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[Frogwarrior]

I found this bug/exploit a while ago, and don't think I've seen any threads or anybody talk about it. It can be harmful, but in certain circumstances can be quite a boon.

The idea is to make a dwarf use extra materials for a given job. This is bad for almost all jobs, and works as follows. Say you're smelting bronze, and for some reason, you have a bar of copper in the smelter, forbidden. You queue up a "smelt bronze from bars" order, and your dwarf brings a non-forbidden bar of copper and goes off to find tin. You then realize you've left a bar forbidden at the smelter, and unforbid it.

As soon as your dwarf grabs the bar of tin, the smelter will "realize" that there's an unforbidden bar of copper sitting in it, and task it as part of the bronze bars job - even though there's already a bar of copper tasked.

So your dwarf will bring back the tin, and go about the job - and when he's done, two shiny new bronze bars will appear, and all the tasked materials will vanish - the tin and both bars of copper.


For most jobs, this is a bad thing, since you lose materials. But there are two ways you could use this to your advantage - jobs where the product is not fixed, but depends on the materials used to make it. I.e., meals and artifacts.

So you can make roasts with five objects by having a food object moved to the kitchen (with a dummy cook command), then forbidden. Then you queue up a roast, and unforbid the item in the kitchen while your dwarf is either going to get or bringing back the fourth item - the kitchen will check its inventory when the dwarf picks up the item he's looking for or when he reaches the workshop with it. You do have to make sure, though, that the item in the kitchen doesn't get tasked by a stockpile between being unforbidden and the cook reaching the food/workshop. Congrats - you have a roast made with five items/stacks. Yes, its value is calculated according to the usual formula, just with more ingredients.


With artifacts, it's a bit more complicated, since they require multiple materials. But it's also easier, since canceling an object that's already been tasked doesn't cancel the job. Thankfully!

So, suppose you have an artifact that requires bones, leather, and metal. Your dwarf grabs as many bones as he needs, then looks for leather. But if you forbid one of the stacks of bones he already brought, he'll be under quota - he'll go looking for more. So then you unforbid the stack in the workshop (to be sure it'll get tasked, do so right before he either picks up or returns with the extra stack). Do this again with leather, and metal. Congrats! You have an artifact that has one extra of each required item type. And I've gotten more than that - if you keep forbidding bones, you can (I think) get as many as one extra bone stack for each non-bone item required. And then get one extra unit of leather for each bar of metal.

So, if metal is the base item on a huge artifact... you can get so many adamantine wafers it's not even funny...


ETA: Dwarven Fruit Punch! So, if you do this with breweries, you can have one brew job with 2 stacks of plants. Both stacks of booze go into the same barrel! A cheatery way to save on barrels, or a fun (and somewhat micro-intensive...) way to add "flavor" to a fort.

[pushy]

You're well over a year too late, mate.

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=28232.0

[Cheddarius]

He created the general case for all items, not just artifacts, and made an explanation for it, though.

[Frogwarrior]

I don't think this has anything to do with the epicness of Planepacked - nobody has a clue what caused that paragon of dorfishness, and it's rather hard to make an epic artifact this way by accident. This is more screwing with how dwarfs think about workshops for any purpose - although it's only useful for meals and artifacts, and sort of for booze. But, it does tell you to be really careful when unforbidding things in workshops.

And, y'know. If you get a 10-item artifact where the first item is metal and the second is stone... if you're lucky, and it works the way I think, you can get 11 wafers and 10 raw adamantine units. Holy crap, and if the third is blocks, you can get 9 addy blocks on top of that. Geez! And all that WITHOUT hacking.

[Cheddarius]

Actually, someone proposed an explanation for Planepacked that was similar to yours.

But nevertheless, you solidified and generalized the technique.

[CobaltKobold]

Is that how you do it...the old Fruit Punch thread suggested it was forbidding the brewing of the items.

This resulted in the items being put into the still, but not being all brewed up.

It only allows normalitems +1, though, it seems- I got many plants into, unforbid them all while the guy was carrying the intended brew to the still, but only one more got TSK'd.

Confirmed sequence for fruit punch:

• Get item(brewplant) into building's inventory, forbidden- do by making some job with it, forbidding while it's in progress.
• Start another brew job, wait for the guy to grab some other plant.
• Unforbid the plant that's there before the guy gets there.
• Allow to proceed as normal, both will be brewed in one barrel now.

Note: a take-to-stockpile job will grab it before the brew job will, so you need to not have stockpiles, or have full stockpiles.
I tried unforbidding another after the plant got in, before the barrel, but it didn't seem to work. You might try yourself.

[Rolan7]

This is a very complete and easy to understand explanation.  I knew it worked for artifacts, maybe meals, but never thought to try anything else.  Thank you for the testing and write-up.

[Frogwarrior]

Thanks!

CobaltKobold, I have tried to get more than two stacks in - no luck. I believe the bug can only grab one extra object at a time. So when the dwarf reaches the item he's looking for, the brewery tasks one and only one additional item.

Actually, I believe I may need to make a correction - I think the workshop tasks extra items not when he reaches the workshop, but when he leaves to go look for the next one - otherwise you could get three plants in a single barrel.

Regarding the old Fruit Punch thread, I think that may be an alternate way of doing the same thing - loading the workshop with unusable items (in that case, because you said "brew plump helmets" to Off in the kitchen menu), then making them usable when he's out a-questing. Good catch, I couldn't find that thread.

[Flaede]

so if you forbid everything right after the final work starts on an artifact... what happens? I'm fairly sure I did this once by accident and got a no-ingredient  "toad leather" artifact... but I distrust my memory, and can't run DF on a netbook. Anyone else try this?

[Frogwarrior]

I... I have never tried this. I suspect it's a really bad idea; it will just remove materials from the task list. Oh god, mass forbidding just got worse.

[o_O[WTFace]]

I'm definatly trying that next time some hauler decides to turn my last four shells and a rock into a worthless artifact bracelet.  Strange mood dwarves are forbidden from using shells because they are reserved for strange moods!

[Darkond2100]

Does this work with making adamantine?