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[Worblehat]

Did you accidentally disable "Allow Plant/Animal" under Additional Options?

Double-checked, Additional Options has Allow Plant/Animal active, Allow Non-Plant/Animal was inactive, but I activated that one too just in case there's something weird that would require it.

There needs to be free space in the stockpile to add a new bin. Try dumping an empty bin onto the stockpile, then unforbidding it.

To be clear, initially the stockpile was 72 empty spaces, that were slowly filled while the nearby carpenter's workshop was cranking out 40-odd bins... Ah, a bin has finally appeared, and a hauler is diligently filling it! Took the lazy buggers long enough... (I bet that's one of the milder unofficial mottoes of this game.  ) And it looks like there's a large list of bins sitting in the carpenter's workshop, so for the most part they haven't been going anywhere.

Some plants may need to be processed at a farmers workshop first.

The plants in question are alfalfa, cabbage, leeks, and spinach leaves, though. According to the wiki, all are edible cooked or raw, no mention of any processing. For brewing, the offenders are apricots, barley, foxtail millet, white millet, and whip vine. (Tangent: this turned out to be quite a garden embark - almost all the trees are fruit trees of some kind!). Again, time seems to have more or less solved the issue. I think what's happening is that the Kitchen screen of the stockpiles menu shows items as soon as the herbalist harvests them, but the workshops only know they exist once they reach a stockpile. And since when I send the herbalist out, I send her out to cover a large-ish area, it takes a while for the goods to get back.

Hmm, and the prepared food thing seems to be working itself out now, finally. Just saw a dwarf put a few in the original pantry stockpile. Looks like dwarves are *much* slower haulers than I remembered (could be this newfangled socializing/poetry/praying stuff, but more likely just my bad memory).

[PatrikLundell]

Also note that prepared meals no longer add any benefit to dorfs in themselves. The "lack of decent meals" thought text is the old one from when it did, but the current meaning is that they haven't eaten their desired anchovy liver (which I think can't exist, as anchovies ought to be vermin fish, and not yield any parts) for a long time. That is, the thought is caused by not eating favored ingredients, not the quality of the meal itself. Also, DF is badly misleading in the thoughts screen when listing preferences, as it only lists animals, while in fact the desired item is a specific body part, but that minor detail is never displayed. It doesn't help that DF generates preferences for butcher products that can never be produced, as some parts are provided only when the animal is above a given threshold (there are different thresholds for different body parts).

[Bumber]

Thankfully, every dwarf has a preference for a type of booze, which you can cook with.

[PatrikLundell]

Thankfully, every dwarf has a preference for a type of booze, which you can cook with.

Nope. You can't cook with water (I've had a dorf who had water in the list, although I didn't check whether some booze was in it as well), nor can you booze cook with mead (it took me some time to figure out why DFHacking it didn't work...), and bumblebee mead doesn't exist at all, but can still be preferred. Finally I believe I've seen dorfs (not goblins) without any drinks preferences at all. Also, I believe dorfs can have preferences to drink non alcoholic "beverages" such as e.g. linseed oil (although I think they can actually be used in cooking).
Apart from that, the only "reasonable" way to get all kinds of booze is to hack DF to both give you a set of 6 biomes to cover all booze producing plants, and then hack those biomes to actually support all the booze producing plants that MAY be present. Getting 6 biomes in the same embark naturally is very rare (but can happen), and having that happen at the same time the RNGs provide every booze producing plant in at least one of those biomes is extremely unlikely (and bananas are bugged so they'll never appear, although they can sometimes be provided by elven caravans).
On top of that, booze cooking is rather difficult to set up using stockpile links, and it doesn't happen very often if you leave it to the dorfs to sort it out (it can be done reasonably reliably with a DFHack script).

[Worblehat]

Good to know; I guess most my dwarves will have "lack of decent meal" bad thoughts. There seem to be a lot of fish preferences, and this is a mountain/forest/swamp embark with no flowing water and only a few murky pools above ground (and I have no interest in having them go fishing, regardless).

The latest in "Argh, you stupid dwarves, what is wrong with you?!? <headdesk>": my first goblin siege. Annoyance #1, militia commander decides that being ordered to stand by the front doors during a siege means "nap time!". Most of the fort agrees, and either naps or drinks/socializes/story-time, even though all the workshops are inside the civilian burrow and there are urgent useful things to do. Get to work on that oil for soap, or, you know, make some iron bolts so the ex-hunter dwarves with a bit of marksdwarf skill can back up the militia... Nope, too busy drinking and socializing. 

The bigger problem is that the 3 tile tether radius around the "move to position" command extends through walls. Now 3/4 of the militia (the commander finally woke up from his nap while the first pair of goblins were slowly shooting a cow and yak to death outside) are stationing themselves inside the stockpile on the other side of a wall from the front door they're supposed to be protecting. I tried using the military menu, defining a front door burrow and telling them to defend it, but they're not doing that. Sort of makes a bit of stupid-dwarf-logic in the sense that that original stockpile still has some booze in it that never got moved to the pantry stockpile next to the dining room.

Argh, I sure hope those traps work, because these idiot militiamen aren't good for much... In the meantime I can raise the drawbridge if there's a way to sort this out. I'm assuming the goblins will eventually try to enter the fort; maybe they'll just hang around outside mutilating my former cattle instead? I'm not keen on the idea of having four noob axedwarfs charge 2-4 goblin archers outdoors; I'd much rather see what traps do to them and have the axedwarfs jump any survivors around a corner.

Edit: OK, apparently even noob dwarves make short work of goblins; 2 gobbos dead, one dwarf has a twisted ankle. Medical dwarf seemed to do his job, turned it yellow on the axedwarf's wound screen, gave him a crutch, and he's back to his training. Had to restart from the start-of-siege backup save because my cook jumped on the rock nut paste before I could forbid it in the stocks menu or set up the make oil job. There shall be no more cooking until I have my soap!

[PatrikLundell]

I typically make my soap from tallow and wood ash based lye.

[Worblehat]

Finally had a bit more time to play; more questions naturally arose.

1. The wiki Corpse page says "Letting corpses naturally rot is the only way to get usable bones from creatures that dwarves refuse to butcher (such as goblins, elves, and other sentient creatures)" How does this work? I have two mangled partial goblin skeletons, and would like to turn them into a small stockpile of bones in case of future strange moods.

2. Still a bit confused by dwarves not sleeping in the dorm. This time one of the long-term resident "monster slayers" (who I'm not letting anywhere near the cavern) took a dirt nap of the non-fatal kind, sleeping on the ground next to one of the beds. Are dorms like archery ranges in the sense that one must designate the room from every piece of furniture, not just one?

3. Is there a way to expand an existing activity zone, such as a temple? Or is delete and re-designate the way to go there?

4. I meant to ask this earlier - for the numerical measure of stress reported by Dwarf Therapist, what sign is bad? My fort has a range from -6800 to +737, and both extremes have plenty of positive and negative thoughts. One would think that positive stress is the bad direction, but there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff in this game. They're all "Happiness: Fine" so it hasn't been an issue yet.

5. Do migrant waves prioritize family members of dwarves already in the fort? I see a few "separated from a loved one" bad thoughts, so I'm considering bumping up the population cap slightly. I assume "population" is defined as adults + children + long-term residents? Or do long-term residents not count until/unless they become actual citizens?

6. Can dwarves haul wood out of water? I finally found some willow logs I ordered cut, and they're in the murky pond (7/7 slope) the willow grew next to.

[Shonai_Dweller]

2. Mercs and other visitors don't use dorms for some reason (bug probably) even mercs in barracks with assigned beds ignore them and sleep on the floor. Give them a room attached to the tavern.

3. You can keep adding to taverns and temples creating multiple z-level sprawling pleasure palaces. Just assign each new zone to the Location.

5. Migrant waves prioritize travelling in with family members. But being kidnapped and being assigned a noble position override that, causing excessive stress sometimes. Needs work.

[PatrikLundell]

1. Bones are retrieved only from "naturally butchered" arms and legs, with whole (including mangled, etc.) corpses not yielding anything. Thus, to gain such parts at larger scales you need something to remove those body parts from their (previous) owners, such as with weapon traps or splatterers (drop the victims from a sufficiently high elevation to cause them to splatter when hitting the ground [preferably something heavy, such as lead or, the ultimate, Slade]). Also note that "naturally butchered" bone from former sapients that were undead when the butchering happened does not count as bone from sapients from a crafting perspective: dorfs will happily make dwarf bone greaves from such bones.

4. If I remember correctly, negative numbers are the bad ones. The extreme end is -100000, and they'll get into depression/tantruming/... well before that, although mooding makes dorfs immune to insanity itself, but certainly not the depression, etc. When your dorfs get yellow exclamation marks over them they're starting to get stressed.

5. While migrants often come in (partial) family units, I don't believe I've ever seen any relatives of anyone arrive in subsequent migrant waves, but I mostly play so I get void dorfs as migrants... I believe the pop cap includes the whole population of the fortress, i.e. everyone except visitors (diplomats, merchants, etc. are visitors for this purpose), so it counts residents and adult and child citizens.
Given that dorfs get stressed from being separated from loved ones when they don't have any family at all to be separated from (and effectively being incapable of creating one though courtship), I think not migrating with the whole family is a lesser issue, especially if the non migrating ones have a good reason for not being able/willing to migrate.

6. Not without draining the water. You can drain a murky pool with a bucket brigade or with screw pumps. A screw pump can also remove sufficient water to allow dorfs access to a tile even when there is 7/7 water in neighboring tiles, but logs can float around and create a danger (and flowing water is a danger in itself, as it can sweep dorfs away). To pick something up dorfs have to stand int the tile, so the water level has to be decreased to 3/7 for them to enter it.

[Starver]

like archery ranges in the sense that one must designate the room from every piece of furniture, not just one?

Slight misunderstanding here.

With archery ranges you designate a room from a target, and it does not matter what other furniture is there, because it doesn't add to the range. If you have multiple targets you can set up multiple rooms and they may expand over the same space.

I tend to set up spurs of floor (usually by digging out channels as fingers of a comb opposite any floor-fingers, but can also construct floors out over space if aboveground) so that targets sit at the end, backed by wall but with a drop between, to catch wayward bolts for re-use (on layer below I often set up an ammo stockpile, just because that's where they end up anyway) and the 'room definition' does not cross over the 'barrier' that is the missing floor. Which works well for my aesthetic, though isn't required at all.


As for chopping down waterside trees, it's sometimes useful to floor over (or bridge) the waterhole before chopping the tree down, to take the falling log (not sure if there's any circumstances where cave-in mechanics can punch through a floor like that, but I've never had that problem myself) and save the trouble of waiting for the dry season (if any) or otherwise draining/spreading the pondwater to get hold of the pool-bottom logs, which you obviously now need to consider.

[Ulfarr]

A wooden log used in a constitution (wall, floor etc) will destroy the floor below it in case of a cave in. I’m not sure whether that’s also the case from cutting trees. Using a bridge is safer i think.

[PatrikLundell]

Logs generated by cutting down trees do not smash through floors, but rather pile up on top of them (but they can cause injury do creatures in the tile they end up in), so those logs do not act as building material released by a cave-in.

There was a time during 0.40.X where hostile trees tossed logs about (probably ripped from existing floors when the trees grew), though, and those logs DID smash through floors...

[Starver]

In the old days, also, deconstructed floors over a drop (or water-dip) would be let dropped down (non-destructively, IIRC, it certainly didn't seem to be a viable enemy-head-squasher, or inadvertent friendly victim, I'm sure), but that was changed to putting them onto the deconstructed-from floor, letting them be regrabbed (stockpiled, assigned to build elsewhere, etc) so long as you don't preciptively deconstruct that floor (itself saved, but dropping it's loose load).

So work with that, next time you floor-save your logs, and wait for the felled logs to be moved on as well as practicing disconnection-cave-in-avoidance practices in your deconstruction.


(For now, surprised nobody has suggested DFHacking it via QuickDump/whatever-it-is to pretend you managed to arrange for the logs to be piled up on the bank, just this once, even if you do it 'properly' in all future endeavours.)

[Loci]

1. The wiki Corpse page says "Letting corpses naturally rot is the only way to get usable bones from creatures that dwarves refuse to butcher (such as goblins, elves, and other sentient creatures)" How does this work?

In general, it doesn't. Obtaining a bone stack from rotting occurs maybe 1% of the time unless you specifically design a system to shred invaders. You would, generally, be better served by butchering non-sentients; not only are animal bones easier to acquire, but they are also potentially much more valuable. 

2. Still a bit confused by dwarves not sleeping in the dorm. This time one of the long-term resident "monster slayers" (who I'm not letting anywhere near the cavern) took a dirt nap of the non-fatal kind, sleeping on the ground next to one of the beds.

That's a known bug.

3. Is there a way to expand an existing activity zone, such as a temple? Or is delete and re-designate the way to go there?

You cannot enlarge an existing zone, but you can draw a new, larger zone over the old one, assign the new zone to your location, then delete the old zone.

One would think that positive stress is the bad direction, but there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff in this game.

Those "stress numbers" are internal variables that were never intended to be visible to players (and aren't without 3rd party tools); as such, labeling them "counterintuitive" isn't really a fair assessment in my opinion.

6. Can dwarves haul wood out of water?

Wood is plentiful; I'd recommend forbidding the water-logged logs and cutting down another tree.

1. Bones are retrieved only from "naturally butchered" arms and legs, with whole (including mangled, etc.) corpses not yielding anything.

Any corpse which has no non-rottable components other than bones will rot into a bone stack. For a goblin corpse, this requires severing the hands, feet, and head.

A wooden log used in a constitution (wall, floor etc) will destroy the floor below it in case of a cave in. I’m not sure whether that’s also the case from cutting trees. Using a bridge is safer i think.

Cutting down trees does not (usually) cause cave-ins, and even if it did, a bridge would be entirely destroyed as well.

Logs generated by cutting down trees do not smash through floors, but rather pile up on top of them (but they can cause injury do creatures in the tile they end up in), so those logs do not act as building material released by a cave-in.

Logs from woodcutting fall harmlessly to floors and creatures alike. Objects stuck in a tree, including logs from previously-cut trees, fall with standard Dwarf Fortress lethality when their supporting tree is cut.

In the old days, also, deconstructed floors over a drop (or water-dip) would be let dropped down (non-destructively, IIRC, it certainly didn't seem to be a viable enemy-head-squasher, or inadvertent friendly victim, I'm sure), but that was changed to putting them onto the deconstructed-from floor, letting them be regrabbed (stockpiled, assigned to build elsewhere, etc) so long as you don't preciptively deconstruct that floor (itself saved, but dropping it's loose load).

Currently, deconstruction moves *all items* from the deconstructed tile into the deconstructing dwarf's tile. The only time the items would fall is if the deconstructing dwarf is standing on the construction being deconstructed.

[Starver]

It's been so long since I have let that (possibly) happen. I can't even be sure if that was a state of possibility between the drop-the-deconstructed times and this bring-everything-to-safety behaviour you describe..

Still, I generally feel better to make sure by micromanaging this sort of thing out of contention.


(Bridges are mentioned. Often a good solution, but you have to balance the varyingly reduced materials needed (exact area covered dictating the ratio against floor-equivalent) and the need to employ the pre-build Architect in preparation time. And you also need to remember you can't arbitrarily build things around it that need other support, nor build anything you might later think useful atop it. Probably not an issue with a log-saver surface, but worth being aware of.)