Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Gameplay Questions => Topic started by: mcnmac on August 02, 2007, 10:51:00 pm

Title: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: mcnmac on August 02, 2007, 10:51:00 pm

I am having a problem preparing fine and lavish meals. My two cooks will easily prepare 'easy meals', but on every attempt to prepare the other two, I receive a message saying "Dwarf cancels Prepare Lavish meal. Job item lost or destroyed." The peasant cooks have only been with my fortress for a little while, and I am wondering if this is just lack of experience. I thought it would take a long time for an inexperienced cook to prepare such a large meal, but they won't cook anything this big at all. Only easy meals seem to work. Am I doing something wrong, or is my kitchen to cluttered?

Title: Re: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: Genuine on August 03, 2007, 12:11:00 am

The cooks are probably trying to cook alcohol or other food that can be claimed. I had this problem recently, and found it was due to the fact that whenever a cook grabbed a barrel of rum to use for cooking and placed it in the kitchen, another dwarf would choose that barrel to drink out of. This claiming of the barrel cancelled the food preparation job, and caused numerous problems until I told the chefs to not cook booze anymore.

Title: Re: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: ColonelTEE3 on August 03, 2007, 12:13:00 am

Make sure you have enough ingredients, easy meals only require 2 ingredients, beyond that requires more.

Title: Re: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: Darkchampion on August 03, 2007, 09:34:00 am

Unless you have a huge excess of booze, dont cook it as I suspect that is your problem.

Title: Re: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: mcnmac on August 03, 2007, 02:50:00 pm

I think that is exactly my problem. My fortress currently has a shortage of barrels, which was caused by me mistakingly choosing the option to prevent my dwarves from hauling wood (I made a post about that problem some time ago, and someone gave a solution). As I watched the kitchen for a while like a hawk, I noticed my cook carrying a barrel to the kitchen, and another suddenly taking it away. Every time this happened a message appeared saying the job was cancelled. At the moment I have about as much food as I do alchohol, but only just enough barrels to store it in.

So what you are saying is I should disable dwarven wine as a cookable item when I have my cook prepare lavish or fine meals. Is this correct?

Thanks

Title: Re: Fine and lavish meal problem
Post by: Angela Christine on August 04, 2007, 10:56:00 pm

Another option is to micromanage your booze stockpiles, so that no matter where in the fortress a dwarf is standing, there are barrels of booze available between him and the kitchen(s).  But that doesn't work very well unless you have hundreds of barrels of booze.