Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: mbeattie on March 20, 2008, 02:00:00 pm

Title: working on specific items
Post by: mbeattie on March 20, 2008, 02:00:00 pm

How can you get dwarves to encrust or melt specific items?  When I select the encrust option at my jewler, he just went around found some bone idol or something, and then used that.  I'd much rather he did ammo or something.

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: Chrispy on March 20, 2008, 02:06:00 pm

Pick a jeweler who likes ammo to do your gem-smithing, forbid all non-ammo items, put an ammo stockpile near him, wall him in with it, throw in some food, a bed, and drink, and make him work.

Sure, he'll get angry after he realizes that he's stuck in a 6*6 cubicle for the rest of his days.  But you'll get some nice bones out of the deal.   :D

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: ToxicFrog on March 20, 2008, 02:27:00 pm

As far as melting goes, you have to go into the stocks screen (under z) and select specific items for melting. When you queue a "melt metal object" job, the operator will grab the nearest meltable object and melt it, and will do nothing if no objects are marked as meltable, so you can just use the stocks screen to govern which items get melted.

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: Frelock on March 20, 2008, 03:09:00 pm

You can also go to the item itself, so if you see a narrow iron mask lying around, you can just hit k and then m to designate it for melting.

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: Othob Rithol on March 20, 2008, 11:47:00 pm

The dwarf picks up the random item because it was the closest legal item when he started the job (mine are always encrusting barrels...that they just emptied) so to get around this I just cut one gem first in the queue. They get the raw gem, go to the workshop, do the job, and then the encrust comes up and they grab the nearest item.

I always have my jewelers shop next to an isolated forge. Between them I designate a stockpile of whatever it is I want to decorate. Usually it is room type furniture made of exceptional quality and above made of precious metals (wood is on for the beds). All the really good stuff goes to the decoration room and the jeweler and a smith go at them. My best so far is a 43,000 masterpiece platinum throne studded with about a dozen types of metals and encrusted with about 40 gems.

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: Mohreb el Yasim on March 21, 2008, 01:33:00 am

show it plzzzz  :)
you should maybe put a craftworkshop and a letherworks next to them and so you could decoret theme even more.

Title: Re: working on specific items
Post by: greggbert on March 21, 2008, 12:25:00 pm

Create a furniture stockpile (or whatever stockiple) one square away from the jewelers worshop.  Then restrict it to the type of item you want to encrust.  Further restrict it to a certain BASE QUALITY so you are encrusting items that are already valuable.  For example Beds with Master or better quality or statues with exceptional or bettter quality.  Once the haulers bring the item you want to encrust, then give the encrust furniture command.  The gem setters ALWAYS get the jem first, then the item to encrust, so as long as your master bed or exceptional door is the closest item to your jeweler, you have a great deal of control over what gets encrusted.  

There is a catch.  These stockpiles will also hold already-encrusted items, so only encrust furniture if you are right about to (B)uild it, and only encrust a type of craft if you are ready to trade it, or else the already encrusted items will clog up your stockpile.

If you have a legendary metalcrafter, for example, you could set your gem shop stockpile to metal cratfts with master or better quality, and encrust them as your dwarves bring them in.  Once all the items are encrusted, then remove your stockpile, and they will go back to finished goods.

[ March 21, 2008: Message edited by: greggbert ]