Print

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

[EmperorNuthulu]

I can't believe nobody has said this yet... wood working. No not carpentry, but making wooden crafts. Seriously you can make stone ones that are usually worth more, don't take up a decently useful resource and wooden crafts offend the elves. So if you trade just wooden crafts, you'll have 1/3 of the available merchants blocked off.

[orrey]

Fish Dissection and Animal Dissection. 


Jobs like Soap Making, Beekeeping, Milking and such aren't the most in demand labors, but they fill a niche.  The dissections create mostly worthless trade goods for more effort than any other crafting labors.  There's potential there; if the extracts (like venom) actually were usable, but for now all we can do is look at those barrels of liquid fire and imagine.

[eataTREE]

I can't believe nobody has said this yet... wood working. No not carpentry, but making wooden crafts. Seriously you can make stone ones that are usually worth more, don't take up a decently useful resource and wooden crafts offend the elves. So if you trade just wooden crafts, you'll have 1/3 of the available merchants blocked off.

There's a Legendary Marksdwarf here to see you. He says Wood Crafters are just fine.

[Teneb]

Animal and Fish Dissectors get the most useless labor in my opinion. Lye makers get a close second. I don't consider animal care to be useless, because if it worked, it'd be quite nice.

I like fishing, actually. My only problem with it is that my biomes tend to not have any fish at all.

[Lagslayer]

People have mentioned beekeeping, how about those Wax Workers? You can't even make enough wax from beekeeping in one year to counter the skill rust on a wax worker.

And it sounds like such an interesting job.

You may be surprised.

The most useless job to me is Potash Maker. I never use the stuff because if I want more plants, I just make bigger/more farm plots. The difference it makes is minimal in the end, and saves a lot of potentially invaluable resources by not using it.

edit: aside from the labors which currently do not have a use, but they don't really count.

[eataTREE]

I totally disagree with the general consensus regarding dwarves skilled in soap and lye making. In any mature fortress I have the soap supply chain in continuous production. Every single one of my dwarves runs around happy from having had "a nice soapy bath lately" and no one ever dies of infection; plus I always have an overflowing food stockpile full of rendered tallow, so why not?

All newly arrived migrants skilled in a fiddly farming task like Milking or Threshing gets all farming tasks enabled except for Cooking and Brewing, which I prefer to be performed by experts, and Growing, because I track planters separately. Once I have enough "Farm Hands", I start drafting newcomers into the army. Put down that plow and pick up a sword, Urist McFarmboy!

Anyone who claims that a trained Strand Extractor is useless reveals themselves as a noob who has never actually dug out any candy. Because after you've waited however many months it takes for your Dabbling Strand Extractor to extract one freaking thread, you will never be unhappy to see a good Strand Extractor ever again.

Now, Potash Making, I have to agree that's pretty useless. I never have a fortress with working farms where I need even more food. Wax Working is also pretty useless; all you can make are crafts and wax crafts aren't any better than the crafts made from the stone you have lying around all over your fortress anyway. But if you have wax cakes left over from making honey/mead, it's not like there's anything else to be done with them in the current version.

Animal Caretakers, Trappers, and Animal and Fish Dissectors are the least useful as far as I'm concerned. Caretakers don't work at all, and Trapping then Dissecting vermin is a complicated process that in the end nets you only a trade good, if you're supremely lucky enough to trap anything extractable in the first place. These tend to be drafted on sight in my fortresses.

[EmperorNuthulu]

I can't believe nobody has said this yet... wood working. No not carpentry, but making wooden crafts. Seriously you can make stone ones that are usually worth more, don't take up a decently useful resource and wooden crafts offend the elves. So if you trade just wooden crafts, you'll have 1/3 of the available merchants blocked off.

There's a Legendary Marksdwarf here to see you. He says Wood Crafters are just fine.

 Pah, bone bolts are more useful, I mean you're not going to use bones that often anyways. Wood on the other hand you probably want for beds and what not. Also, using metal bolts in combat tends to work better. (Not to mention the sheer crap you have to stick through to train marksdwarves...)

[Johuotar]

Dyers, clothiers,  glazers and wax workers are my cannon fodder.

[Greiger]

Animal caretakers, wax workers, potash makers, and the dissectors.


And clothiers are awesome.  a legendary clothier can make three crafts totaling 900☼ from a single bolt of cloth and at legendary craftworker speed.  Throw in a good dyer and weaver and it can become crazy.  Even in more typical skill levels, cloth crafts still easily outvalue stone and wood. 

Only thing I've seen capable of competing is a potter with kaolinite.  And even then kaolinite is a limited resource.  Rope reed and pig tails aren't.

[jc6036]

I love my legendary clothier. Its him and my weaver who clothes my entire fort with masterwork socks.

[EddyP]

Disregarding the literally useless jobs, potash making, milking, metalcrafting, wood crafting, pump operator.

[eataTREE]

I can't believe nobody has said this yet... wood working. No not carpentry, but making wooden crafts. Seriously you can make stone ones that are usually worth more, don't take up a decently useful resource and wooden crafts offend the elves. So if you trade just wooden crafts, you'll have 1/3 of the available merchants blocked off.

There's a Legendary Marksdwarf here to see you. He says Wood Crafters are just fine.

 Pah, bone bolts are more useful, I mean you're not going to use bones that often anyways. Wood on the other hand you probably want for beds and what not. Also, using metal bolts in combat tends to work better. (Not to mention the sheer crap you have to stick through to train marksdwarves...)

I assure you that the number of training bolts my marksdwarves need to fire in order to gain Legendary status far exceeds the number of beds I'm ever going to need, and is also well in excess of the number of animals I have access to times the number of bones in their bodies. Since these bolts are being fired for target practice, their actual stopping power is quite irrelevant, and metal is too valuable to waste in this fashion.

If I didn't have access to a forested biome, plus a large, muddy, relatively harmless cavern layer, plus regular log shipments from Dwarves and Elves, I might sing a different tune, but when wood is plentiful, it is the best source of marksdwarf training bolts. My 10-lane firing range means my marksdwarves can shoot practice rounds as fast as my woodcarvers can crank them out, so the faster (and the higher Woodworking skill) the better!

(Metal bolts are, of course, reserved for firing towards the actual enemy. Bone bolts are marked as dual-use, but in practice always get spent in training.)

[kirrian]

Um.... I can't believe no one has said it yet....  MINER!!!

What the heck are them fer?!  =P

[Gergination]

Um.... I can't believe no one has said it yet....  MINER!!!

What the heck are them fer?!  =P

You sound like one of them folk that don't know what woodcutting is either.

[VerdantSF]

(Metal bolts are, of course, reserved for firing towards the actual enemy. Bone bolts are marked as dual-use, but in practice always get spent in training.)

Wait, designating bolts for combat and training actually works now?  Or do you just set separate stockpiles, with training bolts a lot closer to the archery range and metal bolts near the fortress entrance?