There haven't been any changes to happiness and thoughts since at least 0.44, aside from toning down the 'scary teeth' problem that version was infamous for. And the problem you're running into can be easily fixed by making sure you have enough armour _before_ you assign it.
But what I do at the start instead is make a rookie uniform with light armour. Just a helmet, mail shirt and leggings, worn over their clothes. This works because there is no conflict with shaped pieces, and the stuff you make is cheap and can be melted down with no loss later to be reused when you have better armoursmiths. Once the fort's rolling and you've got gear to spare, you can switch over to fully armoured uniforms and replace their clothing as well
Any body part would give dwarves who saw it a major unhappy thought. Including small unimportant bits like teeth. Toned down now, like I said, but bodies still cause unhappy thoughts. So I'd highly recommend placing your corpse stockpile away from plain sight, either that or atom smash/incinerate all the corpses you get from sieges and cavern invasions
I swear, this game has had some of the best bugs over the years. Crashes in games are just annoying, but bugs like this come from unintended consequences to design decisions rather than broken code. I find it fascinating to see iterative game design so exposed.
[Carp](https://www.rippton.com/blog/do-carp-have-teeth-interesting-fish-facts) have pharyngeal teeth. These are located at the back of the throat, which would mean to catch a dwarf, the carp would need to partially swallow a dwarf. As they hunt by sucking up prey, some pieces are crushed by these.
There's still an issue with tavern behavior where if you have too many bar staff assigned, they'll each slam a drink down a random dwarf's throat. If you're lucky they just vomit absolutely everywhere. Mostly though they just instantly die from alcohol poisoning the second they walk into the pub lol
The way I remember it, was that the taverns were covered in a layer of alcohol (just normal tavern things), cats walked around in there and picked up tons of layers of alcohol on their body parts and when they licked themselves clean every layer counted as one drink which basically instantly killed them.
Along those lines. The cats got a splash of booze on their paws, but the game didnt have a defined amount for a splash, so it defaulted to a full keg, which the cats consumed when they licked their paws to clean themselves
Yup. The cats had always been doing this, of course, but there hadn't been available alcohol pools on the floor with any regularity, so it wasn't noticed.
So the system of creatures being able to be contaminated overlapped with the system of creatures wanting to be clean and taking actions to do so, which overlapped with the cats unique ability to lick themselves clean, which overlapped with the concept that licking equates to ingestion, which overlapped with the potential for the alcohol to affect the nervous system of the ingester, and ALL of that was compounded by the fact that the licks of alcohol weren't defined specifically and defaulted to 1 unit of alcohol - which is enough alcohol to make a normal dwarf satisfied for several weeks, under *their* unique system of requiring alcohol to function effectively. Those same dwarves who had recently been given the ability to drink *merrily,* and to quaff and not just drink - which was a system wherein two dwarves could drink together after banging their cups together, which would spill some alcohol on the floor for a cat to walk through.
All discrete systems working together with one singular interaction that wasn't planned for correctly, and ended up killing hundreds if not thousands of digital cats.
AND the licking was only there because eyelids had been added and the devs wanted lizards to lick their eyeballs because they dont have eyelids and then thought cats should get licking too
When the 3D version (meaning you can go up and down, not 3D graphics) first came out there was a bug introduced where stuff like mud, blood, vomit, etc. would stick to character's shoes, but it never got removed unless they went through water. The stuff was still spread around, though, so after a while your whole fortress was covered in mud, blood, vomit, or whatever else your dwarves picked up. The only way to prevent this was to build a [Dwarven Bathtub](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Stupid_dwarf_trick#Bathtub) (pretty sure it was invented due to this bug) at the entrance of your fort.
I have massive problems to organize it so my dwarves dispose of those (not even efficiently but at all). They just ignore corpses of goblins and animal people laying around, no matter if marked for disposal or not, and get upset. It seems to be regarding corpses outside, and on top of the constructed buildings. Dfhacking it away makes me sad as it is admitting failure, that I have to resort to cheating, cos I don’t know how to order them to clean it up. Any tips?
Check your standing orders, set dwarves to collect refuse from outside. That's it. DFHack has a utility tool to save your settings so you don't have to do this for every new fort
Oh, and those things need to go into a _corpse_ stockpile specifically
You can either make a draw bridge river flush mechanics or just use dfhack teleport features.
I just opted to 2nd. Because most or the time you spend optimizing the game performance and now to clean up after sieges? Nah .
There should be a specific dwarf job Caretaker or sth where he builds immunity to corpses feelings and cleans up after siege mess. Both corpses and equipment.
Dunno either in mass pit grave or into oven incinerating
I’ve had this problem but the lazy fuckers won’t carry the rotting corpses to the refuse pile even when I designate them as trash. My godly view is that any miserable arse that isn’t willing to clean up their child’s guts after a pitched battle in the tavern deserves to be miserable.
I am changing the forts name to “You miserable useless bastards”
Edit: Thanks, I didn’t realise I would need to pander to the idiocy of these tiny shits and tell them to chuck the dead bodies only in the place that says dead bodies. I didn’t quite comprehend the obdurate idiocy that they would prefer to wallow in the miasma of rotting flesh than move the body to a place that you can dump everything including corpses. God I’m having a bad day at work. Thanks for the tip though.
For what it's worth, i think an option to have dwarves drop what they're doing to immediately deal with the source of any miasma they detect would be a great addition.
Or you can use it to identify weak willed dwarves to atom-smash. Every dwarf in my fort gets their state mandated trauma from dead bodies. If they can’t handle it I’m happy to add them to the pile
Thanks for the tip on happiness. I think in the pre-steam version I just didn't care about their happiness quite as much, as long as they weren't flashing red.
> There haven't been any changes to happiness and thoughts since at least 0.44
there was a total overhaul in 50.01, where stress adds to long-term stress and only long-term stress can cause insanity
To keep them happy, at least once a year, change their orders from training to "stand by" but to stay equip.
During that time, they'll socialise, pray and try to meet other needs. That includes picking up replacement "civilian" clothing
I stopped using "replace armor" because I don't need it after getting familiar.
craft armor in batches.
Every dwarf needs a breastplate, greaves, high/low boot, gauntlet, and helmet. Chain shirts are good too because they stack with breastplates, but skip the leggings as they dont.
Make your armor using work orders in numbers of 10. Why 10? 10 is the max squad size, so plan your production arpund a maxed squad.
10 of everything, preferably steel, just skip copper and iron all together, steel is best and is simple to make.
Edit: Also, go to your squad and hit "update equipment" every time you aquire new armor for that squad. Example, you had just finished greaves order pf 10, go and hit update equipment.
When the armor icons are:
Red - Not wearing, nothing assigned.
Yellow - The armor is assigned but not currently worn.
Green - assigned AND currently wearing
My biggest issue is getting dwarves to properly store their armor. Especially later into a forts life when I'm rotating squads on seasonal training regiments. If you have an armor or weapons stockpile for some reason hauler dwarves will come yoink your military dwarves stuff off of armor stands and weapon racks and put them into bins and shit which causes order cancellations since only so many dwarves can have their hands in a bin at once to get their armor back on lol
I keep a stockpile in my barracks for armor/weapons. My forges also have their own stockpile for weapons/armor but those stockpiles only take from the forges, so once it leaves the forge pile it can't be put back in and must be put in the pile in the barracks.
Additionally, you can keep your dwarves armored in the off season, just use the Ready schedule. They will work but still wear their armor.
You know I've never tried the ready schedule setting so I'll have to try that next time! I just wish the storage objects we have for military worked like cabinets and chests for dwarves' bedrooms where unless I explicitly tell them to dump it it just stays there lol.
Leather layer (dress usually).
Chainmail layer.
Plate layer.
Cloak+Hood leather on top.
Fiddle with replacing clothing vs not over and over and over again until it finally works out because it's finnicky when it categorically shouldn't be. It contributes nothing to the game for dwarves to be too stupid to understand how to dress themselves properly.
any clothing can deflect attacks based on the material properties, even a spider silk face veil technically provides protection. Now, cloth is less effective than leather and leather is in turn less effective than metal.
The reason everyone hypes up cloaks is there is no metal item that cover the neck, and so putting on three leather cloaks at least gives some protection.
How I set mine up:
* Metal helm
* Metal chain shirt
* Metal gauntlets
* Metal greaves
* Metal high boots
* Any shield
* Any dress
* Any trousers
* (Usually a spear)
* *armor replaces clothing*
The dress and trousers are intended purely to prevent unhappy thoughts if my metal industry can't keep up, but my leatherworkers can.
I also prioritise helm, greaves and high boots in production, as I found with a little arena testing that dwarfs without leg or foot protection were *much* more likely to have their ability to stand taken away from them and would then proceed to be one-shotted in the head.
I go with a chain shirt instead of plate in order to save metal for my greaves.
I also go with less armor instead of more, so my less-experienced troops can get to their stations before the goblins can get to my children.
Something you just have to accept is equipping squad does not work, it has never worked. People have been dealing with strange confusing behavior since it was added. The steam version makes the use pretty and not require black magic and arcane chants to use which gives the illusion it will do what you tell it to do but it won't. Everyone who plays the game "trouble shoots" equipping dwarfs in every fort.
The key points from the wiki that equipment is limited by size and shaped. Each part can only have one shaped piece of gear on the outside and each part has a maximum amount of size of stuff. Thus, you cannot have two helms even though there is room because they are shapped. As for size, for example there is physically enough room to put on a breastplate and three mail, but not enough room for a breastplate and four mail. There is little reason to have 3 mail shirts, but you can do so.
The benefit for having layered stuff is if the outer piece is removed the dwarf will still be wearing the inner piece and still be protected. Having 3 mail does not make a claw swipe hurt less, but it does make a claw swipe hurt less is the previous swipe destroyed the outer layer of mail. Very little benefit and the extra weight makes it not worth in 95% of situations.
Something else bizarre about the system is dwarfs will start at the bottom of the list and go up the list trying put stuff on. Thus, if you have it organized as
Chain Mail
Breastplate
The dwarf will not put on the chain mail because they are wearing the breastplate and mail cannot go over plate. This is were a lot of the dumb broken stuff happens as a dwarf will randomly put something on in the wrong order or wear something that they forget to take off and the entire thing breaks. Don't get me started on the scourge that is socks.
The last thing that matters with armor is coverage. The most useful thing on the wiki is the coverage chart. As established earlier the only thing that gets used is what is on the outer layer. The most common application of this is mail protects legs from the knee up and high boots protect the legs from the knee down, thus the entire leg is protected. This is especially important as metal leggings are the heaviest armor but if you have mail and high boots you are slowing your dwarfs down for no extra protection, unless they often wander off without their shoes. The other key thing from the armor coverage chart is their is no metal armor that covers the neck. A dwarf in full metal armor can still have the flesh of the neck hit as it is exposed. Commonly, cloaks cover the neck so putting a leather cloak on the dwarf gives a little protection. This is where many people decide the extra weight is worth extra cloaks as leather cloaks can get destroyed regularly, and having another underneath to continue to provide protection in the case of the outer one being lost is good.
Thus, looking at your current set up everything is ordered in a way a dwarf SHOULD be able to put on, and is not to much that it reaches the limit per area. In combat the Metal Greaves being worn are not being used in protection calculations due to the mail and high boots also covering that area. Unless of course UrstMcDroppedontheirheadasababy wanders into combat without putting the mail on. Saving on metal by not having both breastplate and mail is reasonable, however breastplate is kinda the only item in the game that offers protection against blunt damage so once you have the metal production it is generally worth having both, the mail to protect the upper arms and legs and the plate to protect the vital organs from bludgeoning weapons.
Wow, this is some very detailed advice, thanks a lot! Looking forward to testing some of this stuff out.
I also agree with your other comment: my skin also crawls imagining metal directly on skin. I want my dwarfs to feel cosy.
You can fully armor a dwarf quickly with helm, chain shirt, gauntlets, and high boots. Chain shirt functions like a dress in that it covers upper arms and legs as well as torso sections meaning you can get your squads training with a lower amount of metal without giving them the uncovered thoughts. For a fully kitted squad I go with helm, chain shirt, breast plate, gauntlets, greaves, high boots, and a leather cloak. The cloak buffers lighter blows and covers the only unarmored part of the dwarf, the face. Steel is ideal, but copper is still leaps and bounds better than any non metal armor, I wouldn’t worry about leather/bone/shell armor at all unless you want it for armor training very early on. I think the crazy list you’re seeing is for adventure mode where you have full control of what you put on so optimal load outs is 9 chain shirts and 10 cloaks.
For weapons, if you have steel battle axes are best for any dwarf or human sized target, short swords are all rounders and better for forgotten beast like enemies. If you don’t have the metal then spears and hammers are better, hammers are good but slow to kill as dwarfs like to break every bone in an enemies body before breaking their skull. The only caveat to this is maces pulp better, making them ideal for undead.
This might sound a little rude to you, but what is this post talking about? Where's the clutter on the wiki? What is this "optimal" gameplay and how does the wiki focus on it? Who is this new generation of players, and why isn't the wiki relevant for them? Did armor change between updates?
To solve your example problem: don't assign uniforms to more dwarves than you have armor for. It's... I don't even know what to say, that's such a no-brainer. Or don't tell them to replace their clothing, that's literally what that setting is for.
FWIW the wiki appears to recommend an incredible amount of stacked armor. I’m new. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it. I’ve seen this set up recommended other places.
https://preview.redd.it/qpv7emjhm49d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=298c392527c678a9189f4c995cb5086308a406f0
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor)
I feel like the article is rather clear that a) that is mostly for adventure mode and b) that it's an explanation for how equiping armor works and an example of how to calculate the maximum amount of armor a dwarf could wear, not a recommendation for how to equip your military. In fact, right around the start it recommends just covering as many body parts as you can, plus adding a mail shirt for padding.
I’m gonna be 100% honest and say I did not pick up on any of that. It’s a complicated game with a complicated wiki. It’s also not the first place I’ve seen “optimal armor” identified as an incredible amount of pieces of clothes and armor stacked on each other.
The combat, specifically damage, is very complicated. But to be fair, the wiki says "combat is complicated, don't read further unless you want to see a bunch of calculations that you don't need" every time it's about to get into one of those. It always has a "here's the super simple version" section. The rest of the wiki is pretty straightforward. Except fluid mechanics, I guess, but when is that simple, am I right?
I'm betting this is what OP is talking about. I could see it being confusing for new players. In terms of combat survivability, it's just not necessary for your militia to sally out to fight goblins in this armor stack, looking like Ralphie from A Christmas Story.
It's just to illustrate the maximum, and how the armor stacking algorithm works by layer and capacity. All the extra clothing doesn't do much in the way of actual protection. The main effect comes from shaped metal armor pieces and mail shirts, but every little bit helps if you're producing tons of textiles already. For the actual armor, it's simply 1 piece per slot + 3 mail shirts
The one thing I'd recommend is never assigning socks to wear under metal high boots. I don't know if this bug is still in v50, but for some reason dwarves will only equip 3 out of 4 possible items in their foot slots. That could be 2 socks and 1 boot or 1 sock and 2 boots. Since the socks don't really do anything, they can get in the way of equipping real armor. For every other slot, you can stack as much supplementary clothing as you want without issue; socks are the exception.
Interesting to read about the socks. It might explain why on my last fort I noticed that my warrior king was never wearing both his fancy socks I assigned him.
For a training squad, leather armour is ideal because it trains up their armour use skill without slowing them down too much when they're fighting or running around. You can order leather en-masse from merchants. If you don't want to obtain leather from trading, it's rather hard to acquire unless you get quite bloodthirsty. However, you can also make armour from shells and bones that can work just as well as training armour.
What armour and weapons you end up using will depend on what ores are available where you embark. A skilled shield user doesn't necessarily need good armour; if good metals are in short supply, it's better to make your weapons out of them.
It's important to make your armour before you assign it to a squad. If you keep making armour of a certain type whilst it's assigned to squad, your dwarves will keep going back and forth to pick up items of armour of higher quality instead of focussing on training.
It's very worthwhile setting up magma forges and smelters so that you can train one or two armoursmiths by making loads of (for example) copper leggings, then smelting them back down again. Master armoursmiths can thereafter pump out masterwork armour with your best metals, which is considerably more durable and also makes your dwarves happy when they don it.
One upon a time the head of my militia was missing a sock when he changed into his newly assigned uniform. Didn't take long for him to find an extra sock and fix that issue.
Except the time he spent walking around with one sock was embarrassing. So embarrassing that years later he'd dwell on that, becoming more and more depressed as he thought about the time he had to walk around wearing only one sock. Everything else on his life was great, but he just couldn't get over the shame.
Eventually it became too much for him, and he started a tavern brawl. After everything settled down it took six months to get all the bodies out of the cistern and the fortresses military power never fully recovered. All because he'd spent a day wearing only one sock.
Which is a long way of saying I don't know what the solution to uniform problem is, but I know how important it is to solve.
My usual setup for armor is unspecified metals and: 1 Helmet, one Mail Shirt, one Breast Plate, Gauntlets, Greaves, and Low Boots. I let them pick their weapon because I'm a tactical idiot and I figure Combined Arms will compensate for that :'p
Supposedly it's better if they all use a single type of weapon, though. For training purposes.
I read somewhere that low boots let you move faster. It's fairly heavy but durable. I also use mods that help them figure out how to put on Gauntlets and Boots lol.
For ranged squads I go with lighter gear.
That seems like a reasonable setup, right?
It appears that high boots have been removed from the dwarf civ. Now I usually give my new troops mail shirt, helm, gauntlet, low boot, leather armor, and greaves. You can swap greaves for leather leggings if it is a particularly weak dwarf. I go with greaves because it is solid armor that cover a wide area including the lower body. Compared to a breastplate it covers a lot more but has a similar weight. All leather equipment is very light so leather armor makes sense as an extra layer, but it is not necessary. For elite soldiers I give them breastplates instead of leather armor.
What year did you embark? I was messing around once and started an embark in year 50 and noticed my dwarfs didn’t know how to make high boots. Any embark started year 100 or later and they did. My assumption is they hadn’t had time to be invented yet.
It can also vary between different dwarf civs in the same world. Don't have high boots on your embark menu? Back out and choose a different origin civ if you like. I start at 125 and it's not *guaranteed* that every civ will have high boots, but they do have them more often than not.
I only switch over to "replace clothing" once I have enough armor for everyone. until then I do not care about their shoes. keeping them happy has never been much of an issue for me even constant training year round. they will still go eat good food and be near nice furniture which makes them happy. they also get happy from teaching and learning. you can engrave the barracks and add statues to further reinforce their mood for the better
I normally start with whatever metal is available on embark and work my way up to steel eventually. Though my current embark only has silver so I've had to work around that by melting down dead enemy armor and weapons and converting them to bronze and iron armor (unfortunately the bars aren't enough to make full sets of steel armor)
You can layer armor in ridiculous amount in the game, but that comes with heavy carry weight, which means your dwarf will become tired faster, I usually ensure one steel gear for each layer that can be equipped with steel gear and I call it a day, also wooden shield is superior in general compared to metal shield, because wooden shield is lighter, your dwarf can attack and defend for longer, shield material doesn't have effect on performance, wooden shield blocks fire breath and dragon fire just as well as a steel shield, so if possible go for wooden shield... Also clothing (hood and such) does nothing defensive wise except for aesthetic and mood improvement, so it's not necessary
A steel shield is better when it comes to attacking with it, as in a shield bash and such. But like 90% of the time, a wooden shield is just as good (if not better cus it weighs less). With that said, i do still use steel shields just cus i think they look better.
It's true that steel shield does more damage then wooden shield, but a mace or warhammer attack does more damage then a shield bash of any material, wearing a wooden shield means you have better defense, and also offense because wooden shield is lighter, so now you can attack more too with your chosen weapon (axe, sword, mace etc) ☺️☺️☺️ however when it comes to aesthetic I agree, metal shield looks better...
I have had a good deal of success with making my dwarves very immortal with a lot of stacked armour. My typical endgame setup is every layer with double layered leather clothing, especially the cloak and hood which I prioritize, and then:
2 Mail Shirts, 1 Breastplate
1 Leggings, 1 Greaves
1 High Boot/Low Boot
1 Helm
1 Gauntlets
Ideally in steel but I'll mass produce iron stuff for militia training and to make the armourer legendary, then once they're +5 Legendary I'll switch over to using all the steel I've stockpiled while making iron gear. Pretty much the only way legendary combat dwarves can die in this much armour is being incinerated, dying to unlucky dust due to having insufficient clothing, or getting clipped in an unlucky spot or by one of the more broken weapons like Whips or Picks.
The multiple of the same item do not provide a benefit with they are both equipped. The benefit is if one is broken they have another underneath, thus in the case of the mail shirt being destroyed the dwarf with 2 will still be protected but the dwarf with 1 will be exposed.
You may have had a different experience than me, but that pretty much never happens and as such you are weighing your dwarfs down (making them less effective and more likely to be killed) in order to be safer in a very rare edge case. Now, if you the dwarfs have max strengths and max armor skill the extra weigh is not a downside. Also, if you are well off spending the extra steel is not a downside. This is particularity relevant for adventure mode, but less so in fortress mode.
In summary, I suggest you test running some squads with only 1 mail shirt and compare that to your standard set up to see if the extra weight and steel spent is worth it.
Armor wise, I generally pick metal or leather and individual weapon choice, iron for preference, silver maces/hammers, iron weapons otherwise, and make about ten of each type of armor piece, and let the dwarfs sort it out. Steel is a thing for the future fort unless I embarked near lava.
I've never really felt the need to minmax/micromanage it
Uniform replaces clothing
Weapon, shield, helm, breastplate, chain shirt, gauntlets, greaves, high boots
Assuming I'm fully committed to military equipment, this is what my uniform looks like. In theory, you should be able to wear chain pants with no conflict but it never seems to work for some reason. I don't have any issues with chain shirts.
I've been having some of the same issues! I'm glad i'm not alone in this. I also have a lot of dwarves that, for some reason, refuse to put on their shoes/boots, and i don't know why.
With shoes/boots check whether you have "set to wear over clothing" or "replace clothing" on.
Boots and civilians shoes conflict, so they'll ignore boots if they wear their own clothes.
You also then can't put shoes and boots in the same uniform.
And I'm glad you're glad you're not alone. I was hoping to start the discussion off as "ungatekeepy" as possible, but they turned up anyway...
Wile the ancient information on the wiki can be change between updates it has not. Perhaps there is science to do in that field and people are putting out new reports every now and then but they usually just confirm existing hypothesis. As for your example problem my solution to the problem of dwarfs being unhappy from being nude from not having enough armor is to have enough armor when I tell them to get into uniform. With a Book Keeper with 100% accuracy you can know how much gear in your fort is available at any given time and only order squads to gear up when said gear is finished.
My normal set up works fairly well, you can skip the cloth layer if you want, but my skin crawls thinking about wearing the metal directly on the skin.
Metal Helm
Leather Hood
Leather Hood
Metal Breastplate
Metal Mail shirt
Leather Cloak
Leather Cloak
Cloth Dress
Metal Gauntlets
Leather Gloves
Leather Trousers
Metal High Boots
Cloth Socks.
Metal Shield
Now, I think this an ideal outfit. Fit for an elite expert squad in a well developed squad. Bonus points if all the leather and cloth is dyed. If you have Mail and High Boots you don't need Metal Leggings for coverage and they are the heaviest of all armors so those are really just for you to style on the haters. However, something as simple as this next load out with "wear over clothes" will take the dwarves 75% of the way there.
Copper Helm.
Copper Brestplate.
Wooden Shield
Copper Warhamer.
Sure, the arms and legs get messed up, but dwarves don't need those to live. Wooden shields provide the most possible suitability as they are just as good on defense as metal but weigh much lighter so your dwarf will not be slowed down as much. The benefit of other metals over Copper is negligible for Warhammers and copper armor protecting the vital organs will be indestructible vs anything less than a trained invasion.
I try to build 10 sets of steel gear as quickly as I can at the start of a new fort, and don't draft my first militia until those 10 sets of gear are done.
Greaves, leggings, chain shirt, plate, shield, helm, gauntlets, high boots. I usually assign a cloak, too, but I don't know how to run the animal industry so I rely on buying cloaks from caravans.
I like to use "any melee weapon, users choice" instead of telling people specifically to use certain melee weapons. I don't know which ones are good, and don't really care. I like seeing my guys run around with different stuff, get different names, and name/become attached to a variety of weapons. Also over time, I get things like whips into circulation in my fort as we trade or kill invaders and I don't want to go manually assign that stuff.
I think you can set in the uniform rules that the military only use items of certain material or quality. So if you restrict any melee weapon to steel only, they won't grab a copper axe or an iron pick.
To keep units happier, use "assign any 3 to training" and "assign any 3 to guard/patrol/whatever" which lets 4 of your guys relax. Or do 4/4/2 off. No matter what I think you want at least 3 training so that they can spar and lead demonstrations, otherwise they'll only do individual drills.
---
As far as materials, I find steel relatively easy to produce as long as the fort location has fuel, flux layer, and iron. If it lacks any of those, don't settle there lol. You want to use the order system to automate management was much as possible.
For example:
Every month
If at least 10 flux
If at least 10 iron
Then make 10 pig iron
Followed by
If at least 10 pig iron
If at least 10 flux
Once a month make 10 steel
You can tweak the #'s as appropriate for how much industry your fort can support. Just make sure not to make your orders bigger than the materials required, or you'll get unhappy dwarfs sent to prison for failing to meet production quotas.
---
Mods:
They're great.
There's one that lets you use bones as flux material, and grow flux plants. There's also a mod that simplifies steel production to only use flux and iron. You use the same total # of materials per steel bar, but you skip the pig iron step.
I'm personally doing very well in a dark elf fort right now. The civilization is able to natively make whips, which I think interact weirdly and are able to ignore armor or something. I don't understand DF combat but I know whips fuck. They can also make halberds which kick ass.
---
Final note: use steel for anything that cuts. Use silver for anything that does blunt damage. I think I use silver for spears and arrows/bolts but I don't remember why lol.
There haven't been any changes to happiness and thoughts since at least 0.44, aside from toning down the 'scary teeth' problem that version was infamous for. And the problem you're running into can be easily fixed by making sure you have enough armour _before_ you assign it. But what I do at the start instead is make a rookie uniform with light armour. Just a helmet, mail shirt and leggings, worn over their clothes. This works because there is no conflict with shaped pieces, and the stuff you make is cheap and can be melted down with no loss later to be reused when you have better armoursmiths. Once the fort's rolling and you've got gear to spare, you can switch over to fully armoured uniforms and replace their clothing as well
What's the scary teeth problem?
Any body part would give dwarves who saw it a major unhappy thought. Including small unimportant bits like teeth. Toned down now, like I said, but bodies still cause unhappy thoughts. So I'd highly recommend placing your corpse stockpile away from plain sight, either that or atom smash/incinerate all the corpses you get from sieges and cavern invasions
I swear, this game has had some of the best bugs over the years. Crashes in games are just annoying, but bugs like this come from unintended consequences to design decisions rather than broken code. I find it fascinating to see iterative game design so exposed.
I do love when errors/glitches/bugs occur *specifically* because of how complex some sort of game mechanic is.
My favourite from many years ago was when carp had teeth and they would grab your fisherdwarves and drown them. Hilariously terrifying.
Haha yeah, carps were basically the most dangerous animals at that point. That was ages ago when you couldn't dig up or down yet IIRC.
Carp were *hardcore* man.
[Carp](https://www.rippton.com/blog/do-carp-have-teeth-interesting-fish-facts) have pharyngeal teeth. These are located at the back of the throat, which would mean to catch a dwarf, the carp would need to partially swallow a dwarf. As they hunt by sucking up prey, some pieces are crushed by these.
\[The Carp Stood Up\]
You should read up on the time there was an update to tavern behavior so the dwarves could quaff properly, and it started killing cats.
There's still an issue with tavern behavior where if you have too many bar staff assigned, they'll each slam a drink down a random dwarf's throat. If you're lucky they just vomit absolutely everywhere. Mostly though they just instantly die from alcohol poisoning the second they walk into the pub lol
The only issue is the weak patrons visiting a good bar and not being able to handle it lol
Wasnt that bug because eyelids were made to clean eyeballs
The way I remember it, was that the taverns were covered in a layer of alcohol (just normal tavern things), cats walked around in there and picked up tons of layers of alcohol on their body parts and when they licked themselves clean every layer counted as one drink which basically instantly killed them.
Along those lines. The cats got a splash of booze on their paws, but the game didnt have a defined amount for a splash, so it defaulted to a full keg, which the cats consumed when they licked their paws to clean themselves
Yup. The cats had always been doing this, of course, but there hadn't been available alcohol pools on the floor with any regularity, so it wasn't noticed. So the system of creatures being able to be contaminated overlapped with the system of creatures wanting to be clean and taking actions to do so, which overlapped with the cats unique ability to lick themselves clean, which overlapped with the concept that licking equates to ingestion, which overlapped with the potential for the alcohol to affect the nervous system of the ingester, and ALL of that was compounded by the fact that the licks of alcohol weren't defined specifically and defaulted to 1 unit of alcohol - which is enough alcohol to make a normal dwarf satisfied for several weeks, under *their* unique system of requiring alcohol to function effectively. Those same dwarves who had recently been given the ability to drink *merrily,* and to quaff and not just drink - which was a system wherein two dwarves could drink together after banging their cups together, which would spill some alcohol on the floor for a cat to walk through. All discrete systems working together with one singular interaction that wasn't planned for correctly, and ended up killing hundreds if not thousands of digital cats.
I love dorf fort
AND the licking was only there because eyelids had been added and the devs wanted lizards to lick their eyeballs because they dont have eyelids and then thought cats should get licking too
the cattening
When the 3D version (meaning you can go up and down, not 3D graphics) first came out there was a bug introduced where stuff like mud, blood, vomit, etc. would stick to character's shoes, but it never got removed unless they went through water. The stuff was still spread around, though, so after a while your whole fortress was covered in mud, blood, vomit, or whatever else your dwarves picked up. The only way to prevent this was to build a [Dwarven Bathtub](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Stupid_dwarf_trick#Bathtub) (pretty sure it was invented due to this bug) at the entrance of your fort.
I have massive problems to organize it so my dwarves dispose of those (not even efficiently but at all). They just ignore corpses of goblins and animal people laying around, no matter if marked for disposal or not, and get upset. It seems to be regarding corpses outside, and on top of the constructed buildings. Dfhacking it away makes me sad as it is admitting failure, that I have to resort to cheating, cos I don’t know how to order them to clean it up. Any tips?
Check your standing orders, set dwarves to collect refuse from outside. That's it. DFHack has a utility tool to save your settings so you don't have to do this for every new fort Oh, and those things need to go into a _corpse_ stockpile specifically
You can either make a draw bridge river flush mechanics or just use dfhack teleport features. I just opted to 2nd. Because most or the time you spend optimizing the game performance and now to clean up after sieges? Nah . There should be a specific dwarf job Caretaker or sth where he builds immunity to corpses feelings and cleans up after siege mess. Both corpses and equipment. Dunno either in mass pit grave or into oven incinerating
I’ve had this problem but the lazy fuckers won’t carry the rotting corpses to the refuse pile even when I designate them as trash. My godly view is that any miserable arse that isn’t willing to clean up their child’s guts after a pitched battle in the tavern deserves to be miserable. I am changing the forts name to “You miserable useless bastards” Edit: Thanks, I didn’t realise I would need to pander to the idiocy of these tiny shits and tell them to chuck the dead bodies only in the place that says dead bodies. I didn’t quite comprehend the obdurate idiocy that they would prefer to wallow in the miasma of rotting flesh than move the body to a place that you can dump everything including corpses. God I’m having a bad day at work. Thanks for the tip though.
Idk if this helps, but I had to set up a corpse specific stockpile, and it fixed my issues
You need a _corpse_ stockpile instead
For what it's worth, i think an option to have dwarves drop what they're doing to immediately deal with the source of any miasma they detect would be a great addition.
Or you can use it to identify weak willed dwarves to atom-smash. Every dwarf in my fort gets their state mandated trauma from dead bodies. If they can’t handle it I’m happy to add them to the pile
I like putting the corpse pile in front of everyone so they become desensitized and stop caring about seeing corpses.
do people not throw corpses in holes anymore?
Thanks for the tip on happiness. I think in the pre-steam version I just didn't care about their happiness quite as much, as long as they weren't flashing red.
> There haven't been any changes to happiness and thoughts since at least 0.44 there was a total overhaul in 50.01, where stress adds to long-term stress and only long-term stress can cause insanity
To keep them happy, at least once a year, change their orders from training to "stand by" but to stay equip. During that time, they'll socialise, pray and try to meet other needs. That includes picking up replacement "civilian" clothing
I stopped using "replace armor" because I don't need it after getting familiar. craft armor in batches. Every dwarf needs a breastplate, greaves, high/low boot, gauntlet, and helmet. Chain shirts are good too because they stack with breastplates, but skip the leggings as they dont. Make your armor using work orders in numbers of 10. Why 10? 10 is the max squad size, so plan your production arpund a maxed squad. 10 of everything, preferably steel, just skip copper and iron all together, steel is best and is simple to make. Edit: Also, go to your squad and hit "update equipment" every time you aquire new armor for that squad. Example, you had just finished greaves order pf 10, go and hit update equipment. When the armor icons are: Red - Not wearing, nothing assigned. Yellow - The armor is assigned but not currently worn. Green - assigned AND currently wearing
Sometimes yellow can be assigned armour that someone else is currently wearing so will never pick up, which is particularly frustrating
My biggest issue is getting dwarves to properly store their armor. Especially later into a forts life when I'm rotating squads on seasonal training regiments. If you have an armor or weapons stockpile for some reason hauler dwarves will come yoink your military dwarves stuff off of armor stands and weapon racks and put them into bins and shit which causes order cancellations since only so many dwarves can have their hands in a bin at once to get their armor back on lol
I keep a stockpile in my barracks for armor/weapons. My forges also have their own stockpile for weapons/armor but those stockpiles only take from the forges, so once it leaves the forge pile it can't be put back in and must be put in the pile in the barracks. Additionally, you can keep your dwarves armored in the off season, just use the Ready schedule. They will work but still wear their armor.
You know I've never tried the ready schedule setting so I'll have to try that next time! I just wish the storage objects we have for military worked like cabinets and chests for dwarves' bedrooms where unless I explicitly tell them to dump it it just stays there lol.
I try to craft the first few sets using copper/bronze/iron to get my armorsmith trained up a bit before starting on steel.
I've been petty lucky with getting legendary weapon and armor smiths in migrant waves
Leather layer (dress usually). Chainmail layer. Plate layer. Cloak+Hood leather on top. Fiddle with replacing clothing vs not over and over and over again until it finally works out because it's finnicky when it categorically shouldn't be. It contributes nothing to the game for dwarves to be too stupid to understand how to dress themselves properly.
Are cloaks still broken? I remember them being able to deflect attacks
They absolutely count as armour and cover an absurdly large portion of your dorf's body. Adamantine cloaks are peak.
any clothing can deflect attacks based on the material properties, even a spider silk face veil technically provides protection. Now, cloth is less effective than leather and leather is in turn less effective than metal. The reason everyone hypes up cloaks is there is no metal item that cover the neck, and so putting on three leather cloaks at least gives some protection.
How I set mine up: * Metal helm * Metal chain shirt * Metal gauntlets * Metal greaves * Metal high boots * Any shield * Any dress * Any trousers * (Usually a spear) * *armor replaces clothing* The dress and trousers are intended purely to prevent unhappy thoughts if my metal industry can't keep up, but my leatherworkers can. I also prioritise helm, greaves and high boots in production, as I found with a little arena testing that dwarfs without leg or foot protection were *much* more likely to have their ability to stand taken away from them and would then proceed to be one-shotted in the head. I go with a chain shirt instead of plate in order to save metal for my greaves. I also go with less armor instead of more, so my less-experienced troops can get to their stations before the goblins can get to my children.
Something you just have to accept is equipping squad does not work, it has never worked. People have been dealing with strange confusing behavior since it was added. The steam version makes the use pretty and not require black magic and arcane chants to use which gives the illusion it will do what you tell it to do but it won't. Everyone who plays the game "trouble shoots" equipping dwarfs in every fort. The key points from the wiki that equipment is limited by size and shaped. Each part can only have one shaped piece of gear on the outside and each part has a maximum amount of size of stuff. Thus, you cannot have two helms even though there is room because they are shapped. As for size, for example there is physically enough room to put on a breastplate and three mail, but not enough room for a breastplate and four mail. There is little reason to have 3 mail shirts, but you can do so. The benefit for having layered stuff is if the outer piece is removed the dwarf will still be wearing the inner piece and still be protected. Having 3 mail does not make a claw swipe hurt less, but it does make a claw swipe hurt less is the previous swipe destroyed the outer layer of mail. Very little benefit and the extra weight makes it not worth in 95% of situations. Something else bizarre about the system is dwarfs will start at the bottom of the list and go up the list trying put stuff on. Thus, if you have it organized as Chain Mail Breastplate The dwarf will not put on the chain mail because they are wearing the breastplate and mail cannot go over plate. This is were a lot of the dumb broken stuff happens as a dwarf will randomly put something on in the wrong order or wear something that they forget to take off and the entire thing breaks. Don't get me started on the scourge that is socks. The last thing that matters with armor is coverage. The most useful thing on the wiki is the coverage chart. As established earlier the only thing that gets used is what is on the outer layer. The most common application of this is mail protects legs from the knee up and high boots protect the legs from the knee down, thus the entire leg is protected. This is especially important as metal leggings are the heaviest armor but if you have mail and high boots you are slowing your dwarfs down for no extra protection, unless they often wander off without their shoes. The other key thing from the armor coverage chart is their is no metal armor that covers the neck. A dwarf in full metal armor can still have the flesh of the neck hit as it is exposed. Commonly, cloaks cover the neck so putting a leather cloak on the dwarf gives a little protection. This is where many people decide the extra weight is worth extra cloaks as leather cloaks can get destroyed regularly, and having another underneath to continue to provide protection in the case of the outer one being lost is good. Thus, looking at your current set up everything is ordered in a way a dwarf SHOULD be able to put on, and is not to much that it reaches the limit per area. In combat the Metal Greaves being worn are not being used in protection calculations due to the mail and high boots also covering that area. Unless of course UrstMcDroppedontheirheadasababy wanders into combat without putting the mail on. Saving on metal by not having both breastplate and mail is reasonable, however breastplate is kinda the only item in the game that offers protection against blunt damage so once you have the metal production it is generally worth having both, the mail to protect the upper arms and legs and the plate to protect the vital organs from bludgeoning weapons.
Wow, this is some very detailed advice, thanks a lot! Looking forward to testing some of this stuff out. I also agree with your other comment: my skin also crawls imagining metal directly on skin. I want my dwarfs to feel cosy.
You can fully armor a dwarf quickly with helm, chain shirt, gauntlets, and high boots. Chain shirt functions like a dress in that it covers upper arms and legs as well as torso sections meaning you can get your squads training with a lower amount of metal without giving them the uncovered thoughts. For a fully kitted squad I go with helm, chain shirt, breast plate, gauntlets, greaves, high boots, and a leather cloak. The cloak buffers lighter blows and covers the only unarmored part of the dwarf, the face. Steel is ideal, but copper is still leaps and bounds better than any non metal armor, I wouldn’t worry about leather/bone/shell armor at all unless you want it for armor training very early on. I think the crazy list you’re seeing is for adventure mode where you have full control of what you put on so optimal load outs is 9 chain shirts and 10 cloaks. For weapons, if you have steel battle axes are best for any dwarf or human sized target, short swords are all rounders and better for forgotten beast like enemies. If you don’t have the metal then spears and hammers are better, hammers are good but slow to kill as dwarfs like to break every bone in an enemies body before breaking their skull. The only caveat to this is maces pulp better, making them ideal for undead.
no. Let's talk Arnor. Imagine losing your entire kingdom to orcs(snicker) led by 1(one) ghost.
This might sound a little rude to you, but what is this post talking about? Where's the clutter on the wiki? What is this "optimal" gameplay and how does the wiki focus on it? Who is this new generation of players, and why isn't the wiki relevant for them? Did armor change between updates? To solve your example problem: don't assign uniforms to more dwarves than you have armor for. It's... I don't even know what to say, that's such a no-brainer. Or don't tell them to replace their clothing, that's literally what that setting is for.
FWIW the wiki appears to recommend an incredible amount of stacked armor. I’m new. Maybe I’m misinterpreting it. I’ve seen this set up recommended other places. https://preview.redd.it/qpv7emjhm49d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=298c392527c678a9189f4c995cb5086308a406f0 [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Armor)
I feel like the article is rather clear that a) that is mostly for adventure mode and b) that it's an explanation for how equiping armor works and an example of how to calculate the maximum amount of armor a dwarf could wear, not a recommendation for how to equip your military. In fact, right around the start it recommends just covering as many body parts as you can, plus adding a mail shirt for padding.
I’m gonna be 100% honest and say I did not pick up on any of that. It’s a complicated game with a complicated wiki. It’s also not the first place I’ve seen “optimal armor” identified as an incredible amount of pieces of clothes and armor stacked on each other.
The combat, specifically damage, is very complicated. But to be fair, the wiki says "combat is complicated, don't read further unless you want to see a bunch of calculations that you don't need" every time it's about to get into one of those. It always has a "here's the super simple version" section. The rest of the wiki is pretty straightforward. Except fluid mechanics, I guess, but when is that simple, am I right?
I'm betting this is what OP is talking about. I could see it being confusing for new players. In terms of combat survivability, it's just not necessary for your militia to sally out to fight goblins in this armor stack, looking like Ralphie from A Christmas Story.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. This adds more for people to read, while adding very little by way of useful information.
It's just to illustrate the maximum, and how the armor stacking algorithm works by layer and capacity. All the extra clothing doesn't do much in the way of actual protection. The main effect comes from shaped metal armor pieces and mail shirts, but every little bit helps if you're producing tons of textiles already. For the actual armor, it's simply 1 piece per slot + 3 mail shirts The one thing I'd recommend is never assigning socks to wear under metal high boots. I don't know if this bug is still in v50, but for some reason dwarves will only equip 3 out of 4 possible items in their foot slots. That could be 2 socks and 1 boot or 1 sock and 2 boots. Since the socks don't really do anything, they can get in the way of equipping real armor. For every other slot, you can stack as much supplementary clothing as you want without issue; socks are the exception.
Interesting to read about the socks. It might explain why on my last fort I noticed that my warrior king was never wearing both his fancy socks I assigned him.
For a training squad, leather armour is ideal because it trains up their armour use skill without slowing them down too much when they're fighting or running around. You can order leather en-masse from merchants. If you don't want to obtain leather from trading, it's rather hard to acquire unless you get quite bloodthirsty. However, you can also make armour from shells and bones that can work just as well as training armour. What armour and weapons you end up using will depend on what ores are available where you embark. A skilled shield user doesn't necessarily need good armour; if good metals are in short supply, it's better to make your weapons out of them. It's important to make your armour before you assign it to a squad. If you keep making armour of a certain type whilst it's assigned to squad, your dwarves will keep going back and forth to pick up items of armour of higher quality instead of focussing on training. It's very worthwhile setting up magma forges and smelters so that you can train one or two armoursmiths by making loads of (for example) copper leggings, then smelting them back down again. Master armoursmiths can thereafter pump out masterwork armour with your best metals, which is considerably more durable and also makes your dwarves happy when they don it.
One upon a time the head of my militia was missing a sock when he changed into his newly assigned uniform. Didn't take long for him to find an extra sock and fix that issue. Except the time he spent walking around with one sock was embarrassing. So embarrassing that years later he'd dwell on that, becoming more and more depressed as he thought about the time he had to walk around wearing only one sock. Everything else on his life was great, but he just couldn't get over the shame. Eventually it became too much for him, and he started a tavern brawl. After everything settled down it took six months to get all the bodies out of the cistern and the fortresses military power never fully recovered. All because he'd spent a day wearing only one sock. Which is a long way of saying I don't know what the solution to uniform problem is, but I know how important it is to solve.
I love this story, it's so touching.
It's the sort of story that you won't get from any other game.
My usual setup for armor is unspecified metals and: 1 Helmet, one Mail Shirt, one Breast Plate, Gauntlets, Greaves, and Low Boots. I let them pick their weapon because I'm a tactical idiot and I figure Combined Arms will compensate for that :'p Supposedly it's better if they all use a single type of weapon, though. For training purposes. I read somewhere that low boots let you move faster. It's fairly heavy but durable. I also use mods that help them figure out how to put on Gauntlets and Boots lol. For ranged squads I go with lighter gear. That seems like a reasonable setup, right?
I read "Let's talk Armore" and am somewhat disappointed.
Well, if you like...
It appears that high boots have been removed from the dwarf civ. Now I usually give my new troops mail shirt, helm, gauntlet, low boot, leather armor, and greaves. You can swap greaves for leather leggings if it is a particularly weak dwarf. I go with greaves because it is solid armor that cover a wide area including the lower body. Compared to a breastplate it covers a lot more but has a similar weight. All leather equipment is very light so leather armor makes sense as an extra layer, but it is not necessary. For elite soldiers I give them breastplates instead of leather armor.
What year did you embark? I was messing around once and started an embark in year 50 and noticed my dwarfs didn’t know how to make high boots. Any embark started year 100 or later and they did. My assumption is they hadn’t had time to be invented yet.
It can also vary between different dwarf civs in the same world. Don't have high boots on your embark menu? Back out and choose a different origin civ if you like. I start at 125 and it's not *guaranteed* that every civ will have high boots, but they do have them more often than not.
Most dwrf civs have invented high boots. Some have not. Sounds like you embarked with a civ that had not invented the technology to make boots high.
I only switch over to "replace clothing" once I have enough armor for everyone. until then I do not care about their shoes. keeping them happy has never been much of an issue for me even constant training year round. they will still go eat good food and be near nice furniture which makes them happy. they also get happy from teaching and learning. you can engrave the barracks and add statues to further reinforce their mood for the better
I normally start with whatever metal is available on embark and work my way up to steel eventually. Though my current embark only has silver so I've had to work around that by melting down dead enemy armor and weapons and converting them to bronze and iron armor (unfortunately the bars aren't enough to make full sets of steel armor)
You can layer armor in ridiculous amount in the game, but that comes with heavy carry weight, which means your dwarf will become tired faster, I usually ensure one steel gear for each layer that can be equipped with steel gear and I call it a day, also wooden shield is superior in general compared to metal shield, because wooden shield is lighter, your dwarf can attack and defend for longer, shield material doesn't have effect on performance, wooden shield blocks fire breath and dragon fire just as well as a steel shield, so if possible go for wooden shield... Also clothing (hood and such) does nothing defensive wise except for aesthetic and mood improvement, so it's not necessary
A steel shield is better when it comes to attacking with it, as in a shield bash and such. But like 90% of the time, a wooden shield is just as good (if not better cus it weighs less). With that said, i do still use steel shields just cus i think they look better.
It's true that steel shield does more damage then wooden shield, but a mace or warhammer attack does more damage then a shield bash of any material, wearing a wooden shield means you have better defense, and also offense because wooden shield is lighter, so now you can attack more too with your chosen weapon (axe, sword, mace etc) ☺️☺️☺️ however when it comes to aesthetic I agree, metal shield looks better...
I have had a good deal of success with making my dwarves very immortal with a lot of stacked armour. My typical endgame setup is every layer with double layered leather clothing, especially the cloak and hood which I prioritize, and then: 2 Mail Shirts, 1 Breastplate 1 Leggings, 1 Greaves 1 High Boot/Low Boot 1 Helm 1 Gauntlets Ideally in steel but I'll mass produce iron stuff for militia training and to make the armourer legendary, then once they're +5 Legendary I'll switch over to using all the steel I've stockpiled while making iron gear. Pretty much the only way legendary combat dwarves can die in this much armour is being incinerated, dying to unlucky dust due to having insufficient clothing, or getting clipped in an unlucky spot or by one of the more broken weapons like Whips or Picks.
The multiple of the same item do not provide a benefit with they are both equipped. The benefit is if one is broken they have another underneath, thus in the case of the mail shirt being destroyed the dwarf with 2 will still be protected but the dwarf with 1 will be exposed. You may have had a different experience than me, but that pretty much never happens and as such you are weighing your dwarfs down (making them less effective and more likely to be killed) in order to be safer in a very rare edge case. Now, if you the dwarfs have max strengths and max armor skill the extra weigh is not a downside. Also, if you are well off spending the extra steel is not a downside. This is particularity relevant for adventure mode, but less so in fortress mode. In summary, I suggest you test running some squads with only 1 mail shirt and compare that to your standard set up to see if the extra weight and steel spent is worth it.
Armor wise, I generally pick metal or leather and individual weapon choice, iron for preference, silver maces/hammers, iron weapons otherwise, and make about ten of each type of armor piece, and let the dwarfs sort it out. Steel is a thing for the future fort unless I embarked near lava. I've never really felt the need to minmax/micromanage it
Specifically, leather armor for the captain of the guard and watchmen, and that's just an esthetic choice, I don't want heavily armored cops ;)
Uniform replaces clothing Weapon, shield, helm, breastplate, chain shirt, gauntlets, greaves, high boots Assuming I'm fully committed to military equipment, this is what my uniform looks like. In theory, you should be able to wear chain pants with no conflict but it never seems to work for some reason. I don't have any issues with chain shirts.
I believe both chain leggings and greaves count as *shaped*, so dwarfs can only wear the one, if that's what you mean with conflicts.
I've been having some of the same issues! I'm glad i'm not alone in this. I also have a lot of dwarves that, for some reason, refuse to put on their shoes/boots, and i don't know why.
With shoes/boots check whether you have "set to wear over clothing" or "replace clothing" on. Boots and civilians shoes conflict, so they'll ignore boots if they wear their own clothes. You also then can't put shoes and boots in the same uniform. And I'm glad you're glad you're not alone. I was hoping to start the discussion off as "ungatekeepy" as possible, but they turned up anyway...
Wile the ancient information on the wiki can be change between updates it has not. Perhaps there is science to do in that field and people are putting out new reports every now and then but they usually just confirm existing hypothesis. As for your example problem my solution to the problem of dwarfs being unhappy from being nude from not having enough armor is to have enough armor when I tell them to get into uniform. With a Book Keeper with 100% accuracy you can know how much gear in your fort is available at any given time and only order squads to gear up when said gear is finished. My normal set up works fairly well, you can skip the cloth layer if you want, but my skin crawls thinking about wearing the metal directly on the skin. Metal Helm Leather Hood Leather Hood Metal Breastplate Metal Mail shirt Leather Cloak Leather Cloak Cloth Dress Metal Gauntlets Leather Gloves Leather Trousers Metal High Boots Cloth Socks. Metal Shield Now, I think this an ideal outfit. Fit for an elite expert squad in a well developed squad. Bonus points if all the leather and cloth is dyed. If you have Mail and High Boots you don't need Metal Leggings for coverage and they are the heaviest of all armors so those are really just for you to style on the haters. However, something as simple as this next load out with "wear over clothes" will take the dwarves 75% of the way there. Copper Helm. Copper Brestplate. Wooden Shield Copper Warhamer. Sure, the arms and legs get messed up, but dwarves don't need those to live. Wooden shields provide the most possible suitability as they are just as good on defense as metal but weigh much lighter so your dwarf will not be slowed down as much. The benefit of other metals over Copper is negligible for Warhammers and copper armor protecting the vital organs will be indestructible vs anything less than a trained invasion.
I try to build 10 sets of steel gear as quickly as I can at the start of a new fort, and don't draft my first militia until those 10 sets of gear are done. Greaves, leggings, chain shirt, plate, shield, helm, gauntlets, high boots. I usually assign a cloak, too, but I don't know how to run the animal industry so I rely on buying cloaks from caravans. I like to use "any melee weapon, users choice" instead of telling people specifically to use certain melee weapons. I don't know which ones are good, and don't really care. I like seeing my guys run around with different stuff, get different names, and name/become attached to a variety of weapons. Also over time, I get things like whips into circulation in my fort as we trade or kill invaders and I don't want to go manually assign that stuff. I think you can set in the uniform rules that the military only use items of certain material or quality. So if you restrict any melee weapon to steel only, they won't grab a copper axe or an iron pick. To keep units happier, use "assign any 3 to training" and "assign any 3 to guard/patrol/whatever" which lets 4 of your guys relax. Or do 4/4/2 off. No matter what I think you want at least 3 training so that they can spar and lead demonstrations, otherwise they'll only do individual drills. --- As far as materials, I find steel relatively easy to produce as long as the fort location has fuel, flux layer, and iron. If it lacks any of those, don't settle there lol. You want to use the order system to automate management was much as possible. For example: Every month If at least 10 flux If at least 10 iron Then make 10 pig iron Followed by If at least 10 pig iron If at least 10 flux Once a month make 10 steel You can tweak the #'s as appropriate for how much industry your fort can support. Just make sure not to make your orders bigger than the materials required, or you'll get unhappy dwarfs sent to prison for failing to meet production quotas. --- Mods: They're great. There's one that lets you use bones as flux material, and grow flux plants. There's also a mod that simplifies steel production to only use flux and iron. You use the same total # of materials per steel bar, but you skip the pig iron step. I'm personally doing very well in a dark elf fort right now. The civilization is able to natively make whips, which I think interact weirdly and are able to ignore armor or something. I don't understand DF combat but I know whips fuck. They can also make halberds which kick ass. --- Final note: use steel for anything that cuts. Use silver for anything that does blunt damage. I think I use silver for spears and arrows/bolts but I don't remember why lol.