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[Tomsod]

Gonna start a new 47.05 fort soon, but there are still several things I'm curious about since the last time I played.  If anyone can help, please answer these:

• What's the deal with adamantine caps?  They're queued through the armor submenu, but seem to require cloth, not wafers.  Are they as useless as other candy clothing?
• What is an appropriate sand/clay gathering zone size, per workshop?  Never really got these industries running, wanna try now.
• Is there any way to "register" the placement of an artifact by an adventurer so it can be later found in a fort mode mission?  Neither just dropping it nor giving it to someone works, I can spread the rumor but my dwarves always fail to find it there.
• What's the best way to recover seeds from non-brewable plants like celery without forcing the dwarves to eat uncooked greens?  I'm thinking something animal trainer- or caretaker-related, but I never experimented with this.
• As I understand, mission combat is simplified, although weapon/armor material still matters.  But is there an encumbrance penalty for full steel armor (without high skill), like in on-map combat?  I don't want to send out my candy masterpieces lest they lose them somewhere.
• Also, how important/rare is the Tactics skill?  Should I start with a proficient tactician if I want to raid eventually?
• Must a river tile be connected to the map edge for fishing purposes or does only the "river" status matter?  I have a small chunk of a river sequestered into a pool of sorts in my future fort's map (seems to be a glitch), but it's still labeled as a "river".

I'm also still somewhat confused about how material preferences work (particularly in decorations -- there are two materials involved there, but also in "transformation" jobs like kaolinite to porcelain), but I'm gonna science this myself soon, so I'll post an answer if nobody beats me to it.

[Tomsod]

Okay, I performed some tests with DFHack, and it seems for porcelain, it's the porcelain preference that's checked, not kaolinite, as I expected.  More surprising is that for glazing jet jugs with cassiterite, none of the preferences for cassiterite, tin glaze, jet, or jugs appear to affect masterwork chance.  I guess decoration jobs just don't check preferences?  If so, I'll wait for good migrant dyers and glazers instead of training promising dwarves from the ground.

Spoiler: More details on my tests (click to show/hide)

I've used fastdwarf, assign-skills, and assign-preferences DFHack commands.  Items were produced/decorated in batches of 100, by the same dwarf, reloading the same save over and over, to reduce noise.
The dwarf started at skill 10, but improved to 11 halfway through each batch -- interestingly, for some reason porcelain jugs only give 30 XP, not 60 like most crafts.
I've only noted the number of masterworks produced, by looking at announcements at the end.  Conveniently, skill 10 is just on the cusp of masterworks showing regularly, so it's very sensitive to the preference bonus.
In total, 1000 jobs were completed for each kind of preference.
For crafting porcelain jugs, the results were: 112 with no relevant preferences, 116 with kaolinite, 189 with porcelain.  The data speaks for itself.
For improving jet jugs with tin glaze, I got 129 with no preferences, 103 for tin glaze, cassiterite and jet at the same time, and 111 for jugs and tin glaze (in that order, in case only the last preference works or something).  More noise here, but unless preferences decrease quality, this probably means none of them did anything.

Another question I remembered just now:  is there any functional difference between bone leggings and bone greaves?  For metal, the only one is that leggings are chain, but bone can't be chain, right?

[eerr]

1. There are metal caps and cloth caps. I think adamantine makes both.
2. For sand, you need, small area with some big animals, it only needs one tile exposed if nothing grows on it.
3. There was a type of building made for nobles, with pedestals for artifacts. the first artifact you bring there usually stays, or so I've heard.
4. I don't know if there are any alternatives to making dwarves eat their veggies.
5. I would assume speed is relevant to the raid calculations, and that is affected by encumbrance penalties.
6. Raids seem to work fine without tactician skill, but I don't know any reliable way to get the tactics skill.
7. Could be an underground river, a brook covered by snow, or the place that feeds the river. If not, it might be a bug.

-Any stone can be made into a cut gem, and kaolinite is a stone. No need to fire it.
-If actual ceramic products were bugged, I wouldn't be surprised though.

[Tomsod]

1. There are metal caps and cloth caps. I think adamantine makes both.

That's the thing, whether you make an item out of adamantine wafers or adamantine cloth, the game will only remember that the item is adamantine, without preserving the wafer/cloth difference.  So there can be only one kind of adamantine caps.  What I want to know is if they count as armor or clothing, particularly if they get the usual clothing penalty to armor effectiveness.

2. For sand, you need, small area with some big animals, it only needs one tile exposed if nothing grows on it.

So the size doesn't matter at all?  If I have several sand/clay collecting jobs on repeat, won't they obstruct each other with just one tile?

3. There was a type of building made for nobles, with pedestals for artifacts. the first artifact you bring there usually stays, or so I've heard.

Good idea, I should try that.

6. Raids seem to work fine without tactician skill, but I don't know any reliable way to get the tactics skill.

When I tried to liberate that artifact from some bandit I gave it to, embarking with a tactician was the difference between winning and losing the raid.  I've heard you can get skilled generals from sites you conquer, but it's a chicken and egg problem.

7. Could be an underground river, a brook covered by snow, or the place that feeds the river. If not, it might be a bug.

The river meets an ocean within my embark site, and where it enters the stone beach, parts of it are just erased.  It's definitely a glitch, but I could wall off the isolated river chunk and fish in complete safety, if it still has fish.  I suppose I can just test it in practice.

[DerpFortress]

2. For clay, same deal as sand, one tile will suffice. No idea if multiple gather jobs would get in each other's way though.

4. I had a game in a glacier with a dwarf that had a caged pet sheep, and found out he had been feeding it all our berries from the seeds left in the cage. Don't know if it works with celery.

[Tomsod]

Well, placing the artifact on a pedestal doesn't seem to work.  Too bad!  My adventurer has found no less than three "holy weapon" magic dice and got some good stuff from them, but I don't want to just leave it on the future embark site lest I attract dragons etc. too quickly.

4. I had a game in a glacier with a dwarf that had a caged pet sheep, and found out he had been feeding it all our berries from the seeds left in the cage. Don't know if it works with celery.

The wiki says animal trainers will also feed the animals they train, and animal caretakers may feed any hungry animal (not just pets), but I have never tried this so I've no idea how reliable it is.

[anewaname]

1. Look at how dwarfs behave with the candy caps, and what their detailed descriptions are... Metal caps will not grabbed by dwarfs for their civilian garb, and the detailed description will say "This is a [quality] [material] cap". Non-metal caps will be used for civilian garb and say "This is a [quality] [material] cap. It is made from [type] cloth". That is probably the surest way to determine if your candy caps are being treated as armor or clothing, and if they degrade or protect.

2. 1-tile sand collection zones work fine with ten dwarfs collecting there. My sand zone is always adjacent to the sand tile, which may be why it works out okay. Putting a grate over the sand protects from growth (wiki covers this stuff).

7. The river tile flag is probably enough for the vermin fishing, just as murky pool tile flag is for pond turtles. For cavern and ocean fishing, you need map edge access because there are no tile flags ("tile flag" being my term).

About greaves or leggings, greaves are considered to be better, according to this thread which shows many diverse opinions on armor, and delves into the greaves/leggings question.

[Tomsod]

1. Look at how dwarfs behave with the candy caps, and what their detailed descriptions are... Metal caps will not grabbed by dwarfs for their civilian garb, and the detailed description will say "This is a [quality] [material] cap". Non-metal caps will be used for civilian garb and say "This is a [quality] [material] cap. It is made from [type] cloth". That is probably the surest way to determine if your candy caps are being treated as armor or clothing, and if they degrade or protect.

At least in v47.05, if you make, say, adamantine socks, it won't say the socks are "made from adamantine cloth", and socks are 100% clothing, so your method doesn't work here.

2. 1-tile sand collection zones work fine with ten dwarfs collecting there. My sand zone is always adjacent to the sand tile, which may be why it works out okay. Putting a grate over the sand protects from growth (wiki covers this stuff).

Great news, thanks!  Then I'll keep it small.

7. The river tile flag is probably enough for the vermin fishing, just as murky pool tile flag is for pond turtles. For cavern and ocean fishing, you need map edge access because there are no tile flags ("tile flag" being my term).

I suspect it's true, but I'll need to test it later.

About greaves or leggings, greaves are considered to be better, according to this thread which shows many diverse opinions on armor, and delves into the greaves/leggings question.

The argument there is that leggings are chain so they're worse against blunt.  But bone can't be chain, I think.  And apart from that (and material size), leggings and greaves appear to have identical stats?

[anewaname]

1. Look at how dwarfs behave with the candy caps, and what their detailed descriptions are... Metal caps will not grabbed by dwarfs for their civilian garb, and the detailed description will say "This is a [quality] [material] cap". Non-metal caps will be used for civilian garb and say "This is a [quality] [material] cap. It is made from [type] cloth". That is probably the surest way to determine if your candy caps are being treated as armor or clothing, and if they degrade or protect.

At least in v47.05, if you make, say, adamantine socks, it won't say the socks are "made from adamantine cloth", and socks are 100% clothing, so your method doesn't work here.

There are two parts to that method... You showed the detailed description will not help differentiate, but the second part is if the dwarfs regard the caps as items they can wear as clothing. If you make an candy cap in a forge from a wafer, and a candy cap in a clothing shop (add order for a cap and limit available cloth to candy cloth (not even sure if this can work)), do the dwarfs take either, neither, or both to wear? This is a test to see if the cap is considered to be armor or clothing, and a test to see if the underlying material is retained as "metal" or "cloth" even if the description shows no difference.

The argument there is that leggings are chain so they're worse against blunt.  But bone can't be chain, I think.  And apart from that (and material size), leggings and greaves appear to have identical stats?

In DF, you can make bone leggings, consider this. Greaves and leggings do have different Armor Levels. As suggested in that armor thread, greaves probably have a less flexible surface that allows for better deflection of impact (any angle of deflection means impacts transfer less momentum to the target and more momentum remains in the weapon as it deflects away.

[Tomsod]

There are two parts to that method... You showed the detailed description will not help differentiate, but the second part is if the dwarfs regard the caps as items they can wear as clothing.

Right, good point, I read past that bit in your previous message.  Well, I tried this, and dwarves will wear adamantine hoods, but seem to ignore adamantine caps, so here they're treated as armor after all?  It still proves nothing, because I already know the game is inconsistent on this (otherwise they'd require wafers to forge).  I guess I'll need direct arena tests.

The reason I got this question to begin with is my getting an artifact adamantine cap from a clothier mood in my previous fort -- the mood used candy cloth, so I got curious and it turned out non-artifact candy caps are also weird.  It might become relevant again, since my new fort has an immigrant with GCS silk preference and no moodable skills, who I wouldn't mind making into my clothier if RNG allows.

BTW, all adamantine clothing is made in the forge by an armorsmith.  Wafers vs. cloth rolls is their only observable difference from armor, WRT crafting at least.

Greaves and leggings do have different Armor Levels.

I forgot about that.  But, I heard armor levels don't actually influence combat since v0.31, being a 40d remnant.

As suggested in that armor thread, greaves probably have a less flexible surface that allows for better deflection of impact (any angle of deflection means impacts transfer less momentum to the target and more momentum remains in the weapon as it deflects away.

That's what the chain tag does.  I just suspect it doesn't apply to bone.

[mikekchar]

For #4 if you assign a dwarf to "Animal Care" they will feed any grazers in restraints or cages.  They will pick the closest food to them that is either a plant or a prepared meal.  Technically, you can use it to get seeds.

In practice, because it prioritises food nearest to the dwarf *when they get the job*, there is no way to game it so that they pick a specific food.  I really wish that would be fixed to "closest food to the animal", because that opens up a ton of possibilities for growing food specifically for animals (or gaming food for which there is no reliable way to get seeds).

There is a mod somewhere that adds a reaction for obtaining seeds from any plant.  I can't remember which mod it is, though.  It adds a *lot* of stuff, though.  If you really want to do it, I think just making your own mod is probably the easiest way to go.

[Tomsod]

Hmm, I suppose if I burrow the caretaker so that she has no access to food other than what I need eaten raw, it might work?  It still forfeits the fancy prepared meal stress reduction, but only for a single dwarf who'll probably be a hauler in her spare time.

[mikekchar]

They also get a good thought when feeding the animals, so it mostly will balance out, I guess.

[Tomsod]

Okay, I did manage to get that clothier mood (after three days of save-scumming), so I tried to test the cap thing in arena, and apparently adamantine caps do deflect steel swords, but so do hoods.  Or cloaks.  Or trousers.  I googled some more and it seems somewhere between 2013 and 2018 the change that made candy clothing useless was reverted, so now it's at least as good as chain in combat.  It still wears out with time, and you can't melt-duplicate adamantine thread, so purposefully forging it into clothes is probably wasteful, but since artifacts are immune to wear, I think I'll aim for a cloak or possibly a robe for this mood, to be worn by my general.  Also I'll need to update the wiki at some point, it has been wrong for 6+ years now.

[Tomsod]

Update: I finally got a good fisherdwarf migrant, and she successfully fished some mussels out of the isolated part of the river.  It means I can build a safe fishing spot after all!