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You've probably triggered the Planepacked bug, where he won't stop gathering materials until you remove the burrow assignment.  You can probably get him to use every piece of adamantine ore on the map if you want.

Cilob's Journal - early summer of year 55

The elves are here, trading peacefully.  After that incident with the elven spy - I know they claim he was a diplomat, but who knows what he saw on the way in and out? - we're keeping a close eye on them.

Sure, they seem cheerful, but I'll never trust the elves.  No matter how happy they seem.


Unfortunately, this time we actually need them.  The loss of the fall caravan means we're short of several key supplies.  While we have the ability to produce our own cloth, we can't possibly supply enough to keep up with Erush's clothing production lines.


At least now I won't have to listen to him complain about being out of cloth.  Just the inferior quality of elven weave.  He'll adapt.

I have also received an anonymous request for some surface plants.


Some sort of elven specialty crop, I gather.  I also have a request pending for Sun Berries, but the local elves have never heard of them.

Finally, our military has requested some kind of giant war hawk.  The elves don't have those either, but they were carrying something close.


Close enough, I think.  I'll see if I can train them into war animals.


Whatever you say, elf. 

We really need better security here.  I'm starting to think that having the trading depot in the middle of the crafting-hall was not such a good idea.  It's convenient, sure, having the goods stockpiles right next to the depot, but there are elves wandering all around and poking their heads in everywhere.  It's a good thing that none of the elves has ever shown the mechanical aptitude to figure out a crossbow, or I'd have to post guards on Geb's workshops.

As it is, I'm glad my animal training labs are off in a side alley, behind the hospital, where elves never go.

Speaking of the animals, I found something strange, and disturbing, lately, when I went to check on our captured Rhinoceroses.


This was our only female, who I had hoped to base a breeding program around.  She and three males had been sitting in cages in the outdoor holding area ever since we caught them.  Now, I'm no fool.  I know that rhinos will only survive in the wild.  They need to retain their wild instincts in order to remember how to not need to eat.  If you tame them, they get used to having food, and then they starve.  Left wild, she shouldn't have starved - she should have been fine, just like the two giraffes we have in the dining room.  So what happened?  Did someone go against my orders and tame her?  I'll have to ask around.

Clever girl that she is, Geb had asked to have some animal traps made earlier.  I remember my first animal trap, so many years ago, back in the Mountainhomes when I was just a child.  I haven't had a chance to use one on a very long time, since I moved on to the giant animals I'm taming now.  I took one of the ones she made, and seems I still remember how to use them.  I managed to catch a little furry creature who was trying to get into the seed stockpiles.  (Perhaps that's why the sweet pod seeds keep vanishing?  We have cats guarding the stockpiles, but somehow the seed stockpiles keep vanishing).  I decided to put it in that fancy cage she has in her room as a surprise.  Well, didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped.


I had forgotten they could do that.  Got right out of that cage, didn't hold it at all.  I'm pretty sure it's still in her room somewhere - the door is solid stone, it can't gnaw through that.

Athra, a pleasant young fellow who recently came of age, came to me asking for permission for a private project.  Seems he wants to dig out some private space and decorate it himself.  I told him to run it by Phenix, make sure that it wouldn't interfere with any of the plans she and Cain have for that 'Alpha Laboratories' place they're building, and to hand over any gems he found to Rachel.  That's when he told me he already did that, but there weren't any spar picks for him to use.  Ha!  I'll ask Daenyth to make some, it'll be a nice break from making swords for the military.

He won't be able to use the new magma smithery yet.  Construction of that is still coming along.  Phenix tells me her masons are finishing the process of installing the magma channels under the future smithing floor.


Once the channels are finished we'll be able to have someone run the pump and fill the chambers.  Then we can seal off the passage to the magma pipe, at least for the time being.

Speaking of the military ... I have recently received a detailed suggestion for an isolated fortress within the fortress, where "five or so elite dwarves" will be sealed up along with food and war hawks, to train with each other.  Sigh.  I wish we had the spare dwarfpower to do this at the moment, but we can't at this time afford to let that many dwarves off normal duties.  Especially considering that our best metalsmiths are already in the military.

Besides which, if the military are isolated, how can they be called out to defend the fortress?  We need the military to be able to reach the front gates at a moment's notice.

Still, it is true that the military could use some organization.  I'll ask Phenix to start working on dedicated living and dining quarters for the military dwarves, that can be isolated if required, yet where they can also easily reach the front gates.  Perhaps something involving those two circular towers they're already building alongside the gate.  Unfortunately, the most ideal locations are all blocked by aquifers.

I am also worried about some possibly personality conflicts among members of our military.  One fellow - going by the odd name of Higginbottom III - has been professing his hatred of the surface dwellers.  He's picked up a flail, and is saying how eager he is to use it on any kobolds or goblins, or even any elves or humans that step out of line.  Now, that by itself is not a problem.  Problem is another fellow, going by the name of ObeseHelmet.  Scrawny guy, despite the name.  He's enamored with the elves, and has picked up a wooden spear as his chosen weapon.  I don't know where he even got the wooden spear, Corai didn't make it.  I'm sure there will be bloodshed if I put these too together, which is another reason we can't go ahead with the sealed military fortress plan.

Oh, and along with that plan, there was another idea.  A sealed fishing area.  Absurd!  The very point of Brightwater is to claim the ocean itself.  We will be extending a fishing pier out into the ocean, as long from the shore as the curtain wall is wide.


The walls and grates will protect our dwarves, while letting them dip their beards to catch fish.  It will take some time to finish, but once it is our fisherdwarves will be able to harvest fish safely from far out at sea.

Meanwhile, the first whale-trapping chamber is coming along.  Our mechanic Quietust has been working non-stop building cage traps.


When the traps are finished and the chamber sealed, we will breach the final conglomerite walls from above and flood the chamber.  Whales and other large fish will be able to venture inside and be caught in the traps.  Once the traps are full, we will raise bridges and pump the water out allowing them to be harvested.

edit:  Okay, I got the prompt that they've embarked, THEN I opened the gate and now they're just sitting there, not going anywhere.

They may take some time to finish packing.  When you get the message that they've embarked, it actually means that they're not trading any more.  They will then take time to pack up all their stuff on their wagons and animals before leaving.  I think the items in the trade depot marked [T] are theirs, stuff they need to pack.

Do robes cover most of the clothing requirements? I'm hoping to only need a small clothing industry, so that I can focus on more important things.

No.  Shoes, pants, and shirts need to be provided separately.

Quote from: Graknorke on April 28, 2012, 04:03:19 pm

If Obsese doesn't want Tirist due to his size, I'll have him.

No, I decided that Tirist would be the perfect dwarf for my elf-loving dwarf of blasphemy. His width doesn't even match his name.

Hopefully he will exercise little enough to get fatter. . . .

Here you go.  I'll try to fatten him up for you.


I've given him a wooden spear, and a mixture of wooden and leather armor.

I think that's everyone who requested dwarfing for now.  Now to get back to actually playing.

Testing with cave blobs in the arena shows that they only leave trails of liquid when in the water, although they are covered by a coating of their own secretions even when on dry land.

[SECRETION:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:SWEAT:LIQUID:BY_CATEGORY:BODY_UPPER:COPPER] should be working if you wanted that behavior.  Do the creatures have a covering of sweat when you examine them?

Is anything showing up in your error log?

When you craft a mug out of stone, you get three mugs from one piece of stone.  If your goal is to turn excess stone into easily-removed trade goods, mugs are not a good choice, resulting in three times the number of goods as other options.

I'll second cabochons.  You get one per stone, they don't seem to weigh much, and it's a good way to train up your jeweler before letting them work on actual valuable gems.

I have yet to see convincing evidence that cisterns need to be lined at all.  I know from my own experiments that contrary to prior claims cisterns do not need to be lined to avoid becoming saltwater - you can have a freshwater cistern with sand walls in a saltwater area, so long as no salt water has ever been in that location.  I suspect that stagnant water works the same.

I do make a point of lining the floor of my cisterns with constructed floors, but that's to prevent plants from growing.  I also sometimes replace the walls with constructed walls, especially if the cistern intersected a vein of cinnabar or pitchblende or something, but that's purely an aesthetic step.