Bay 12 Games Forum

if a squad is assigned to training for a month, is that basically their entire month's duties?

Yes, they will do nothing but train, sleep, eat, and drink. If you make some backpacks and waterskins/flasks for them, they will carry food and drink, so eating and drinking is barely a distraction.

Do note however that if you assign a minimum of 2 people, training will be rather ineffective. You want them to spar and make demonstrations - they will learn faster this way. Also note that those who are supposed to have free time will not usually bother with satisfying their needs (praying, reading, socializing). They will do labors if you assign them, but as soon as there is no job to be done - they would prefer individual combat drills, a highly ineffective way of training.

The way you do it is how it's supposed to work (I think), but in DF's current state I find it much better to make Seasonal training sessions. E.g., full training for the entire squad during Winter; completely unassigned barracks during other Seasons. That said, if your military guys don't really contribute to the fortress in any meaningful way, you might as well set year-round training. A lot of dwarves will be happy to live a military life - the joy of training will outmatch any other unsatisfied needs.

One easy and relatively simple way is to at least immobilize it forever is to use artifact furniture as bait. Ideally an artifact door, hatch, or floodgate, to lure it and immobilize it in a predictable location.

Making lots of dorfs have mason as their highest moodable skill is a great way to get artifact furniture. (IMO more worthwhile than artifact weapons/armor) Dwarves with preferences for doors/hatches will always produce those as their artifact from a mood.

This worked for the duck-loving dwarves of Duck Fortress, and while it was terrifying at the time to hit unpause, it's a pretty reliable way to trap a FB in one place. (Which can be part of a plan to stun/cage it if you want to attempt a cave-in or maybe falling to stun it? Not sure what will work there.) In your place, I'd build the silk farm first and lure/trap it there.

My goal has nothing to do with silk farms. I already have plenty of spiders for that. What I wanted to do is to place the caged beast inside the arena for dwarven entertainment and more engraving/storytelling material. Also for the sake of !SCIENCE!, because I'm genuinely interested if the beast can beat a bronze colossus in battle (I have one caged inside the arena already). Both of them have incredible armour, and while bronze will supposedly perform better than crystal glass in combat, the FB also has webs.

Besides, there aren't many megabeasts left in the world, and I was curious if the dwarves start worshipping the last one remaining, considering they will personally witness the beast murder every other pretender in duels.

There is no need for an artifact door to immobilize him. This set-up works just fine:


So the beast approaches the spider/fortifications from the north. The spider starts shooting webs (cage traps are beneath the webs, can't see them on the screen). The beast is triggered and looks for a way to reach the spider. He walks through the corridor and bumps into a simple bronze door. The door is locked. He stands there for some time, apparently thinking if it's worth the effort. Probably not. He starts walking back and sees the spider. The spider shoots webs at him. He is triggered and looks for a way to reach the spider. It's an endless loop.

If I remove the spider however, he simply goes back to the caverns and resumes his genocide. Anyway, he is immune to the effects of stunning, unconsciousness, exhaustion, webbing, fire, Armok knows what else - guess I can't cage him after all. I'll have to build an intricate personal maze for this titan to be able to move him in and out of the arena.

I have a nigh-invulnerable FB in my fort that I absolutely need to be caged.


He's been wandering the 3rd layer of my caverns for over 10 years, and nobody was able to harm him in any way. Crystal glass seems to be impenetrable, while his webbing ability makes any battle one-sided.

My arena is nearing its completion, with many contestants already waiting for their moment of glory in the cages, including a bronze colossus. But I have troubles caging this one, since he is immune to giant cave spider webs and stunning. I do have a few more ideas, but all of them will be a hellish pain in the butt to set up, so maybe someone tried these before?

1. Using smoke. The creature is immune to fire, but I know that he can be blinded by smoke. One of the other FB's that challenged him, a giant fire-breating mite, managed to ignite the caverns and proceed to beat the titan for more than 23 pages of combat. The titan didn't respond due to being unable to see through the smoke. The smoke eventually evaporated, and the battle was over in an instant. So, do smoke-blinded creatures trigger traps?

2. Using water. Even though he can't be stunned, maybe a high-pressure water beam can knock him prone. If he falls on the trap, will the trap trigger?

3. Using FB webs. I can't be 100% sure if he is immune to all webs. He fought a FB spider and a FB tarantula. The combat log was very unclear, but someone definitely got webbed. It went smth like "the FB is caught in FB's webs", "the FB is free from FB webs", etc. If that is the case, will webbing the traps with another FB's webs make them effective?

Aaand, I think that covers my ideas for now. Of course I could sorta "lure" him inside the arena and seal inside, but that option comes with its own drawbacks. I would rather leave as a last-resort one.

Another thing. Does anyone happen to know if dwarves are capable of starting to worship a megabeast out of the blue? What if they personally witness the creature slaying all megabeasts remaining in the world? I'm pretty sure I saw HFs worshipping megabeasts, but I don't know what causes this behavior exactly.

Edit: almost forgot. If a weapon is left within humanoid-FB's reach, can it pick up and use this weapon?

One of my military squads consists of miners. Every other year they spend some months training, then everyone gets disbanded except for militia captain, who is a legendary miner and a legendary metal crafter. He is the only member of the squad who gave his pickaxe a name for no reason. Despite being around for over 20 years, he never participated in real combat.

Until just now, when he found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. A minotaur came to the fortress and my head miner just happened to be on that edge of the map, face-to-face with the minotaur. Alone. Armed with nothing but his favorite pickaxe, Alod Berim "The Day of Artifices".

What followed afterward was one of the most brutal scenes this fortress has ever seen.


Love this game.

As I thought, operating with low numbers (e.g. if the amount of pig tails is at least 1, process 1 pig tails, restart, check daily) is a terrible solution. The amount of work that was previously done in a matter of weeks now takes seasons to complete. Not to mention the task completion spam. What's even worse, this kind of approach defeats the purpose of having multiple work stations and 8 legendary threshers, as only 1 work order is given at a time.

Back to the drawing board. Such a pain in the butt over something so trivial...

I've either been getting short changed by the caravans, or I'm just not very keen on the details, but I don't remember ever seeing dyed cloth from the traders.

You're right, my bad. They bring only boring cloth.

If you do end up with the take from anywhere stockpile getting clogged with dyed cloth however, you could set up another linked clothier's shop and just queue up an infinite order of bags until that stockpile is cleared.  Or temporarily set it to give to the dyed cloth stockpile to make some space again.

My current 23-year-old-fortress is at the point where I'm obsessed with automating everything I can so that it would require no player input. Keeping an eye on dyer's stockpile is not really what I'm aiming for. Besides, most of the cloth that comes from the weaver is already dyed since the thread itself is dyed - I don't think there is a point of keeping that second stockpile of cloth. The problem at the moment is not dyers vs clothiers fighting, but more of a dyers vs dyers and clothiers vs clothiers infighting. Oh, well. At least they get the job done after all the cancellation spam.

I can always prevent the bin-fighting between them by simply producing more cloth, but it goes against my second goal of avoiding over-production and keeping the stocks tight and clean. The basic formula is

Harvest/Loot/Import raw materials ==> Process each and every bit of raw materials into goods ==> Sell/Gift them to the caravans ==> Repeat.

I'm not trying to set a mega-production chain that you can normally do with Workflow (keep those goods at this quantity, and these goods at this quantity, etc). The goal isn't keeping the dwarves busy. The goal is to process everything I got as fast as I can, so that everyone gets leisure time until the next caravan arrives. It's not even for the sake of profit (a single functioning industry is enough to buy anything from the caravans), it's mostly to keep those legendary skills frosty and let the dwarves scratch that "practice a craft" itch.

Damn, I was a happy man for about an hour. Oh, well. I'll try that entity_default trick. And if that doesn't work, guess I'll stick with 'o'rders, forbidding/unforbidding goblin panties each time they come.

Dwarves can't produce loincloth for whatever reason (apparently making a rag that wraps around your dwarf parts is more sophisticated than making a dress). However, first thing they do after fighting off a goblin siege is taking that blood-soaked XXtroll fur loinclothXX out of a dead goblin's body and putting it on. Which results in this:



Even if you have hundreds of masterwork clothing laying around, the dwarves will still get those recurring memories of "after clothes rot off her body" and "due to wearing old clothing", "after wearing tattered clothing" just because unlike that shirt/hood/dress/whatever, they cannot replace worn-out loincloth. Unless you have elven neighbours, you can't import loincloth either - the dwarves will keep wearing looted ones.

What makes it worse, designating all loincloth for dumping via Stocks screen works only if you do it immediately after breaking the siege, before any looting begins. If you forget to do it right away and accidentally let the dwarves put it on, worn loincloth won't be dumped. Driving me crazy really. Having a state-of-the-art textile industry while every single dwarf in the fortress has some kind of old-clothing-related PTSD.

How do you deal with loincloth problem? Also, is there a mod of some sort to make crafting loincloth possible? I honestly can't fathom a reason why wouldn't a dwarf craft loincloth. Apart from, maybe, not wanting to wear one? Then again, apparently they do.

I have problems with setting some of my industries to work properly via manager orders. Would appreciate some advice.

1. Processing pig tails.

So, everything should be easy in theory. I have a separate stockpile for pig tails so that they don't get brewed. Then I give out two order via manger screen:
- If amount of unrotten processable plants is at least 100, process 50 plants, check seasonally, restart when completed;
- If amount of press_paper_mat-producing plants is at least 100, mash 50 plants into slurry, check seasonally, restart when completed.

Once the fortress harvests 100 pig tails, half of them is processed into thread, and another half into slurry. The problem is, pig tails are harvested and gathered into stacks of varying amounts, anywhere from 1 to 5. The manager counts the amount of pig tails, not the amount of stacks. Once the stock reaches 100 pig tails, he orders 100 jobs. Each job processes a single stack, not a single pig tail. This results in running out of pig tails way before the order is completed, following by job cancelation spam and the need to reset the order.

I've tried to mess with the numbers, setting the trigger to [at least 300 processable plants = process 50 plants], but that doesn't work. Sometimes we run out of pig tals regardless, and sometimes we get overflowed with unprocessed pig tails. Both scenarios require manual interruption and resetting orders, which annoys me somewhat. Same problems exists in milling jobs, pressing slurry into paper, processing quarry bushes into bags of leaves - basically anything involving stacks of varying amounts.

2. Working with bugged industries.

Gem setting and decorating with bone/shells/other body parts is currently bugged as most of you know - the manager can give out the order, but the job count never goes down. So if you have a stock of 100 sapphires and 100 shells and order to decorate with 10 shells and 10 sapphires, the order won't stop until you run out of both shells and sapphires. What makes it worse, there is no such thing as auto-gem-setting or auto-bodypart-decorating, so you have to do all that stuff manually each time. It's especially painful with gem setting due to horrendous interface of jeweler's shop. First you look up your stocks screen and find how many heliodors you have. It's fourteen. You highlight the workshop, select a specific gem, select an encrusting job (furniture, goods). Select a gem, select a job. Select a gem, select a job. Select a gem, select a job. Sel-- oh wait, can't have more than 10 jobs per workshop. You highlight the next jeweler's workshop, select a gem, select a job. Select a gem, select a job. Sel-- wait, how many heliodors I have again? Open up the stocks screen, find heliodors. It's 14. Okay. How many cutting jobs did I give out again?

There's gotta be an easier approach to all this.

3. Clothing and dyeing.

Since there is no option to set separate stockpiles for dyed/undyed cloth, my dyers and clothiers keep fighting between themselves for those cloth bins, resulting in job cancellation spam. At some point I tried playing with cloth QSP to keep cloth out of bins, but that was even worse. First, that's just too much hauling (dyers work extremely fast). Second, I can't import cloth (traders bring cloth in bins, and dwarves can't take cloth out of bins unless you order to dump it - it's the same as leather). Then I tried to sort of schedule these industries via manager (he made his order condition checks for dying and clothemaking yearly, so that dyeing happened during Summer-Autumn, and clothesmaking during Winter-Spring). That solved the problem somewhat, but not quite . Dyers fought between themselves, as well as clothiers.

Sorry for the text wall, but I don't know how to explain these nuances without delving deep into the details.

TL;DR: how do you automate plant processing, gem cutting, bone/shell decorating, clothesmaking, and dyeing?