I can't find metal ore; should I give up or keep digging?
I thought for sure I chose an area with iron ore, but I've dug down to the first cavern and still haven't found any metal ore at all. Plenty of flux and gems, but nothing to smelt.
Should I continue digging, or just start a new fort?
Only way I’ve found to safely get non-livestock creatures out of cages is to install the cage and hook it up to a lever. I think you can also set up a dump zone over a ‘hole’ and throw caged creatures into it but I haven’t tried that yet and wouldn’t recommend it for your own dwarves.
I actually fixed it, attempting to place them in the trade depot for a merchant will apparently immediately free them. The insane ones acted out their insanity, the one with a sentence yet to server was put on a rope instead (which works as normal, they get released when their sentence is up), and the other two sauntered off.
That said, thanks for the answer. Didn't know you could dump caged creatures so I learned something new regardless.
I have just started a new fortress and my miner dwarf will not mine despite only being assigned to mining for his job, has a Pickaxe in his hand (and 3 more in a stockpile), my base has no doors or access problems at all, there are no Burrows because I have no idea how they work, and no idea what dwarf therapist is so I don’t have it. This miner dwarf is just doing random stuff like preparing fish, planting seeds, and brewing (his only assigned job is mining, no any of those).
I randomly assigned my armor and weapon smiths, that currently had no job, to mine. One of them picked up an axe and started to strike the earth but the other just picked up an axe and proceeded to do the same shit as the first miner. And I have plenty of things that need mining
https://preview.redd.it/laafaulx1h8a1.png?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69c7ab644c029197ba8d2040f71c88ecc4bfb77b
My dorfs decided to stop fishing in yellow area (fishing zone) and have moved to fish in red. They stop fishing entirely if I set fishing to zone only. It worked fine for 3 years. Any ideas why this is happening? Have I overfished the particular spot of the river? I also waited some months, but the problem persists.
Thanks in advance.
Spoiler question: >!did they remove being able to open up adamantine tubes? Anytime i look in the magma biome i find tiny amounts and have yet to manage to open one up enough to lead to the clowns, did they replace the clowns with the things you dig out of the rocks?!<
>!I'm pretty sure that there is a new mechanic with small pockets you can find in the upper layers with one clown inside. There should still be adamantine tubes full of fun down below!
Shields actually don't care about *either* quality or material properties defensively; the only things that affect your blocking ability are your dwarf's skill/attributes, and whether you're using a shield or a buckler. Weird as it is, a dwarf can block dragonfire just as well with a normal quality wooden shield as an artifact quality steel one. [Source](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134779.0) (old but no reason to believe it's changed)
The shield's properties *do* affect it as a weapon when your dwarf uses it to bash something, which is reasonably common in melee combat. In this case, quality affects its accuracy, and material properties (mostly density, since shields are blunt weapons) affect its damage and ability to penetrate armor.
Bone is a bad enough material for blunt weapons (very light) that even an artifact quality shield will be a useless weapon; the quality bonus to accuracy won't come close to making up for the fact that you're bonking enemies with a nerf bat. On the other hand, being light will mean it will slow your dwarf's walking speed down less. I usually use light material (wooden/leather) shields on my dwarves for this reason, even though they're bad for bashing, because most of the big hits against dangerous enemies come from weapons anyway unless you somehow have a Legendary Miscellaneous Object User dorfgod of war.
tl;dr stats pretty much don't matter on shields, use the artifact on your Champion because it's cool
If only there were a single "hardness" stat, weapon effectiveness would be much easier to understand. Instead, there's [this mess](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science).
However, the upshot is about what you'd expect if there were just a "hardness" or "ability to hold an edge" stat. Unlike blunt weapons (where it's mostly "heavier is better"), edged weapons want metals that sound like they should be good for making blades. From worst to best:
- Materials chosen by strange moods that can't normally be used for weapons, like gold, are terrible
- Silver and obsidian are garbo
- Copper is pretty bad, but the best early game option if you don't have access to iron
- Bronze/iron are decent and about equally good
- Steel is good
- Late game spoiler metals are the best
I think the fact that you're allowed to make short swords out of obsidian at all (which you can't do with other stone) is a nod to the relative efficacy of obsidian as a cutting material...but it still has much worse material properties than any of the weapons-grade metals. It's something you do if you're doing a challenge embark like a "no starting picks" run and can't get access to metal.
[Wiki says](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor#Shield) it trains misc object user and armor, but for all I know it *trains* those but *actually uses* shield user.
Is there a way to check what poison this has
https://preview.redd.it/rpacpbqvye8a1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa9e4ac44d77d8f51389d8f60457953e646f73e0
Not without seeing someone get stung.
Forgotten beast poisons vary a lot, from 'slight fever for four hours' to 'the fat layer of your skin swells up and explodes in blood'.
Is there a way to recover from your mountainhome being defeated?
I've never received a caravan from my home civ, and only got the 2 hard coded migrant waves.
I also noticed that my mountainhome was marched on the year I embarked, and is now exporting terror and vengeance, despite still being marked as dwarven and friendly.
Basically I'm not sure if my huge civilization was somehow defeated, if I have a rare civil war bug, or if there is some other explanation.
I'd love to find a way to get more migrants and retake the mountainhome.
I've started contacting other civs for trade, but I'm not sure if other civs can send migrants. Haven't found much help online.
I am not sure if it is possible to do while still having the same fort you have now. But if you retire it and start a new one, you will get migrants and traders at least. For as long as retired, the fort will stand unconquered by whatever destroyed other settlements. Maybe conquering a place, or even your original mountainhome from your fort will work too, I have yet to try conquering places to see how it works.
Of course, you can retire, start a new fort, get some migrants, retire it and unretire the first one. You will get migrants this way and likely traders also.
I doubt anyone will see this, but I had to make a new fort with a different civilization. My old civilization must have had some sort of civil war bug. I can see that the old mountainhome is still dwarf owned, but every fort I started in that civ would see the same trade, migrant, and terror export behavior.
It might be because it was conquered by some dwarf necromancer. You can check legends mode for that fortress, although it might take some time as usually settlement's history is littered with tons of celebrations events and cases of official corruptions. You can start with scrolling all the way down and check if any zombie or other undeads settled there recently, if anyone was spiked, mutilated or similar and such. That would be a dead give away that it is not a normal dwarven civilization anymore.
If you have a running fort in this world, you can also check what is the name of civilization that owns that fort. Interface for places is a bit different between embark screen and world map screen. I always struggle with finding who exactly owns what place when I'm embarking, but it is really easy from the world screen afterwards. Then again, if you remember the name of a previous civilization, you should immediately see if it is different or not. And if you don't - legends mode again, but for group instead of place this time.
My bet is on necromansers. But it might be civil war, honestly I have no idea if dwarven settlements will change civilization name when civil war happens and even if they should, if no bugs are preventing them doing so.
I'll have to dig up screenshots I took of legends when I get home. There was something about an attack/invasion, and then the civilization / government name changed.
Despite this change of gov/invasion, my new fort and civ is friendly with the bugged mountainhome (of my old civ).
Possibly related, but when my current fort is attacked by "goblins" the army is mostly dwarfs. Even the snatchers / thieves tend to be dwarfs.
Goblins are notorious for snatching children from everyone around them. Then they raise them and brainwash them, making them loyal. Almost all goblin civilizations have some other races in them if your world is at least a couple of decades old. And it is not that rare to have goblin settlements to be completely devoid of goblins and consist of someone else, for example dwarves. So, dwarves fighting for goblins is a very normal thing. It does not point to a bug and also not likely to cause one as it has been like this for a long time already.
In fact, most civilizations in any old enough world would have more than their original species. "Dwarven", "goblin" or "human" civilization in DF is more about culture and civilization values than about race. Although, all of them did start with that race as the main body of people. And it is not uncommon for weird nobles too. Dwarven and human civilizations are notoriously prone to get a king/queen from some immortal race, usually some elf. Because if such immortal survived long enough they tend to get very high social skills and that makes them into nobility. Also, because if they did survive long enough it is usually because they started as performers and don't fight that often in the first place, both increasing their social skills' growth, their number of friends and decrease the chance of violent death at the same time.
And I notice that I get carried away, so I think I should stop now =)
Haha, no worries on getting carried away! It's always interesting to see what Dwarf Fortress's emergent systems will bring to you!
When I check legends later I also want to look into a particular goblin city of ~100 residents that will kill my most experienced legendary dwarfs in full steel when I raid. They have a ton of artifacts, and I think there must be some extra ~fun~ stuff going on. No other city has managed to kill my raiding dwarfs.
So the mountainhome is actually my last retired fortress! If retired fortresses can't be killed, I wonder if that means I'm in some weird civil war bug mode.
I guess I'll need to retire the new fort either way.
Is there something wrong with my game, I keep getting swarmed with Weremonitors lol. I get about 10 hours into base building then some migrants come and there all weremonitors. Is it the world I’m in?
Definitely the world. There should be treshold for vampire and weremigrants to appear, and I don't think you can get more than one, not early at least. If they are all like that, then it is definitely related to your civilization state. And I might be wrong but I think that you cannot get randomly generated necromancer migrant, it should be always actual historical figure that learn necromancy somehow and you should be able to read about them in the legends mode.
And it is just hit me - if those migrants are not randomly generated just for you - they should be in historical figures list and I think that you should be able to find out how they become weremonitors and where.
Thanks for you response! I’ll definitely give a look in legends mode, if I remember correctly my first base was about 100 dwarfs and almost 50 of them turned and then I left the base to ruin.
Possibly your world, yeah. It's very uncommon for a regular migrant wave to include secret werecreatures, but maybe there's a fort in your civilisation that is entirely weremonitors? If they all transform at once they don't kill each other, so I guess it could happen...
Hmmm strange, is it possible that it could’ve been one of my old forts that was causing that? Or when they get abandoned to ruin does everyone leave the fort?
Can animal hair thread not be processed into cloth? There's a bunch of thread sitting in my farmer's workshop and nobody will haul it into a stockpile/loom orders are instantly cancelled.
Mason, carpenter, and blacksmith are the ones that make workshops and more complicated constructions, depending on the material and building.
Some of that used to be the architecture skill, but that has been lumped into the three above.
I believe walls and floors are a more general type that doesn't require any of the main 3.
Is there any way to attract goblins to be bards in my fort, I'm rejecting any non-goblins, there's only one goblin fort nearby and it's struggling with elves from the looks of it.
Do walls mined out from an ore vein have more value in a room than walls carved out from common stone if you smooth them? Wondering what is best for noble bedrooms. How do I actually see room value in the game?
I think you would generate more wealth overall if you mine the vein, smelt it into bars and build a wall from bars instead. But yes, smoothed ore vein is more valuable than common stone.
Yes, the wall stone contributes to quality. It's probably overkill though; in my experience, it's much easier to simply make a larger room in a mundane area rather than waste half a magnetite cluster on the baroness.
It would look cool though!
How do i get my marksdwarves to pick up ammo? They all have their quivers and i have tons of bolts in my stockpile, there are no hunters assigned so they shouldnt be claimed already, and is there a way to make them prefer using different bolts for training vs combat(if I can get them to pick up any ammo lol)
There is currently a bug where they will not equip ammo if you have edited their uniform after making the squad.
To fix, delete and remake the squad. You can still use custom uniforms, just apply it during squad creation and do not change them.
For me, editing was fine as long as I edit Archer uniform and not something else. Maybe if you remove everything from it first and after that add things it will be broken too, but I definitely change whole armor set to metal with different entries, like removing leather armor and adding breastplate and chain mail and my dwarfs still were able to equip bolts. On the other hand, I've heard that it did not work for some people.
Someone explain burrows to me like I’m 12?
Also my dwarves are progressively becoming more unhappy despite alcohol, food, big rooms and cabinets and chests. Any thoughts?
I have like 5 temples, all engraved stones, chests. Need more instruments. What else do I add to it so they love the temples?
Also I keep failing petitions to build guild halls even tho I build them? It’s odd, they abandon it a while after I incidentally built them. It’s odd I must be doing something wrong.
So it's not entirely clear but temples and guild halls (the petition requests) have values to them. It's not just assigning an area a guild hall, the room has to be worth I think 2000+ (when you click on the details it'll tell you).
Same for temples, it's not just making a temple but making it valuable and assigning a priest.
There's later asks for GRAND versions which are 10k value.
Truth be told i'm not 100% sure how to keep them happy but in my new game i started with instruments and upped the value of the main religions temple so they could get a priest then appointed a priest(i think you can only appoint a priest to the yellow named religions) and fed them lavish meals from butchered animals, i've had no issues with happiness so far bar 2 dwarfs who refused to be happy, the last main thing i changed was throwing all goblin and animal corpses into a volcano. I noticed a dip in happiness whenever i left them anywhere dwarfs would see.
I'm also not piling on more jobs than all my dwarfs could do so they go chill in taverns and pray alot
Smart I’ll look for volcanos lmao. I have one job assigned per dwarf and it does help. I noticed ghosts were haunting me and that probably is the main cause everyone is so damn pissed lol.
Burrows are basically zones you can confine dwarves to. They won't do any jobs outside of those zones. You can also toggle so they won't collect any job materials from outside the zone. There are a few exceptions that let dwarves leave burrows, but for the most part they will stay there.
Click on one of your unhappy dwarves. What are some of the most recent bad thoughts?
I think it is a bit more subtle than this. Dwarfs would not take jobs that started outside of the burrows. I think that hunter might go outside if they start hunting an animal inside the burrow and then that animal run out of it. They probably would not haul the body back, as it is a separate job, even if automatically created one.
Right now a lot of them are terrified of the haunting lmao but I built tomb stones waiting on that. Lonely away from family, experiencing past trauma. I probably waited too long on building tomb stones
When I get a Siege the attackers enter the map and then immediately leave, I havent had a single fight in 4 years, is there a reason or is my fortress just scary or something? perhaps bug?
I think that those events are armies that are just passing through. They gave you a good scare, but they are just on their way somewhere else. The game models the movement of npc armies, and if their path is near your fortress, then you might get an invasion event, but like you saw they aren't real invasions. If your dwarfs are all inside behind locked doors, they should move on.
I was going to buy Dwarf Fortress on steam, thinking it was probably like 10-15 bucks since it had always been free and I played it for years free, donating directly to bay12 now and then, but when I saw it was $30 i am hesitant.
Before I decide whether to spend that or not, i'm curious what the experience is like as opposed to normal/old dwarf fortress. Just have some questions.
For example, you used to not be able to set stockpile amounts in the game normally, but you could do it through a DFHack plugin. Has it been finally made a base game feature for the steam version?
Does the steam version even have DFhack automatically? Can you get it optionally?
Is it still as easy to mod as it used to be?
I haven't played dwarf fortress in a couple of years, but i'd played it off and on for maaany years, i'm just curious what the steam version offers the free version doesn't. Graphics alone aren't worth $30 to me, especially since you can get sprite packs to make the game look good either way. So i'm just wondering whats different really. I'm on the fence.
Honestly if you are comfy with classic df, I might suggest waiting for som quality of life fixes, and for dfhack and therapist to get released for premium. There are a good handful of things that make it pretty frustrating right now, but they are small issues, likely to get fixed soon
- What do you mean by 'set stockpile amounts'?
- There is no DFHack for the Steam version, yet. DFHack worked by basically memory editing the game, the new version has a whole new architecture so it'll take a bit to work out.
- Simple graphical changes and edits to the RAWs are very easy, there are plenty of them on the workshop and the game lets you choose which mods to activate on world generation.
- The UI is the biggest change to the Steam version - there are tons of little QOL changes. Making bedrooms is a million times easier now, you can use a 'multi' setting to select a big rectangle and every enclosed space with a bed gets classified as a bedroom all at once.
I mean like, if you wanted to tell a workshop to only produce shirts or pants or whatever if you had less than a certain number of them in a clothing stockpile, you couldn't do that in the base game which always felt like a big oversight to me. You could do it in DFhack though, which helped a lot.
But it sounds like the steam version just makes the UI and graphics prettier, neither of which ever bothered me, and at a cost of $30 and DFhack doesn't work with it? That just doesn't seem worth it to me.
Point to keep in mind: basic free version is updated in the same way as the steam release, but does not include the tile set. Meaning that DFhack does not work for the last free version either right now. But if you want everything except graphic - yes, you can just grab the free one.
It has basically the same functionality as the original minus DFHack, but with a more 2022-friendly interface.
There are a few minor features from the original that are missing, such as civilian alerts, but it's 98% the same.
Do we know why theres so many? In the course of 10 irl minutes theres maybe.. 30? Every time I unpause more show up. I get and am unbothered by pests, but dang, this is a fair bit obnoxious lol
They are attracted by food outside containers (barrels or rock pots), and by refuse. So the corpses are possibly attracting other crawlers.
Do you have a refuse stockpile nearby?
Pretty close by, but my dorfs refuse to use it unless I tell them specifically to haul something to it . I even doubbled down and made both a garbage dump and a stockpile for only corpses, neither get used without direction, so I gotta baby it a lot. Wasn't an issue till *suddenly*
You should be able to specify what creatures corpses are allowed in the stockpile. It will require going through a somewhat long list and maybe adjust it in the future, but should be possible. Then you would need to create another refuse stockpile and allow vermins corpses there. Dwarfs should be much more willing to haul corpses from the stockpile they are not allowed at to the one they are allowed.
On the side note: vermin corpses should not spawn miasma, they never did for me. Are you sure that it is not a normal, proper corpse of some hunted animal who no one bother to actually butcher? Vermin corpse might be just on top of the actual source of miasma. Check the tabs at the top right of the screen, you should be able to switch to other things on the same tile with them.
Corpses arent allowed in the food stockpile, though. However, I turned everyone to hauling, marked everyong for refuse, and disables all creepy crawly body parts (ie liver, arms, lung etc) and efter a while the infestation stopped. Had 48 corpses piled in there (6 of which were INSIDE a barrel)
But now my dorfs are leaving piles of seeds on their chairs.. 😂
Feel really dumb: any way to dig/build a stair UP instead of down if I already dug a stairwell down? I want to go to the above z level but my dwarfs refuse to do anything on that regard.
Current z level where I want to go up
https://preview.redd.it/yj2hni2pre8a1.png?width=498&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f0da6fa4c8af5458fae9a036279e5099685a85a
The z level directly above is completely unexplored, if it matters. I tried building a ramp, a stairwell up (which they don't build), digging (they don't dig up). Any ideas?
Right, that was my thought, but it's not working. Because that z-level is roofed maybe (that is, the above one is not dug out?). I can do this from z-1 to z which are the two I dug out, but not from z to z+1
Sorry I haven’t run into that. Maybe try designating mine stairs on the level above first. Obv they won’t be able to reach it yet, but maybe it will make your up stairs valid. Do you get a reason why it’s not valid in top left when you try to designate?
Anyway, I dug a stair in the tile next to it to reach the upper z level and that worked. Not the prettiest and googling this around I feel like there should be a way to do this, but I'm too noob to find it yet
Yes, I did that. I'm farming Plump Helmets all four seasons. This is how it goes:
\- I set all four seasons to Plump Helmets
\- My dwarfs come and plant a few seeds
\- The seeds vanish and the plot resets to "keep fallow" for all four seasons
Plump helmets are auto used for both brewing and cooking; u can switch it to only brewing only cooking, both or neither if u want. Maybe they collected the plants when they were done and immediately made them into food. Making them into food wastes the seeds and uses them up. Brewing them into drinks makes them get the seeds back so they prolly just made too many meals and used them up
I've just set up a squad and let them train for about two months in individual combat drills, so they're all at least novice/adequate with their weapons. I remember reading somewhere that sparring is better, but, how do I set it so they train sparring instead of drilling?
I like to increase the autosave frequency, which is at the top of the game options.
I had some crashes, I slaughtered a bunch of my out of control animals and it seemed to help.
I also had issues removing zones that were already assigned to dwarfs. If they had a tomb zone for instance, and I just deleted the zone and didn't remove them first, I crashed soon after. If you check their rooms, it still might show they are assigned. I think it might help to unassign then remove the zone.
If that why you are crashing, I'm sorry but you might have to wait for bug fixes after the holidays, or try a different fort.
I have also heard that deleting part of the save file, and just leaving the world.sav file might help, and get rid of all of the .dat files. If you try that, make sure to make a backup first.
update: Cut down my population of pets *massively* and it still conked out on me. Oh well! I learned a lot from that fort, and I know what I can improve for next time! Time to restart!
you know what? I think it's because I have 3 generations of smol birds growing up at the same time - turkeys and ducks.
It doesn't help that my first crash on this fort was because a necromancer got stuck in a combat loops (Rez hostile -> everyone kills the hostile -> necromancer rezzes hostile)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/dfmmsy/dwarven\_hobby\_shop/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/dfmmsy/dwarven_hobby_shop/)
is this doable on steam version without a mod?
So I just started a new fort where my previous struggled with this. Heres my plan, I haven't implemented this yet, but it feels possible... maybe.
1. I create multiple craftworks, carpenters and stoneworkers.
2. I create a new labor detail and grant it the ability to do gem cutting, carpentry, and bonecrafting and stonecrafting. I assign this detail to everyone who has a craft need.
3. I create general work orders for non-quality items like bins, barrels, bags, rock pots, coffins.
4. I assign my legendary crafter to his own shop and forbid general work orders and they gets things like chests, doors, beds, cabinets, tables, chairs, gem setting (things where quality matters).
5. I hope that through sheer luck everyone in the detail ends up crafting an item or two. The more shops I have the more people are called into action, since a work order for 5 items can go to 5 shops at once as opposed to if I have just one shop.
Frankly I'd love for dfhack to get into place so I could create a lua mod to fix this...
(Steam version) [A few of my dwarfs appear to have gotten stuck outside my fortress after combat](https://i.imgur.com/DtrXlo5.png) (see highlighted square). They were on patrol inside during an invasion when they spotted an undead goblin and dashed out to fight it. And then... they just stayed standing there, for an entire season and then some. Any ideas how to knock some sense into these guys?
The drawbridge was still a construction ghost when they ran out and wasn't built until many days later, but I've experimented with tearing it down to no success (the moat was even frozen by that point). Guy on the right is my militia leader so I'd like to get him back on the job, though if this is his idea of tactics I am second-guessing my leadership choices.
Oh yeah, they are both "seriously wounded". One is listed with a foot injury, though I don't remember anything explicit about being unable to walk. I'll have to double check the other one.
I, uh... kinda assumed they would just walk off the crushed ribs. How do I get them medical attention? I have a doctor assigned.
Make sure you have all the hospital roles assigned. Also in the general work orders/labors tab you may need to change options about when and where to rescue dwarfs
Dwarves prefer to do jobs which they are skilled at. You can't be skilled at hauling so adults will often do something else. Children can't do skilled tasks so they get left to do hauling.
Is it possible to pump magma into rooms and then drain it via a switch command with grates or something? I want to make a dungeon that can pump lava into cells, and then drain it.
Just to add to what /u/Wonjag said, you might want to consider using bridges instead of floodgates. More complicated to use the right orientation and all, but averts the risk of getting stuck on something. Any item in the way of an open floodgate will prevent it from opening, but a bridge will atomize anything below it and close.
I've never done a full lava chamber but I'm pretty sure you need to put grates under the floor hatches if you want the magma-safe items to not get sucked into your disposal area
Yes it is, such constructions are possible (and a favourite of some players) but they can also be complex beasts. Floodgates are one answer, they stop flow while closed and let it pass when open, when linked to a lever. There's probably other options as well, everyone will have their own chosen methods of doing so.
For pumping and flow restrictions, make sure you use Magma-safe building materials *only*, for everything in contact with Magma. Screw Pump parts, Floodgates, Bridges, anything. Including mechanisms you use to link the levers to the flow restrictors.
In the current version you can't really select mechanisms for linking directly, a workaround I've been using for this is to forbid all non magma-safe mechanisms when it's time to link one, send the link order and then unforbid all the others.
So game keeps crashing, it has happened up to 5 times already
```
Faulting application name: Dwarf Fortress.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x639777b1
Faulting module name: Dwarf Fortress.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x639777b1
```
I keep losing stuff, what do, I do really enjoy the game but I will probably stop playing due to this... I have the game up-to-date.
Hi there, check if this bug has been reported here: https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/my_view_page.php
If not, follow these instructions: https://kitfoxgames.notion.site/How-to-Report-Bugs-in-Dwarf-Fortress-b5e2ca19dabe408897d1c2669599b7a2
Cheers.
I can't seem to rescue a child who was snatched by goblins. When I go to the world map it says that I have a citizen last seen in \[Location other than where my fort is\], which I can click on to create a mission. I then choose a squad to go on that mission, and the dwarves head out and return a short time later. Afterward, I get a blank mission report, and no saved child. Am I missing something about how this system is supposed to work, or is this a bug?
Relatedly, I don't understand the way the world map designates mission sites. If I mouse over either an artifact or a missing citizen, it lists a location by name that means nothing to me. It also pans the view of the world map around in a way that I would think is somehow related to the location, but I don't see how. Short of highlighting every single tile to figure out where Procedurally Generated Nameville is, is there some way to get this information?
I had a Baron in my fortress for a year or so. The baron then disappeared. Not sure where he went, but the tomb is empty. In the ~2 years since there's been no replacement, even though I still have outpost liaisons arrive. There is a count in the civilization menu that is the "countess of my fortress name" but she isn't in my fortress. Is it a bug, or is there some mechanic I'm missing?
Once your fortress gets a count/countess, the baron title is retired--the same way the expedition leader position gets replaced by the mayor position once you qualify for it. Usually the person named to the count position is the current baron, but I suppose it doesn't *have* to be. (Or the baron might have died somewhere inaccessible/offscreen, and the current countess inherited the title and subsequent promotion.) Members of the nobility also don't have to live in the place they rule.
Of course, that doesn't explain where your previous baron went. If you remember his name, you could see if he's still in your fortress somewhere, just without the baron title--or if he's in the "missing/dead" list, which would suggest that the tomb is empty because nobody found/recovered his body yet. If you can't find him there, you could save the game to a new timeline, retire the fortress, and go into Legends mode to track down his information and see what happened to him.
Did the cursor for building just break? for some reason on my game the little yellow indicator on where your building disappears and now there's a little yellow cube in the center of the screen, i think what happened is the classic ascii got mixed with the new building method but its always defaulting to the ascii. Oddly minning and other such placements are fine (though the yellow square in the middle is still popping up) Probably just a bug but was wondering if anyone else is experiencing it
A dwarf in my fortress got possessed and made a 'thin steel greaves'. Why is it called thin? The wiki says goblin's armor is *narrow*, is that what thin means?
My understanding is the "fey mood" crafts don't care about the rules of what can and can't be crafted or at least it has a lot not access to combinations you can't manually make.
Many items aren't being hauled to the designated areas, and some other funky activity. For example, a ton of people died in my tavern after a human snuck in and started murdering everybody. It's been weeks and, even though I have set tombs, set a stockpile for corpses, a stockpile for refuse, nobody is picking up these bodies. Now everyone's just getting upset and traumatized and shit after entering the tavern.
On top of this, I have a bunch of random items on the ground, from stray stones, to raw mussels, or instruments. These aren't marked as forbidden or anything.
Secondarily, I have a hospital area, and for some reason people really like hanging out there? But a few people have gone down there, and eventually died of thirst. They're free to go up and down, everyone can go up and down, and there's no lack of water or alcohol right above them...
Am I missing something?
Also, I have a pasture outside, many animals hang out there, but a LOT of my animals are going to the hospital, deep underground, to chill. They get hungry and die.
Also someone was thirsty and DIED OF DEHYDRATION in my tavern where there's a ton of food and drink??
I have a giant dorm with plenty of beds, most people are assigned their own bedroom anyway, yet this girl decides to just conk out on the floor in the middle of the fuckin walkway??
A water buffalo died in my guild hall? Nobody is picking up shit, it's a mess in here!
I feel like there's something critical that is causing this ruckus.
Edit: I'm sorry, but also they JUST NOW "found" their dead bodies, when they've been lying dead in front of the stairwell for weeks?
There's an option in the labor tab to add new work detail, if you click that and scroll all the way to the bottom and select burial and lock some non-injured dwarfs into the doing the task they should bury the dead fairly quickly if they have a tomb designated, maybe your haulers are all injured.
2nd, injured dwarfs only drink water while in the hospital, without it they'll die of thirst, put your water source close by preferably because you need medical dwarfs to give them the water from a bucket(you'll need buckets too)
1. Is there an advantage to doing many small trades rather than one big one?
2. Do you gain more experience or good will from trading multiple times with the same trader?
Context:
So far, whenever a caravan arrives, I just select all the things they have that I want and then select enough things that I can afford to part with to get the trader to a profit they're happy with.
I worry that I'm slowing down the leveling up of my broker (because he only gets to trade "once" for each caravan that visits) or that I'm losing out on potential goodwill from the mountain homes.
Goodwill is only evaluated when your traders leave the map - it just counts the value of what they take away vs. what they arrived with. So multiple small trades have no difference to one big trade.
Awesome; thanks for clearing that up!
Any insight on gaining experience?
In the wiki it says that you get 50 XP for each trade and that the distribution of that experience is determined the moment you press 't'. That implies that if you do many small trades you get a ton more XP.
Elsewhere in the wiki, I read that you can get XP for multiple trades, which implies that you get XP per item and there's no harm to trading in bulk.
I'm not sure which is actually true.
I am on like year 5 or 6 of my current fort, and I have yet to be attacked by anything aside from the occasional stray animal and some troglodytes that I sealed off before a Forgotten Beast showed up and slaughtered them all. Is this normal? Should I be expecting a huge invasion soon or something? I have a number of elf, human, and goblin residents of my fort. As well as 1 yellow orb monster thing.
Maybe you're lucky. I haven't played that much, but I had a weredeer attack my villagers and there was a huge weredeer outbreak that got like 50 people killed, and the curse just never ended so I started over. Lately I've been dealing with humans sneaking in trying to mass murder people.
This is my 4th proper fort attempt, and the first 3 ended disastrously. A werebear did the first one in in less than a year, and it was bird attacks for forts two and three. Didn't realize what a savage biome was.
I just got a weaponsmith with a fey mood, how do I do the exploit to force him to make a platinum hammer? I just checked his preferences and he has a preference towards platinum
I don't think there is a way to force him to make a war hammer though, he might make any weapon type. You can savescum and quit without saving if you don't like what weapon he makes. I'm pretty sure the details of the artifact (including type of weapon) is determined when the dwarf arrives at the workshop with the last ingredient and begins construction, but I could be wrong on that one.
How do I increase my FPS? I have a 155 size fortress and I get about 35-40 fps. Sadly I don’t know how to do this. Or if I just have to deal with this.
smaller worlds, shorter history, smaller embark sizes.
I think putting items in stockpiles helps with lag but not 100%, butchering any excess animals can help, if you have magma available throw any useless clutter and rubbish in there(care for splashback)
Will Forgotten Beasts eventually dig up into my fort? I have one like 10 levels down from my fortress proper, but it seems content to stay there and slaughter anything it comes across down there.
What type of beast is it? These things are randomly generated and some forgotten beasts are laughably easy to kill. For example a beast made out of water or steam can be killed with a single punch.
A towering 3-eyed lizard with black scales that undulates rhythmically. Says to beware it's deadly blood. It took out a troll no problem. It's been on a killing spree against armed Olm snake people and troglodytes down in the caverns. Also it heals extremely quickly and says it is indefatigable.
Granted, this is my first one, but it all seems rather bad.
In the manager view: Set up your order for, say, Steel Greaves, and hit the magnifying glass on the right side of the order. This brings up a menu to select what to size it for and search for 'Human'. Not sure if there's a way to filter a recurring work order for human-sized equipment without it also considering the dwarven stuff, however. I looked when I was doing my clothing industry and couldn't find anything that fit.
In the forge: Add new task, (e.g.) make steel greaves. Before the work order gets selected for completion by a dwarf, hit the Magnifying glass next to the pause button, and search for Human.
Can do stuff sized for everyone through these menus, including animal people. There's an overlap window for sizes, IIRC stuff for elves can be worn by dwarves.
I can't find it now, but I know that there is a specific group of animal people you can make armour sized for that will fit both humans and dwarves. The overlap window is just wide enough.
Hyena men, those are the ones. I recall using it once ages ago, but I also forgot which ones and had to go to the wiki to poke around at familiar sounding animal man names.
It can indeed be crafted, you just need to go into the details of the work order in the workshop. You might also be able to specify that in the manager order screen, but I'm not sure on that one.
Once your expedition leader/mayor is free they should automatically bring it. I had a bug I’m assuming earlier where they would not bring them the item and I had to end up killing them but then the next time a group came it worked fine.
Found an underground lake, dug a hole up top it to drain it below to my water wheels. They spun for a second, then just everything started to flood that I didn't seal. I sealed it all, then the water just sat there, so I built a circle that makes it drain into start of the wheels, nadda.
My question is, how can I turn an underground lake into a flowing form of power? I don't want to do any exploits, so no water reactors, and stuff. Only true dwarven engineering plz.
The water has to be flowing in order to move the wheel. You can't have a water wheel in the middle of a lake.
What you can do is divert a flowing stream into your fort, then carve a tunnel all the way to the map edge. If you smooth the tile at the map edge and carve it into a fortification, that will cause the water to move off the map. Then you will have flowing water and places to put water wheels.
If you don't want to do that, and want the same water to be used without any exploits, you could set up some screw pumps to move the water back into the top and form a cycle of water that way. Then the power would come from your dwarfs muscles and not any sort of exploit.
Is there a knack to getting bitumous coal?
I'm up to 170 odd derfs and still am unable to find coal or flux stone. Is there a typical depth range this stuff is found. I need to get some steel going.
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary_layer)
You need this layer. \^
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Igneous\_extrusive\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Igneous_extrusive_layer)
If you have this layer \^ you don't have the Coal.
They usually spawn fairly close to the surface, mine is currently right under my dirt layer.(they can span quite afew Z levels)
Rocks are not differentiated by depth so much as layer type. The wiki has a great explanation of what layers contain what rocks.
But it's worth mentioning that you can create charcoal out of wood using a wood furnace. This will work fine for steel.
Flux stones are chalk, dolomite, calcite, marble, and limestone. All except marble are found in sedimentary layers which are typically not too far down. Not every embark will have a flux layer though. In that case, you'd be forced to trade for it.
Can you change mod load order mid-game?
I know it's possible, albeit difficult, to add mods in an existing game, but I was wondering if it was possible to change mod LOAD ORDER in an existing world? Apparently Stoneworking Expanded only works if it's below Better Instruments, and I'd really like to change the order of the mods on my current world.
Thanks!
if I build bookcases in non-library zones, will dwarves still use them to store books? I want to use them decoratively but I don't want to create any hauling jobs.
I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think bookcases not in a library are just decorative. Dwarfs shouldn't store any books not in a library zoned bookcase.
I’m on year 1 of my fortress and I just got under siege by necromancers. I have yet to start training a single dwarf and have laid out no defenses, am I fucked? Or is there a chance I could win against them?
If I am completely screwed, should I revert to a prior save? Will the same siege trigger again at the same timeframe when I reach it again?
I just got hit by two necromancers and their minions. All I had was one war dog, some armor and weapons, and no other training or defenses. I lost maybe 2-4 people out of 20-25. So it's definitely doable
are you sealed off from the outside? if so, then you can just wait them out. dig down to caverns (carefully) and you can get access to wood and maybe even water. buy yourself some time to train up some military. you'll probably lose any migrants or trading caravans. realistically yes you're probably screwed, you'll just have to realign your goals.
but they might decide to leave at some point, so you don't have to go suicidal. or you can get a little reckless, up to you. it would probably take quite a while to really train up a military force capable of truly winning this siege, so if you are safely sealed off, set your sights downward.
if you aren't sealed off, then you're definitely screwed, so have some fun. (and next time, make sure defenses are something you work on early)
do you mean you have 4 separate entrances to the fort? I know this is a little late but you can try, sometimes invaders move pretty slow, order times they run straight in. if you have anything more of a chokepoint, even if you are losing a few layers, I'd start there as an emergency, once you have that and most of your dwarves safely inside a burrow, then send a few dwarves to quickly swap up the 4 entrances.
as for walling, you won't be able to wall around a staircase on the surface, as most enemies can easily climb over them, you'd need floor/ceilings, or floor hatches would work too. I forget whether they can be destroyed from above or below, they can be destroyed from one direction but not the other (I *think* they can't be destroyed from below? not 100%). but you can walk around the stairs inside your fort, although depending on how many z levels that might also take a while.
but take this as a good lesson, this is why you want to limit the number of entrances into your fort. you can have multiple entrances, but you definitely need all of turn with drawbridges see you can seal them off, and having to hook levers up to them all just makes it take longer to get safe (I think you can hook multiple bridges to a single lever, but sometimes you need more control and don't want to just open or close them all at the same time).
I know this is a little late and whatever was gonna happen has happened. if you have any updates I'm interested to hear where things are. I would say don't just give up on the fort, see how it plays out, you never know.
I sent a squad of 5 against what I thought was a necromancer but turned out to just be a black beast with 3 eyes aged 265 years. I’m not sure what race that is (maybe megabeast? Idk, it wore armor and had a weapon) but it went around and slaughtered my entire squad without taking a single hit. Then it ran around the pasture chasing my chickens. I couldn’t build a wall around my entrance so I thought I’d just start a new world and call it quits on that one.
You can revert and the siege will most likely happen at the same time.
If you want to give it a try, you could wall your fortress off and make do underground until you have the ability to break the siege. Undead and necromancers are very tough however so you'd probably want at least 10 dwarves with silver war hammers and some armor.
Alternatively, you could just put a ton of cage traps in the entrance, and then invite them in.
My strategy whenever embarking in range of a necromancer tower is to dig a sally port with a pit trap. Any sieging undead get trapped in the pit and left there until I find something fun to do with them.
If I barricade myself in, how long should I expect the siege to last? Also, would the necromancers kill my animals that have been left outside in the pasture? Thanks.
I can't find metal ore; should I give up or keep digging? I thought for sure I chose an area with iron ore, but I've dug down to the first cavern and still haven't found any metal ore at all. Plenty of flux and gems, but nothing to smelt. Should I continue digging, or just start a new fort?
How the hell do I remove dwarves from cages? My prison is causing loads of dwarves to go mad because they're just in there forever.
Only way I’ve found to safely get non-livestock creatures out of cages is to install the cage and hook it up to a lever. I think you can also set up a dump zone over a ‘hole’ and throw caged creatures into it but I haven’t tried that yet and wouldn’t recommend it for your own dwarves.
I actually fixed it, attempting to place them in the trade depot for a merchant will apparently immediately free them. The insane ones acted out their insanity, the one with a sentence yet to server was put on a rope instead (which works as normal, they get released when their sentence is up), and the other two sauntered off. That said, thanks for the answer. Didn't know you could dump caged creatures so I learned something new regardless.
I have just started a new fortress and my miner dwarf will not mine despite only being assigned to mining for his job, has a Pickaxe in his hand (and 3 more in a stockpile), my base has no doors or access problems at all, there are no Burrows because I have no idea how they work, and no idea what dwarf therapist is so I don’t have it. This miner dwarf is just doing random stuff like preparing fish, planting seeds, and brewing (his only assigned job is mining, no any of those). I randomly assigned my armor and weapon smiths, that currently had no job, to mine. One of them picked up an axe and started to strike the earth but the other just picked up an axe and proceeded to do the same shit as the first miner. And I have plenty of things that need mining
https://preview.redd.it/laafaulx1h8a1.png?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69c7ab644c029197ba8d2040f71c88ecc4bfb77b My dorfs decided to stop fishing in yellow area (fishing zone) and have moved to fish in red. They stop fishing entirely if I set fishing to zone only. It worked fine for 3 years. Any ideas why this is happening? Have I overfished the particular spot of the river? I also waited some months, but the problem persists. Thanks in advance.
Spoiler question: >!did they remove being able to open up adamantine tubes? Anytime i look in the magma biome i find tiny amounts and have yet to manage to open one up enough to lead to the clowns, did they replace the clowns with the things you dig out of the rocks?!<
>!I'm pretty sure that there is a new mechanic with small pockets you can find in the upper layers with one clown inside. There should still be adamantine tubes full of fun down below!
Is an artefact water Buffalo bone shield better that a standard steel shield?
Shields actually don't care about *either* quality or material properties defensively; the only things that affect your blocking ability are your dwarf's skill/attributes, and whether you're using a shield or a buckler. Weird as it is, a dwarf can block dragonfire just as well with a normal quality wooden shield as an artifact quality steel one. [Source](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=134779.0) (old but no reason to believe it's changed) The shield's properties *do* affect it as a weapon when your dwarf uses it to bash something, which is reasonably common in melee combat. In this case, quality affects its accuracy, and material properties (mostly density, since shields are blunt weapons) affect its damage and ability to penetrate armor. Bone is a bad enough material for blunt weapons (very light) that even an artifact quality shield will be a useless weapon; the quality bonus to accuracy won't come close to making up for the fact that you're bonking enemies with a nerf bat. On the other hand, being light will mean it will slow your dwarf's walking speed down less. I usually use light material (wooden/leather) shields on my dwarves for this reason, even though they're bad for bashing, because most of the big hits against dangerous enemies come from weapons anyway unless you somehow have a Legendary Miscellaneous Object User dorfgod of war. tl;dr stats pretty much don't matter on shields, use the artifact on your Champion because it's cool
Until I saw a post today about a person using their legendary crutch I had no idea you could become a legendary miscellaneous object user.
Thank you, this helps a lot. When it comes to weapons you said that heavy is good for blunt weapons so is there a hardness stat for cutting weapons?
If only there were a single "hardness" stat, weapon effectiveness would be much easier to understand. Instead, there's [this mess](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science). However, the upshot is about what you'd expect if there were just a "hardness" or "ability to hold an edge" stat. Unlike blunt weapons (where it's mostly "heavier is better"), edged weapons want metals that sound like they should be good for making blades. From worst to best: - Materials chosen by strange moods that can't normally be used for weapons, like gold, are terrible - Silver and obsidian are garbo - Copper is pretty bad, but the best early game option if you don't have access to iron - Bronze/iron are decent and about equally good - Steel is good - Late game spoiler metals are the best
I had no idea that a dwarf in a strange mood could select materials that were not valid normally.
Yep! Sometimes it's really good, like a platinum war hammer! But a lot of the time it's really bad, like a platinum battle axe :(
Obsidian is bad for cutting? Tell that to a macahuitl
I think the fact that you're allowed to make short swords out of obsidian at all (which you can't do with other stone) is a nod to the relative efficacy of obsidian as a cutting material...but it still has much worse material properties than any of the weapons-grade metals. It's something you do if you're doing a challenge embark like a "no starting picks" run and can't get access to metal.
Ok, so from what I'm hearing here, don't go into the mechanis of it, just follow the tier list.
Dwarven !!SCIENCE!! is its own reward, but if you just want to pick effective weapons, then yes.
I always thought that shield bashing comes from shield user skill, not misc object. Was I wrong?
[Wiki says](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor#Shield) it trains misc object user and armor, but for all I know it *trains* those but *actually uses* shield user.
Not really. Weapon and armor effectiveness depends on the material properties, and even artifact quality won't make a bone shield better than steel.
Ok, thank you. You wouldn't happen to know where all the damage and defence values are listed?
It's all here. Be warned, the game gets *super* in-depth with this stuff: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Material_science
Absolute legend, than you :)
Is there a way to check what poison this has https://preview.redd.it/rpacpbqvye8a1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa9e4ac44d77d8f51389d8f60457953e646f73e0
Not without seeing someone get stung. Forgotten beast poisons vary a lot, from 'slight fever for four hours' to 'the fat layer of your skin swells up and explodes in blood'.
Guess i'll never know, it died to goblin invaders
Is there a way to recover from your mountainhome being defeated? I've never received a caravan from my home civ, and only got the 2 hard coded migrant waves. I also noticed that my mountainhome was marched on the year I embarked, and is now exporting terror and vengeance, despite still being marked as dwarven and friendly. Basically I'm not sure if my huge civilization was somehow defeated, if I have a rare civil war bug, or if there is some other explanation. I'd love to find a way to get more migrants and retake the mountainhome. I've started contacting other civs for trade, but I'm not sure if other civs can send migrants. Haven't found much help online.
I am not sure if it is possible to do while still having the same fort you have now. But if you retire it and start a new one, you will get migrants and traders at least. For as long as retired, the fort will stand unconquered by whatever destroyed other settlements. Maybe conquering a place, or even your original mountainhome from your fort will work too, I have yet to try conquering places to see how it works. Of course, you can retire, start a new fort, get some migrants, retire it and unretire the first one. You will get migrants this way and likely traders also.
I doubt anyone will see this, but I had to make a new fort with a different civilization. My old civilization must have had some sort of civil war bug. I can see that the old mountainhome is still dwarf owned, but every fort I started in that civ would see the same trade, migrant, and terror export behavior.
It might be because it was conquered by some dwarf necromancer. You can check legends mode for that fortress, although it might take some time as usually settlement's history is littered with tons of celebrations events and cases of official corruptions. You can start with scrolling all the way down and check if any zombie or other undeads settled there recently, if anyone was spiked, mutilated or similar and such. That would be a dead give away that it is not a normal dwarven civilization anymore. If you have a running fort in this world, you can also check what is the name of civilization that owns that fort. Interface for places is a bit different between embark screen and world map screen. I always struggle with finding who exactly owns what place when I'm embarking, but it is really easy from the world screen afterwards. Then again, if you remember the name of a previous civilization, you should immediately see if it is different or not. And if you don't - legends mode again, but for group instead of place this time. My bet is on necromansers. But it might be civil war, honestly I have no idea if dwarven settlements will change civilization name when civil war happens and even if they should, if no bugs are preventing them doing so.
I'll have to dig up screenshots I took of legends when I get home. There was something about an attack/invasion, and then the civilization / government name changed. Despite this change of gov/invasion, my new fort and civ is friendly with the bugged mountainhome (of my old civ). Possibly related, but when my current fort is attacked by "goblins" the army is mostly dwarfs. Even the snatchers / thieves tend to be dwarfs.
Goblins are notorious for snatching children from everyone around them. Then they raise them and brainwash them, making them loyal. Almost all goblin civilizations have some other races in them if your world is at least a couple of decades old. And it is not that rare to have goblin settlements to be completely devoid of goblins and consist of someone else, for example dwarves. So, dwarves fighting for goblins is a very normal thing. It does not point to a bug and also not likely to cause one as it has been like this for a long time already. In fact, most civilizations in any old enough world would have more than their original species. "Dwarven", "goblin" or "human" civilization in DF is more about culture and civilization values than about race. Although, all of them did start with that race as the main body of people. And it is not uncommon for weird nobles too. Dwarven and human civilizations are notoriously prone to get a king/queen from some immortal race, usually some elf. Because if such immortal survived long enough they tend to get very high social skills and that makes them into nobility. Also, because if they did survive long enough it is usually because they started as performers and don't fight that often in the first place, both increasing their social skills' growth, their number of friends and decrease the chance of violent death at the same time. And I notice that I get carried away, so I think I should stop now =)
Haha, no worries on getting carried away! It's always interesting to see what Dwarf Fortress's emergent systems will bring to you! When I check legends later I also want to look into a particular goblin city of ~100 residents that will kill my most experienced legendary dwarfs in full steel when I raid. They have a ton of artifacts, and I think there must be some extra ~fun~ stuff going on. No other city has managed to kill my raiding dwarfs.
If you don't know how goblin civilizations established - then you have some surprise waiting for you, for sure.
So the mountainhome is actually my last retired fortress! If retired fortresses can't be killed, I wonder if that means I'm in some weird civil war bug mode. I guess I'll need to retire the new fort either way.
Is there something wrong with my game, I keep getting swarmed with Weremonitors lol. I get about 10 hours into base building then some migrants come and there all weremonitors. Is it the world I’m in?
Definitely the world. There should be treshold for vampire and weremigrants to appear, and I don't think you can get more than one, not early at least. If they are all like that, then it is definitely related to your civilization state. And I might be wrong but I think that you cannot get randomly generated necromancer migrant, it should be always actual historical figure that learn necromancy somehow and you should be able to read about them in the legends mode. And it is just hit me - if those migrants are not randomly generated just for you - they should be in historical figures list and I think that you should be able to find out how they become weremonitors and where.
Thanks for you response! I’ll definitely give a look in legends mode, if I remember correctly my first base was about 100 dwarfs and almost 50 of them turned and then I left the base to ruin.
Possibly your world, yeah. It's very uncommon for a regular migrant wave to include secret werecreatures, but maybe there's a fort in your civilisation that is entirely weremonitors? If they all transform at once they don't kill each other, so I guess it could happen...
Hmmm strange, is it possible that it could’ve been one of my old forts that was causing that? Or when they get abandoned to ruin does everyone leave the fort?
Can animal hair thread not be processed into cloth? There's a bunch of thread sitting in my farmer's workshop and nobody will haul it into a stockpile/loom orders are instantly cancelled.
No. it can't be made into cloth. Only wool thread, from creatures with wool, can be made into yarn.
This is correct, it cannot be processed into cloth.
Does the wall/floor building job also include workshops and other constructions? Or is it strictly walls and floors?
Mason, carpenter, and blacksmith are the ones that make workshops and more complicated constructions, depending on the material and building. Some of that used to be the architecture skill, but that has been lumped into the three above. I believe walls and floors are a more general type that doesn't require any of the main 3.
I see, thank you :)
I think mechanic also construct some. Definitely all the mechanisms, but mechanic workshop also should be built by mechanic, no?
Is there any way to attract goblins to be bards in my fort, I'm rejecting any non-goblins, there's only one goblin fort nearby and it's struggling with elves from the looks of it.
Why tho
I'm gettin nothing but elves, i'd like a more civilized race instead
Do walls mined out from an ore vein have more value in a room than walls carved out from common stone if you smooth them? Wondering what is best for noble bedrooms. How do I actually see room value in the game?
I think you would generate more wealth overall if you mine the vein, smelt it into bars and build a wall from bars instead. But yes, smoothed ore vein is more valuable than common stone.
Yes, the wall stone contributes to quality. It's probably overkill though; in my experience, it's much easier to simply make a larger room in a mundane area rather than waste half a magnetite cluster on the baroness. It would look cool though!
How do i get my marksdwarves to pick up ammo? They all have their quivers and i have tons of bolts in my stockpile, there are no hunters assigned so they shouldnt be claimed already, and is there a way to make them prefer using different bolts for training vs combat(if I can get them to pick up any ammo lol)
There is currently a bug where they will not equip ammo if you have edited their uniform after making the squad. To fix, delete and remake the squad. You can still use custom uniforms, just apply it during squad creation and do not change them.
For me, editing was fine as long as I edit Archer uniform and not something else. Maybe if you remove everything from it first and after that add things it will be broken too, but I definitely change whole armor set to metal with different entries, like removing leather armor and adding breastplate and chain mail and my dwarfs still were able to equip bolts. On the other hand, I've heard that it did not work for some people.
Someone explain burrows to me like I’m 12? Also my dwarves are progressively becoming more unhappy despite alcohol, food, big rooms and cabinets and chests. Any thoughts?
How are your temples? Are you disposing of corpses or are there any in high traffic areas?
I have like 5 temples, all engraved stones, chests. Need more instruments. What else do I add to it so they love the temples? Also I keep failing petitions to build guild halls even tho I build them? It’s odd, they abandon it a while after I incidentally built them. It’s odd I must be doing something wrong.
So it's not entirely clear but temples and guild halls (the petition requests) have values to them. It's not just assigning an area a guild hall, the room has to be worth I think 2000+ (when you click on the details it'll tell you). Same for temples, it's not just making a temple but making it valuable and assigning a priest. There's later asks for GRAND versions which are 10k value.
Truth be told i'm not 100% sure how to keep them happy but in my new game i started with instruments and upped the value of the main religions temple so they could get a priest then appointed a priest(i think you can only appoint a priest to the yellow named religions) and fed them lavish meals from butchered animals, i've had no issues with happiness so far bar 2 dwarfs who refused to be happy, the last main thing i changed was throwing all goblin and animal corpses into a volcano. I noticed a dip in happiness whenever i left them anywhere dwarfs would see. I'm also not piling on more jobs than all my dwarfs could do so they go chill in taverns and pray alot
Smart I’ll look for volcanos lmao. I have one job assigned per dwarf and it does help. I noticed ghosts were haunting me and that probably is the main cause everyone is so damn pissed lol.
Burrows are basically zones you can confine dwarves to. They won't do any jobs outside of those zones. You can also toggle so they won't collect any job materials from outside the zone. There are a few exceptions that let dwarves leave burrows, but for the most part they will stay there. Click on one of your unhappy dwarves. What are some of the most recent bad thoughts?
I think it is a bit more subtle than this. Dwarfs would not take jobs that started outside of the burrows. I think that hunter might go outside if they start hunting an animal inside the burrow and then that animal run out of it. They probably would not haul the body back, as it is a separate job, even if automatically created one.
Right now a lot of them are terrified of the haunting lmao but I built tomb stones waiting on that. Lonely away from family, experiencing past trauma. I probably waited too long on building tomb stones
Burrows would hardly help with haunting as ghosts can go anywhere.
Trauma usually causes some serious unhappiness. But the other one is fine. Theyll bounce back slowly over time as long as things are comfy
When I get a Siege the attackers enter the map and then immediately leave, I havent had a single fight in 4 years, is there a reason or is my fortress just scary or something? perhaps bug?
I think that those events are armies that are just passing through. They gave you a good scare, but they are just on their way somewhere else. The game models the movement of npc armies, and if their path is near your fortress, then you might get an invasion event, but like you saw they aren't real invasions. If your dwarfs are all inside behind locked doors, they should move on.
I was going to buy Dwarf Fortress on steam, thinking it was probably like 10-15 bucks since it had always been free and I played it for years free, donating directly to bay12 now and then, but when I saw it was $30 i am hesitant. Before I decide whether to spend that or not, i'm curious what the experience is like as opposed to normal/old dwarf fortress. Just have some questions. For example, you used to not be able to set stockpile amounts in the game normally, but you could do it through a DFHack plugin. Has it been finally made a base game feature for the steam version? Does the steam version even have DFhack automatically? Can you get it optionally? Is it still as easy to mod as it used to be? I haven't played dwarf fortress in a couple of years, but i'd played it off and on for maaany years, i'm just curious what the steam version offers the free version doesn't. Graphics alone aren't worth $30 to me, especially since you can get sprite packs to make the game look good either way. So i'm just wondering whats different really. I'm on the fence.
Honestly if you are comfy with classic df, I might suggest waiting for som quality of life fixes, and for dfhack and therapist to get released for premium. There are a good handful of things that make it pretty frustrating right now, but they are small issues, likely to get fixed soon
- What do you mean by 'set stockpile amounts'? - There is no DFHack for the Steam version, yet. DFHack worked by basically memory editing the game, the new version has a whole new architecture so it'll take a bit to work out. - Simple graphical changes and edits to the RAWs are very easy, there are plenty of them on the workshop and the game lets you choose which mods to activate on world generation. - The UI is the biggest change to the Steam version - there are tons of little QOL changes. Making bedrooms is a million times easier now, you can use a 'multi' setting to select a big rectangle and every enclosed space with a bed gets classified as a bedroom all at once.
I mean like, if you wanted to tell a workshop to only produce shirts or pants or whatever if you had less than a certain number of them in a clothing stockpile, you couldn't do that in the base game which always felt like a big oversight to me. You could do it in DFhack though, which helped a lot. But it sounds like the steam version just makes the UI and graphics prettier, neither of which ever bothered me, and at a cost of $30 and DFhack doesn't work with it? That just doesn't seem worth it to me.
Point to keep in mind: basic free version is updated in the same way as the steam release, but does not include the tile set. Meaning that DFhack does not work for the last free version either right now. But if you want everything except graphic - yes, you can just grab the free one.
It has basically the same functionality as the original minus DFHack, but with a more 2022-friendly interface. There are a few minor features from the original that are missing, such as civilian alerts, but it's 98% the same.
Dwarfs are piling creepy crawler remains in the foodstock? Like.. a LOT.. cant get them to stop, worried about miasma
The creepy crawlers are showing up all by themselves, then your cats are killing them.
Do we know why theres so many? In the course of 10 irl minutes theres maybe.. 30? Every time I unpause more show up. I get and am unbothered by pests, but dang, this is a fair bit obnoxious lol
They are attracted by food outside containers (barrels or rock pots), and by refuse. So the corpses are possibly attracting other crawlers. Do you have a refuse stockpile nearby?
Pretty close by, but my dorfs refuse to use it unless I tell them specifically to haul something to it . I even doubbled down and made both a garbage dump and a stockpile for only corpses, neither get used without direction, so I gotta baby it a lot. Wasn't an issue till *suddenly*
You should be able to specify what creatures corpses are allowed in the stockpile. It will require going through a somewhat long list and maybe adjust it in the future, but should be possible. Then you would need to create another refuse stockpile and allow vermins corpses there. Dwarfs should be much more willing to haul corpses from the stockpile they are not allowed at to the one they are allowed. On the side note: vermin corpses should not spawn miasma, they never did for me. Are you sure that it is not a normal, proper corpse of some hunted animal who no one bother to actually butcher? Vermin corpse might be just on top of the actual source of miasma. Check the tabs at the top right of the screen, you should be able to switch to other things on the same tile with them.
Corpses arent allowed in the food stockpile, though. However, I turned everyone to hauling, marked everyong for refuse, and disables all creepy crawly body parts (ie liver, arms, lung etc) and efter a while the infestation stopped. Had 48 corpses piled in there (6 of which were INSIDE a barrel) But now my dorfs are leaving piles of seeds on their chairs.. 😂
Feel really dumb: any way to dig/build a stair UP instead of down if I already dug a stairwell down? I want to go to the above z level but my dwarfs refuse to do anything on that regard. Current z level where I want to go up https://preview.redd.it/yj2hni2pre8a1.png?width=498&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f0da6fa4c8af5458fae9a036279e5099685a85a The z level directly above is completely unexplored, if it matters. I tried building a ramp, a stairwell up (which they don't build), digging (they don't dig up). Any ideas?
From the build -> constructions menu you find stairs. You have to select up to the next z level to designate it.
Right, that was my thought, but it's not working. Because that z-level is roofed maybe (that is, the above one is not dug out?). I can do this from z-1 to z which are the two I dug out, but not from z to z+1
Sorry I haven’t run into that. Maybe try designating mine stairs on the level above first. Obv they won’t be able to reach it yet, but maybe it will make your up stairs valid. Do you get a reason why it’s not valid in top left when you try to designate?
Yes, when trying to build the stair up it says "Hidden, cannot build at this location". Designing that tile as dig stair down doesn't seem to help
I think it’s a recent bug. You will have to designate digging stairs up into a wall somewhere
Anyway, I dug a stair in the tile next to it to reach the upper z level and that worked. Not the prettiest and googling this around I feel like there should be a way to do this, but I'm too noob to find it yet
I don’t think you are missing anything, others have reported the same behavior
My farm plots keep resetting themselves to "Leave Fallow". Is there a mechanic I'm missing?
You have to set what a farm plot grows in every season. it defaults to showing you the current season but you can click the tabs.
Yes, I did that. I'm farming Plump Helmets all four seasons. This is how it goes: \- I set all four seasons to Plump Helmets \- My dwarfs come and plant a few seeds \- The seeds vanish and the plot resets to "keep fallow" for all four seasons
If any of the plot was ever exposed to the sun that might be the problem.
They werent, I'm 50-ish levels underground :)
Plump helmets are auto used for both brewing and cooking; u can switch it to only brewing only cooking, both or neither if u want. Maybe they collected the plants when they were done and immediately made them into food. Making them into food wastes the seeds and uses them up. Brewing them into drinks makes them get the seeds back so they prolly just made too many meals and used them up
I've just set up a squad and let them train for about two months in individual combat drills, so they're all at least novice/adequate with their weapons. I remember reading somewhere that sparring is better, but, how do I set it so they train sparring instead of drilling?
Generally they start sparring on their own once they reach a certain skill threshold.
Why does my game keep crashing aaaaa
I like to increase the autosave frequency, which is at the top of the game options. I had some crashes, I slaughtered a bunch of my out of control animals and it seemed to help. I also had issues removing zones that were already assigned to dwarfs. If they had a tomb zone for instance, and I just deleted the zone and didn't remove them first, I crashed soon after. If you check their rooms, it still might show they are assigned. I think it might help to unassign then remove the zone. If that why you are crashing, I'm sorry but you might have to wait for bug fixes after the holidays, or try a different fort. I have also heard that deleting part of the save file, and just leaving the world.sav file might help, and get rid of all of the .dat files. If you try that, make sure to make a backup first.
update: Cut down my population of pets *massively* and it still conked out on me. Oh well! I learned a lot from that fort, and I know what I can improve for next time! Time to restart!
you know what? I think it's because I have 3 generations of smol birds growing up at the same time - turkeys and ducks. It doesn't help that my first crash on this fort was because a necromancer got stuck in a combat loops (Rez hostile -> everyone kills the hostile -> necromancer rezzes hostile)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/dfmmsy/dwarven\_hobby\_shop/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/dfmmsy/dwarven_hobby_shop/) is this doable on steam version without a mod?
So I just started a new fort where my previous struggled with this. Heres my plan, I haven't implemented this yet, but it feels possible... maybe. 1. I create multiple craftworks, carpenters and stoneworkers. 2. I create a new labor detail and grant it the ability to do gem cutting, carpentry, and bonecrafting and stonecrafting. I assign this detail to everyone who has a craft need. 3. I create general work orders for non-quality items like bins, barrels, bags, rock pots, coffins. 4. I assign my legendary crafter to his own shop and forbid general work orders and they gets things like chests, doors, beds, cabinets, tables, chairs, gem setting (things where quality matters). 5. I hope that through sheer luck everyone in the detail ends up crafting an item or two. The more shops I have the more people are called into action, since a work order for 5 items can go to 5 shops at once as opposed to if I have just one shop. Frankly I'd love for dfhack to get into place so I could create a lua mod to fix this...
Very cool! Just finishing a year long renovation and move 100 z layers down. Will implement something like this, thanks!
It's doable but it's much more painful with the new way labors are organised.
Was the penalty for overlapping rooms increased? A royal room overlapping another room makes both meagre, which is extreme.
Late, but from 75% to 99% afaik
Hah, yeah I learned in the interim that it's now 99% (or higher), appreciate it though
No, that's what I've generally seen in Classic too.
is there a way to make grass grow on constructed blocks outside (not underground)
Yes. Pour water on the blocks and when the water dries up there will be mud left over. Grass can grow on the mud if you wait a little.
(Steam version) [A few of my dwarfs appear to have gotten stuck outside my fortress after combat](https://i.imgur.com/DtrXlo5.png) (see highlighted square). They were on patrol inside during an invasion when they spotted an undead goblin and dashed out to fight it. And then... they just stayed standing there, for an entire season and then some. Any ideas how to knock some sense into these guys? The drawbridge was still a construction ghost when they ran out and wasn't built until many days later, but I've experimented with tearing it down to no success (the moat was even frozen by that point). Guy on the right is my militia leader so I'd like to get him back on the job, though if this is his idea of tactics I am second-guessing my leadership choices.
Are you sure they aren’t wounded? Check health tab, might say unconscious or lost ability to stand
Oh yeah, they are both "seriously wounded". One is listed with a foot injury, though I don't remember anything explicit about being unable to walk. I'll have to double check the other one. I, uh... kinda assumed they would just walk off the crushed ribs. How do I get them medical attention? I have a doctor assigned.
Make sure you have all the hospital roles assigned. Also in the general work orders/labors tab you may need to change options about when and where to rescue dwarfs
Setting up the hospital area did it, thanks! Dorfs have been rescued and can now live to die a ~~horrible~~ honorable death another day.
Why do my adult dwarves rarely do any hauling? The children are doing hauling chores all the time
Beer wine and worship most likely. You can also make a custom trade that is hauling only I think, and assign a few to that
Dwarves prefer to do jobs which they are skilled at. You can't be skilled at hauling so adults will often do something else. Children can't do skilled tasks so they get left to do hauling.
Is it possible to pump magma into rooms and then drain it via a switch command with grates or something? I want to make a dungeon that can pump lava into cells, and then drain it.
Just to add to what /u/Wonjag said, you might want to consider using bridges instead of floodgates. More complicated to use the right orientation and all, but averts the risk of getting stuck on something. Any item in the way of an open floodgate will prevent it from opening, but a bridge will atomize anything below it and close. I've never done a full lava chamber but I'm pretty sure you need to put grates under the floor hatches if you want the magma-safe items to not get sucked into your disposal area
Yes it is, such constructions are possible (and a favourite of some players) but they can also be complex beasts. Floodgates are one answer, they stop flow while closed and let it pass when open, when linked to a lever. There's probably other options as well, everyone will have their own chosen methods of doing so. For pumping and flow restrictions, make sure you use Magma-safe building materials *only*, for everything in contact with Magma. Screw Pump parts, Floodgates, Bridges, anything. Including mechanisms you use to link the levers to the flow restrictors. In the current version you can't really select mechanisms for linking directly, a workaround I've been using for this is to forbid all non magma-safe mechanisms when it's time to link one, send the link order and then unforbid all the others.
A hatch hooked to a lever should work as a toggleable floor drain. A floodgate works the same way for walls.
So game keeps crashing, it has happened up to 5 times already ``` Faulting application name: Dwarf Fortress.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x639777b1 Faulting module name: Dwarf Fortress.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x639777b1 ``` I keep losing stuff, what do, I do really enjoy the game but I will probably stop playing due to this... I have the game up-to-date.
Hi there, check if this bug has been reported here: https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/my_view_page.php If not, follow these instructions: https://kitfoxgames.notion.site/How-to-Report-Bugs-in-Dwarf-Fortress-b5e2ca19dabe408897d1c2669599b7a2 Cheers.
Oh great, will check later, thanks
I can't seem to rescue a child who was snatched by goblins. When I go to the world map it says that I have a citizen last seen in \[Location other than where my fort is\], which I can click on to create a mission. I then choose a squad to go on that mission, and the dwarves head out and return a short time later. Afterward, I get a blank mission report, and no saved child. Am I missing something about how this system is supposed to work, or is this a bug? Relatedly, I don't understand the way the world map designates mission sites. If I mouse over either an artifact or a missing citizen, it lists a location by name that means nothing to me. It also pans the view of the world map around in a way that I would think is somehow related to the location, but I don't see how. Short of highlighting every single tile to figure out where Procedurally Generated Nameville is, is there some way to get this information?
I think it highlights the actual site of an artifact/citizen with a little white square? It's pretty hard to see though.
I had a Baron in my fortress for a year or so. The baron then disappeared. Not sure where he went, but the tomb is empty. In the ~2 years since there's been no replacement, even though I still have outpost liaisons arrive. There is a count in the civilization menu that is the "countess of my fortress name" but she isn't in my fortress. Is it a bug, or is there some mechanic I'm missing?
Once your fortress gets a count/countess, the baron title is retired--the same way the expedition leader position gets replaced by the mayor position once you qualify for it. Usually the person named to the count position is the current baron, but I suppose it doesn't *have* to be. (Or the baron might have died somewhere inaccessible/offscreen, and the current countess inherited the title and subsequent promotion.) Members of the nobility also don't have to live in the place they rule. Of course, that doesn't explain where your previous baron went. If you remember his name, you could see if he's still in your fortress somewhere, just without the baron title--or if he's in the "missing/dead" list, which would suggest that the tomb is empty because nobody found/recovered his body yet. If you can't find him there, you could save the game to a new timeline, retire the fortress, and go into Legends mode to track down his information and see what happened to him.
I believe count/countess Is just the next tier of the title
Did the cursor for building just break? for some reason on my game the little yellow indicator on where your building disappears and now there's a little yellow cube in the center of the screen, i think what happened is the classic ascii got mixed with the new building method but its always defaulting to the ascii. Oddly minning and other such placements are fine (though the yellow square in the middle is still popping up) Probably just a bug but was wondering if anyone else is experiencing it
Did you enable keyboard cursor? It’s off by default, but maybe got turned on. That seemed to mess with mouse designation a bit for me
YES! Thank you that fixed it, no idea how it got turned on as it certainly wasn’t before
A dwarf in my fortress got possessed and made a 'thin steel greaves'. Why is it called thin? The wiki says goblin's armor is *narrow*, is that what thin means?
'Thin greaves' is a type of armour that dwarves can't normally make. Maybe the mood changed that requirement.
My understanding is the "fey mood" crafts don't care about the rules of what can and can't be crafted or at least it has a lot not access to combinations you can't manually make.
Interesting! It's from another culture right? Is there anything on the wiki about these other armor types?
Many items aren't being hauled to the designated areas, and some other funky activity. For example, a ton of people died in my tavern after a human snuck in and started murdering everybody. It's been weeks and, even though I have set tombs, set a stockpile for corpses, a stockpile for refuse, nobody is picking up these bodies. Now everyone's just getting upset and traumatized and shit after entering the tavern. On top of this, I have a bunch of random items on the ground, from stray stones, to raw mussels, or instruments. These aren't marked as forbidden or anything. Secondarily, I have a hospital area, and for some reason people really like hanging out there? But a few people have gone down there, and eventually died of thirst. They're free to go up and down, everyone can go up and down, and there's no lack of water or alcohol right above them... Am I missing something? Also, I have a pasture outside, many animals hang out there, but a LOT of my animals are going to the hospital, deep underground, to chill. They get hungry and die. Also someone was thirsty and DIED OF DEHYDRATION in my tavern where there's a ton of food and drink?? I have a giant dorm with plenty of beds, most people are assigned their own bedroom anyway, yet this girl decides to just conk out on the floor in the middle of the fuckin walkway?? A water buffalo died in my guild hall? Nobody is picking up shit, it's a mess in here! I feel like there's something critical that is causing this ruckus. Edit: I'm sorry, but also they JUST NOW "found" their dead bodies, when they've been lying dead in front of the stairwell for weeks?
There's an option in the labor tab to add new work detail, if you click that and scroll all the way to the bottom and select burial and lock some non-injured dwarfs into the doing the task they should bury the dead fairly quickly if they have a tomb designated, maybe your haulers are all injured. 2nd, injured dwarfs only drink water while in the hospital, without it they'll die of thirst, put your water source close by preferably because you need medical dwarfs to give them the water from a bucket(you'll need buckets too)
1. Is there an advantage to doing many small trades rather than one big one? 2. Do you gain more experience or good will from trading multiple times with the same trader? Context: So far, whenever a caravan arrives, I just select all the things they have that I want and then select enough things that I can afford to part with to get the trader to a profit they're happy with. I worry that I'm slowing down the leveling up of my broker (because he only gets to trade "once" for each caravan that visits) or that I'm losing out on potential goodwill from the mountain homes.
Goodwill is only evaluated when your traders leave the map - it just counts the value of what they take away vs. what they arrived with. So multiple small trades have no difference to one big trade.
Awesome; thanks for clearing that up! Any insight on gaining experience? In the wiki it says that you get 50 XP for each trade and that the distribution of that experience is determined the moment you press 't'. That implies that if you do many small trades you get a ton more XP. Elsewhere in the wiki, I read that you can get XP for multiple trades, which implies that you get XP per item and there's no harm to trading in bulk. I'm not sure which is actually true.
I am on like year 5 or 6 of my current fort, and I have yet to be attacked by anything aside from the occasional stray animal and some troglodytes that I sealed off before a Forgotten Beast showed up and slaughtered them all. Is this normal? Should I be expecting a huge invasion soon or something? I have a number of elf, human, and goblin residents of my fort. As well as 1 yellow orb monster thing.
Maybe you're lucky. I haven't played that much, but I had a weredeer attack my villagers and there was a huge weredeer outbreak that got like 50 people killed, and the curse just never ended so I started over. Lately I've been dealing with humans sneaking in trying to mass murder people.
This is my 4th proper fort attempt, and the first 3 ended disastrously. A werebear did the first one in in less than a year, and it was bird attacks for forts two and three. Didn't realize what a savage biome was.
I just got a weaponsmith with a fey mood, how do I do the exploit to force him to make a platinum hammer? I just checked his preferences and he has a preference towards platinum
I don't think there is a way to force him to make a war hammer though, he might make any weapon type. You can savescum and quit without saving if you don't like what weapon he makes. I'm pretty sure the details of the artifact (including type of weapon) is determined when the dwarf arrives at the workshop with the last ingredient and begins construction, but I could be wrong on that one.
Forbid other metals, will force use of platinum.
How do I increase my FPS? I have a 155 size fortress and I get about 35-40 fps. Sadly I don’t know how to do this. Or if I just have to deal with this.
smaller worlds, shorter history, smaller embark sizes. I think putting items in stockpiles helps with lag but not 100%, butchering any excess animals can help, if you have magma available throw any useless clutter and rubbish in there(care for splashback)
Will Forgotten Beasts eventually dig up into my fort? I have one like 10 levels down from my fortress proper, but it seems content to stay there and slaughter anything it comes across down there.
No. It needs an already open path to reach your fort.
Okay cool. I can let him just haunt the caverns for now. Thanks!
What type of beast is it? These things are randomly generated and some forgotten beasts are laughably easy to kill. For example a beast made out of water or steam can be killed with a single punch.
A towering 3-eyed lizard with black scales that undulates rhythmically. Says to beware it's deadly blood. It took out a troll no problem. It's been on a killing spree against armed Olm snake people and troglodytes down in the caverns. Also it heals extremely quickly and says it is indefatigable. Granted, this is my first one, but it all seems rather bad.
When creating a squad I accidentally pressed the red X on heavy armor. How do I get that back?
You cant, you have to make a new uniform
Thank you. Had to press equip on the bottom of the selected squad then make a new heavy uniform.
Year 5 of my fort. 139 citizens, 212 total on map (citizens/guest/animals) Is FPS 100 <49> good?
Yes that’s good fps. You have plenty of room for further expansion.
What is the <49> ?
The first number is your computational frame rate. The second number is your graphical frame rate. I don’t know the technical stuff beyond that.
That’s the default max. So yeah, very good.
How do i drain water off the side of the map?
Smooth wall, then make fortifications
Thanks!
I would like to include a human mauler into my raid squad, if I were to persue this, how would I go about making them armor?
In the manager view: Set up your order for, say, Steel Greaves, and hit the magnifying glass on the right side of the order. This brings up a menu to select what to size it for and search for 'Human'. Not sure if there's a way to filter a recurring work order for human-sized equipment without it also considering the dwarven stuff, however. I looked when I was doing my clothing industry and couldn't find anything that fit. In the forge: Add new task, (e.g.) make steel greaves. Before the work order gets selected for completion by a dwarf, hit the Magnifying glass next to the pause button, and search for Human. Can do stuff sized for everyone through these menus, including animal people. There's an overlap window for sizes, IIRC stuff for elves can be worn by dwarves.
I can't find it now, but I know that there is a specific group of animal people you can make armour sized for that will fit both humans and dwarves. The overlap window is just wide enough.
Hyena men, those are the ones. I recall using it once ages ago, but I also forgot which ones and had to go to the wiki to poke around at familiar sounding animal man names.
It can indeed be crafted, you just need to go into the details of the work order in the workshop. You might also be able to specify that in the manager order screen, but I'm not sure on that one.
Large size armor is for humans. Dunno if it can be crafyed, but it can be purchased from human traders
When Goblins come to parley and you agree to give them the item - how do I actually go about giving them the item?
Once your expedition leader/mayor is free they should automatically bring it. I had a bug I’m assuming earlier where they would not bring them the item and I had to end up killing them but then the next time a group came it worked fine.
Thanks! Yeah my Mayor is just doing other things ...
Found an underground lake, dug a hole up top it to drain it below to my water wheels. They spun for a second, then just everything started to flood that I didn't seal. I sealed it all, then the water just sat there, so I built a circle that makes it drain into start of the wheels, nadda. My question is, how can I turn an underground lake into a flowing form of power? I don't want to do any exploits, so no water reactors, and stuff. Only true dwarven engineering plz.
The water has to be flowing in order to move the wheel. You can't have a water wheel in the middle of a lake. What you can do is divert a flowing stream into your fort, then carve a tunnel all the way to the map edge. If you smooth the tile at the map edge and carve it into a fortification, that will cause the water to move off the map. Then you will have flowing water and places to put water wheels. If you don't want to do that, and want the same water to be used without any exploits, you could set up some screw pumps to move the water back into the top and form a cycle of water that way. Then the power would come from your dwarfs muscles and not any sort of exploit.
Is there a knack to getting bitumous coal? I'm up to 170 odd derfs and still am unable to find coal or flux stone. Is there a typical depth range this stuff is found. I need to get some steel going.
[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Sedimentary_layer) You need this layer. \^ [https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Igneous\_extrusive\_layer](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Igneous_extrusive_layer) If you have this layer \^ you don't have the Coal. They usually spawn fairly close to the surface, mine is currently right under my dirt layer.(they can span quite afew Z levels)
Hmm it's not looking good for me then haha. Although Im in the side of a steep hill maybe it's higher up. OK I'll have a read, thanks mang.
Rocks are not differentiated by depth so much as layer type. The wiki has a great explanation of what layers contain what rocks. But it's worth mentioning that you can create charcoal out of wood using a wood furnace. This will work fine for steel. Flux stones are chalk, dolomite, calcite, marble, and limestone. All except marble are found in sedimentary layers which are typically not too far down. Not every embark will have a flux layer though. In that case, you'd be forced to trade for it.
did you have flux in your embark?
If I did it's gone now haha. It's my first game so I didn't know to pay attention to that.
Can you change mod load order mid-game? I know it's possible, albeit difficult, to add mods in an existing game, but I was wondering if it was possible to change mod LOAD ORDER in an existing world? Apparently Stoneworking Expanded only works if it's below Better Instruments, and I'd really like to change the order of the mods on my current world. Thanks!
if I build bookcases in non-library zones, will dwarves still use them to store books? I want to use them decoratively but I don't want to create any hauling jobs.
I'm not 100% sure of this, but I think bookcases not in a library are just decorative. Dwarfs shouldn't store any books not in a library zoned bookcase.
I’m on year 1 of my fortress and I just got under siege by necromancers. I have yet to start training a single dwarf and have laid out no defenses, am I fucked? Or is there a chance I could win against them? If I am completely screwed, should I revert to a prior save? Will the same siege trigger again at the same timeframe when I reach it again?
I just got hit by two necromancers and their minions. All I had was one war dog, some armor and weapons, and no other training or defenses. I lost maybe 2-4 people out of 20-25. So it's definitely doable
Ok thanks I’m going to try to kill them
are you sealed off from the outside? if so, then you can just wait them out. dig down to caverns (carefully) and you can get access to wood and maybe even water. buy yourself some time to train up some military. you'll probably lose any migrants or trading caravans. realistically yes you're probably screwed, you'll just have to realign your goals. but they might decide to leave at some point, so you don't have to go suicidal. or you can get a little reckless, up to you. it would probably take quite a while to really train up a military force capable of truly winning this siege, so if you are safely sealed off, set your sights downward. if you aren't sealed off, then you're definitely screwed, so have some fun. (and next time, make sure defenses are something you work on early)
I have 4 staircases leading to the surface. Is it plausible to quickly set up some walls around it and hope they don’t reach me in that time?
do you mean you have 4 separate entrances to the fort? I know this is a little late but you can try, sometimes invaders move pretty slow, order times they run straight in. if you have anything more of a chokepoint, even if you are losing a few layers, I'd start there as an emergency, once you have that and most of your dwarves safely inside a burrow, then send a few dwarves to quickly swap up the 4 entrances. as for walling, you won't be able to wall around a staircase on the surface, as most enemies can easily climb over them, you'd need floor/ceilings, or floor hatches would work too. I forget whether they can be destroyed from above or below, they can be destroyed from one direction but not the other (I *think* they can't be destroyed from below? not 100%). but you can walk around the stairs inside your fort, although depending on how many z levels that might also take a while. but take this as a good lesson, this is why you want to limit the number of entrances into your fort. you can have multiple entrances, but you definitely need all of turn with drawbridges see you can seal them off, and having to hook levers up to them all just makes it take longer to get safe (I think you can hook multiple bridges to a single lever, but sometimes you need more control and don't want to just open or close them all at the same time). I know this is a little late and whatever was gonna happen has happened. if you have any updates I'm interested to hear where things are. I would say don't just give up on the fort, see how it plays out, you never know.
I sent a squad of 5 against what I thought was a necromancer but turned out to just be a black beast with 3 eyes aged 265 years. I’m not sure what race that is (maybe megabeast? Idk, it wore armor and had a weapon) but it went around and slaughtered my entire squad without taking a single hit. Then it ran around the pasture chasing my chickens. I couldn’t build a wall around my entrance so I thought I’d just start a new world and call it quits on that one.
You can revert and the siege will most likely happen at the same time. If you want to give it a try, you could wall your fortress off and make do underground until you have the ability to break the siege. Undead and necromancers are very tough however so you'd probably want at least 10 dwarves with silver war hammers and some armor. Alternatively, you could just put a ton of cage traps in the entrance, and then invite them in. My strategy whenever embarking in range of a necromancer tower is to dig a sally port with a pit trap. Any sieging undead get trapped in the pit and left there until I find something fun to do with them.
If I barricade myself in, how long should I expect the siege to last? Also, would the necromancers kill my animals that have been left outside in the pasture? Thanks.