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[Tahlin]

Hello!
As any dwarf fortress player i get lots of migrants, and their mostly Soap makers, potash makers etc. Now all they really do is eat and become insane at times. What could i use them for? How could they pay for what they eat? Oh and before you post. I don't need any soap or potash.

[Necro910]

I just use them for useless jobs. I'll make them woodcutters and things like that, or make the train to be something if I run out of mechanics or something.

[Tahlin]

Oh. Nice idea , but that means i'll have to make tons of picks and axes D:, Oh while i still have this thread. I managed to get a flux metal some time ago to smelt and make copper. But i can't make anything better D:, what should i do?

[nomad_delta]

I managed to get a flux metal some time ago to smelt and make copper.

You don't need flux stone to make copper; flux is only used in the production of steel.  For all other native metals (silver, iron, gold, platinum, etc) you just smelt the ore directly into bars at a smelting workshop using fuel (charcoal or coke).

--nomad_delta

[Lectorog]

For the migrants, I recommend mason jobs. They don't need any equipment, and it doesn't require any training to do reasonably well. Even if you don't have stoneworking tasks needed done, you can always build something giant and pointless (dwarfy) or smooth every surface in your fortress. Drafting up a military can be useful too.
If you don't use it, I highly recommend Dwarf Therapist for managing these migrants. It makes it easy possible.

As for the metals, make what you can. If you've only found copper ores, just make copper. Copper equipment is way better than no equipment. For better metals, when you want/need them, buy random metal objects from caravans; these can be melted and re-worked (but it costs fuel to melt them down). Copper is good enough for most purposes, as long as you don't need exceptional military equipment, weapons, etc.

I hope this answered your questions simply enough.

[Kestrel]

You could send them to your gulag where they are forced to haul stones back and forth across a long, narrow bridge suspended above magma.  That should keep them busy for a while.

[Psieye]

'Useless' migrants become Drones in my forts. Through the power of Dwarf Therapist, I switch on 30-ish labours all at once on these Drones and they keep my industries running smoothly. All the industries where skill doesn't matter that is (e.g. milling skill only speeds up job completion time). In mature forts, they don't get time to do any of those jobs because they're busy hauling stuff.

[Blade Master Model 42]

I managed to get a flux metal some time ago to smelt and make copper.

You don't need flux stone to make copper; flux is only used in the production of steel.  For all other native metals (silver, iron, gold, platinum, etc) you just smelt the ore directly into bars at a smelting workshop using fuel (charcoal or coke).

--nomad_delta

Or magma. Magma smelters are nice too.

My useless migrants tend to become masons. I don't make them engravers because that task usually gets done fairly quickly, and I don't like to micromanage workers in an attempt to keep dabbling engravers from making a three sided square. This happens less now though, as I'm making more use of spinners, threshers, and other 'useless' jobs, now that I know what they're good for.

I've yet to actually complete one, but in my current and two previous forts, I was using them to make a Chicken Little Device. This one I'm using blocks instead of raw stone.

Quick off-topic, can Constructions built with blocks be engraved? I was never able to previously, but I'm guessing that's because I was using rough stone...

[Ganondwarf]

I've actually done a lot of paperwork on this, deciding how to manage labor division.
What I do is I set out jobs for:
My first 7 dwarves
My first wave of immigrants (spares become soldiers)
MY first 100 dwarves

I won't post my full job plan here, unless someone asks for it but I can tell you out of 100 dwarves:
40 are either in the military or supporting it
20 are hauling stuff, mainly for workshops
20 are crafting things to trade

I think I'm going to post my full labor division plan in a seperate topic and ask for opinions on it, probably later today.
Just remember: If you want your economy to run as efficiently as possible you can (almost) never have too many haulers, and you can never have too many soldiers.

[FrisianDude]

Anybody who doesn't excel at awesome stuff often just gets general Farming/Hauling duties. Anyone with starting military skills, nice health and/or an affinity for weapons, shields or armour gets drafted.

[Naryar]

My useless migrants tend to become masons and haulers. Or just die.

But most of the time they stick around, make friends, improve their social skills like crazy and I get a completely useless fish dissector mayor, rather than my expedition leader.

On the other hand, to get less useless migrants: Before you start a fortyou can mod the dwarf part of your entity_default.txt in your regional save, so to remove the useless skills, and put them back when you have enough useful migrants. I do that generally.

I think removing the [] from the useless skills works fine. Then put them back.

Like if you have [PERMITTED_JOB:CHEESE_MAKING] you WILL get cheesemaker immigrants, if it has no brackets or is simply not present at all, you will not. Repeat for other useless jobs.

[dmurray]

I may be a new player and haven't gotten this far yet but why not just use them for medical practice? (I'm not sure if it will work how I imagine it).

But... why not just station them on a bridge, pull the bridge, have them plummet about... 4-8 Z levels, drag them to the hospital and fix them up; you gain job level increases for your doctor(s) and if they do survive the sugery and so on; you have a an oath to take that states "I will make sure my chief medical dwarf knows how many Z-levels a crast test dwarf must plummet before he will surely die".

Or just use them as haulers. Usually what I do when I get the first wave of immigrants is start using them as miners and then mine out a few levels down where I can set up a more... "advanced" fortress.

[Naryar]

You don't need medical practice. My dwarves seem to perform surgery/set bones/suture on other dwarves fine without any medical skill other than dabbling.

[dmurray]

You don't need medical practice. My dwarves seem to perform surgery/set bones/suture on other dwarves fine without any medical skill other than dabbling.

Perhaps, but it's always good to make every dwarf feel useful.
What better way than testing out the theory that falling several Z-levels hurts and also allowing the hospital works feeling useful by willingly falling 7 Z-levels?

Or, to put it bluntly: I wanna see how much pain Urist McCrashTestDummy can handle.

[Nameless Archon]

You don't need medical practice. My dwarves seem to perform surgery/set bones/suture on other dwarves fine without any medical skill other than dabbling.

Does medical skill affect the speed of the tasks, their success at preventing infections, or both? I've never had a problem with even a dabbling doctor, but I've never tested to see if the doctor is measurably faster (or safer) with skill.

The wiki doesn't appear to make mention of it either way, that I've seen.