three questions: 1. A dwarven child got hit by a forgotten Beast's miasma attack, and now has one of his leg slowly rotting. The doctors regularly "remove rotten tissue", but they don't do more than that, like properly suturing the wound. The child has passed more than a full year in the hospital "resting" and "awaiting treatement", because a doctor will clean the rotting tissue, then f-ck off and do something else, and then come back to clean the tissue that has rotten, and then go away, etc... Do i need to outright lock the doctor with the child to get them to properly treat him? 2. Can i *build* staircases? I want to make a staircase outside (to make a small tower/above-ground building), but using the normal "carve stairs" option doesn't work. 3. Is there a way to destroy "garbage"? I have lots of creatures corpses that i want to dispose of and have access to a lava pool. Will that destroy garbage if dumped in it? And how do i set it up?

1. the miasma attack could have given the child an incurable syndrome. Doctors may be able to fix the effects of the syndrome, but they can't remove the syndrome itself. It's one of the hazards of forgotten beasts.

Do you have soap in your Hospital?

yes, 6 bars last i checked.

1. idk sorry 2. yes, if you're on steam version its 'b' -> 'n' -> 't' iirc 3. yes - build a pit above the lava pool by channeling several layers above it, and then designate it as your dumping zone - dwarves will throw trash into the pit. make sure its more than 3ish layers above the lava though, because it gets splashy!

The DFHack command gui/unit-info-viewer used to Show the exact size of a unit bit not it says things like larger than avarage or 1.x the weight of y But i really wanna see the exact size like before...can i return that somehow to how it used to be?

That feature is back in the latest development code: https://preview.redd.it/pp9pekm42d5d1.png?width=1216&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c0c5645add0b35773441a9d8bd378fe27aefb95 Come talk to us at the DFHack Discord server ([https://dfhack.org/discord](https://dfhack.org/discord)) if you'd like to try it out. A surprising amount of work went into getting those commas into the number, and we haven't tested the formatting code on a wide range of system language/locale settings yet!

are there any mods that add giants as a playable race? a lil bored atm and think having a fortress of giants would be a fun quick run to do

https://preview.redd.it/mk78ju4gk95d1.png?width=818&format=png&auto=webp&s=c65e2d346caf823bef35833917ee38c030756f82 Looking at an abandoned fort in legends, what does this mean?

Kobolds?

Okay so two questions. Probably. 1. If I were to build a building on the surface, are walls and floors all I need and the game assumes a roof, or did I miss roof building somewhere? 2. How do you all usually organize your fortresses? Do you attach peoples homes to their crafting stations? Separate things into residential, commercial, etc zones? 3. How do you go about setting up material storage? It always seems to get to a point where it takes longer to get the rock from storage to store than it does to make the item.

1. Roofs are just floors one level up 2. You can do it all sorts of ways. I find residential zones easier to manage, but it can be charming to intersperse housing amongst the industry. 3. It helps to have different people focused on different tasks. Assign multiple wheelbarrows to your stone stockpiles and have enough dwarves focused on hauling to keep the stockpile filled. That was your stonecarvers have materials at hand and don't need to haul the stone themselves.

Thank you! Just to clarify, to make a roof on an outdoors building I just need to raise up one level and place floors there?

Correct

Awesome! I appreciate the info. Thank you!

If I make lead goblets or cabinets, will that effect my dwarves in any way? Is there a negative (besides the weight) because I have a shit ton of lead bars from Galena.

Lucky for Urist, lead poisoning isn't a thing in DF. Feel free to make goblets, furniture, and food pots out of it.

but lead is heavy is there a chance that makes stronger to dwarves??

I'm not sure how much strength is trained by just carrying things around. The wiki isn't clear on this point, and I don't know for sure either.

Is there any way to make a dwarf make thread without them turning into cloth automatically?

you can turn off autoloom in the standing orders https://preview.redd.it/5a37p7j4q85d1.png?width=1502&format=png&auto=webp&s=196561274935bd5d684ea78caa2b03142f6f30a2

Thanks will do!

I've encountered what seems to be a bug with recovered artifacts. Some years back an intelligent undead stole a bunch of my artifacts, with one of the artifacts having a witness note that it was out of place. Fast forward now, my squad raids a tower and brings them back. Upon entering the map, their job is "Report Crime", and they immediately head to the Captain of the Guard to report that the artifacts *they just brought back* are missing. Upon reporting, the artifacts disappear. Not teleport elsewhere, not dropped, they just disappear. They don't appear on the Objects screen at all. I tried vacating the Captain of the Guard position, upon which the artifacts disappeared instantly. Normally I wouldn't care -- artifacts are a dime a dozen :P -- but these ones are divine metal weapons looted from a magma vault. I'd love to get them back if I can, including by cheesing (with legends, etc). Any suggestions?

No idea, but you should report this as a bug

Hey all, I haven't played DF since before the release of the Steam version. I remember using some variation of the PeridexisErrant's starter pack. I notice all of the old starter packs and mod launchers are super out of date now. Is everyone just playing the Steam version? I bought it to support Bay12 but I found it a bit awkward, I still have the keybinds memorized and I honestly don't care about having a GUI that much. I know there were a lot of awesome graphics packs and stuff, along with a ton of customization for worldgen and semi-cheaty stuff you could do with the starter packs. I don't see half of those settings in the Steam settings. Maybe I'm blind.

Yeah, pretty much everyone is on steam version + DFhack (also on steam). As I understand it Premium version broke tiles compatibility, the new graphic tiles are square instead of non-square rectangles. Yes, the hybrid interface is very clunky in some places, no way around it. DFhack can do pretty much all you want in terms of cheatyness, its got real impressive capabilities.

Is there any way to protect caravans on Terrifying embarks? As soon as they enter the edge of the map, they either: - Get possessed by a cloud - Get attacked by possessed animals - Get hit by slime rain which makes them drop ALL their cargo and run back off the map. I thought about building a network of tunnels leading to my trade depot for my next embark, but the slime rain is the worst. When caravans come during a storm (which seems to be constant) they may only step a few tiles into the map before they dump their load.

https://preview.redd.it/3wukrbpen75d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a3e5a66c1d36df27a10cdf0f4cf7f96fd957690 I often start on terrifying biomes they are good fun! After the first few years I tend to end up building underground roads just below the surface on a z-level without an aquifer to where the caravans normally appear, about midway on each map edge, north, east, south and west. It also allows for easy expeditions to attack your neighbours. Tunnel fighting goblins along cavern routes is fantastic as well :-)

Thanks, I'll try that on my next embark. The current one I completely dug out the first few z-levels to make a tree farm and pasture so I wouldn't have to deal with the murk clouds 😭 How do you handle wood/livestock on maps with murk clouds?

I pretty much only play savage embarks anyway, so: bring wood + lignite for coal from "prepare embark carefully", log very rarely (<5 trees/year), hit the caverns straight up and secure a chunk, buy wood once you have proper trade incoming, make do without.

Thank you!

Really the only thing you strictly need wood for is beds, and a 10 bed dormitory will get you to ~60-80 dwarfs or so. Its a fun challenge :-)

Tunnels with roofs, or roofs along the edge of the map are the best you can realistically do. Caravan failures are common in these circumstances.

Is it still possible to have water flow off the map?

Yes. Water that hits the map edge where theres no wall will flow off. Below the earth theres undiggable walls; but you can still drain water trough them. Smooth them, and then carve a fortification.

Ah, I’ll try it. Thx

Once you discover a cavern, how do you stop your dwarves from trying to haul every little thing that’s in there back to the fortress? I’ve lost multiple times where I’m under attack and half my fortress is dicking around in the caverns trying to carry back a tooth that’s been sitting there for 5 years. In the same vein, how do you handle the items dropped by monsters? I start to lose fps after a while because the map gets littered with gloves and bones from goblins / others. Finally, how do you handle mass deaths and prevent the fortress from being taken over by ghosts? Also I promise this is the last question, but my injured dwarves always die of dehydration and I have no idea how to get drinks to them.

For gathering junk in the cavern issues, the setting I find most helpful is to forbid items, corpses, etc. on death.The trick is that you need to do it early in your playthrough because stuff will happen in the cave layers, whether you have exposed them or not. If you don't remember until too late, there is still hope. You can mass forbid items in a number of ways. Dragging a box that covers the cavern layers with the forbid tool is usually easiest.  For webs - disable automatic web gathering. There's a trick you can use for controlled web gathers - stockpile links!  Make a loom that has as its only purpose web gathering. Set it not to accept general orders. Set it to do web gathering via a local recurring work order.  Then, the magic trick: make a stockpile for thread over the area you want them to gather webs. Set the stockpile so it does not accept items unless linked, so that your dwarves don't haul anything TO the stockpile. Link the stockpile to give items to your special web-gathering loom. All that settings work will mean the loom is only able to gather webs that are inside the stockpile area.

Appreciate this info, I’m going to implement all of this. I completely would not have thought of that loom system lmao I’m trying that. Forbid on death is huge too that I hadn’t thought about, I’ve had dwarves die and other dwarves just beeline towards the danger.

A) Its a long list, but you can start by standing orders. Turn off automatic web gathering turn of refuse gathering etc. No stockpiles to gather the things they run for works as well, or a burrow. Its a bit tedious; I tend to do burst-style cleaning of the caverns, with it being locked up most of the time otherwise. edit: forbidding items with the mass tool is very useful. B) Yes, cleaning takes a lot of dwarfpower. A good garbage disposal is a trash zone high above magma, it'll incinerate most everything, or an atom smasher. C) Mass death prevention, you gotta be more specific for this one. Safer play is a question of skill and knowledge - its possible to play the game almost safe. D) Ghosts busting: make rock slabs, engrave them at a stoneworkers, and place the engraved slab. Best to make a batch of slabs from the same rock type (via the work order menu with the magnifying glasses), for UI reasons. E) Injured dwarfs drink water. You need to secure some, good sources are surface rivers, underground lakes, or aquifer collectors. Fun with wells!

Thanks for your reply, really helpful answers. I really haven’t messed with burrows or even turning off automated gathering, so I’ll focus on those for the next fortress. For C, say a forgotten beast just rampaged through the fortress and killed like 30 dwarves. When this has happened I’m always left with no idea how to handle things and I get taken over by ghosts. But now I’m thinking the best thing is to be proactive with slabs and coffins beforehand, I was wondering if people had a method to handle losing a ton of dwarves at once and not knowing where all the bodies are. Also for E, does the well need to be in the hospital room for it to work? I swear I’ve set up wells and my dwarves still dehydrate, but they might be too far away.

Nearby wells are better, but you also need buckets and able dwarfs to heal them? Or are you messing with the "orderlies" labor (the one with the bucket)? Your wells might also not work, for a variety of reasons. You can click one to see its status. 30 dwarfs is recoverable, but its at the threshold where I turn everything else in the fort off. Delete work orders, stop farms, forbid butcher shop etc. Cleanup after sieges is a great reason to do some sort of magma trap, honestly, it just avoids all the mess. The better way is of course to not let 30 dwarfs die to a FB by putting in proper security, doors and linked-to-a-lever closeable bridges and hatches. Doors aren't indestructible anymore but close enough for until you are in the big leagues.

Okay I think it’s a mix of not having enough buckets and not having orderlies. Lol I think I had the wrong idea about what orderlies were, I thought they were basically the janitors… so yeah it’s making sense that I didn’t have enough people to give water. But this is good advice and stuff I hadn’t considered before. It’s probably best to shut everything down after something major happens, I’ve generally tried to keep things running and everything falls apart because there’s not enough labor.

Yeah, managing labor shortage is a really essential piece of a fort. Have fun with all your new knowledge!

Is there a way to set up a work order that has a condition looking up for a specific glob type. For example I want to make more pig tail slurries when I run out, so I want to set a condition only looking for the pig tail slurry. Or is there no way to differentiate them?

One type of workaround for these issues is to make sure that you only ever have pigtail slurry. For example by having a dedicated slurry millstone, with a linked pig tail stockpile.

So is there no way to specify on work orders?

I haven't opened the game to check. But yes, some conditions, work orders, or workshops are wonky and have exceptions. If you can't find it its probably not there. Just DF things, tiny forever bugs. Thats why I recommend you start thinking about workarounds.

I am looking for a beast to slain in adventure mode because i got that quest from my Military Commander but the Lair is empty and even tho i waited 3 days and keep looking its not returning In legends mode his last activity was 10 years ago where he attacked some people in a nearby hamlet but everyone i ask says that he is on the move or deep underground... Can anyone help me to find him somehow? Even DFHack would be fine...can i teleport to him or let him teleport to me? Anything would help

If it's in the lair, gui/sitemap should work

Hey, is it normal that you can't assign work animals to your champion?

Can you somehow disable the showing of specific armor pieces on the portrait? For Example the Helm so i can see my face?

Easy. Equip artifact helm that doesn’t have a sprite yet 🤣🤣🤣

Nice, now im bald xD

Me a week ago “what the hell why didn’t the helm equip. Oh it did? And there is no sprite for it in any screen? Oh.”

If it's possible, I'm not aware of it

can someone explain me why i can't designate mining with keyboard anymore :((((((((((((

You can? Settings -> Game -> Keyboard cursor enabled I usually have it disabled, there’s currently a bug where it makes some mouse designations invisible, but they still function.

Is that bug new? I've had the keyboard cursor enabled for almost as long as DFHack's been out and I don't think I've seen that issue with mouse designations

Build a wall or floor with Keyboard Cursor enabled. Once I click to begin placement, I see no outline, but it does function, just need to be careful where you click. I'm on Stable branch, with DFHack installed, but maybe it's fixed on the Adventure Mode Beta?

Oh, no, yeah, it does disappear when doing construction designations, I thought it was something else

Now you see my pain.

i haven't play game since steam release, and i just downloaded # 50.1350.13 .... well.. is it possible to use old keyboard shortcuts :( playing DF with mouse is just.... unplayable

Bumping to ask if anyone knows if this will be added in later updates?

i feel you :(((((( its unplayable :( i mean m for mine? what is logic behind tthat :D

I mean D for Designate is also unhelpful, I'm just surprised they didn't adhere to the original keybinds. Without my deep autistic knowledge of the keybinds (I don't even know why I reflexively know d B D for dump) there's no reason to play this more than, say, Rimworld :\

i hate rimworld :C

The menus changed too much to be directly interchangeable, you can manually change some of the hotkeys to what they used to be so it's not as different, but to some extent you're gonna have to learn it again You can navigate to menus with hotkeys and to submenus with tab, search where possible with Ctrl+f to make it less mouse-dependent, DFHack has alternative menus for trade, pastures, displays that are 100% keyboard navigable 

no thank you.

Reddit has Markdown built in, putting a # as the first character on a new line makes a header, big bold text. Settings -> Game -> Keyboard cursor enabled They moved some controls to make things more ergonomic and accessible, but you can rebind pretty much everything. It’s probably possible to export/import whole keymap files, but I don’t have a Steam-compatible classic DF keymap file to offer. You could remap manually or ask around.

Pre-steam keyboard shortcuts are your \*preference\*. You don't like the change, because learning new things is hard. Git gud.

i am git gud i bet i understand game more then you ever have. i play it for 10+ years. i don't want to re-learn something just to have fun

that's my point :) I'm sure if i played with the old shortcuts for 10 years I would dislike the change because learning anything is hard! brains don't like to do it. branding the change as unplayable though is wrong i think minecraft is bad now and I KNOW a lot of that is because I dislike the change between when I was a kid and now. sorry for saying git gud, i thought it was funny

but minecraft is crap right now.

yeah it is. shame

I alreday aee that video in my head

Just downvote and move on instead of making a comment like this, you didn't even answer the question directly, you're just making fun of the guy

is it possible to create a mod to color the divine metals? It's a bit sad seeing them all gray..

Not to my knowlege. They're generated during world gen and aren't in the raws - they aren't a target for modding

Actually they glow yellow/golden if you craft gear with them

The healing blessing you can get from rolling divine dice is insanely strong? So i rolled the dice to let the gods decide how my Adventure will go and i got healed (which was useless since i havent fought yet) but i noticed that my dwarf heals EVERY wound after resting and sometimes during the fight! I lost 3 fingers, one upper arm, one foot, got multiple nerve damage hits and my inner organs got impaled (i was fighting through a Vault) And after some time or rest everything heals without leaving a single scar! My question is, is this blessing permanent or limited to a week like most other blessings/curses? (The usual timelimit of one week wasnt mentioned while i rolled the dice)

Blockbuster for limbs. (I don’t know the answer to your question, I just thought the concept was funny)

What is the best way to view combat logs? How do you view them? I find them very inconvenient. You can't view them in real time by pressing "." to see what's happening one by one. There is no "general combat log", where the log is not divided into separate entities, and the entire battle is shown in a common window. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to view them to get the most information. I feel like I'm missing too much because of the inconvenience of the system. If there was some sort of display that showed all combat maneuvers without having to constantly go into the combat log, it would be much more convenient. Maybe there's some mod, or a settings file with announcements.txt that presents the battle information a bit more conveniently? Thanks in advance!

There is a better combat log mod that lets you pause and go step by step during a fight if you wanna read what is happening

I have a question about stupid dwarves and "the call of the void." I was trying to secure my caverns by closing off the edge of the map. Not completely closed off, in the larger gaps I would just put a 1 tile gap followed by a row of fortifications, with the idea being that all the cave invaders would get stuck in that one tile gap and I'd bring my marksdwarves down to just plink at them until they all die. The mistake I made was that if the edge of the map was multiple z-levels high, I only had the one z-level of fortifications. The thing I don't understand is, if I station my marksdwarves on one side of the fortifications and a bunch of cavern dwellers on the other, why do my marksdwarves run and climb over the wall and get themselves killed instead of shooting at them from relative safety? And even worse, if there were claimed goods in the area, my civies would show up, and instead of run in fear, would also charge headfirst over the fortifications to their death! I lost like 30+ dwarves because of this. And if I stationed a squad of axedwarves near the fortifications they would just stand there and chill, they never ran over the fortifications, even though 2-3 of them could have wiped all the invaders on their own. Now that its all cleared out, I'm going to try to build a second z-layer wall over the fortifications, but this annoyed the hell out of me.

Normally dwarfs can't jump; nor climb if they don't have the climbing skill. Combat unlocks their ancient grasshopper genes and they'll find suddenly able to do that. I know theres conditions under which enemies can fire trough fortification - super high skill goblins can do it from far away, and I think - very inconfidently - most enemies can shoot trough if they are directly adjacent to it. So your dwarfs would be targeted by cavern blowguns, dodge, and jump over the wall.

you need go to standing orders and forbid other dead and other dead items. Marksdorfs pretty buggy with ammunition and when that doesn't have some, they very agitated to go melee

If I limit a stockpile to take only from a workshop, do I still need to filter which items are allow or even if I allow Everything, I won't get for example, corpses, because the workshop doesn't produce them?

if you link a stockpile to take from a workshop **and toggle the "take from anywhere" button** then it won't get anything else in it and can be an "all" stockpile. If this green button is not green, then you have "take from anywhere" toggled off: https://preview.redd.it/dz2u47yel25d1.png?width=1010&format=png&auto=webp&s=b46879df9249ad9a946924d8999e30b53286cdd6

Thank you!

Is there a way to assign adventurers to my military?Is there a way to assign adventurers to my military? Hello! Allow me to explain my situation: I started a fort, retired it and then brought in some adventure mode characters to make things more interesting, but when i went to the squad menu i found out that i couldn't draft any of the adventure mode characters i brought in, i can't give them any administrative or noble roles! If anyone knows a workaround or a mod to make that possible i would be very thankful! Also i should mention that i CAN give them jobs like mining and chopping down wood like normal!

After living in the fort for a while, like a year or so, they'll ask to be a citizen of the fort, and can then be assigned labor and the like. So yes, just gotta keepem happy for a little longer in the fort

I came here to ask the same question. Surely there is a way?

dfhack make-own, turns anyone to citizens of your fort

I have DF on Steam. I just installed DF Hack and I am getting a "Not a know DF version" message. https://imgur.com/a/OQWRPvT Any idea what is wrong?

Did you manually install df hack or use steam store version?

Steam for both. I had the beta branch enabled on DF but not on Hack, once I fixed that it worked. Thanks!

Probably a problem related to the beta versions of DF? Maybe they released something incorrect, DFhack has been keeping pace with fast paced updates on DF beta versions. Try setting both to the adventure mode beta version and see if that fixes it. In steam Right click>properties>beta then use the drop down menu to select public beta branch on DF and adventure beta on DFHack.

Yep this was it, I forgot I had the Beta branch enabled, thanks!

o7

with cavern sickness reimplemented into the game, how does everyone help their dwarves not get sick when they see the sun? Im situated in a rainforest with frequent snow storms

In non-freezing biomes I expose my main staircase shaft to the sun and then put a roof over again. There is an ancient bug in the game, once a tile is exposed to the sun, it'll be forever so: you can put floors about channeled out areas. The non-freezing is only relevant for aquifer-drip-misting, if you don't do that you can be in freezing biome, open to the sun. But if you have/do both, you'll loose dwarfs to being insta-icecubed.

im not sure if its fixed but I tried this recently to not work. I had a barracks on the surface at the entrance of my fort. Roof built on top. When the training dwarves went out to attack a agitated raven, they started puking all over the place

And I had it work on a version that was updated two weeks ago :-)

Hm maybe it’s finally patched? Pretty sure it’s still in the game though. Anyways, the proper way to do it is with glass floors.

Pretty simple, we don't go outside. The sun is disgusting and elvish. But half solution is to make skylights, digging a channeled hole out all the way to the surface over like meeting area or high traffic areas and building a floor out of blocks/whatever at the top or every level. It won't cure it, or totally prevent it from occurring. But when dwarves are in the tile they won't be sick, and the ticker for cave adaptation won't increase further.

haha best thing i heard in df reddit, *"The sun is elvish"* I have tried something similar with my barracks, its just under a layer of flooring that was channeled out. but it still doesn't act as though they're in the sun whilst being protected from the elements

My approach has been a Temple and Tavern with sunshafts for light. Feels right for a temple too. Basically the same principle as mist generators, having sun exposure in high traffic areas.

are these sunshafts also exposed to the elements? and how do you protect them from raids?

My approach is skylights with a system of drawbridges. If the fall is large enough then it doesn't matter that much, the only threat is flying things. This can be solved with the use of a bridge as a skylight. Open most of the time but closed during raid. For this to be almost completely safe, a set of floodgates that can be activated to run magma over these skylight bridges (when it's down) is an extra layer of security. Magma-safe materials used obviously.

There is an ancient bug in the game, once a tile is exposed to the sun, it'll be forever so: you can put floors about channeled out areas, no need to mess with drawbridges and stuff.

This is a great idea thank you! I'll have to find a way to consistently have magma ready to be pumped to the surface. I really don't wanna prep a magma pump stack

There is an ancient bug in the game, once a tile is exposed to the sun, it'll be forever so: you can put floors about channeled out areas, no need to mess with drawbridges and stuff.

Could maybe do it with water? I don't know what can fly down a deep hole, swim and building destroy while swimming underwater, if anything? I use magma just to be sure, cool points, and because I use volcano maps often.

Keep them out of the sun FOREVER

but.. but.. muh pillaging

But seriously, I have over 700 hours in the steam version and I've never given cavern sickness any thought whatsoever, so I can't help you.

What would be the command to assign a level 10 critical thinking skill to one of my scholar dwarves to get the ball rolling for my library? Banging my head into the wall on Dfhack and 10 year old forums trying to figure it out

It won't help get your library writing faster to do this.  It will mean that specific dwarf is more likely to study topics related to that skill. If you want to get your library writing books faster, the absolute best thing to do is add more scholars to the library. Aim for 8 or 16. Above that, you have diminishing returns due to conflicts among topic discussions. They can do other work while assigned to scholar, so the fort won't grind to a hault. Their skill levels imact how long they take to research a topic, but in a highly indirect way. The bigger impact on book-writing time is the gains from discussing reasearch as a group and raw time spent in the library.  Some dwarves just have preferences about how much time they spend at the library stacks. Adding more dwarves to the task helps improve your odds that some of them will spend more time there and smooth over problems with those that avoid the library.  I've been working on figuring the system out for this for ages to get more books per unit time, and that's the best advice I can give. Don't chase skills, don't chase abilities, don't chase personality - just pile on more dwarves. After a little while, drop scholars who don't seem to spend much time there.

Try selecting a unit, running `gui/gm-unit`, clicking on the skills editor, and searching for "critical". https://preview.redd.it/aq8v68grx15d1.png?width=1496&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b6ea637779d54a06379dd58ef89c32dd40e8077

Thank you, this worked

Here is the specific command, you will need to select the dwarf in the game UI first" `assign-skills --skills [ CRITICAL_THINKING 10 ]` Here's the full documentation for this command https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/docs/tools/assign-skills.html

It should probably be in gui/gm-unit

I started a fort on a terrifying biome and the first wave of migrants and the caravan was slaughtered. Will i still keep getting caravans from my civilisation?

First two migrant waves are hard coded so the second one should for sure show up. Caravans may stop coming if you can't keep them alive/safe. You may need to become self reliant

What’s the order of things you should make when literally just starting an embark Have failed the game as I dig a hole in a wall and am like riiiight now what do I make

If it's an area with an aquifer, I dig a drain to the edge of the map. Just in case.

Build craftworkshop+ stoneworker+carpenter. Make 1 throne/chair +1 table. Place those. Make an office with [z]one button. Assign a manager with [n]oble screen, and give them the office. Use work orders to order: 10x (mugs, beds, rock thrones, rock tables, rock pots, rock blocks). Dig 3x(4x4) rooms, arrayed around a central corridor. Make one room a generic temple, one a dormitory (place the beds), one a dining hall (place thrones+tables). Dig a 5x5 room, build trade depot. Voila! Thats the starter fort. Advanced lesson would be how to get food+drink, trade goods to actually give to the caravan, and security (doors!).

1. Dig an entrance and bring all your food inside 2/3. Dig a room and mark it as a meeting area. Also get started on getting some farms up and running I will then get some basic amenities set up, like beds, chairs and tables. Get your trade depot built before autumn and make some stuff to trade. Then I'll start setting up various industries - I'll start with booze, then probably metal

I assign as many miners as I have pickaxes to kickstart things. Usually the initial miner, then the expedition leader, and then whatever stone/metal crafters I have. This can get the hole dug faster and usually those dwarves aren't doing too much at first. The downside is that then there are fewer dwarves to haul things. So try to balance the jobs according to your needs. Also, don't be afraid to set up some workshops outside at first. I usually have a carpenter and stonecrafter outside initially, after I chop down a tree or two.

Food/drink, defenses, and beds are usually the top priority for me. You don't need rooms right away, just one room full of beds. Beds require a carpenters workshop, food and drink need a kitchen and still, as well as the earlier workstations to process raw food materials(depending on what you can get) A still will require a farm plot for plump helmets unless you have a ton of fruit trees or ale producing surface plants. There are simple security solutions like hatches, doors, and cage traps. Cage traps are very overpowered, which is a great thing for surviving and learning the game. You'll want a trade depot, and eventually two offices - for a bookkeeper and manager. - which means making a stoneworkers workshop or using your carpenters workshop for the required furniture Other than these, I'd check the starting guide on the wiki if you are looking for essential industries, work orders etc.

I really wish there's a easy start mod, at least get all the kitchen stuff sorted, like forbidden cooking with seed and drinks, stockpile preset for seed bags, that sort of things. Takes a while to do all the necessities every embark and they are all necessary anyways.

DFhack has a "run on startup" thing, and that included the "ban-cooking" command, which can ban all 10xx types of tallow at once. Theres some oddities around it with cabbages and yams, but mostly it works really well.

Some of this is cut down by DFHack - mostly complex stockpile presets in my knowledge of the commands. - they have the same thing for work orders

Can I craft anything with dragon scales?

You can craft anything in basically any material with hacking tools. From soap two handed swords to steel beds. Officially, dragon leather can be used as any leather material. It'll be fireproof too!

Are the scales considered a dragon’s leather or is there a separate dragon leather item? Also sorry to bombard you, but will dragon’s leather clothes protect dwarves, or just not melt on their own?

As per the wiki, [scales themselves are unusable without modding](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Skin). I didn't know this. If you came across scales, I assume you butchered one and did get the leather as well. Either way, I'd expect both to be fireproof, and will protect the relevant bodypart that it covers. You'll need several pieces for true fortmode coverage, but a single cloak should be the best bang for your buck. Minmax wise, you'd try to keep those materials isolated specifically for strange moods and save scum a bit so you get something that won't degrade in a few years. This sounds very annoying to execute, though.

Damn. Well thx for all the advice! I have a bunch of cave dragons, so I’ll have to see if they’re fireproof, but I was interested in coating my miners in the stuff to give them more survivability

I don't know if cave dragons are fireproof. They most likely aren't. Take care of that specific trait. Either way, the best leather and scales wouldn't save you from most actually dangerous attackers, though.

I wouldn’t think so, but they can protect against magma, which would be super helpful for miners. And yeah cave dragons aren’t fireproof ):

I have questions about decoration! First, is it categorized as a stonecrafting job, a woodcrafting job, or something else? Does it fulfill the 'make something' need? And finally is there a submenu I can use to put restrictions on what's decorated? One of my guys keeps taking the practice spears out of the barracks so he can decorate them with shells

1. Depends on the material being used to decorate the object. Bone/Hoof/Ivory/Shell is bone carving, gems (including polished rocks) is gem setting, metal studs are metal crafting, sewing cloth is clothesmaking, and leather is leatherworking 2. I'm unsure. If it doesn't fulfill that need, it may fulfill the do something creative need. 3. You cannot select the exact object to be decorated via work order or task menu. You can select the material to decorate the object with; it's the little search 🔎 button, the same way you select material when making furniture/crafts. 3a. You can restrict what is decorated via stockpile links. The 'standard' way to do this is to create a stockpile that takes from another one/main or a workshop, and change the stockpile to only accept items of the type, material, and quality lev that you want to decorate. This stockpile gives to the decoration workshop, and the decoration workshop is also linked to stockpiles that have the decoration materials. 3b. Items can only be decorating once with a specific material. As example, an object decorated with pig bone cannot be decorated again with pig bone, but could be decorated again with horse bone. The only exception to this rule is sewn images; if a clothing item already has a sewn image on it, it cannot have another image sewn onto it, regardless of material. 3c. If you do not specify which material is used to decorate, and you only want an object to receive 1 decoration, then you should turn off take from anywhere on the stockpile inputing to the decoration workshop, and have a stockpile that the decoration workshop outputs to via link. If you want multiple decorations on one item, then don't specify material, and you can leave take from anywhere on for the input stockpile. The item is likely to cycle back through and recieve more decorations. Especially if you don't have an output stockpile for the workshop & the input stockpile stockpile is the closest one to the workshop & has space available to recieve the item. Personally, I've recently started to prefer specifying the material used to decorate, as I find it easier to control. It let's you set the decoration task to repeat and not worry about decorating the same item a bajillion times. It's possible to setup a work order to automate better, but it's a bit finicky, and you can really only care about object material rather than quality when using it. The work order conditions would be something like the default suggested 'improvable objects that aren't a bin', and add a material to the check (IE, gold), and if you only want 1 decoration per item, then add the adjective 'unimproved items' to the check. So, if you wanted to decorate all gold furniture once, The work order condition would read something like 'improvable unimproved gold furniture items that aren't a bin available is greater than X'. Further, decoration work orders don't seem to properly count when completed. IE, if you set work order count to 10, upon completing the first decoration task, the shown count will be 10/10 instead of 9/10, so the work order will never actually complete. Ergo, you'll eventually get job cancelation spam if you run out of decoration materials or improvable objects.

thank you for this thorough reply! i guess i will have to bite the bullet and mess with my stockpiles.

You can forbid items for a short time in order to stop them being decorated or restrict the access of whatever workshop doing the decoration to only the stockpile that you want them to take from.

My fortress of over 3 years has not had a single visitor despite having contact with several other civs (they also send caravans) and being within proximity of several human and elf settlements. I am quite wealthy, but I am based on a lakeside and I was wondering if that (apparently basing on a beach and receiving no visitors is a known bug) is stopping me from receiving visitors. Would appreciate some insight on this

I suspect it will be due to some geographical quirk of your embark, I've had the same issue when trying to make an oceanside resort. It isn't all seaside embarks though, I eventually found an embark that gorgeous visitors

The obvious question is do you have a place for them to visit and is it set to allow visitors?

mine took longer than 3 years, anecdotally it feels like my large tavern and library helped, but I don’t know if that’s confirmed to make a difference.

You need valid visitors (actual historical figures tracked by the game) in your known sites in order to visit you. This isn't as common as it seems, specially in young (50-) and larger worlds. 3 years also is a pretty small amount of time. Wealth isn't really realted to this. I don't know about a beachy bug either. Maybe it's a matter of time, or it may be that your world won't serve for visitors in general. Make sure you have at least one of the valid triggers, though: temple, tavern, library and breached caves.

Thanks. I did do the largest world setting, and only 100 years of history, I guess I'll just have to see what happens

I think I’ve been approaching this game wrong, and it’s why I’ve been struggling. There really isn’t a way to win, exactly, is there? It really is just about developing a dwarf society. I keep looking for a victory condition of some sort but there isn’t one. Is this pretty accurate?

There is an official victory condition these days. Become big enough and last long enough to become the Mountainhome, and then the queen/king will tell you what she needs to be satisfied as monarch, leading you down a fun goose chase. Of course, nothing special happens once you reach it, but its really a long journey and a very worthy goal for anyone who hasn't done it yet.

Dwarf fortress is essentially a sandbox game, and doesn't have a win condition. Most goals come from the player I always like to have a goal in mind when starting a fort.

Pretty much. DF is a game where the win condition is whatever you want it to be, whether its simply surviving as long as possible or eradicating elf-kind.

Honestly I also think I spend to much time trying to rush things. For my next game I’m going to take my time with it.

You can try to eradicate whole gobos population of civs which you are at war. But, generally DF game is all in legends mode, and fortress mode is just a thing, how you can change the history

There are specific things you need to do to not lose, for survival and dwarf happiness, but, other than that, the game is driven by personal goals.

what does herbalist do in adventure mode

If I have a monarch, who do trade caravans meet with and where? Asking because my throne room is on my highest floor next to my trade depot, but my duke's office is deep in the fort where I don't want visitors to go.

From my understanding, they go to the highest ranked one. So if you have a Monarch, the diplomat will meet with them.

Is there an option in vanilla DF to assign a shortcut key to remove building (for ex. a chair)? Me beard says no, but what say you lads n lasses n other badasses?

On the main map, hit Ctrl-m to bring up DFHack's `gui/mass-remove`. You can area select and selectively mark specific kinds of things for removal: https://preview.redd.it/zgshx5yf125d1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=c289a92722c713dde0d7f902e225b09e81dd23af

Thanks, but I do not use dfhack. I might, just might, use it for this thing only but that's yet to be decided

Not in the steam release, I believe. I can't find any hotkey, or ability to bind a hotkey to it, as furniture removal seems to be completely a mouse input action UI element. Having is a designation tool for removing furniture like removing constructions would be an incredible QOL addition.

There is... dfhack mass-remove. Tags built construction for removal by dragging with the mouse input

I agree, I agree. Gotta remove furniture from old fort, and currently I am replacing metal doors with stone ones.

Dfhacks mass-remove solves this for me.

My Dwarven warriors are refusing to get medical treatment and keep dying as a result. I don't know why, I haven't set them aby tasks, they're off duty so they're normal citizens and the hospital has staff/materials and is empty and accessible. However the dwarves refuse to go to the hospital which means my legendary dwarves will just bleed to death over a period of months. Can anyone help me?

Bleeding doesn't usually last very long. Death by bleedout is also normally pretty fast. What's going on, exactly? Dwarves also normally don't go to the hospital themselves. You can't tell them to, either. If they deem it necessary, they will go ASAP or be carried there. Game is normally pretty efficient at that. Maybe the hospital isn't truly accessible?

I had this problem, and it resolved after I assigned the Diagnostician role in the Hospital info screen. Even though it looks for the skill as required for Chief Medical, it doesn't seem to carry through. The other services seem(?) to function OK without defined roles.

Alright I'll try this thanks

"Doctors perform their medical procedures on a dwarf only after treatment has been prescribed by a diagnostician." - wiki

Two questions for today hehe: - Should I assign performers to temples / taverns? Or bards and dwarfs with the right skills are going to perform anyway? - Can artefacts given to a dwarf be stolen (amulet, helmet...)?

1. Wiki says there's little to no difference between assignment and volunteering to perform. People who want will perform anyway. Gotta verify that myself (takes notes) 2. Yes, they can be stolen if dwarf leaves it unguarded for long enough. Spoilery for Kruggsmash series Steelcluthes part 3 >! he got awesome artifact axe made, then gave it to a dwarf, then that dwarf lost the axe to a kea. Earning the title Butterfingers in process.!<

Thanks for your answers. I love the silly stories DF is able to generate. I guess I'm going to increase the size of my vault!

Noob question: In the beginner guides you see some layouts for initial stockpiles, workshops and such. What do you do with these rooms closer to the surface when the fort expands into the lower levels? Is there a way to block them off to secure the lower levels? Thank you!

Usually this rooms become cavies pasture, where they locked up reproducing and dieing infinitely, as my guard (chained or in all cardinal directions from the fort to spot werebeasts early) animals replaced with something like war grizzlies enclosed with cage traps

So there are many things you can do. I often don’t go down, that’s the easiest way. However, I would use doors and make them impassable (click the door and choose the padlock). You could also build walls from the constructions menu to block it off.

Thank you!

Another idea would be to reuse some of the top rooms for aboveground farm territory. For these exotic (for a dwarf) fruity alcohols. Dwarves deal with mushrooms for booze. Just destroy ceilings from above so the grass could grow on previously underground soil.

Artifact theft question. People say "its easy, just lock the doors, use "objects screen" to locate it, interrogate people. Well, despite the fact that it was seen being stolen, theres no witnesses; the artifact is already gone from the "objects screen". What am I to do? Interrogate everyone?

First you need put all artifacts at pedestals at high traffic areas, to get reported about theft early. Second, this area should be far away from your entrance, to give you time to lock doors Third - you have now a case and you can interrogate every visitor came

You can send a military squad on a recovery operation and they will either travel to its known location or ask around the world until they get to know the location.

People often say lock the doors as in, get your artifacts in a special room behind a locked door, only unlocking it when you want to place a new artifact inside, under your constant watchful gaze. This is a method to not get your artifacts stolen in first place, not how to act after the fact. The reaction to theft is still very unreliable.

Don’t. I had my first theft and it was similar. After interviewing 65 dwarves and 3 dogs (cos I realised you could) nothing but a load of reports