Bay 12 Games Forum

Hello everyone,

I created a new world with advanced parameters (not villains release but the one before).
I added more rainfall and temperature because I wanted a savage shrubland+jungle start (want Giant Rhinos I don't know why only that I want them).

Then I also reduced the caverns to 1 to hopefully improve FPS (2x2 embark) and increased the number of levels above first layer to have some more room.

What I realized is that my whole ground is not very deep. There is not many layers until I reached the magma sea. Does everyone know if that is tied to the cavern layers number setting or was that just random because of elevation?
Also don't have Iron only copper and silver but I guess this will be more interesting of a game try going leather armor (and many deaths) with the surviving veterans getting better traded stuff and relying on war animals. Animals are also bad for FPS but I try going low numbers and put them on restraints.

Side question: Can you pick fallen fruits and other items out of murky pools without draining them? Can I do it with trained swimmers? It looks ugly with all the stuff inside the pools.

Thanks for any feedback

I am totally depressed again with this game. Somehow all my fortresses break down totally.
A while ago I posted in this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170098.0
that my forts in the past all died FPS death.

Following some of the advice in that thread I am now fine on the FPS front. I have few animals only 50 dwarfs, 2x2 embark, no flowing water, disabled temperature and sparse vegatation. I am 6 years in at about 70-80 FPS most of the time. Current game is 44.09 x64 manual install only added utilities are DFHack and Spacefox tileset.  But now another issue that I always had in all of my previous forts has returned and what lead me to stop playing Dwarf Fortress in the past.

Somehow the whole pathfinding in my fort is breaking down.

Like I have a finished goods stockpile with many bone crafts and gems right next to my trade depot.
But I somehow can't manually mark them for Trade with Shift+T

Nor can I select them manually for Move for trade inside the Trade Depot the crafts just aren't available not even in All category.

there should be tons of crafts between those distances but rhere aren't

Then I have 9 minecarts filled with Magma near the magma sea:

I deleted the stockpile below them. They should be moved to a stockpile near the surface. And I assigned one to a hauling route but nothing is happening for months. The area is clearly pathable I even dug out the second access to the upper left but this did not help.

Then also I occasionally have workshoüps that can't access materials that are available. I have no idea its not that I am a noob I have played the game for hundreds of hours, read the wiki for ages and I don't have locked doors or something which is to blame or too many items I regularly smash with atomsmasher not did I do strange pathing sins. This game does not like me.

saw something the other day

that looked like some improved legends viewer and would probably be an insane help to select a nice eventful embark location

can someone tell me what it is and maybe some tips on using it effectively?

Hey everyone

had this issue in 40_24. But also upgraded to 43 and have the same issue there. Probably its not a bug but I did something wrong?


I have 14 military Dwarfs marksmen. They just came back from killing a Water Bull. Now they wont enter my fortress anymore they can only stay outside. If I give them station even one level down they wont go it always says "Unreachable Location" to the right. Also if I change their alert back to inactive so they go civilian again it does not change a thing they still wont go down to train, eat or sleep. Everything is perfectly accessible to my other 60 dwarfs only the 14 are affected. Even deleted all my burrows or scrapped the hatches does not change a thing.

Does anyone have an idea what could be happening here? It has to be anything specific to these military dwarfs thats keeping them from moving away from the surface.

Hello everybody,

I have plenty of leather (butchering elven animals and from wardog breeding) currently so I thought about equipping my civilian dwarfs with full sets of leather armor.
Will that slow them down?
Also wiki says that armor does not have wear. So a Leather Armor and Leggins will not rot away? But that does not apply to Heavy Boots or Robes/Cloaks right? Also is there any disadvantage of a Robe over a Cloak? Since the robe covers slightly more body parts.

Hello everybody,

in my recent game my miners behave very strangely:

they mine one or two tiles and then return to the stairway, then repeat
they are actually not doing anything in between just it seems that this greatly reduces the mining speed.
It is just normal soil walls

I have no idea why they are doing this. On other places it seems to work.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

Hello everybody.

I am asking this question because I was curious on some designs that I saw at places which claimed to be incredibly "efficient". For one example this here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/File:Organics_processing_complex.png (just one of many)

Now I don't claim to know better here I just want to understand how this game works. So I try what I know so far but please correct me if I am wrong
As far as I know Dorfs can pass through most buildings, items and zones. There are a few exception to that most notably the occupied workshop tiles and some constructions (btw is there a list somewhere which exactly is unpassale?). If need be they can go through other Dorfs occupied fields slowly but they usually don't and path around them. Diagonal movement costs same as normal movement. When fetching raw materials Dorfs always choose the closest one. Even if a pile of wood is 2 tiles away behind a wall and needs walking through your whole castle to reach it he will prefer that one instead of the 4 tile away one.
Now because of the diagonal movement even between workshops there are usually many 2 or even 3 tile wide pathways which don't cost extra cause a zig-zag path costs as much as a direct line: . Now this leads to the cube being the perfect body in DF instead of the Sphere like in the real world. Every part of the outside of the Cube has the same distance to its center in Dwarfen Geometry.
To honor that I want to go with a 16-23 central cube without any dedicated walls. So probably 16x16x16 (3x3 workshops plus side stockpiles + extra staircases) or up to 23 (4x4 shops) I am not sure yet. Yes this has some problems for Berserk, Defense and certainly Rooms.
Can you name a few problems that I have to overcome or do you have any advice? I want to state I will have a small additional outside defense perimeter probably in a tube like shape leading away in all sides, so to defend against sieges and lower caverns. If they breach inside my main room I might be dead although I will still have staircase hatches, the bigger problem might be inside threats which I can't contain very well.

So can you explain to me what reason there is to leave empty space? Aesthetic reason is perfectly fine but is there any other?
Anyone did giant cube without inner walls yet? Yes I know it is probably the most boring and simple design I am not claiming to be very creative here anyway I only had this game for a week, artistic I can get later.

Thanks for feedback,

Chris aka CyberianK