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[Raptomex]

I remembered why I wanted cloth now. Clothes and bandages. I understand they will want a change of clothes eventually? They become dirty little dwarves I guess and the clothes get tattered. Also, I want to have enough supplies ready for a working hospital.

[Clover Magic]

Yes, dwarves will need new clothes eventually, and starting a clothing industry is important if you don't want to rely on caravans and dead goblins to clothe your dwarves.  Naked dwarves are unhappy, tantrum-throwing dwarves.

For future use - when making a hospital, I recommend setting all the supplies in the Hospital Zone menu (except crutches, splints, and plaster) to 0 and creating stockpiles in the hospital zone to hold cloth, thread, soap, and buckets instead.  If you leave the supplies at default and build containers to hold your medical supplies, dwarves get very enthusiastic about storing them and your hospital basically becomes a black hole - every dwarf will queue a "Stock Hospital" without checking for other dwarves with the job, so basically everyone thinks "there is space in the hospital, I MUST FILL IT UP" and they run as lemmings to the hospital, candy threads in hand.  Crutches, splints, and gypsum plaster can be stored this way, since they have no use outside of medicine, but everything else is a pain if it gets stored in the hospital.  So small stockpiles are best in hospitals instead of building containers (chests/coffers/bags).

[chevil]

This is just a question that I have but can thralls die?  A haunting smoke cloud thralled one of m cats that was roaming about and I have had my military attacking him non-stop for quite some time now. They can't seem to kill it though, even though they are using weapons.

They can, but they are extremely tough and only die to...beheading and bisection, I believe?  Blunt and piercing weapons are essentially useless on them.  Get some good-quality swords and axes to fight thralls.  Either way you are very lucky that it was only a cat, as a decent-sized thrall is usually a fort-ender if your military is not sufficiently skilled.  Also be careful, as dwarves are known to try fighting a small thrall like a cat until they starve to death.  You could also try to lure it into an atom-smasher - thralldom doesn't come with immunity to being squished by a bridge.

Thanks. I had some axedwarfs and sworddwarfs fighting it, but it wasn't dying. They cut off all its paws and its tail, nose and eyes, but it didn't die. Then they all died of thirst because they wouldn't leave when I told them to. Anyway to prevent that?

The only way to get a military dwarf to run is to set their squad to inactive.

[thefish1992]

to the dwarfs of Grizzlyflag

i know you want to grab all the stuff from the caravans that died out their, and to clean up the corpse and every other thing that i cant find to forbid, but must i remind you how they died? the devilish soot that blows across the surface causes all the blood of whatever it touchs to explode from their body. so can we please stay below ground, for your own health.

sincerely thefish1992

P.S. seriously guys their is nothing up there of value, and i already got all the booze down, stop going out their.

[Erils]

This is just a question that I have but can thralls die?  A haunting smoke cloud thralled one of m cats that was roaming about and I have had my military attacking him non-stop for quite some time now. They can't seem to kill it though, even though they are using weapons.

They can, but they are extremely tough and only die to...beheading and bisection, I believe?  Blunt and piercing weapons are essentially useless on them.  Get some good-quality swords and axes to fight thralls.  Either way you are very lucky that it was only a cat, as a decent-sized thrall is usually a fort-ender if your military is not sufficiently skilled.  Also be careful, as dwarves are known to try fighting a small thrall like a cat until they starve to death.  You could also try to lure it into an atom-smasher - thralldom doesn't come with immunity to being squished by a bridge.

Thanks. I had some axedwarfs and sworddwarfs fighting it, but it wasn't dying. They cut off all its paws and its tail, nose and eyes, but it didn't die. Then they all died of thirst because they wouldn't leave when I told them to. Anyway to prevent that?

The only way to get a military dwarf to run is to set their squad to inactive.

Thanks. Most of them already died so I reclaimed the fort. I found it again when it ambushed one of my dwarves. A legless tailless ear-less deaf blind cat ambushed my dwarves. A dwarf thrall also ambushed a dwarf earlier but my new military quickly killed it. How come they can kill the dwarf thrall but not the completely disfigured and maimed cat thrall?

[Anathema]

So if I want to bring a military dwarf or a couple of some sort should I also bring along some weapons and armor?

It's prohibitively expensive to bring actual weapons and armor of any material except copper - which is sub-par for military purposes - but you can easily afford some metal bars and immediately make decent equipment. If I'm embarking somewhere dangerous and want to maximize my early military strength, I usually bring:

(1) Two or three dwarves with military skills - usually 5 weapon skill + 5 dodging, because I find that fighter and shield user skills catch up quickly, and armor user won't be very important until later when you have full sets of metal armor.
(2) 5 Armorsmithing and 5 weaponsmithing on civilians (two different dwarves - you want to be able to make weapons and armor simultaneously later on when your metal industry gets going).
(3) Twenty or so metal bars, plus a bunch of wood for charcoal. I find copper+tin (forge into bronze) to be the most cost effective, although iron+flux for steel could be viable if you're not in a rush. You could even bring raw ore and start from scratch, although I feel like this delays my start too long, especially if the embark is potentially dangerous. If you went the copper+tin route, immediately make bronze weapons and copper tools (you can save points by not bringing picks and woodcutting axes, forge them instead*), then spend any remaining metal on bronze armor, throw in wooden or copper shields (material isn't too important for them) and you have a decent military.

Of course, all this is optional if your embark isn't immediately deadly, and you just want a head start on your military. For a relatively safe embark, I usually compromise by bringing two dwarves with military skills and just enough metal to forge picks + axes. The two military dwarves start out as miners, carving out the initial fort, then after the first or second migrant wave they switch to sparring and defending with weapons + wooden shields only. And even that is unnecessary if you want to seal up underground and/or use lots of traps, building up an early military is a playstyle preference, I just find it more fun.

*If the embark is very deadly, say hordes of undead, I consider bringing one copper pick to immediately create a moat around the wagon, then forge the rest.

[Larix]

(3) Twenty or so metal bars, plus a bunch of wood for charcoal. I find copper+tin (forge into bronze) to be the most cost effective, although iron+flux for steel could be viable if you're not in a rush. You could even bring raw ore and start from scratch, although I feel like this delays my start too long,

If you want to use bronze, starting with ore is quicker than using bars: you can make bronze directly from ore (one copper-bearing + one cassiterite = eight bars of bronze, while bars go one copper + one tin = two bronze). If your civ has bismuth available, you could also make bismuth bronze instead of regular bronze, which is created at a speed of four bars per job and performs just as well.

If your civ has any kind of coal (bituminous coal or lignite), it'd also be a good idea to bring some along for the start. It occupies the smelter to convert to coke, but is much more plentiful and thus faster (and cheaper in embark points) than burning wood.

[Raptomex]

So I have an archer squad now. They all have crossbows and archer armor whatever that means. I created a barracks for them as recommended as well as an archery range with 4 or 5 archery targets. I never see them in there, though. Is that normal?

[smurfingtonthethird]

Is their schedule on?

Press "s" and check if they are active or inactive. Turn them to active and they should start training.

[fortydayweekend]

So I have an archer squad now. They all have crossbows and archer armor whatever that means. I created a barracks for them as recommended as well as an archery range with 4 or 5 archery targets. I never see them in there, though. Is that normal?

Are they set to train in the barracks and each of the archery targets? (i.e. "q" over the barracks, "+" down to the squad name and hit "t")

Even if they're inactive they'll train in their spare time so you might also want to disable hauling for each of them.

[Raptomex]

They're bset to train in both the barracks and archery room but I didnt set each target for anything special. I used one target to make the room an archery range. Do I have to set each target?

[fortydayweekend]

Yeah, make each target into an archery range, make sure the firing direction is correct, and set the squad to (T)rain in each one.

Also the barracks should be sized as a barracks overlapping the archery targets and again with the squad set to (T)rain in it.

If that's not working, check their Inventories.. do they have quivers and are there bolts in them?

[Raptomex]

Awesome, thanks. Does that apply to everything? Like if I designate a room a sculpture garden from one statue should I be designating them all in the room?

[fortydayweekend]

Awesome, thanks. Does that apply to everything? Like if I designate a room a sculpture garden from one statue should I be designating them all in the room?

AFAIK it's only archery targets that matter. Sculpture gardens, dormitories, dining halls etc are fine from a single piece of furniture.

(Possibly because you have to assign squads to them... everything else is either assigned to a single dwarf/married couple or is available for every dwarf, so as long as the "room" is defined there's no need to specify who each piece of furniture is for).

[Raptomex]

Lol I have my most successful fortress yet so I'm running into all these new things. I have a goblin caged from a caged trap which is cool. I had a dwarf confiscate his items, how do I transport the goblin or do whatever to get the trap re-set up?

One of my initial problems is still an issue. Thread. My dwarves always report they need un rotten plants to process which is not making sense. Should I disable cooking certain things?