner tip is to keep your cooking stove and butchering table in different rooms. Butchering table is very dirty, and poisons meals more often.

[Farce]

Dang, really?  I keep my stove and butchery in my freezer and I only get food poisoning very rarely.  Apparently it takes longer to cook in the freezer, but I sorta hope the efficiency of not having to open and close a door twice makes up for it.  I mean, it probably doesn't, but still.

[Blood_Librarian]

You could build the 3x3 Kitchen as the "airlock" into the freezer, Especially if your freezer gets big enough that it becomes a complex rather then a room to store all your potatos and corn.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Dang, really?  I keep my stove and butchery in my freezer and I only get food poisoning very rarely.  Apparently it takes longer to cook in the freezer, but I sorta hope the efficiency of not having to open and close a door twice makes up for it.  I mean, it probably doesn't, but still.

Cooking skill is generally more important than clean rooms, so if your cook is good enough it matters less. Still, your freezer is "dirty" because of the butcher table, raw food on the ground, possible dirt left by colonists or possible lack of floor.

At cooking skill 8 or so, you could never get food poisoning with a relatively clean kitchen.

[Yoink]

Nutrient paste master race.

[hector13]

Oh hey that makes sense, I never built a floor for my freezer one time and every bugger was getting food poisoning.

I also thought it was because the room was incredibly dirty, given nobody was cleaning.

[scriver]

I still hate the cleaning. It is the bane of my colonies.

The few gunskilled characters without cleaning disabled is a godsend. Definite always keeps.

[Broseph Stalin]

Oh hey that makes sense, I never built a floor for my freezer one time and every bugger was getting food poisoning.

I also thought it was because the room was incredibly dirty, given nobody was cleaning.

Both. Dirt floors hurt room cleanliness but so does a mess. Honestly my kitchen is usually more sterile than the hospital. It's less important but I use it more and a little food poisoning can fuck a lot up.

[n9103]

One mod I never have trouble accepting is the door/floormats mod that forces people to wipe/clean their feet when they run over it.

[hector13]

One mod I never have trouble accepting is the door/floormats mod that forces people to wipe/clean their feet when they run over it.

That sounds awesome.

I will promptly forget that for the next time I play the game.

[Greiger]

That is odd, I always made sure my hospital was the cleanest 7x7 meters tiles on the planet but I never had trouble with the kitchen, in fact my butchers table is almost always in the same room, usually even within 2 tiles, and the only times I get food poisoning is when either some new recruit I forgot to set the labors of wanders into the kitchen, or when the cook is indisposed and people start gnawing on raw squirrel/rabbit/alphabeaver/dinosaur.

I definitely see now that room cleanliness is indeed a factor, but 10+ cooking skill must more than make up for it, because my kitchens can look like a horror show when I decide I have too many mortar shells and decide there are too many deer on the map, and no-one gets so much as a tummyache.