Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JakeTamber]

I read the wiki, and I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. I need to make some bags (I can always buy some from the next caravan probably, but I wanna make my own) for glass making. Here is what I am doing.

1) Have a butcher ready with no other jobs.
2) Set a random dwarf to military.
3) Station him next to a ground hog.
4) He kills the ground hog.
5) I pause, and within seconds tell the butcher's workshop to butcher a dead animal.

Then it says that there is no butcher-able animal. I have been trying this for a while and am going to run out of groundhogs to kill.

Sorry for the dumb questions, but I just can't seem to do this.

[Strant]

You're doing it wrong.  Military kills aren't butchered.  I'm not sure if there's a way to change that.

Get a dwarf and set his labor to hunting.  Also, give him a crossbow weapon and some leather armor too.

EDIT: let me elaborate a bit more.

press [v] and go the the dwarf you want hunting, press [p]ref then [l]abor and turn on hunting, you may as well turn everything else off too.  press [p]ref again then [ s ]oldiering and Hunting.  Select the crossbow, leather armor, and a shield.

If you don't have a crossbow he'll wrestle the animals if you have a crossbow but no bolts he'll bludgeon them to death with the crossbow.  The armor and shield is help alleviate the high casualty rate of hunters.   

Anyway, he'll kill an animal and return the kill the the butcher's shop.  Then the butcher shop will create a butcher animal job automatically (this can be disabled in the [ o ]rders menu, but don't do that).  The butcher will butcher the animal.  Then the tanner's shop will create a tan a hide job automatically (you have a tanner and a tanner's shop right?).

Make sure you have a refuse pile (I put mine outdoors) for the chunks, otherwise they'll cause miasma.  You may want a different refuse pile for the bones and skulls (bones are used for bolts and crossbows).  Also, a place for the fat.  Otherwise, your butcher shop will get cluttered and the corpses will rot before anything gets done.

I hope that that's not too much information for you.  Good job on using the wiki and telling us exactly what you're doing so it's easy to see what you're doing wrong.

[JakeTamber]

Then someone who knows what they are doing needs to edit the wiki, it specifcally says you can use military to butcher animals.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Requires: A butcher's shop, a butcher, and either a stray tamed animal marked for slaughter or one killed by a hunter or soldier

It actually says this in several locations.

Anyway, thank you. I don't have any weapons yet. I have magma and native copper, so I am pretty sure I can make some. I'll have to go read the wiki again, though. Again, thank you.

[Quietust]

You don't need to tell the butcher's shop to butcher the dead animal - it will enqueue the task automatically unless you've disabled it under Standing (o)rders. If you have (r)efuse settings set to collect from (o)utdoors, then you're getting the cancellation message because somebody's busy hauling the corpse to a refuse stockpile. If you're not set to collect refuse from outdoors, you may need to turn it on or your butcher might simply ignore your kill.

Note that you'll also need a tanner's workshop to make leather out of the animal skins.

Incidentally, there are other ways of making bags than hunting wild animals, such as butchering some of your tame animals (horses, cows, and donkeys are livestock unless you explicitly make them available as pets). Another way (which isn't time sensitive) is to grow some pig tails or rope reed, process them at a Farmer's workshop, weave the thread into cloth at a Loom (normally happens automatically), then make plant fiber bags at a Clothier's workshop.

[Malicus]

I think the critical point here that people missed is that the corpse MUST be hauled to a refuse stockpile (or a refuse stockpile placed right under it) before it is considered for butchering.  It doesn't matter how it died, in my experience.

[JakeTamber]

Alright, my hunter has killed some groundhogs, I did a bunch of other things, and now I have made my first bag.

1) I have a bag.
2) I set a sand gathering area (it does indeed have sand) with the "i" menu.
3) Nothing?

I am obviously missing a simple step. How exactly do I tell my dwarfs to collect sand?

[Malicus]

To gather sand, you have to create a job to "collect sand" at a glass furnace.

[Strant]

You need to create a sand gathering job.  Create a glass furnace and issue the collect sand order.  You need somebody with architecture.

People mostly use Glass Furnaces for sand collecting and Magma Glass Furnaces for making stuff.

The only problem is that it screws when building glass items via the Job Manager.

[JakeTamber]

Ah, now I feel silly. I totally already read that. *sigh*

Thank you. Now I can finally mass produce glass. Now my crappy crafts will be less worthless!

[Skorpion]

Then someone who knows what they are doing needs to edit the wiki, it specifcally says you can use military to butcher animals.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Requires: A butcher's shop, a butcher, and either a stray tamed animal marked for slaughter or one killed by a hunter or soldier

It actually says this in several locations.

Anyway, thank you. I don't have any weapons yet. I have magma and native copper, so I am pretty sure I can make some. I'll have to go read the wiki again, though. Again, thank you.

Nope, military kills ARE butchered. I used the system myself to kill the roving herds of camels. The job's just generated automatically once the kill has been hauled to a stockpile and isn't tagged for anything else, or rotten.

[Strant]

Now I have a question.  Since it seems I have misunderstood some facts.  Can any of the following be butchered?

Animals killed by chance? (stray bolts, cave-ins)
Pets?
Tame animals killed by chance?
Sentient creatures? (goblins)
Vermin?

EDIT: Also, I changed the offending Wiki entry.  The Meat Industry one.

[Malicus]

Non-tame animals killed by chance can be butchered, as long as their corpse is taken to a refuse tile first.  I am unsure about tame animals killed by chance (though I don't think that they can be butchered), but the rest is a definite "no".

[Quietust]

Killed wild animals can always be butchered, provided they aren't sentient or anything special like that.

Killed tame animals can never be butchered, except in the case of specific glitches (such as the one that will cause a captured and tamed Giant Cave Spider to spontaneously get marked as Hostile).

[Skorpion]

Now I have a question.  Since it seems I have misunderstood some facts.  Can any of the following be butchered?

Animals killed by chance? (stray bolts, cave-ins) - Wild animals, yes.
Pets? - No.
Tame animals killed by chance? - No.
Sentient creatures? (goblins) - No.
Vermin? - No.

[The Navigator]

*Most* vermin can't be butchered, since they have the [NOT_BUTCHERABLE] tag. Any vermin without this tag however, such as purring maggots, can be butchered.