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[mihra]

When I started my first fortress, I planned to try everything DF fortress mode can offer. While I already tried most things, I didn't plan to finish the game soon. But, suddenly, my military dwarves started killing each other, in fits of chaos. Usually, 4-5 dwarves get killed, before it ends, and starts again, 20-30 minutes later. I have already lost more dwarves to chaos than to enemy sieges or "accidents". So, before my fortress gets depopulated, and my military gets degraded from a mighty "we take zero casualties while fighting titans and 70+ goblin&troll invasions" dwarven legion to "let's send some untrained civilians, who didn't even have time to equip armour and weaponry" rubble, I want to try everything that I didn't do yet. While I don't have problems with the zoo, mechanisms and traps, and training beasts, I have problem with some other things.
1. Textile&leather&paper industries. For some reason, my dwarves refuse to make any leather stuff, despite me producing the said leather. At the same time, the dwarves butcher&use leather for their own needs, and I'm able to butcher animals too- but I get no tanning options and no "use the leather" options active. Without leather bags,I'm unable to make paper from plants. Without leather, I'm unable to make parchment, so, my paper industry doesn't work too. Without leather, I can't produce quivers (well, I only managed to produce 3-4 in a fit of luck) and waterskins. The same problem goes with my textile industry. For some reason, while the dwarves do produce some stuff, I'm unable to produce it myself.
2. Missions. Do the dwarves require leather waterskins to stay hydrated? Or can I send them without having a running leather industry?
3. Caverns. If I pierce a cavern layer, will I get instantly attacked, or not? Does the attack pause the game, like the attack of the surface titans? Should I have a squad of military dwarves ready in the mines, or are the cavern beasts the same as the surface ones, not invading my fortress, and only attacking those dwarves that are neareby?
4. Steel industry. Can the flux needed for steel production be found in the cavern layers?

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. Buy leather from merchants. Enable leatherworking on dwarves. Should work fine.

2. Don't think so.

3. Nah. Well...mostly. Sudden cave crocodile might surprise and injure a couple of your dwarves. Generally a miner is the first one in and they can usually handle themselves in the first cavern layer before you wall it up. Usually...
No, game won't pause. Keep an eye on what critters are on the map (u screen).

It's handy to break through to the caverns for cave moss spores. They grow fungus and stuff on your soil layers that your animals can graze on without having to put them outside.

4. Marble can be found fairly deep, yes.

[Sarmatian123]

You playing very old save? Lots of features missing, like tanner shop and auto-tanning in work options? All Dwarves should have tanning skill, I think. Can you do plant bags at least? How old is your save? 0.20.something?

The good news is, missions are carried out, even when you send your military out without any drinks or provisions. They need just to reach the edge of your embark.

If you never pierced caverns, then nothing to worry at start. Just keep digging 1x1 channel down and make sure all walls around, specially corners, so nothing will get to your fortress from caverns. After a while some forgotten monsters will spawn in them and keep camping killing all cavern animal populations (good bye giant cave spiders!), which can suck. The thing is, when you reach lava sea on the bottom, you stop digging or you hit FUN!, which will end your game.

About the flux. Some locations do not have it. Marble is most typical flux and like all other flux stones it is always near surface. Sometimes you can request this stone from your Dwarven caravan. 4 flux stones yearly won't make big difference though. Better is, once you got magma smelters (if you can get magma smelters in your old save) to do the trading trick with 10 bars turned into 500 coin stacks. You split them to 1 coins during trade with merchant in Trade Depot. Then melt all those 5000 coins into 500 new bars of your favorit metal. This part needs you to use DF-macros. Probably this is how you are doing it right now, right?

You can get on top of your rioting military and keep your game going on. Check for red arrows blinking dwarves. Form suicide squad on one of these dwarves. Replace clothing & exact match with some foreign clothing, you do not have in your fortress. A large 10x9 bridge to station them under in a  10x9 room. Another bridge to close this room. Once you got entire naked suicide squad in. Close one bridge. kick all dwarves from the squad. Remove captain in noble menu. Atom smash them. Some stone slabs to memorize them. The nazi eugenics with this psycho mechanics on which Toady insists is the necessary part of any longer lasting game, then Toady's tests games.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You didn't need the blatant lie at the end there.
They started a thread specifically to analyze what problems there are in the stress system in long-term fortresses and are working on fixing it.

[mihra]

1. Buy leather from merchants. Enable leatherworking on dwarves. Should work fine.

I did enable leatherworking. Actually, most of my dwarves have most of the labours enabled, just in case. They often butcher animals and tan hides, but I am unable to use any of it, and unable to order them to tan hides (they do it on their own accord)

[mihra]

You playing very old save? Lots of features missing, like tanner shop and auto-tanning in work options? All Dwarves should have tanning skill, I think. Can you do plant bags at least? How old is your save? 0.20.something?

I use the newest version, and I have tanner shops. But, for some reason, I'm unable to use them myself, even if I just butchered a dozen animals. Only the dwarves can, on their own initiative. And I can't use anything they produce there.

The good news is, missions are carried out, even when you send your military out without any drinks or provisions. They need just to reach the edge of your embark.

But the question is- do they starve/dehydrate? Can they carry water/alcohol without waterskins?


About the flux. Some locations do not have it. Marble is most typical flux and like all other flux stones it is always near surface. Sometimes you can request this stone from your Dwarven caravan. 4 flux stones yearly won't make big difference though. Better is, once you got magma smelters (if you can get magma smelters in your old save) to do the trading trick with 10 bars turned into 500 coin stacks. You split them to 1 coins during trade with merchant in Trade Depot. Then melt all those 5000 coins into 500 new bars of your favorit metal. This part needs you to use DF-macros. Probably this is how you are doing it right now, right?

You can get on top of your rioting military and keep your game going on. Check for red arrows blinking dwarves. Form suicide squad on one of these dwarves. Replace clothing & exact match with some foreign clothing, you do not have in your fortress. A large 10x9 bridge to station them under in a  10x9 room. Another bridge to close this room. Once you got entire naked suicide squad in. Close one bridge. kick all dwarves from the squad. Remove captain in noble menu. Atom smash them. Some stone slabs to memorize them. The nazi eugenics with this psycho mechanics on which Toady insists is the necessary part of any longer lasting game, then Toady's tests games.

>You playing very old save? Lots of features missing, like tanner shop and auto-tanning in work options? All Dwarves should have tanning skill, I think. Can you do plant bags at least? How old is your save? 0.20.something?

I use the newest version, and I have tanner shops. But, for some reason, I'm unable to use them myself, even if I just butchered a dozen animals. Only the dwarves can, on their own initiative. And I can't use anything they produce there.

>The good news is, missions are carried out, even when you send your military out without any drinks or provisions. They need just to reach the edge of your embark.

But the question is- do they starve/dehydrate? Can they carry water/alcohol without waterskins?

>This part needs you to use DF-macros. Probably this is how you are doing it right now, right?

I'm not a big fan of automatization in any game. I personally managed every planet&ringworld&habitat in my x00 or x000 (don't remember which one) planet/ringworld&habitat Stellaris Empire, for example.

[Shonai_Dweller]

1. Buy leather from merchants. Enable leatherworking on dwarves. Should work fine.

I did enable leatherworking. Actually, most of my dwarves have most of the labours enabled, just in case. They often butcher animals and tan hides, but I am unable to use any of it, and unable to order them to tan hides (they do it on their own accord)

Very strange. Do you have any links set up on your leather pile? Or burrows. Even if they seem right, sometimes just deleting them all and setting them up again makes stuff work.

As far as I can tell, squads won't starve or dehydrate while out on a raid (and don't worry about any long-term artifact questers you send out either, they spend more time drinking in the many taverns of the world than actually looking for artifacts).

[mihra]

1. Buy leather from merchants. Enable leatherworking on dwarves. Should work fine.

I did enable leatherworking. Actually, most of my dwarves have most of the labours enabled, just in case. They often butcher animals and tan hides, but I am unable to use any of it, and unable to order them to tan hides (they do it on their own accord)

Very strange. Do you have any links set up on your leather pile? Or burrows. Even if they seem right, sometimes just deleting them all and setting them up again makes stuff work.

As far as I can tell, squads won't starve or dehydrate while out on a raid (and don't worry about any long-term artifact questers you send out either, they spend more time drinking in the many taverns of the world than actually looking for artifacts).

>Very strange. Do you have any links set up on your leather pile? Or burrows. Even if they seem right, sometimes just deleting them all and setting them up again makes stuff work.

No, I don't create any links, roads, burrows, restrictions, etc.

>As far as I can tell, squads won't starve or dehydrate while out on a raid (and don't worry about any long-term artifact questers you send out either, they spend more time drinking in the many taverns of the world than actually looking for artifacts).

Thanks. I'll try a waterskinless raid then.

[Sarmatian123]

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Leather

You can read on DF Wiki about this leather industry. It is part of meat industry in DF. Maybe it will give you some clue what is wrong with those tanned skins.

In adventure mode there was some issue, where tanned skins were created from every small cut part of an animal. I remember that.
I never had it in Fortress Mode. Maybe it is causing issue for you? Too small leather to make a complete leather cloths?
Did you try to set a small size (d "details" key on highlighted order in workshop) instead. Size like for kobolt?

[mihra]

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Leather

You can read on DF Wiki about this leather industry. It is part of meat industry in DF. Maybe it will give you some clue what is wrong with those tanned skins.

In adventure mode there was some issue, where tanned skins were created from every small cut part of an animal. I remember that.
I never had it in Fortress Mode. Maybe it is causing issue for you? Too small leather to make a complete leather cloths?
Did you try to set a small size (d "details" key on highlighted order in workshop) instead. Size like for kobolt?

I tried to create the smallest items possible, like quivers.But no luck there.

[Sarmatian123]

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Leather

You can read on DF Wiki about this leather industry. It is part of meat industry in DF. Maybe it will give you some clue what is wrong with those tanned skins.

In adventure mode there was some issue, where tanned skins were created from every small cut part of an animal. I remember that.
I never had it in Fortress Mode. Maybe it is causing issue for you? Too small leather to make a complete leather cloths?
Did you try to set a small size (d "details" key on highlighted order in workshop) instead. Size like for kobolt?

I tried to create the smallest items possible, like quivers.But no luck there.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor

Quivers are material size 3, so they are small, but not smallest, as you claim.
Smallest items with material size 1 are:
Caps, gloves, mittens, loincloth, tong, socks, sandals, shoes and low boots.

Also, I ment "creature's size", not "item's size".
Select leather workshop with "q" button.
Press "a" to add new task.
Choose from the list "make leather glove" and press enter.
Press "d" to set details.
Choose from "Specify leather" and "Specify size", the last.
Choose from list "kobolds", as I know they are significantly smaller in body size then Dwarves.
Now, the leather workshop should display instead of "make leather glove" "make _small_ leather glove".

Dwarves won't be able to wear kobolts' size clothing.
Maybe tanned skins made out of body parts, are entirely useless for any clothing making, even small one.
I would suggest then to use them simply as trade goods.

[delphonso]

1. Likely culprit is accidental link setting on a stockpile. Just build a new leather stockpile near your leatherworks and try again. Sounds like you're doing things correctly. Tanner shops are sort of set and forget places.

1.1 Paper
Paper can also be made from pigtail with a screw press and quern, though the process requires a little more management. It should at least be possible if you're experiencing a leather bug. Check the wiki for a better description than I could give.

2. You can send them completely naked and they might be successful. Starvation and dehydration isn't an issue. 

3. They're dangerous but not too bad. Punch through and wall it off is what I do early in a fort. There are trees down there if you need the wood. Often water too.

4.If you don't find flux in the first cavern layer, you probably won't even further down, but you might. I recommend asking the outpost liaison for all the types of flux stone (and iron/coal while you're at it). They're cheap, but caravans won't bring a ton.

[Bumber]

I'm pretty sure parchment is made from raw hide, not leather. However, I can't double check right now and the wiki is unclear.

[Sarmatian123]

Bins are evil! Avoid bins!
When you start embark, you get in orders by default "mix" option. When you correct this "mix" into "no mix", then bins containing different types of items become bugged. If you create stockpiles for specific items, then bins moved into such, which contain different types of items can get bugged again. It is a wild mess. Easiest solution is to fix orders from beginning asap. Then never ever make, use or buy bins. Just build minecarts and use quantum stockpiles. Later when setting up auto-brewing, an issue can be some specific barrels, which can contain in the same time different types of fruits and quarry leaves.

Resolving those issues is always dumping contents, which is done alike gathering goblinite. d-b-d and mark all containers with goblinite(or bugged bins and barrles). then with k go over every of those container and unmark dumping from it. Then contents will be gathered by Dwarves and thrown at dumping ground and forbidden. Burn all bins! and reclaim dumped items.

[delphonso]

Bins are fine. I don't recommend quantum stockpiling for your first playthrough. If you encounter bugs, check the wiki, and they'll probably be mentioned there.

Bins work fine with gems, leather and cloth, and bars/blocks. I highly recommend them in those stockpiles. Finished goods are great too, especially since it makes selling them much easier.

I still use bins, but avoid them in buggy areas (ammo and seeds being the big ones.)