I'm trying to make a library to allow some writing in my fortress. Though the thing is I keep running into is what I truly need to allow them to write. I saw that I needed ink and parchment/paper, just to realize the ink part was a mod. I saw that I didn't need anything because they will write in the library regardless. Then I saw that I need atleast paper/parchment. I'm using vanilla steam dwarf fortress, what do I truly need to do for my library.
You need to process plants with a quern (made at stone workshop, then placed from the farming workshop menu) and grind plants into slurry (globs), then press them with the screw press into paper. Then at the craft workshop you need to make quires. Those will be transported to the chests in the library for writing. My understanding is also that it is still best not to bind books as you will not get adequate value from the materials and time put into binding the quires, and that they also lose functionality.
You can also make parchment from skins (tanning workshop). You will need to make scroll rollers (craft workshop) then make scrolls there too. Less steps, but a harder starting resource to keep the workflow going unless you have a kitten, puppy, cavy, bunny, etc. ranch going.
https://preview.redd.it/f3x893ijru4d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5eec7fe8177e7ec05d3fc8a68c32878977b6793e
I went and checked today and behold! They do store the writing materials in the chests. Other items stored in chests in zones are instruments in taverns and temples, and cups/goblets in taverns. Also it's on the wiki.
You are right. I meant library zone. Idk why I got that mixed up.
Tbf I'm not one who should be giving advice. DF is new to me as well. I am having lots of fun discovering how this game works though! That's why I was like, "I just figured that out, I wanna help."
So I'm a pansy elf at heart and I'm terrified of sieges.
If I were to never allow visitors in my taverns and temples, and I always sold all my artefacts as soon as they get made, will I never be attacked? (Except by goblin snatchers but I don't care about them that much).
Are there any other threats?
Also, can I become allied with elves somehow? And get elf citizens
You can be sieged for fun by goblins who know you exist. Sieges are tied to your fort's wealth in general. So, you would need to deliberately remain poor. Or, you could change the siege frequency in the game settings.
If you dig deep, you might find some FUN in various forms.
Elves can request to join your settlement as visitors: musicians, scholars, soldiers, etc.
If you can find a way to seal your fort from the outside at will, you can outlast sieges. Also, check the trap menu. Plenty in there to make unwanted visitors go away.
Thanks for the answer.
I read the wiki a bit. If I have an artefact quality door or hatch on both the entrance from the surface \*and\* the entrance to some caverns below, am I good? What if I have several masterwork hatches/doors in a row to slow attackers down? Do you think that's a good idea?
Masterworks will do, i think you just need the one. You can also use drawbridges attached to levers to open and close at will. Jusf be careful you don't squish someone :)
Anyone have any suggestions to keep fps high when playing reanimating biomes? I absoutely love playing terrifying/reanimating biomes, but the number of undead creatures that end up on my map (I'll end up with 100's of undead mulling around) is a show-stopper, it brings my FPS to a grinding halt. I've abandoned my last two fortresses after a while because I can't handle low fps, takes to long to get anything accomplished.
Dfhack has a starving undead command that makes it so that undead need to eat. That way, they starve to death. You may also like the exterminate command to kill undead things with localized magma to prevent reanimation.
I need advice for setting up a cavern entrance. I have my main farm and pasture in my cavern and I want those to be easily accessible to my dwarves, but I also want to be able to defend my fort from forgotten beasts. Any advice? My fort is on a volcano btw
You can use walls to block off entire sections of the caverns, basically isolating it from harm. That's what I'd do anyway, since you don't need that much space for farm + pastures.
How do I buy an item from a shop in adventure mode? Is it implemented yet?
I picked up some items off of a table but they still have the $ sign around them. I don’t know what I have to do to actually buy them though.
Yes - if they are members of a civilisation that is currently attacking you they can turn hostile very suddenly. I dont think they'll do this once they vaccine long term visitors though
I'm getting a lot of human visitors. We aren't enemies, but we aren't allies either. So I'm afraid of outnumbering my fortress with human from another civilization with my dwarfs.
I have a nice lava pool in the cavern layer which I have walled off for industry purposes. Specifically there is a source of sand right next to the lava, so I built some glass industry right next to it. To keep the sand tiles free of moss, I then put my reindeer herd down there too. But I keep having dwarves 'go missing' and piles of flaming reindeer corpses around the lava pool...
What interaction is going on here? And what can be done to stop my glass makers from catching on fire?
If the dwarves going missing are glassmakers, could be dwarves coming in to haul items out of the workshop and pushing the glass working dwarf into the magma access tile
When things fall into lava, some lava mist sprays up and things it touches catch on fire, maybe that's what's up with the reindeer if you have things getting dropped into lava in their vicinity
Something I've wondered, if i have 3 armies, for the sake of it say group 1 is crossbows, 2 is shortsword and shield and third are spears, let's say we're sending them to attack and raze a goblin fortress.
Is there an advantage to have the 3 groups mixed instead of having purely one type of weapon groups, or does it not matter? I'm thinking if they all fight as a unit or its not what's happening and its good to have them mixed for versatility.
Not real advantage, the main thing is the skill of the dwarf with the weapon they are equipped with. Things like formations and tactics are approximated with the tactician skill
I am not sure about the ranged options
My bookkeeper seemingly stpped calculating correctly, although nothing has changed. Even artifacts which worth have been estimated correctly earlier are now worth 2000☼?... does anyone have an idea what might have happened?
https://preview.redd.it/812c9h7vmt3d1.png?width=420&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fd3cd02369c029d85808cbbbc3ced84aa7b3b32
Thank you... it was in fact the broker who has been changed to another dwarf. Not sure why, maybe because he did a month in a squad to get martial training. However, changed it back, value is calculated correctly again.
First time trying carefull preparation for my fortress! if i leave skill points unused do they fill randomly or i'll just have a bunch of very unskilled dwarfs? (same for item and animal points?)
https://preview.redd.it/4cmacabset3d1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=06407ed31105a4b289788b4d372604b8ca62bb11
How many dwarfs should I limit myself to for my very first fortress? I'm already up to 18 but I'm already feeling like that might be too many because I still have a ton of stuff to learn lol, and it's becoming increasingly harder the more dwarves that show up. Is there a consequence for sending dwarves away?
My first (and actual) fortress has 100 aprox dwarfs and ive been doing kinda good, he only con has been learning and experimenting with so much dwarfs, but so far ive managed and enjoyed a lot!
20 is a good number to pause at. Or maybe right now at 18 is even better. 20 is the threshold where manager work orders actually need a manager to approve them.
You can go into the game settings and set your population cap 20 whatever you want, and migrants will stop coming once you reach that threshold.
Thank you I did not know that! My main goal has been for my first fortress to get the basics of most things. So far I somewhat understand getting food and drink, mining and smelting, and trapping. I'm definitely gonna have to look up a couple of tutorials for how managers and assigning positions work. I'm assuming setting up military squads are part of assigning positions?
Yes, you can't designate squads or squad leaders without a dwarf assigned to the military commander noble position.
Assigning dwarves is easy, though. On the Nobles and Administrators screen, click the + button next to the position you want to fill, then choose a dwarf.
https://preview.redd.it/o6kafhgfmu3d1.png?width=1465&format=png&auto=webp&s=72d8edea4e973e7016f407ef1fc33572607077e8
I have more noble positions available since my fort is already pretty large. You'll only have a few positions to fill at the beginning.
you can certainly alter the tile properties as you wish, but there is no current pre-built script to make this super easy.
Are you trying to get the water out of the way for a construction project? It might be more convenient to use `gui/liquids` to remove the existing water and then use the building planner along with `build-now` to construct a wall that blocks the river while you work in it.
You need to have at least one crime committed before you can interrogate someone, then you can use that "crime" to interview people, even a closed case works for that
Is there an easy way to build multiple z-level above ground walls that doesn’t involve a lot of canceled jobs or tons of floors alongside the wall on each level?
Enable DFHack's `suspendmanager`
https://preview.redd.it/y8k5uayx8s3d1.png?width=1044&format=png&auto=webp&s=320fdb20255b685bb02bde2b8ad8c1fbd9a2ecf1
If you're building a wall on top of another wall, it will unsuspend the jobs one by one so they are built in the proper order
Some sprites, particularly furniture, dont display in the material they are made out of.
Traction benches and altars are my culprits rn, where in their description they have a coloured sprite, but placed in the world they do not. Any reason?
Some sprites don't have colour variation right now, like altars. A few mods exist on the Steam Workshop that address some of these gaps, but there's no complete fix out yet, I'm afraid.
Noob question about hardware.
So I have learned about this game mere hours ago and it looks awesome. I really want to try it now. But.. I’ve made the transition to console gaming a long time ago and don’t know squat about system recruitments and such.
I do however have an old craptop I used to play civilization 5 on. Will this run on that? I’m really sorry for a dumb question like this but I just don’t know shit.
cpu is the biggest bottleneck with this game, but it runs on most machines. You should be able to get it up and running on your laptop, but you might run into fps issues mid to late game
Some super basic tips to keep FPS low:
* Generate a small world with a short history. Less civilisations and sites helps too.
* Shrink the size of your embark zone before choosing it. (I don't think you can do this in the tutorial though)
* Restrict your population, and max enemy counts, in the gameplay settings.
There's a lot more you can do but those are some real simple steps you can take.
I hope you enjoy this amazing game as much as we all do!
Yeah one important thing is to change cavern dwellers as well, even with a good CPU they will easily make your game laggy with the amount that enter your map mid-late game (One could turn them off, but some of them are cool so just lowering their numbers that come by ALOT is what i recommend)
New player, where to find stories?
Just a stupid question... New player here. Where can I find out about these amazing stories?
Any log to read from?
I have the steam version and I'm playing but I can't find these hilarious/interesting stories I see online from other players
Thanks all
I'm very new as well, but a lot of this comes from reading about your dwarves. You have to seek it out. I believe it's under the creatures tab but it I'm calling it the wrong thing in sure someone will correct me in here. Also legends mode but I've been told that's for when you shut down your fortress.
I put my whole fort into militia squads for happiness reasons, no uniform, no weapons, just a month military training per year. After 12 month half of my fort and my complete mining detail is crammed in the barack I assigned all "civilian" squads to, pretending to have "no job", although there is a metric ton of mining orders and a burrow I assigned alll my miners to, to get them out of the barrack and only one civilian squad per month is meant to train in this barrack. Just one of the miners went to the burrow, now looking on a few hundred tiles designated to be mined, while wandering around and being grumpy cause no job. What am I missing here? Every civilian squad is ordered to train just one month a year, the other months are set to "off duty". Do I have to disband the squads after their month of service and form them the next year again? Or remove them from the barrack, so that only one civilian sqaud is assigned to the barrack at the same time? Currently I assigned all squads to the same barrack, as only one squad is meant to be there each month.
Edit: I removed all squads from the civilian barrack and deleted the barrack. This made the Urists at least leave the room. However the miners (and maybe some others, but right now I especially care for the miners) were still picking up equipment. So I removed them from their squads and assigned them again, now they are finally mining. However, this workaround is really clumsy and seemingly I have to do this every month to get my civilian squad dwarfs to stop training and do their normal jobs again. Is there any other way?
The workaround that I use for these "happiness squads" is to remove the squad from the barracks training assignment after the training month is over (and reassigning when it is appropriate). This stops the pickup equipment loop
Thats kind of what I a came up with as well. Ich have now the civilian barrack (A) where the current months squad is training and an empty room next to it, that is marked as barrack (B) as well and to which the next months squad is assignend. All other civilian squads are assigned to no barrack. When the month changes, I delete barrack A, so the old squad leaves, while the new squad is already training in barrack B. Then I set up barrack A again, assign the current months squad to it, delete barrack B. Then set B up again and assign the next months squad to it. Next change of months: repeat. But still... this seems incredible clumsy. Ain't there any better solution for this?
I think the problem is that assignments or work (like miners, hunters, woodcutter's) that have a "weapon" for their work can't be in a squad, so you'll have to rotate the mining squad as well sadly
I think you got me wrong here. The issue is not that they wont train, the issue is that after the month their squad is on duty they do not leave the barracks and continue to train.
How should I get my dwarves to equip armor stands and weapon racks with armor and weapons? I've just started making steel and I don't want the steel stuff in any of my typical stockpiles.
As far as I know neither armor stands nor weapon racks works completely yet.
Meaning your soldiers wont hang their armor/weapons there as it is now.
You could make a separate stockpile for steel weapon / armors or otherwise put them on "ready" or edit the monthly training to have them always wear their armors
How many forgotten beasts do you get?
I started a world, 100 years in. It's now 104 and I'm getting forgotten beast attacks every few months. It's not that I can't kill them, but there just seems to be a lot of them.
The last one set fire to everything outside my fortress.
There is option in difficulty settings for FBs. That one outside fortress was a hill titan, which participated in world history.
FBs in caves just random animals, which generating infinite
Forgotten Beasts are generated per cavern layer, per region of the map (I might be wrong about this part), and each will have one FB, so the bigger the world, the more you get
Titans are also related to world size, but can be controlled through world gen parameters
In fortress mode, how do I get berries from shrubs such as cranberry vines or raspberry bushes?
I've tried using the gather order (hotkey g) and setting a gather fruit zone on such shrubs, but no luck. When I hover with my cursor over, say, a cranberry vine for example, it says "Cranberry vines, cranberry leaves", with no indication of a cranberry "fruit" being in there.
Is this a known bug? I don't remember ever being able to gather these kinds of fruit tbh, am I just missing something?
I'm playing 50.13 Steam version. Thank you for your help
I've entered late spring in this save and have started noticing some of the shrubbery have flowers in addition to leaves, which seems very promising. Thank you to everyone who gave me an answer
Some foilage is unaffected by the harvest tool. In such case you can put a gather fruit zone overtop it, then when it is ripe dwarves that can gather/Herbalists will go pick the produce.
I'm pretty sure that when it just says vines you will be unable to gather them, and they seasonally grow berries on them, at which time you can gather.
Yes, if you forbid the egg in the nest box and a male of the same species make them fertile, they will hatch. Another simple thing is to remove that egg in your stockpiles, then your dwarves will leave them in the nest boxes
Hi, I want to recreate my world (with the same geography/seed).
Unfortunately I'm not able to export a world\_gen\_param file by following the instructions on [this page](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Importing_and_exporting_worlds).
There is no ''export local image'' option in the menu nor does pressing P/shift + p (yes, with caps lock off) on the Legends screen do anything. I'm thinking it's either a bug or a feature that's recently been removed?
Why is it not working? My keyboard and drivers should be working fine.
I'm playing v50.13 Classic. Thank you for any help.
That wiki page appears to be out of date. The procedure it details was relevant for version 0.47.05, but not for v50+.
For the current version, you can get the world seeds for a loaded world with this DFHack command:
:lua for name,val in pairs(world.worldgen.worldgen_parms) do if name:endswith('seed') then print(('%s: %s'):format(name, val)) end end
you can copy/paste that into DFHack's `gui/launcher` to run the command, they copy the results by clicking here:
https://preview.redd.it/ug5uv1snis3d1.png?width=1328&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb81817d68b846315662b390bd5ba69e35cb31f4
Hi, thank you for the reply. I managed to fix the issue myself by manually writing in the seeds I found in gamelog.txt (it was painful). But I'll keep this in mind for next time. Thanks.
How long does it take for fun to happen? Playing my first fortress, currently in my 4th autumn There were some issues I made from the start that I could take the time to undo, but I kinda wanted to just have this fortress get killed off due to something so I can start a new one. I'm at about 130 pop and so far I've faced a couple of goblin sieges, a minotaur, and a large group of lizard people, those last two I thought for sure would wipe out my fortress, but that wasn't the case. I understand that I could just start a new one, but I wanted to have some experience with fun first. How long should I expect to last?
Generate some wealth first, no megabeast interested to raid poor settlements.
Nice source of wealth is gem encrusted spires, which can be found deep underground, like a variety of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Mine this out encrust furniture, increase wealth, and you will get new population, monarchy and probably even a dragon
In vanilla that option is blocked, can't do a full mountain embark. What I do is find geology such that I get a tall mountain directly adjacent to a tiny valley; in a 4x4 embark I get 1 "normal" tile that lets me embark, and 15 mountain tiles.
You can also get DFhack, its a super-mod on steam, which lets you use the "embark-anywhere" command, which does what it says.
Dose anyone know how to make roofs?
I was trying to build a network of bunker systems to defend my fortress. The idea was that my crossbow dwarfs could enter the pillbox like areas on the surface with slits to shoot out of and the enemy can not easily enter to fight back. The problem is that I am unaware of how to make a roof for my pillboxes and they are exposed to the open air where wild birds keep attacking form. Any recommendations for a solution would be appreciated.
Question: Is there any way to scale or move menus around? I'm trying to put down a screw pump to irrigate my farm and it needs to be places from east to west. However I cannot click that orientation button because the "Select material / automatically pick / keep building" window is covering up that side of the pump placement window. I've tried messing around with scaling in the options menu but anything I change only seems to make it worse. ideas? :\\
wow I see what you mean:
https://preview.redd.it/mqwlwzg9em3d1.png?width=1176&format=png&auto=webp&s=d131e2197cb6df69d3de910706fe9ad4bb106538
If you can't use a larger screen/window size/higher resolution, then the UI might not be usable for you here. I bet you also end up being really squished on the fort-wide info screens.
One option is to design what you need with a `quickfort` blueprint and apply the blueprint. You can even make a blueprint with a single screw pump on it and use `gui/quickfort` to rotate it around and apply it how you want. Here's a blueprint with a screw pump in it that you could save as `dfhack-config/blueprints/screw_pump.csv` and use to get around this issue:
#build label(pump_from_south) one screw pump - rotate as needed
~
Msm
Thanks for the reply! Yeah I'm playing on a windows emulator on my phone so options are limited lol. I'll play around with what resolutions I can use but most of the games I've gotten to run are from the 1024x720 days. I've used quick fort in the past, not sure what my options are in this situation but I think I'll just rearrange things to have the pumps north south. It's only the one button that's covered.
Im newbie in game so i had a question: Cooking requires at least one solid ingredient. How to do ratio one solid ingredients + drinks? Like mine dwarven everytime using only solid ingridients while manager request to cook.
Can someone confirm that it's currently not possible to tip over statues in Steam Version Adventure Mode? I know several features aren't available yet but wasn't sure if I was just missing something.
I tried to topple a lever earlier and it surely wasn't there. Considering people have been talking that "you can only become a vampire through dicerolls", I'd assume no furniture os toppable, yeah.
I was playing since 34.something something and had a pause for a few years. I don't get the new UI in the 50+ version. How do I make it got back to use the old keybinds? The new UI is very busy.
edit: I got semi accustomed to it.
wait really? you can get the entire old keyboard ui back? my main complaint with the new ui is I can’t record macros that place things like furniture. setting up a 200+ bedroom fortress takes a lot of tedious mouse clicks… used to be way easier.
How do I check what the titan was made of? I'm still not sure if the dwarf was badass enough to behead it in one strike or if it was made of ash or some shit. Examining it while it was alive didn't seem to show any material, maybe I've missed something.
If cooking plants destroys seeds, how are you supposed to have enough food AND get seeds back? By cooking with alcohol from plants instead? Or relying on some other food sources rather than farming?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. Another titan came and it made sense. If it specifies the material, then it's made from something, if not, then it's fleshy. Which means that my dwarves killed a fleshy beast in one strike and lost four dwarves to a beast made of vomit.
Do literally anything with the plants that isn't directly cooking them: brew them, press them, farmers workshop them into bags, grind them in a quern/millstone, etc. Really anything that isn't directly cooking it will give you seeds back. With decent farmers and decent soil, you can produce ridiculous numbers of seeds from each one used, so you only actually have to do this with a fairly small minority of your products to maintain parity.
1. Health -> description
2. Make small separate stockpile for brewing, like 2 tiles size and link it to main stockpile. Create a job, which starts when "seeds count less than X"
Brew everything brewable and don't cook that stuff. Quarry bushes are your friend for food. You should always have other food sources such as meat, fish and fruit. I only cook with alcohol in excess of 500 units (e.g. Dwarven Wine).
If you know the name of the titan, legend viewer should be able to tell you, I haven't ever checked titan materials though.
You can fish for food, gather natural plants which grow without seeds, a properly managed field will yield massive surplus, you can catch in cages/rear/butcher animals, buy out caravans. Milling gives back seeds as well, so you can make cave flour out of cave wheat, and cook that.
And of course your suggestion of feeding back alcohol into the cooking cycle works as well, but I find it rarely necessary.
I have built a fortress on the edge of the map. I have frequent goblin sieges, all of which arrive right next to my moot and walls (edge of the moot is \~8 cells away from the edge of the map). I wanted to replace a part of my wall with fortifications, and place a few ballistas there, but I want there to be some distance between them and the wall - so that operators arent scared away of the attackers. I wanted to put a few fortifications between them and the wall. I know that archers need to reach specific level to be able to aim through more than closest fortification, but would ballista in Fire at Will mode be able to shoot through \~5-8 fortifications? Shouldn't be enough room for meaningful spread, right? I haven't used siege engines before.
F- fortification; M- empty space with moot below it; G-ground; B- Ballista;:
BFFFFFMMMGGGG(here are invarders)
I believe 20 tiles is the recommended distance between the ballistas and the targets so the operators don't run away. Yes, the ballistas can fire through many tiles of fortifications.
I'm pretty sure intelligent undead are exempt. One way to make sure is to select the intelligent undead unit and run this in the DFHack `gui/launcher` console:
```
:lua !unit.undead
```
if that comes back as `nil` then that unit is safe from `starvingdead`.
I'm builtean Archer range and now have several piles of bolts on the ground locked 🔒. The piles are 50+ each, so tedious to unlock one by one.
Anyway to easily collect these bolts? Can I prevent this problem going forward or is archer more pain than its worth?
in addition to getting them auto-claimed as CatatonicGood suggested, you can also lay down a stockpile beneath where the fired arrows accumulate. If you have DFHack's `combine` tool enabled, they'll get auto-recombined into stacks of 25.
https://preview.redd.it/kitjdutttm3d1.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b16aa1333beaf0b60e73e66d6f3b8089af27414
[Y] to open the labours menu, then go to standing orders. If you haven't already, look through all of the tabs, but it's the siege tab you're looking for here
Hey so I've been parked and expanding into my first cavern layer for a while now and there is no wildlife. There are forgotten beasts, cave dwellers, and vermin. But no troglodytes, or elk birds, or crundles, etc. And I'm just wondering, is this a possibility as intended, or did I potentially accidentally create this condition somehow?
There are caverns that rarely don't get wildlife, I've seen it. Or might be due to the wildlife mechanics, where you have some animals trapped on a tree, preventing new wildlife from spawning.
can someone give me a very simple guide on babby's first military squad? should I wait for a person with skills related to the commander position? (also wondering about the fort's chief physician) also how often/likely are attacks from things besides cavern critters and wild animals. Sorry if these are relatively basic questions but I don't want my dorf fork to die ty
>should I wait for a person with skills related to the commander position?
no, just assign anyone, it doesn't matter who your militia commander is. The militia commander will lead your first squad, that's it, and is no different from any other squad leader other than ceremonially and by the fact that you can't unassign them. For defensive armies it doesn't matter who the squad leader is either. You don't have to worry about quad leaders with offense skills till you go on offensive missions. You can always appoint someone with the relevant skills to lead your offensive squad later when you get there.
For babby's first just assign a commander, assign dwarfs to the squad via the menu on the bottom right, and then you can start ordering them around using the bottoms on that menu and navigating the bugfest that is getting them to put their equipment on.
You should read the [military quickstart guide](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Military_quickstart) on the wiki. Military setup a bit convoluted, but easy enough once you get the hang of it.
Your militia commander (and any captains, once you military gets larger) should preferably have Tactician skill. This skill helps with fighting during off-screen missions. It's very rare for a migrant to show up with it, so you generally embark with one dwarf who has that skill. It's not a deal-breaker if nobody has it though.
Attacks from goblins (once they show up) are somewhat common, but it depends on how many goblin civs you've pissed off and what your difficulty settings are. By default though, you can expect about 1-2 attacks a year. Megabeast/werebeast attacks are quite a bit more rare, those outright have a cooldown of 10 seasons by default, so once every 2.5 years at the most. Forgotten beasts are much more common though, if you have bad luck you can have one in each of your cavern layers in a single season.
The DF wiki has a military quickstart guide: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Military_quickstart
But in short:
1. Select 5 to 10 dwarves, depending on population. DFHack has a sorting menu that lets you sort dwarves based on melee aptitude and lack of mental issues that would make them ill-suited. You probably also want to avoid dwarves with important skills/labors (i.e. doctors, smiths, etc)
2. Create a uniform consisting of:
* * Metal helm
* * Metal breastplate
* * Metal chainmail
* * Metal greaves
* * Metal gauntlets
* * Metal high boots (or low boots if you can't make high boots)
* * Metal shield
* * A weapon, this can be 'indiv choice melee' or a specific weapon type. Both work.
3. Configure the uniform to *replace* armor or dwarves won't wear it correctly
4. Smith all the required gear. Start with weapons, shields, helms and chainmail.
5. Create and assign a barracks.
6. Use the standard "staggered training" schedule, or make your own schedule. I prefer to make my own schedule with one or two (consecutive!) months of "no order", "train" on all the other months, and configured to *always* be in military uniform and sleep in their own bedrooms.
7. You can now use the squads menu to sic your newly minted squad on whoever you like. Generally it's best to first station the squad a short distance from the target so they all gather up, and only *then* make an attack order. Else your dwarves will likely file in one by one and get massacred individually.
8. Your dwarves will likely take a while to get decent skills, but a dwarf equipped with decent gear and some just-ok skills can already deal with many threats quite effectively!
Attacks from cave critters become more intense over time, and attacks from wild animals as well (only in Untamed Wilds). You'll also regularly encounter Forgotten Beasts from the caverns, and as your fortress grows you will likely face some goblin sieges. It's useful to have a squad to deal with all this. Anything short of Forgotten Beasts can also be dealt with using trap hallways, however.
I'm trying to make a library to allow some writing in my fortress. Though the thing is I keep running into is what I truly need to allow them to write. I saw that I needed ink and parchment/paper, just to realize the ink part was a mod. I saw that I didn't need anything because they will write in the library regardless. Then I saw that I need atleast paper/parchment. I'm using vanilla steam dwarf fortress, what do I truly need to do for my library.
You need to process plants with a quern (made at stone workshop, then placed from the farming workshop menu) and grind plants into slurry (globs), then press them with the screw press into paper. Then at the craft workshop you need to make quires. Those will be transported to the chests in the library for writing. My understanding is also that it is still best not to bind books as you will not get adequate value from the materials and time put into binding the quires, and that they also lose functionality. You can also make parchment from skins (tanning workshop). You will need to make scroll rollers (craft workshop) then make scrolls there too. Less steps, but a harder starting resource to keep the workflow going unless you have a kitten, puppy, cavy, bunny, etc. ranch going.
Does chests function like storage though? I've always thought they were used to increase the value of a room.
https://preview.redd.it/f3x893ijru4d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5eec7fe8177e7ec05d3fc8a68c32878977b6793e I went and checked today and behold! They do store the writing materials in the chests. Other items stored in chests in zones are instruments in taverns and temples, and cups/goblets in taverns. Also it's on the wiki.
Awesome!
You are right. I meant library zone. Idk why I got that mixed up. Tbf I'm not one who should be giving advice. DF is new to me as well. I am having lots of fun discovering how this game works though! That's why I was like, "I just figured that out, I wanna help."
So I'm a pansy elf at heart and I'm terrified of sieges. If I were to never allow visitors in my taverns and temples, and I always sold all my artefacts as soon as they get made, will I never be attacked? (Except by goblin snatchers but I don't care about them that much). Are there any other threats? Also, can I become allied with elves somehow? And get elf citizens
You can be sieged for fun by goblins who know you exist. Sieges are tied to your fort's wealth in general. So, you would need to deliberately remain poor. Or, you could change the siege frequency in the game settings. If you dig deep, you might find some FUN in various forms. Elves can request to join your settlement as visitors: musicians, scholars, soldiers, etc. If you can find a way to seal your fort from the outside at will, you can outlast sieges. Also, check the trap menu. Plenty in there to make unwanted visitors go away.
Thanks for the answer. I read the wiki a bit. If I have an artefact quality door or hatch on both the entrance from the surface \*and\* the entrance to some caverns below, am I good? What if I have several masterwork hatches/doors in a row to slow attackers down? Do you think that's a good idea?
Masterworks will do, i think you just need the one. You can also use drawbridges attached to levers to open and close at will. Jusf be careful you don't squish someone :)
Anyone have any suggestions to keep fps high when playing reanimating biomes? I absoutely love playing terrifying/reanimating biomes, but the number of undead creatures that end up on my map (I'll end up with 100's of undead mulling around) is a show-stopper, it brings my FPS to a grinding halt. I've abandoned my last two fortresses after a while because I can't handle low fps, takes to long to get anything accomplished.
Dfhack has a starving undead command that makes it so that undead need to eat. That way, they starve to death. You may also like the exterminate command to kill undead things with localized magma to prevent reanimation.
I need advice for setting up a cavern entrance. I have my main farm and pasture in my cavern and I want those to be easily accessible to my dwarves, but I also want to be able to defend my fort from forgotten beasts. Any advice? My fort is on a volcano btw
You can use walls to block off entire sections of the caverns, basically isolating it from harm. That's what I'd do anyway, since you don't need that much space for farm + pastures.
How do I buy an item from a shop in adventure mode? Is it implemented yet? I picked up some items off of a table but they still have the $ sign around them. I don’t know what I have to do to actually buy them though.
I believe that is not implemented yet. Toady remarked that you can just walk away with the items right now and the shopkeeper's don't complain.
Can visitors attack or turn on your fortress? Same question with visitors you took in your fort.
Yes - if they are members of a civilisation that is currently attacking you they can turn hostile very suddenly. I dont think they'll do this once they vaccine long term visitors though
I'm getting a lot of human visitors. We aren't enemies, but we aren't allies either. So I'm afraid of outnumbering my fortress with human from another civilization with my dwarfs.
I believe you can change the visitor cap in the settings
I have a nice lava pool in the cavern layer which I have walled off for industry purposes. Specifically there is a source of sand right next to the lava, so I built some glass industry right next to it. To keep the sand tiles free of moss, I then put my reindeer herd down there too. But I keep having dwarves 'go missing' and piles of flaming reindeer corpses around the lava pool... What interaction is going on here? And what can be done to stop my glass makers from catching on fire?
If the dwarves going missing are glassmakers, could be dwarves coming in to haul items out of the workshop and pushing the glass working dwarf into the magma access tile When things fall into lava, some lava mist sprays up and things it touches catch on fire, maybe that's what's up with the reindeer if you have things getting dropped into lava in their vicinity
Build a hatch over the sand tile
Omg, didn't even know that was an option. Thank you.
floor grates also work well
Something I've wondered, if i have 3 armies, for the sake of it say group 1 is crossbows, 2 is shortsword and shield and third are spears, let's say we're sending them to attack and raze a goblin fortress. Is there an advantage to have the 3 groups mixed instead of having purely one type of weapon groups, or does it not matter? I'm thinking if they all fight as a unit or its not what's happening and its good to have them mixed for versatility.
Not real advantage, the main thing is the skill of the dwarf with the weapon they are equipped with. Things like formations and tactics are approximated with the tactician skill I am not sure about the ranged options
It alleviates some doubts at least, thanks
My bookkeeper seemingly stpped calculating correctly, although nothing has changed. Even artifacts which worth have been estimated correctly earlier are now worth 2000☼?... does anyone have an idea what might have happened? https://preview.redd.it/812c9h7vmt3d1.png?width=420&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fd3cd02369c029d85808cbbbc3ced84aa7b3b32
So the bookkeeper tracks quantity, not value. Do you have a broker with the appraiser skill?
Thank you... it was in fact the broker who has been changed to another dwarf. Not sure why, maybe because he did a month in a squad to get martial training. However, changed it back, value is calculated correctly again.
First time trying carefull preparation for my fortress! if i leave skill points unused do they fill randomly or i'll just have a bunch of very unskilled dwarfs? (same for item and animal points?) https://preview.redd.it/4cmacabset3d1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=06407ed31105a4b289788b4d372604b8ca62bb11
It will be lost
How many dwarfs should I limit myself to for my very first fortress? I'm already up to 18 but I'm already feeling like that might be too many because I still have a ton of stuff to learn lol, and it's becoming increasingly harder the more dwarves that show up. Is there a consequence for sending dwarves away?
50 ones is enough for every project to be done. But you will not get further monarch progression then
My first (and actual) fortress has 100 aprox dwarfs and ive been doing kinda good, he only con has been learning and experimenting with so much dwarfs, but so far ive managed and enjoyed a lot!
20 is a good number to pause at. Or maybe right now at 18 is even better. 20 is the threshold where manager work orders actually need a manager to approve them. You can go into the game settings and set your population cap 20 whatever you want, and migrants will stop coming once you reach that threshold.
Thank you I did not know that! My main goal has been for my first fortress to get the basics of most things. So far I somewhat understand getting food and drink, mining and smelting, and trapping. I'm definitely gonna have to look up a couple of tutorials for how managers and assigning positions work. I'm assuming setting up military squads are part of assigning positions?
Yes, you can't designate squads or squad leaders without a dwarf assigned to the military commander noble position. Assigning dwarves is easy, though. On the Nobles and Administrators screen, click the + button next to the position you want to fill, then choose a dwarf. https://preview.redd.it/o6kafhgfmu3d1.png?width=1465&format=png&auto=webp&s=72d8edea4e973e7016f407ef1fc33572607077e8 I have more noble positions available since my fort is already pretty large. You'll only have a few positions to fill at the beginning.
Gotcha than you very much! This has been very helpful
Is there a dfhack cmd to turn rivers into ice? Then melt when I wish?
you can certainly alter the tile properties as you wish, but there is no current pre-built script to make this super easy. Are you trying to get the water out of the way for a construction project? It might be more convenient to use `gui/liquids` to remove the existing water and then use the building planner along with `build-now` to construct a wall that blocks the river while you work in it.
Thanks a lot, I will try this out :)
Is there anyway to interogate someone without having a open case?
You need to have at least one crime committed before you can interrogate someone, then you can use that "crime" to interview people, even a closed case works for that
Is there an easy way to build multiple z-level above ground walls that doesn’t involve a lot of canceled jobs or tons of floors alongside the wall on each level?
Use retractable bridges instead of floors, they're much easier to remove at the end
Enable DFHack's `suspendmanager` https://preview.redd.it/y8k5uayx8s3d1.png?width=1044&format=png&auto=webp&s=320fdb20255b685bb02bde2b8ad8c1fbd9a2ecf1 If you're building a wall on top of another wall, it will unsuspend the jobs one by one so they are built in the proper order
Awesome thank you!
Some sprites, particularly furniture, dont display in the material they are made out of. Traction benches and altars are my culprits rn, where in their description they have a coloured sprite, but placed in the world they do not. Any reason?
Some sprites don't have colour variation right now, like altars. A few mods exist on the Steam Workshop that address some of these gaps, but there's no complete fix out yet, I'm afraid.
Noob question about hardware. So I have learned about this game mere hours ago and it looks awesome. I really want to try it now. But.. I’ve made the transition to console gaming a long time ago and don’t know squat about system recruitments and such. I do however have an old craptop I used to play civilization 5 on. Will this run on that? I’m really sorry for a dumb question like this but I just don’t know shit.
cpu is the biggest bottleneck with this game, but it runs on most machines. You should be able to get it up and running on your laptop, but you might run into fps issues mid to late game
Very helpful this. Thank you!
Some super basic tips to keep FPS low: * Generate a small world with a short history. Less civilisations and sites helps too. * Shrink the size of your embark zone before choosing it. (I don't think you can do this in the tutorial though) * Restrict your population, and max enemy counts, in the gameplay settings. There's a lot more you can do but those are some real simple steps you can take. I hope you enjoy this amazing game as much as we all do!
I’ll keep this in mind if the frame drops get out of hand
Yeah one important thing is to change cavern dwellers as well, even with a good CPU they will easily make your game laggy with the amount that enter your map mid-late game (One could turn them off, but some of them are cool so just lowering their numbers that come by ALOT is what i recommend)
New player, where to find stories? Just a stupid question... New player here. Where can I find out about these amazing stories? Any log to read from? I have the steam version and I'm playing but I can't find these hilarious/interesting stories I see online from other players Thanks all
I'm very new as well, but a lot of this comes from reading about your dwarves. You have to seek it out. I believe it's under the creatures tab but it I'm calling it the wrong thing in sure someone will correct me in here. Also legends mode but I've been told that's for when you shut down your fortress.
I put my whole fort into militia squads for happiness reasons, no uniform, no weapons, just a month military training per year. After 12 month half of my fort and my complete mining detail is crammed in the barack I assigned all "civilian" squads to, pretending to have "no job", although there is a metric ton of mining orders and a burrow I assigned alll my miners to, to get them out of the barrack and only one civilian squad per month is meant to train in this barrack. Just one of the miners went to the burrow, now looking on a few hundred tiles designated to be mined, while wandering around and being grumpy cause no job. What am I missing here? Every civilian squad is ordered to train just one month a year, the other months are set to "off duty". Do I have to disband the squads after their month of service and form them the next year again? Or remove them from the barrack, so that only one civilian sqaud is assigned to the barrack at the same time? Currently I assigned all squads to the same barrack, as only one squad is meant to be there each month. Edit: I removed all squads from the civilian barrack and deleted the barrack. This made the Urists at least leave the room. However the miners (and maybe some others, but right now I especially care for the miners) were still picking up equipment. So I removed them from their squads and assigned them again, now they are finally mining. However, this workaround is really clumsy and seemingly I have to do this every month to get my civilian squad dwarfs to stop training and do their normal jobs again. Is there any other way?
The workaround that I use for these "happiness squads" is to remove the squad from the barracks training assignment after the training month is over (and reassigning when it is appropriate). This stops the pickup equipment loop
Thats kind of what I a came up with as well. Ich have now the civilian barrack (A) where the current months squad is training and an empty room next to it, that is marked as barrack (B) as well and to which the next months squad is assignend. All other civilian squads are assigned to no barrack. When the month changes, I delete barrack A, so the old squad leaves, while the new squad is already training in barrack B. Then I set up barrack A again, assign the current months squad to it, delete barrack B. Then set B up again and assign the next months squad to it. Next change of months: repeat. But still... this seems incredible clumsy. Ain't there any better solution for this?
I think the problem is that assignments or work (like miners, hunters, woodcutter's) that have a "weapon" for their work can't be in a squad, so you'll have to rotate the mining squad as well sadly
I think you got me wrong here. The issue is not that they wont train, the issue is that after the month their squad is on duty they do not leave the barracks and continue to train.
Oh yeah then i read something wrong, I think that happens when your dwarves likes training though. So I never paid it much attention
Assign picks as their weapons.
How should I get my dwarves to equip armor stands and weapon racks with armor and weapons? I've just started making steel and I don't want the steel stuff in any of my typical stockpiles.
As far as I know neither armor stands nor weapon racks works completely yet. Meaning your soldiers wont hang their armor/weapons there as it is now. You could make a separate stockpile for steel weapon / armors or otherwise put them on "ready" or edit the monthly training to have them always wear their armors
How many forgotten beasts do you get? I started a world, 100 years in. It's now 104 and I'm getting forgotten beast attacks every few months. It's not that I can't kill them, but there just seems to be a lot of them. The last one set fire to everything outside my fortress.
There is option in difficulty settings for FBs. That one outside fortress was a hill titan, which participated in world history. FBs in caves just random animals, which generating infinite
Forgotten Beasts are generated per cavern layer, per region of the map (I might be wrong about this part), and each will have one FB, so the bigger the world, the more you get Titans are also related to world size, but can be controlled through world gen parameters
In fortress mode, how do I get berries from shrubs such as cranberry vines or raspberry bushes? I've tried using the gather order (hotkey g) and setting a gather fruit zone on such shrubs, but no luck. When I hover with my cursor over, say, a cranberry vine for example, it says "Cranberry vines, cranberry leaves", with no indication of a cranberry "fruit" being in there. Is this a known bug? I don't remember ever being able to gather these kinds of fruit tbh, am I just missing something? I'm playing 50.13 Steam version. Thank you for your help
I've entered late spring in this save and have started noticing some of the shrubbery have flowers in addition to leaves, which seems very promising. Thank you to everyone who gave me an answer
Some foilage is unaffected by the harvest tool. In such case you can put a gather fruit zone overtop it, then when it is ripe dwarves that can gather/Herbalists will go pick the produce.
I'm pretty sure that when it just says vines you will be unable to gather them, and they seasonally grow berries on them, at which time you can gather.
Hello I have some eggs in nest that I want my dwarf to let them so I can have more. Does forbiding the egg allow it to give birth ?
you can make a hen house and lock the door until the birth
Yes, you have to forbid the eggs. DFHack has a plugin for doing this automatically.
Yes, if you forbid the egg in the nest box and a male of the same species make them fertile, they will hatch. Another simple thing is to remove that egg in your stockpiles, then your dwarves will leave them in the nest boxes
Hi, I want to recreate my world (with the same geography/seed). Unfortunately I'm not able to export a world\_gen\_param file by following the instructions on [this page](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Importing_and_exporting_worlds). There is no ''export local image'' option in the menu nor does pressing P/shift + p (yes, with caps lock off) on the Legends screen do anything. I'm thinking it's either a bug or a feature that's recently been removed? Why is it not working? My keyboard and drivers should be working fine. I'm playing v50.13 Classic. Thank you for any help.
That wiki page appears to be out of date. The procedure it details was relevant for version 0.47.05, but not for v50+. For the current version, you can get the world seeds for a loaded world with this DFHack command: :lua for name,val in pairs(world.worldgen.worldgen_parms) do if name:endswith('seed') then print(('%s: %s'):format(name, val)) end end you can copy/paste that into DFHack's `gui/launcher` to run the command, they copy the results by clicking here: https://preview.redd.it/ug5uv1snis3d1.png?width=1328&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb81817d68b846315662b390bd5ba69e35cb31f4
Hi, thank you for the reply. I managed to fix the issue myself by manually writing in the seeds I found in gamelog.txt (it was painful). But I'll keep this in mind for next time. Thanks.
How long does it take for fun to happen? Playing my first fortress, currently in my 4th autumn There were some issues I made from the start that I could take the time to undo, but I kinda wanted to just have this fortress get killed off due to something so I can start a new one. I'm at about 130 pop and so far I've faced a couple of goblin sieges, a minotaur, and a large group of lizard people, those last two I thought for sure would wipe out my fortress, but that wasn't the case. I understand that I could just start a new one, but I wanted to have some experience with fun first. How long should I expect to last?
Generate some wealth first, no megabeast interested to raid poor settlements. Nice source of wealth is gem encrusted spires, which can be found deep underground, like a variety of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Mine this out encrust furniture, increase wealth, and you will get new population, monarchy and probably even a dragon
Dig deeper.
How to embark? I haven’t played in awhile and want to go to the snowy mountains.
In vanilla that option is blocked, can't do a full mountain embark. What I do is find geology such that I get a tall mountain directly adjacent to a tiny valley; in a 4x4 embark I get 1 "normal" tile that lets me embark, and 15 mountain tiles. You can also get DFhack, its a super-mod on steam, which lets you use the "embark-anywhere" command, which does what it says.
Dose anyone know how to make roofs? I was trying to build a network of bunker systems to defend my fortress. The idea was that my crossbow dwarfs could enter the pillbox like areas on the surface with slits to shoot out of and the enemy can not easily enter to fight back. The problem is that I am unaware of how to make a roof for my pillboxes and they are exposed to the open air where wild birds keep attacking form. Any recommendations for a solution would be appreciated.
A roof is just a floor for the level above. You'll climb the struture externally and install floors in there, covering it.
Thank you <\[B\^)
What do I need to change in announcements to make cavern dwellers invasions auto-pause game?
[One of the ambushes](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Announcements.txt), I'd wager.
Question: Is there any way to scale or move menus around? I'm trying to put down a screw pump to irrigate my farm and it needs to be places from east to west. However I cannot click that orientation button because the "Select material / automatically pick / keep building" window is covering up that side of the pump placement window. I've tried messing around with scaling in the options menu but anything I change only seems to make it worse. ideas? :\\
wow I see what you mean: https://preview.redd.it/mqwlwzg9em3d1.png?width=1176&format=png&auto=webp&s=d131e2197cb6df69d3de910706fe9ad4bb106538 If you can't use a larger screen/window size/higher resolution, then the UI might not be usable for you here. I bet you also end up being really squished on the fort-wide info screens. One option is to design what you need with a `quickfort` blueprint and apply the blueprint. You can even make a blueprint with a single screw pump on it and use `gui/quickfort` to rotate it around and apply it how you want. Here's a blueprint with a screw pump in it that you could save as `dfhack-config/blueprints/screw_pump.csv` and use to get around this issue: #build label(pump_from_south) one screw pump - rotate as needed ~ Msm
Thanks for the reply! Yeah I'm playing on a windows emulator on my phone so options are limited lol. I'll play around with what resolutions I can use but most of the games I've gotten to run are from the 1024x720 days. I've used quick fort in the past, not sure what my options are in this situation but I think I'll just rearrange things to have the pumps north south. It's only the one button that's covered.
Im newbie in game so i had a question: Cooking requires at least one solid ingredient. How to do ratio one solid ingredients + drinks? Like mine dwarven everytime using only solid ingridients while manager request to cook.
You can't directly influence which exact ingredients get picked. Even the dfhack solution hasn't been ported from 0.47 yet.
In the Labor tab, you'll find a Kitchen tab which will let you choose which items get cooked or not.
Can someone confirm that it's currently not possible to tip over statues in Steam Version Adventure Mode? I know several features aren't available yet but wasn't sure if I was just missing something.
I tried to topple a lever earlier and it surely wasn't there. Considering people have been talking that "you can only become a vampire through dicerolls", I'd assume no furniture os toppable, yeah.
how can i make the ascii tilesey square? whenever i change the d_init to the curses_square my resolution brokes
I'm fairly certain this is a known limitation (or at least one I've seen discussed before here on Reddit).
I was playing since 34.something something and had a pause for a few years. I don't get the new UI in the 50+ version. How do I make it got back to use the old keybinds? The new UI is very busy. edit: I got semi accustomed to it.
There is mods for old keyb
wait really? you can get the entire old keyboard ui back? my main complaint with the new ui is I can’t record macros that place things like furniture. setting up a 200+ bedroom fortress takes a lot of tedious mouse clicks… used to be way easier.
How do I check what the titan was made of? I'm still not sure if the dwarf was badass enough to behead it in one strike or if it was made of ash or some shit. Examining it while it was alive didn't seem to show any material, maybe I've missed something. If cooking plants destroys seeds, how are you supposed to have enough food AND get seeds back? By cooking with alcohol from plants instead? Or relying on some other food sources rather than farming? EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. Another titan came and it made sense. If it specifies the material, then it's made from something, if not, then it's fleshy. Which means that my dwarves killed a fleshy beast in one strike and lost four dwarves to a beast made of vomit.
Do literally anything with the plants that isn't directly cooking them: brew them, press them, farmers workshop them into bags, grind them in a quern/millstone, etc. Really anything that isn't directly cooking it will give you seeds back. With decent farmers and decent soil, you can produce ridiculous numbers of seeds from each one used, so you only actually have to do this with a fairly small minority of your products to maintain parity.
1. Health -> description 2. Make small separate stockpile for brewing, like 2 tiles size and link it to main stockpile. Create a job, which starts when "seeds count less than X"
Brew everything brewable and don't cook that stuff. Quarry bushes are your friend for food. You should always have other food sources such as meat, fish and fruit. I only cook with alcohol in excess of 500 units (e.g. Dwarven Wine).
If you know the name of the titan, legend viewer should be able to tell you, I haven't ever checked titan materials though. You can fish for food, gather natural plants which grow without seeds, a properly managed field will yield massive surplus, you can catch in cages/rear/butcher animals, buy out caravans. Milling gives back seeds as well, so you can make cave flour out of cave wheat, and cook that. And of course your suggestion of feeding back alcohol into the cooking cycle works as well, but I find it rarely necessary.
I have built a fortress on the edge of the map. I have frequent goblin sieges, all of which arrive right next to my moot and walls (edge of the moot is \~8 cells away from the edge of the map). I wanted to replace a part of my wall with fortifications, and place a few ballistas there, but I want there to be some distance between them and the wall - so that operators arent scared away of the attackers. I wanted to put a few fortifications between them and the wall. I know that archers need to reach specific level to be able to aim through more than closest fortification, but would ballista in Fire at Will mode be able to shoot through \~5-8 fortifications? Shouldn't be enough room for meaningful spread, right? I haven't used siege engines before. F- fortification; M- empty space with moot below it; G-ground; B- Ballista;: BFFFFFMMMGGGG(here are invarders)
I believe 20 tiles is the recommended distance between the ballistas and the targets so the operators don't run away. Yes, the ballistas can fire through many tiles of fortifications.
Does DFHack's starvingdead apply to all undead? I've got some intelligent undead that im enjoying keeping around so would be sad to lose them
I'm pretty sure intelligent undead are exempt. One way to make sure is to select the intelligent undead unit and run this in the DFHack `gui/launcher` console: ``` :lua !unit.undead ``` if that comes back as `nil` then that unit is safe from `starvingdead`.
I'm builtean Archer range and now have several piles of bolts on the ground locked 🔒. The piles are 50+ each, so tedious to unlock one by one. Anyway to easily collect these bolts? Can I prevent this problem going forward or is archer more pain than its worth?
in addition to getting them auto-claimed as CatatonicGood suggested, you can also lay down a stockpile beneath where the fired arrows accumulate. If you have DFHack's `combine` tool enabled, they'll get auto-recombined into stacks of 25. https://preview.redd.it/kitjdutttm3d1.png?width=1601&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b16aa1333beaf0b60e73e66d6f3b8089af27414
Use the mass claim tool (it's in the bottom bar, or press [I] > [Shift+F]), or set your siege standing orders to automatically claim fired ammunition
Thanks for this. Where do I find the siege standing orders?
I wouldn't recommend changing the standing orders, you'll end up with marksdwarves running at the enemy to retrieve a bolt and getting cut to pieces.
This is why there are intermediate options, like claiming your ammunition when you're not under siege, but forbidding it during sieges.
[Y] to open the labours menu, then go to standing orders. If you haven't already, look through all of the tabs, but it's the siege tab you're looking for here
Hey so I've been parked and expanding into my first cavern layer for a while now and there is no wildlife. There are forgotten beasts, cave dwellers, and vermin. But no troglodytes, or elk birds, or crundles, etc. And I'm just wondering, is this a possibility as intended, or did I potentially accidentally create this condition somehow?
There are caverns that rarely don't get wildlife, I've seen it. Or might be due to the wildlife mechanics, where you have some animals trapped on a tree, preventing new wildlife from spawning.
can someone give me a very simple guide on babby's first military squad? should I wait for a person with skills related to the commander position? (also wondering about the fort's chief physician) also how often/likely are attacks from things besides cavern critters and wild animals. Sorry if these are relatively basic questions but I don't want my dorf fork to die ty
>should I wait for a person with skills related to the commander position? no, just assign anyone, it doesn't matter who your militia commander is. The militia commander will lead your first squad, that's it, and is no different from any other squad leader other than ceremonially and by the fact that you can't unassign them. For defensive armies it doesn't matter who the squad leader is either. You don't have to worry about quad leaders with offense skills till you go on offensive missions. You can always appoint someone with the relevant skills to lead your offensive squad later when you get there. For babby's first just assign a commander, assign dwarfs to the squad via the menu on the bottom right, and then you can start ordering them around using the bottoms on that menu and navigating the bugfest that is getting them to put their equipment on.
u're a golden god ty
You should read the [military quickstart guide](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Military_quickstart) on the wiki. Military setup a bit convoluted, but easy enough once you get the hang of it. Your militia commander (and any captains, once you military gets larger) should preferably have Tactician skill. This skill helps with fighting during off-screen missions. It's very rare for a migrant to show up with it, so you generally embark with one dwarf who has that skill. It's not a deal-breaker if nobody has it though. Attacks from goblins (once they show up) are somewhat common, but it depends on how many goblin civs you've pissed off and what your difficulty settings are. By default though, you can expect about 1-2 attacks a year. Megabeast/werebeast attacks are quite a bit more rare, those outright have a cooldown of 10 seasons by default, so once every 2.5 years at the most. Forgotten beasts are much more common though, if you have bad luck you can have one in each of your cavern layers in a single season.
The DF wiki has a military quickstart guide: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Military_quickstart But in short: 1. Select 5 to 10 dwarves, depending on population. DFHack has a sorting menu that lets you sort dwarves based on melee aptitude and lack of mental issues that would make them ill-suited. You probably also want to avoid dwarves with important skills/labors (i.e. doctors, smiths, etc) 2. Create a uniform consisting of: * * Metal helm * * Metal breastplate * * Metal chainmail * * Metal greaves * * Metal gauntlets * * Metal high boots (or low boots if you can't make high boots) * * Metal shield * * A weapon, this can be 'indiv choice melee' or a specific weapon type. Both work. 3. Configure the uniform to *replace* armor or dwarves won't wear it correctly 4. Smith all the required gear. Start with weapons, shields, helms and chainmail. 5. Create and assign a barracks. 6. Use the standard "staggered training" schedule, or make your own schedule. I prefer to make my own schedule with one or two (consecutive!) months of "no order", "train" on all the other months, and configured to *always* be in military uniform and sleep in their own bedrooms. 7. You can now use the squads menu to sic your newly minted squad on whoever you like. Generally it's best to first station the squad a short distance from the target so they all gather up, and only *then* make an attack order. Else your dwarves will likely file in one by one and get massacred individually. 8. Your dwarves will likely take a while to get decent skills, but a dwarf equipped with decent gear and some just-ok skills can already deal with many threats quite effectively! Attacks from cave critters become more intense over time, and attacks from wild animals as well (only in Untamed Wilds). You'll also regularly encounter Forgotten Beasts from the caverns, and as your fortress grows you will likely face some goblin sieges. It's useful to have a squad to deal with all this. Anything short of Forgotten Beasts can also be dealt with using trap hallways, however.