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[Arkenstone]

Disclaimer: This is a purely theoretical method, untried and untested.

Which makes it perfect for Dwarf Fortress!


Don't you hate it when you're playing a game and your fortress dies, and when you reclaim and all the best items are in spots too dangerous to reach?  Or would you like to build in a different site (possibly because your current one's been made unlivable), but hate starting from scratch?  Well, my breakthrough method is 0% guaranteed to work, or your ☼ back!!!

Stage 1:  Before your fortress dies, build a chamber real close to the surface and quantum stockpile as many lead bins there as you can make.  You may also wish to leave a set of masterwork adamantine armor in a lead bin up there if at all possible.  If you find an easy way to get all your adamantine into bins made of lead, gold, platinum, or anything else that's really heavy (maybe with some other metal bars to weigh them down) then it'll help, no matter where they are in the fortress (but again, closer to the surface is better).

Stage 2:  After the fortress is dead, come back in adventure mode (with a high-level adventurer, you can cheat here to save time).  Have your adventurer get the equipment waiting for him at the top (you did leave some there, right?) and use it to explore the fort.  Pick up all the items you find and want to keep, then store them in the lead bins at the fort's doorstep.  Or, you could take the goods somewhere else, but you'll need to leave them at a site if you want any chance of finding them again; a human town is especially good for this since you get all that other stuff and even your hero if he retires there.  (Check out the site you want in embark mode before you start your adventure, and make sure you got the right one.  Writing its name down and memorizing the lands between it and your fort on the world map help with the moving.)

The way it works is simple: the distance an item moves between visits is inversly proportional to its weight, meaning light stuff (like Adamantine) spreads out alot while heavy stuff (like lead) doesn't.  As any item in a bin stays put, this helps keep stuff from scattering all over the place.


I don't know the stacking limit for a bin in adventure mode; it might be possible to fit an entire fortress' non-archetectural wealth in a single lead bin.
Or a Slade one...


Weight: 100000Γ
Value: ☼5000000

[Beeskee]

Don't items get scattered around after a reclaim even if they are in a sealed room?

I was thinking about putting the good stuff in a room and sealing it off, but I wasn't sure if sealed rooms get "looted" or not.

[Fourdots]

Don't items get scattered around after a reclaim even if they are in a sealed room?

I was thinking about putting the good stuff in a room and sealing it off, but I wasn't sure if sealed rooms get "looted" or not.

They do; the system for scattering stuff just moves it randomly, regardless of whether it could be moved or not. However, as mentioned in the OP, heavier items move much, much less; in theory, a very large chamber with no empty space above or below it (or a number of similar chambers stacked up) would be the perfect place to store items in lead bins, because they would probably end up elsewhere in the chamber, preventing the problem of having to hunt through a warren of passageways to find them.