Bay 12 Games Forum

The most direct way is probably to "forbid" all items in the category before you give the order, and then unforbid them after the workshop order is active (I assume the activation means that the target item has been allocated). In particular, you can "forbid" the item(s) already processed.

One possible way is to try to use the "total quality" stockpile criterion. I've tried to use that to store worn clothing near the trade depot, but with limited success, since worn masterworks socks are still worth more than pristine basic quality ones. You also have the problem that you might want to adorn the things that already are the most valuable. Another path is to try to use material, but I guess all the things you want to adorn are of the same material.

Another possible way is to have two stockpiles, one close to your workshop, and one a fair bit away, and then "dump" things to a dumping site near the desired stockpile, and then unforbid them.

I had assumed the coins were intended for a coinstar, which I think is the only thing they are good for (if doing that, use the cheapest metal).

You CAN seal magma with water (turning magma into obsidian), but it's a lot of work.

To seal the way to anything (magma, water, caves, upper exterior environment, etc), you typically use raising drawbridges (for magma, all the material in the bridge has to be magma safe, i.e. all stones/metal/wood it's made of, as well as the mechanism(s) inside it use to control it).
To get at the magma, dig a suitable tunnel up to, but not into the magma source (i.e. one tile left). Then build a bridge to control the access to the magma once the source is breached (I usually use two bridges spaced to get an airlock type structure, but that's not necessary). Once the bridges are set up (and tested: it's far too easy to accidentally create a retracting bridge rather than a raising one!), breach the magma source. That can be done in two ways:
either have a miner just dig out the last tile, which carries the risk of the dwarf being ignited by magma, or have the miner channel the last tile from above. Note that after having channelled from above, you have access from the magma sea to that tunnel as well, so you want to draw bridge protect that access too.
If you use the first method, you should make as sure as you can that the miner immediately leaves the area, e.g. having another mining job elsewhere (and make sure no other miner hogs it, so digging out a strip rather than a 1 tile corridor is safer). You can cancel the job once the miner is clear (i.e. inside your sealing bridge, and, if any magma passed the bridge before it was raised, then out of the tunnel reserved for the magma). There is no guarantee though. Your miner might decide that after all that sweaty work close to the hot magma, it's time for a drink, cleaning, or just a quiet lie down. I would advice against trying to use burrows for this purpose, though, since dwarves seem to be very sluggish when it comes to responding to burrows (I think I've read somewhere that a burrow overhaul is next on Toady One's agenda).

Think of magma as extra dangerous water. The magma sea has a rock roof above it (if the sea is at varying depth, the roof is as well, leaving no gap), so to get at it from above you need to channel down to the magma layer.

I was wishing for the same thing, to finally be able to try out my defenses. My second invasion came early summer 257 (started 250), so it took quite a lot of time. At least the invasion was of a reasonable size. Some of them decided to flee, though, so I didn't get them all. Also, there is a strange "stay close to the leader" behavior, so they stopped walking into my traps fairly early. Conclusion: if possible, activate your traps when the army (or at least the leader) is in the middle of the defenses, otherwise your militia will have to was their clothes from blood.

Ah, OK. I had the impression there were more stuff down there besides what the blue stuff can yield. So the magma sea seabed is always made of semi molten rock or blue stuff, then?
I AM careful with the blue stuff, but provided the wiki is correct, there is a safe method of getting a fair bit of it. So far it's worked out: 100% mineable stuff from the top 5 tiers, 8 unrecovered tiles from the sixth one due to the risks. Haven't dug deeper there yet, as I've got enough stuff to keep the processing of it occupied for a fair while.

I've found the magma sea, and certain resources in it. I now want to plan for digging down into the sea to get at said resources (and explore beneath, eventually).
I understand you can obsidianize magma by dropping water on top of it from at least one free fall level above, so you can reasonbly easily create an obsidian floor or wall. The question comes for the next level of magma: Can you create a vertical obsidian wall, or do you have to create an inverted pyramid where each lower level is one tile narrower than the previous one, since you reasonably cannot drop water from above when the previous level's obsidian is in the way?
If you create an obsidian wall, channeling to the level below on the inside will expose the next level of magma. If you then get the dwarves out of the way and drop water on it it will turn into obsidian (well the obsidianizing will happen regardless, but any dwarves will probably be steam boiled if not removed), but I would guess the magma on the side of that channel remains unaffected? Will a second channeling, this time into obsidian, followed by a drop of water onto the channeled tile reobsidianize it due to the influx of magma from the side, and somehow also obsidianize the side (magma) wall(s) because the tile now was only partially filled with magma (provided you can get the water drop timing right)?

I think I just have lost my fortress to the FPS death when it suddenly went from a sluggish 16 or so down to unplayable 3-4. There seems to be some kind of steps in the FPS loss, as I have seen a drastic loss from basically 100 down to 30 reasonably early (and I saw that with my previous fortress as well), then a gradual loss, until this hit. The thing is that nothing of interest has happened that ought to have triggered it. I was trying to seal the third cavern when this hit came. There is no digging going on, no new water flows (the river remains the same, no flow introduced by me [not quite true: I've drained the murky pools, and they may have a water depth of 1-2 due to rain, but that engineering took place several years ago]). My woodcutter has been going slow recently due to lack of trees (and my wood stacks have dwindled due to wood burning). I DO have a lot of food and stone, about 160 animals (down from a top of 230 or so, mostly birds and dogs in two rooms with no-animal access doors (and pastures of those rooms)). I've produced a lot of stone blocks, but nothing is being produced as this hits (I was trying to get the masons to work on using the blocks). Unless there is a huge hidden army that's just arrived, the number of creatures have rather decreased than increased recently, as a human caravan just left.
I'm constantly producing clothes from all leather I can get as well as from a constant supply of cloth (1 leatherworker shop and one clothier) to replace the things the buggers throw all over the place, but I'm collecting all the discarded clothing and palm it off to the caravans (at a huge loss when it comes to the longears, as they don't have much to sell), so the clothing I have lying around is what's accumulated since my last caravan trade.
I've tried looking at the FPS wiki page, but it doesn't contain anything that looks step-like. Any ideas, or will I just have to give up the fortress?

Well, it seems the crawler explosion has petered out, so I only have one or two where I previously had 5 or 6, so m-logik's suspicion seems to be correct. I've tried to assign vermin capture tasks in the kennel, but that only resulted in reports of rats eating their way out of traps. I think I'll try an ordinary cage trap to see if they get caught by that. Otherwise, the problem seems manageable now. A freshly acquired cat (male) probably won't hurt (although cats are evil, so it might start hunting sleeping dwarves...).
I've used a number of quantum stockpiles with good results, but haven't thought of trying that with refuse. I won't have any problems with thieving animals, though, as I've completely enclosed a goodly section of the overground map (60*60 or so), so refuse, grazers, and outdoor crops are protected.