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[Five chickens]

It seems I can't order my dwarves to pick fruit without some of them getting stuck in the trees and dying of dehydration.  Any tips for preventing this?  I try rescuing them by building stairs, ramps, etc, but for whatever reason, sometimes they still don't come down.

[Mobbstar]

If you use a zone, maybe only pick "fallen fruit" (on the ground), and not fruit on trees (requiring a stepladder).

If that doesn't solve it, maybe they climb onto the trees elsehow.  Scared by wild animals?  Ramp weirdness?

[PatrikLundell]

Dorfs can be trapped in trees by the trees growing, so it morphs such that there is no path back.
Bringing step ladders and building stairs (that actually reach the level of the dorf, not just the level below) should usually work. Cutting down the tree is a possible solution, as it's faster, but it also risks killing the dorf.
A DFHack solution is to use teleport to teleport the dorf sideways into empty space, after which it will fall to the ground, usually without getting hurt, but there is still a risk. It's possible to teleport them to the ground, but that a lot harder to do (you have to find the coordinates for the target location and the syntax for getting the teleport command to accept those coordinates, which probably also requires you to find the ID of the dorf to use as a parameter).

[Thisfox]

I found that my problem wasn't the stepladders, but the bastards stealing the sodding stepladders and using them somewhere else. I rarely have this problem any more, but I've ended up with a few personal rules due to the problem:

1. I never sell stepladders to the traders because other dorfs grab the stepladders while in use, and put them in the trade depot. Then no one brings the ladders back.
2. I have only one place stepladders can be stored, and it's a dedicated furniture storage area under the trees in question. If a kea steals one, I can always make more stepladders, but if someone decides the ladder needs to be 35z down the fortress, then that ladder wouldn't be coming back up any time soon.
3. I build the occasional staircase into the trees. It helps the helpless.

I think #1 is the most important. Any chance that's your problem?

[Naia]

Still using this method
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174022.msg7976825#msg7976825

[amade]

A DFHack solution is to use teleport to teleport the dorf sideways into empty space, after which it will fall to the ground, usually without getting hurt, but there is still a risk. It's possible to teleport them to the ground, but that a lot harder to do (you have to find the coordinates for the target location and the syntax for getting the teleport command to accept those coordinates, which probably also requires you to find the ID of the dorf to use as a parameter).

You can use gui/teleport instead. No need to go faffing about with coordinates.

[Five chickens]

Thank you for your responses.  Two more questions.

1/ do large fruit-picking zones interfere with caravans?
2/ is there a way to order dwarves to deploy a stepladder to a particular location?

[PatrikLundell]

1. No, except that trees interfere with caravan ability to path through the terrain, zone or no zone, so if you leave all (fruit) trees in the zone it will eventually be impassable to caravans. That's related to logging, though, not zones.
2. No. They fetch a step ladder when there is fruit in trees in gathering zones and the zone is set to pick from trees, i.e. as needed.
You could possibly try to exploit the behavior by not having any zones to store step ladders and then designate zones where you want the step ladders, but that only works if there actually is high hanging fruit to harvest at the location, so it's fiddly, micro managerial, and unreliable at best.

[anewaname]

Building a ramp and adjacent wall is also a good way to get dwarfs out of trees, since you do not need to wait for a dwarf to build the lower stairs before starting on the upper stairs.