Print

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

[Loud Whispers]

A room can be legendary with size one so long as it is it all a diamond cluster engraved by a master

Or built in an adamantine vein ;P
[Though that has... Certain risks.]

[murlocdummy]

A room can be legendary with size one so long as it is it all a diamond cluster engraved by a master

A legendary broom closet's going to be pretty hard to do, especially since most of my engravers are either dabbling or novice.  I'm going to have to go with quantity instead of quality for legendary rooms.

Also, I just found out what key I press in order to have squads wear uniforms outside of duty.  Problem is, do they wear the uniforms when the key says
u:    Inactive = Uniformed
or
u:    Inactive = Civ Clothes?

I'm thinking that when Inactive = Civ Clothes appears is when squads wear uniforms while they're inactive, but then again, it doesn't tell you, so I'm not so sure.

I figured out that PRI/Assignments will NOT tell you what the dwarf is wearing.  So, I'll need to go into my unit list, grind the names until I find the dwarf I'm looking for, then individually select their inventories and look at them.  A note about using Excel to decrease list grinding:  split up your dwarf names into sections of 19.  This will enable you to index dwarves by pages, allowing you to use the Pgup/Pgdown keys to more easily scroll through the list.  I figure my List Organization skill is no higher than Competent, but using that skill is alot better than leveling up your Where's Waldo skill in order to find things without having to use Excel spreadsheets.

I'm also having a few other issues:
Caravans are no longer leaving the depot for some reason.  No idea why.

[Starver]

So far, I've kept a veritable Noah's Arc of every single animal that I've acquired.  Each one sits in its own species' pasture in a neat, organized manner.

YAme&ICM5☼!

Spoiler: Ninjaed (click to show/hide)

Whenever I go into the Animals menu listing to slaughter them, though, I get a massive unhappy thought when I look at the total and nearly complete disorganization of the list.

Don't use that, then.  Use 'v' to view the animal stats by wandering your cursor over the map onto the animals concerned, go to (p)references and then you can toggle the "Ready for (s)laughter" between N and Y, if it's a tame non-pet.  I do this to choose to slaughter the least desirable animals, by directly comparing with the z-description from within the same (v)iew screens.

and just as frustrating when you want to move the pasture to make room for a wind power plant or something.

I've already mentioned my method.  Assuming a majority of creatures are pastured, go to that pasture you want to abandon and de-pasture the ones at the top, who are the residents of it.  Then go to the new pasture (or create one to go into) and scan down the list for animals not assigned to any other pastures/cages/tethers.  All the ones you just now released will be in that list (spread around your entire animal list; which, if it is anything like mine, is huge, but still easy to discover), although so will all animals you haven't yet pastured.  But then if you're working on a single species in a single pasture you can work the rest out easily enough.

I want to be able to wholesale slaughter large portions of my herd without having to grind through the entire list, looking for six or or seven animals at a time out of a list of hundreds.

Once you embrace the above, the problems will not be as you have just stated, but the near insta-Cluttering of your butchers' shops (you may want a score of them, with just as many butchers, if you have the population to do this) and then ensure that all the food-grade outpourings (both regular meat and the various offals/eyeballs/etc) are quickly [TSK]ed and moved into a suitable stockpile, the fat (especially) rendered as quickly as possible, the skins taken up by a set of dwarfs dedicated to fulfulling the tannery job-queue and the rest set to be dumped.  (Actually, bones and skulls can be used, but I tend to force-dump them just to get them out of the butchery shops, then unforbid them in order to make use of them for bone bolts/totems/whatever.  Nervous tissue is just plain useless, horns and similar can be used in craftworks (or decoration), hair/wool I think can be spun into yarns, after butchering (as well as after shearing, both of these tasks in a farmer's workshop) and there may be occasional other produce but I can't think what they are, but all the stuff that doesn't rot can wait.

All the stuff that does rot needs to be dealt with quickly (if only put into stockpiles, although setting up a number of kitchens (and set various dwarfs to Cooking duties) to deal with the meat/offal overflow and render the fat would be a good first step.  As is having the butchery in the open air (or at least exposed to the open air, after removing the roof above it), just in case things start rotting before they are all moved accordingly.  At least that's my approach.

Dwarf Therapist only allows you to have nicknames that are only so long.  It's not enough characters for me, so I end up having to go through the Unit list every single time I want do something like change my Doctor 6, which has just completed a Strange Mood, into a Stonecrafter 11.

Hence my three-character abbreviations, briefly mentioned.  Urist "XB4Mil6SCr12p" McUrist might be a crossbowdwarf (at least part of the time) with a decent Milling skill, a very good Stone Crafting skill and a pet.  But I'm not necessarily consistent in that.  And it looks awful when you get engravings of them and their actions on moodcrafts.

Unrelated Sidenote:  I just realized that mined ice will sublimate upon melting.

Yep, but if you embark upon a permanent glacier it should stick around (above and below ground, magma excepted) because the temperature is cold enough year-round, and once you build structures with it (walls, etc), it is impervious.  In fact, you could use it to hold magma back.  One of the little quirks (not guaranteed to last beyond too many verisons, but has been so for an awful long time already) is that constructed stuff does not burn even if it's flammable or melt even if its melting point is below the ambient (or, via applied !!MAGMA!!) temperature. 


As I am ninjaed, on the indicated point, here's something about manual room assignment.  If I'm making deliberate bedroom-assignments (or, indeed, other types of room, but usually it's a bedroom, or the bedroom is the base one from which the others offshoot), the colour of the dwarfs in the list indicates whether they have or have not got a room.  If I'm only marginally fussy but want to give everyone a room, as well as the nobles, I search for the nobles for the larger bedrooms I created, etc, but then I go to the array of identikit bedrooms that I've built (assigning them to be dug out, the bed built, the bed location designated and the designation getting fulfilled being the longest wait, game-time, in my experience) and just "q, make bed(r)room, {+/- to size}, <enter>, (a)ssign" then "+" on down to the first green name (or "*" to the first page with a green name, and "+" into it) then <enter>.  Names that are yellow (or dull yellow, when the cursor is not on them) already have a room, names that are green (brightest green when the cursor is on them) need one.

Go to the next bed, "q, r, etc" it and find the next dwarf.  Ok, so I've done it a lot, but it's an easy sequence to repeat.  Also, once you find that you've had to page-down (with "*") a certain number of times, you can automatically do that without concentrating the next time, because the list stays in the same order.  As long as you have beds to assign, keep on doing this.

Note: if you have married dwarfs, assigning one spouse to the bed will auto-assign their spouse as well.  They will become yellow in the list, but once you know this you don't need to know about specific spouses.  Children do not get assigned to the beds of their parents (if you've giving them one, it's their own) and babies do not get assigned to the beds either but don't technically need one while at this stage of their life.  But appear on the list as assignable (as per everyone else) and I tend to get them a bed as soon as I think about it, so that I don't have to worry about them as they start to mature.


It's perfectly possible to assign a dwarf to two (or more) bedrooms.  (Or throne rooms, or tombs.)  This does not (AFAIK) help their mood, any, so I wouldn't do it.  If you're wanting to assign a newly ennobled Baron, or somesuch, to a fancy room and find they already have one (being yellow on said list) use the (R)ooms menu (shift-R, as opposed to lower-case 'r' for the Reports) and you'll see a list of Bedrooms, Offices, Dining Rooms, etc[1].  If it's merely a built bed it'll be a "Bed", but if it was made to define a bedroom you get something like "Meager Quarters" (sorts from best of the kind to worst of the kind, within each kind) and either "No Owner" next to it or the name of the dwarf.  I forget now what happens with married couples.  I think both names are listed, but you might want to make note from of the spouse (if any) of your favoured dwarf and keep a look out for their name as well as the favoured one.  Scroll down the list (cursor up/down, or page up/down for page at a time) and then when you've found the room concerned "q" it to find the room-assigning screen, with Current Owner: (or owners) confirmed.

You can either (f)ree the room or (a)ssign to Nobody, then go to your absolutely fabulous new accommodation (assuming here that you've not just actually downgraded them from a blinking good room, by accident!) and assign the dwarf.  Or go back into the (R)ooms list, find the top-listed room (or the top-most one that you're willing to shove a less worthy dwarf out of, in the process) and then (q) into it to (a)ssign what you know is the most top-notch room you have in your power to provide.


Sorry, way too much description, but it might help.

[1] Inclusive of 'Zone's, workshops, farm-plots, etc, which you might find useful to know about, but some are a little too similar and unspecified.

[murlocdummy]

Information that will be extremely useful to users reading this thread.

Well, to be honest, the only useful piece of information that you gave me was hinting that items from animals that are capable of rotting will eventually cause miasma if not processed quickly enough.

I'm already using a residential apartment center layout.  By the time new migrants arrive, their rooms are already pre-made and mints are placed on their pillow.  I usually wait a minute or two until all of the migrants arrive before assigning the rooms to them.  The only thing that I haven't done is make a waterfall in my fort to clean them as they walk around.

As for the pastures, the vast majority of my fort's animals consist of
1.  Dogs of various kinds
2.  Cats
3.  Birds of various kinds
4.  Things that have four legs but are not dogs or cats

I prefer to not keep everything in one, single, easily Goblin-invadable pen.  The only exception to that is my Nest Box area, which consists of a pen to put birds into and a door that can be locked to prevent dwarves from taking the eggs before they hatch.  I even keep my war dog defense pens separated for fear of a particularly powerful goblin coming in and instantaneously wiping out my entire stock of dogs.

I find it much easier and safer to just slaughter everything that's not useful and cluttering up my Animals list.

Right now the following issues are bothering me:

1.  I've had an issue with caravans taking more than a month to leave after they've said that they've "embarked on their journey."  I've read that when the caravan trader goes insane, their guard does not, and ends up killing them.  My main questions about this are:  What do the guards do afterward?  Does the death of the psychopath that wouldn't leave my depot affect future caravans?

2.  I can't figure out what setting causes my squads to keep their armor when they're off duty:

u:    Inactive = Uniformed
or
u:    Inactive = Civ Clothes

I THINK it's u:    Inactive = Civ Clothes, since most of the keys in the game do what the tooltip says WHEN you press the key.  But then again, Toady made the interface all kinds of wrong and inconsistent, so I really don't know.

3.  I have a fortress of over 200 dwarves now, and the idle rate is still near zero.  Dwarf Therapist is telling me that more than a quarter of my dwarves are engaged in some sort of hauling activity to bins/barrels/stockpiles, etc.  I've decided to rearrange as many of my workshops as possible so that they're closer to the stockpiles.  What other ways can I improve the efficiency of hauling?

[Starver]

1.  I've had an issue with caravans taking more than a month to leave after they've said that they've "embarked on their journey."  I've read that when the caravan trader goes insane, their guard does not, and ends up killing them.  My main questions about this are:  What do the guards do afterward?  Does the death of the psychopath that wouldn't leave my depot affect future caravans?

I believe the guards get labelled as "Friendly".  Not player-controlled, but well-disposed to the player.  They may well wander off.  (Occasionally I've had a caravan guard not quite leave the map after the caravan does, sit as Friendly for a while and then wander off without me noticing.  Or at least I think that's what happened, I might be mistaken.)

The issue of the "caravan has embarked" but then a long wait could be because there's no exit from the map (e.g. a lock-in), but I think it's more likely that you (having given the impression that your fortress is thriving enough) have offloaded a whole load of trade-goods, and I think they need to be each picked up and packed, before everyone goes off.  I tend not to sell bins of things (just the things that were in the bins) and it can take quite a while to pack up.  Never yet had the caravan go insane on me within that (unmeasured) period of delay, though, only if I'd (truly!) accidentally managed to lock the caravan up in some part of my fort and not noticed that they weren't off the map.  Oh yes, and one time when I just locked the Trade Depot room for the hell of it.  That was just sheer cruelty.  In fact I was half way to setting up a way of drowning them, because however they'd upset me I seem to recall I was determined that they should die.  Can't remember how that situation concluded.  Very unlike me to even try it.  (Can't even remember their race.)

I think that caravans not leaving the map is treated the same, regardless of the cause of their cause of death (ambushes, killing, gone insane, etc, etc).  As an utter loss it will at least provoke a worse caravan load, next time, and if it's a non-Dwarf civilisation that sent it you're pushed a notch in the direction of war with them.  Shouldn't have immediate consequences, but don't make a habit of it.  (Unless that's what you're after.)

I may or may not have that completely right, but at least I used less words to describe it than usual.

[Sappho]

The only dwarves I assign rooms to are the nobles, or if I want a particular dwarf living in a particular area (farmers close to the farm, for example). It does not take months for dwarves to assign themselves their own rooms, and they do not get unhappy thoughts from not having a room unless they are ready to sleep and there isn't one available. I'm also pretty sure they don't get a happy thought from having a room unless they actually sleep in it, so assigning them one in advance shouldn't give them a happy thought (please correct me if I'm wrong on this one). Basically, as long as you don't care which room each dwarf gets, there's really no downside to leaving the rooms unassigned and letting them sort it out themselves, and it saves a lot of time.

[murlocdummy]

I believe the guards get labelled as "Friendly".  Not player-controlled, but well-disposed to the player.  They may well wander off.  (Occasionally I've had a caravan guard not quite leave the map after the caravan does, sit as Friendly for a while and then wander off without me noticing.  Or at least I think that's what happened, I might be mistaken.)

The issue of the "caravan has embarked" but then a long wait could be because there's no exit from the map (e.g. a lock-in), but I think it's more likely that you (having given the impression that your fortress is thriving enough) have offloaded a whole load of trade-goods, and I think they need to be each picked up and packed, before everyone goes off.  I tend not to sell bins of things (just the things that were in the bins) and it can take quite a while to pack up.  Never yet had the caravan go insane on me within that (unmeasured) period of delay, though, only if I'd (truly!) accidentally managed to lock the caravan up in some part of my fort and not noticed that they weren't off the map.  Oh yes, and one time when I just locked the Trade Depot room for the hell of it.  That was just sheer cruelty.  In fact I was half way to setting up a way of drowning them, because however they'd upset me I seem to recall I was determined that they should die.  Can't remember how that situation concluded.  Very unlike me to even try it.  (Can't even remember their race.)

I think that caravans not leaving the map is treated the same, regardless of the cause of their cause of death (ambushes, killing, gone insane, etc, etc).  As an utter loss it will at least provoke a worse caravan load, next time, and if it's a non-Dwarf civilisation that sent it you're pushed a notch in the direction of war with them.  Shouldn't have immediate consequences, but don't make a habit of it.  (Unless that's what you're after.)

I may or may not have that completely right, but at least I used less words to describe it than usual.

Problem 1 of 3 solved, thank you!  So apparently unloading 50000☼ on a caravan causes it to to sit around and count its profits before they leave, which can take a while.  That takes a huge load off my mind.

I recently got sieged by a force larger than any I have ever seen before.  Two squads of about a dozen jabberer crossbowmen each came and rained arrows INTO my walls by standing atop a hanging cliff.  They only stopped when they ran out of ammo and killed a whole bunch of my guys, then ran away before I could annihilate them with my traps.  I hadn't a clue that they could attack you from a different Z-level.  One of my civilian crossbowmen capped a few of them before they left.

Anyway, that brings me to a reitteration of my second problem.  I still don't know what setting causes my units to still wear their armor outside of duty.

Also, I'm finding it quite troublesome that about 99-100% of my dwarves are all still very busy despite the fact that I shut down nearly all of my industry.  So far, the only thing running is my farm system, which consists of 8 10x10 plots and associated milling and processing duties.  It's not a very profitable business, since the only thing I really do with it is use it for making prepared food, drinks, and bags to store stuff in.  I don't sell any of my grown produce at all, and usually buy barrels of drinks whenever my brewers can't keep up with demand.  I ended up shutting down my prepared food industry, since I have several thousand meals in chalk and diorite pots now.  The dwarves are still running around, hauling goods, and I'm not sure why.  It's preventing my gigantic wall around the entire map from being built, as well as a host of other issues.  I'm still engaged in my Livestock Final Solution, but I have 3 butchers currently working, and between 0 to 2 are active at any given moment.  Around 50-70 dwarves are storing things in bins/barrels/stockpiles, etc. at any given moment according to Dwarf Therapist.  Any ideas on what to do?

[Delta Foxtrot]

I hadn't a clue that they could attack you from a different Z-level.
...
Around 50-70 dwarves are storing things in bins/barrels/stockpiles, etc. at any given moment according to Dwarf Therapist.  Any ideas on what to do?

It's a 3d game inside a 2d interface. Not that hard once you get the hang of it.

If you don't want all your dwarves hauling stuff, turn off some or all of their hauling labours. If you want to build a huge wall (or much anything really), give your dwarves instead masonry labour (or carpenter or metalsmith, depending on the material used). Though if you do give your unskilled peons masonry/carpentry/metalsmithing, make sure that your mason/carpenter/smith workshops are either given to specific dwarves (ie.  legendaries/other high skilled dwarfs), or have minimum skill limits for dwarves using them. You need a manager to do this. Otherwise instead of having your legendary mason churning out masterwork furniture, you have Urist McIdiot making lumps of stone that look like something resembling a chair while your legendary mason gets lashed in two by a goblin ambush.

It's not out of the ordinary to have most of your fort on hauling duty. The amount of dwarves you need to run any single industry is fairly small (rather have one or two highly skilled professionals than 10 dabbling). One legendary dwarf manufacturing anything churns out stuff faster than a single hauler can haul it to an appropriate stockpile. I'm not telling you how you should play the game but usually I see people having a small number of professionals per given field ('small' here can be anything from a single stonecrafter to 20 glassmakers working in a huge magma glassforge complex), military that varies from a single champion to your entire fort, and the rest are on builder/hauler duty (so you get stuff moved and those huge walls/castles built as fast as you can designate them).

Seeing how you're fairly new to the game, you could take a dozen or two of those dwarfs and see about expanding your knowledge on different industries/military. Get a proper textile industry going (with dyes and everything), or mine all the ore you can get and get crazy on the metal business. Or if you have only tried melee or ranged combat, try them both. Recruit a squad or two and start training (and producing the prerequisite arms and armour).

[Nyxalinth]

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. I've just seen the same person complain about the interface over and over again in this thread, even going so far as to suggest that Toady has intentionally made the game difficult to use and that he has some obligation to make it easier, and I've seen so many people make the same complaint, as though they had paid good money for the game and felt entitled to an easier control system... The community has changed a lot over the years, a lot of newcomers have been drawn in as the game has developed more, and I feel like the general attitude on the forums is moving away from the former near-universal gratitude for this free gem of a game and more towards the mainstream judgement of the game as though it were a polished, finished product for which we had all paid good money.

I totally understand being frustrated with the learning curve of the game at times - I was a newbie once too. But when I see people "threatening" to stop playing altogether if it doesn't get easier and attacking Toady as though he were a bad developer, I get frustrated, and at the end of a crummy weekend I guess I just feel like that needs to be said.

What problem do people have with the interface?  It's not *that* difficult to use, they ought to try using vi.  Without arrow keys.  Everything is menu-ed, what more do the gripers want?

(I will admit, I do use Dwarf Therapist for job setting, means I can set jobs for everybody with fewer clicks/keypresses.)

(Also, for the record, I am a DF n00b.)

I get tired of the griping too.  This isn't Minecraft, it isn't that easy, and hell, the game took me three tutorials and a video tutorial to learn, and I am not a stupid person.  But I love this game, been playing since early 2009.  I don't much like the new military system--just really recently got to where I can be half-decent at it--but otherwise, it's fun.  I turn off or disregard stuff I haven't felt like being bothered with yet, and I'm fine (don't feel up to fiddling with aquifers just yet!).

I'm looking forward to the new version, and when I have the cash, I'm sending toady a donation.  He deserves it.

[Loud Whispers]

Easy, and DF are two things rarely spoken in one sentence. Beware noobs, for your !FUN! shall be hard fought, and heartily enjoyed!

[murlocdummy]

I hadn't a clue that they could attack you from a different Z-level.
...
Around 50-70 dwarves are storing things in bins/barrels/stockpiles, etc. at any given moment according to Dwarf Therapist.  Any ideas on what to do?

It's a 3d game inside a 2d interface. Not that hard once you get the hang of it.

If you don't want all your dwarves hauling stuff, turn off some or all of their hauling labours. If you want to build a huge wall (or much anything really), give your dwarves instead masonry labour (or carpenter or metalsmith, depending on the material used). Though if you do give your unskilled peons masonry/carpentry/metalsmithing, make sure that your mason/carpenter/smith workshops are either given to specific dwarves (ie.  legendaries/other high skilled dwarfs), or have minimum skill limits for dwarves using them. You need a manager to do this. Otherwise instead of having your legendary mason churning out masterwork furniture, you have Urist McIdiot making lumps of stone that look like something resembling a chair while your legendary mason gets lashed in two by a goblin ambush.

It's not out of the ordinary to have most of your fort on hauling duty. The amount of dwarves you need to run any single industry is fairly small (rather have one or two highly skilled professionals than 10 dabbling). One legendary dwarf manufacturing anything churns out stuff faster than a single hauler can haul it to an appropriate stockpile. I'm not telling you how you should play the game but usually I see people having a small number of professionals per given field ('small' here can be anything from a single stonecrafter to 20 glassmakers working in a huge magma glassforge complex), military that varies from a single champion to your entire fort, and the rest are on builder/hauler duty (so you get stuff moved and those huge walls/castles built as fast as you can designate them).

Seeing how you're fairly new to the game, you could take a dozen or two of those dwarfs and see about expanding your knowledge on different industries/military. Get a proper textile industry going (with dyes and everything), or mine all the ore you can get and get crazy on the metal business. Or if you have only tried melee or ranged combat, try them both. Recruit a squad or two and start training (and producing the prerequisite arms and armour).

I see, so hauling is simply the national pasttime of the Dwarven countries.  That might explain why I see a great deal of hauling of armor that the dwarves are already wearing.  I once had an issue with my broker/manager trying to strip himself of all of his armor by placing it all in my armor storage bins.  I'm assuming that such random actions are commonplace and don't amount to anything of interest.  I was afraid that if I try and mess with the hauling labors, it would cause my industries to grind to a halt, with excessively cluttered workshops and the like.

Well, it doesn't actually solve my third problem, per se, but it does alleviate some of my apprehension regarding my exceedingly busy dwarves.

Now, if someone could answer my second problem, then that would be just peachy.  Really, I don't think it's that difficult of a question, but since I can't seem to get my dwarves to stop hauling long enough to make them put on armor, it's extremely difficult for me to try and find out on my own.  I'd really like it if a more experienced player could answer my query and put my mind at ease.

[Loud Whispers]

Armour is heavy, and slows dwarves down, when not on active duty, they will place them in a suitable armour bin (placing an armour, weapons and ammo stockpile in the barracks is a very good idea, or coffers and cabinets and designating them as an armoury). When on duty, they will automatically nab their gear, and go to training/war/guard duty/stomp duty.

[Newbunkle]

Anyway, that brings me to a reitteration of my second problem.  I still don't know what setting causes my units to still wear their armor outside of duty.

This has been a real pain for me recently. The setting you're looking for is in the military screen (m) under schedules (s). I think it's set to Inactive = Uniformed by default, but they don't seem to wear the stuff until they've been given an order first.

I've had some guys training for a while, and it was only when I ordered them to station by the entrance that they went to grab some armour. Worse, I changed their orders to attack before some arrived. When the goblins were dead and I cancelled their orders, some of them dropped pieces of armour on the ground before returning to work. I assume they were going to put them on when they arrived at their station, but I've no idea.

That reminds me. There are a couple of things I've been meaning to ask, and I might as well ask them in this thread.

What do the Individual Eq and Squad Eq options mean when you're setting a barracks? The wiki page doesn't say.

Also, if a zoo overlaps a jail, can dwarves be locked in the animal cages or do they count as unavailable?

[Delta Foxtrot]

What do the Individual Eq and Squad Eq options mean when you're setting a barracks? The wiki page doesn't say.

"A barracks can be defined as a place to train, sleep, store squad equipment, store individual equipment or any combination of the above".

It gives your soldiers the permission to store their equipment in the barracks if you have any suitable containers there.

[Newbunkle]

What do the Individual Eq and Squad Eq options mean when you're setting a barracks? The wiki page doesn't say.

"A barracks can be defined as a place to train, sleep, store squad equipment, store individual equipment or any combination of the above".

It gives your soldiers the permission to store their equipment in the barracks if you have any suitable containers there.

Aha, thanks. Doesn't seem like it would be useful to me since I always leave them equipped anyway.

That info really belongs on the barracks page.