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[Particleman]

So.... I barely use these. I have maybe half a dozen dwarves in burrows at any given time. Now don't get me wrong, they're INCREDIBLY useful for keeping my legendary carpenter from wandering around the surface or caverns collecting wood (when there's a wood stockpile three tiles south of his workshop...) and consequently getting his stupid ass murdered by the first hostile creature he encounters. They're also really nice for getting my miners to dig out a specific area without having to remove every dig designation to the west of the area I want mined NOW.

But aside from things like keeping my dumbass carpenter alive and stopping my broker from collecting crops when he's supposed to be trading, I simply haven't found much use for them. They're REALLY nice when they are usable, but to me, general use just seems limited.

Could other people tell me how they use burrows? Because they're a pretty big change to the game and I feel like I can't figure out how to take full advantage of them.

[cyks]

It is for herding dwarfs.  I use it during attacks and assign all dwarfs to hide while I take care of threat.

You could assign all food, beds, and shops to specific dwarfs and confine them to a section of your fort.

[darius]

I use them to set guards (veeeeryyy usefull) and to crush migrants (also good) Also i used to designate main fort area and when i need to seal fort i just set civ alert

[Battlecat]

Here's a few ideas I've been considering for burrows.  I haven't had a chance to test these yet though:

1: Set up a burrow for your jewelcrafters that excludes your primary furniture and goods storage areas.  Then set up a secondary storage that only accepts the type of furniture/crafts that you want decorated. 

2: Set up a burrow for your master masons so they won't go outside to help with potentially dangerous construction projects with your low ranking haulers. 

3: Burrows might be usable to keep children from wandering outside to be grabbed by snatchers. 

4: One other idea for burrows is to improve efficiency. If you set up a burrow for a crafter that only includes the raw material sources you want them to work with, it'll keep your crafters from wandering off into the depths of your mines to find that perfect piece of stone.  Of course, this setup means you need some haulers to bring the desired stone into the burrow area.

Hope this helps. 

[monk12]

I'm currently tinkering with a burrow based fortress. Basically, each industry has a floor for that industry, with the workshops and stockpiles on one side and a small living quarters/meeting hall area on the other. I plan for it all to eventually work out to look like a series of sealable individual mini-forts, with only haulers and nobles free to wander and get their stupid asses killed. May abandon soon though, as the design needs further refinement. Instead of floors, maybe small fort-cubes... and more elaborate traps! and...

[Delduvat]

Well, guess it mostly listed already, but one more time as I use it:

1. Full-cycle-industry sectors (Smelter-Forge, Ashery-Glass-Kiln, etc. ) with stockpiles, bedrooms and favorite meal/booze. Prevents dorfs from travelling through a whole fortress just to get hematite or a barrel of beloved strawberry wine.

2. Positions for Code:Red alert — protect most important points (gems and artifacts vault, armory, hospital, food) in case of security breach.

3. Now implementing the "Inner Fortress" thing, a sort of obsolete "Only soldiers may go outside" order. All civilians are restricted to the secured part of the fort, and the only ones that can leave are quarantine teams: militarized miners, masons and harvesters, all armored and covered by military patrols.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I primarily use burrows for my military schedules.  I define an outside burrow and alternate my squads' schedules so that it is always defended.  When I finally decide to open the underground, I create a burrow that encompasses it, and do the same for the underground that I do for the surface.  This is very effective, and keeps my military discovering and dealing with ambushes, rather than my forge crew   Unfortunately, it's making it very difficult for me to capture a female polar bear....

[Rkui]

Honestly i don't like them very much, i use them only for fisher and hospital and they seam to create more problem than they solve and spam the announcement with pathing problems all the time. If you want them to work you must have your entire fort in a burrow so i don't see the point to them.
Maybe they work great but then you really have to put some effort into them, and for exemple have special hauling dwarf and stuff like that. So if you have a very specilized fort it might work great, but if you tend to let the dwarf do what they want and have many jobs, burrows aren't very effective imo.

The only really nice thing is the painting feature to create them, i think that method should be used to define all the rooms/stockpiles/and all those space related stuff in DF, because sometime i find myself in need to build walls and doors only to set a room properly (like my dining room/barracks) and destroy the doors/walls after i set them, or i need to delete only part of my stockpiles...

[BodyGripper]

Right now I only use one "Emergency" burrow.  I would use more, but almost all my bedrooms are in the same place.

[Bouchart]

Right now I only use one "Emergency" burrow.  I would use more, but almost all my bedrooms are in the same place.

I only use the Emergency burrow too.  I usually design my fort in sections so it's never been too necessary for me.  Eventually I'll have enough haulers moving stuff around that my dwarves with trade skills don't need to wander all over the place.

[shibdib]

if i put some1 in a burrow will he leave said burrow to eat/drink/sleep?

[Tcei]

My first 2010 fort was designed with burrows in mind. I had a series of industry areas with workshops storage and living/eating areas. All my dwarves save for haulers and soldiers, were restricted to a burrow. The fort eventually crumbled due to bugs and a  forgotten and mis-placed burrow that put half the fort outside during the middle of siege. I  havent really used burrows sence other than to make a all dwarves stay inside type command. I may revisit the burrow system again soon tho.

[Sphalerite]

I have a burrow which covers the Baroness's office, which also houses the emergency fortress defense levers.  This is useful both to force her to finally meet with diplomats, as well as to force dwarves to go in there and pull the damn levers.

I have a burrow which covers the trade depot.  The broker gets assigned to this when it's time to trade.

I also have a burrow which covers an emergency defense magma pump, and when I need it to be pumped NOW I assign all my pump operators to it.

[clc02]

if i put some1 in a burrow will he leave said burrow to eat/drink/sleep?

Only when dehydrated/starving they will go get water/food, they will sleep on the floor.

[Havlock]

I've found burrows useful for keeping children from following their parents everywhere. Just put the children in the "kindergarten" burrow, with beds, food and drink, of course. This'll keep them from dangerous situations if their parent does something stupid and is killed.