Bay 12 Games Forum

If you build a cage (b - j) you can assign animals to it. Like the pic in my avatar you can put an infinite amount of animals in a single cage.

The animal stockpile is for unbuilt cages.   You can deconstruct a cage with animals in it and it will go to the stockpile with all the animals still inside. It will show up on the expanded list (x).

Probably a good idea to disable labors on seriously injured dwarfs.

For shells, make an indoor refuse pile to hold them so they do not rot away. After you have a dozen shells, TURN OFF FISHING or your fisher dwarfs will fish the area dry after a few years. Even a 16x16 embark that borders an ocean and has multiple rivers, brooks, and ponds can be fished clean by a single dwarf.

"R" (uppercase) shows rooms, so if you are looking for a noble level bedroom or something you may find you already have several. Rooms that have gem veins for floors or walls are exceptionally valuable. You can also find wayward zones that way. It's easy to lose garbage zones when they are full of garbage.

Embark points - you can increase these to bring more stuff, make a custom map and adjust the settings before generating it.

Trading - request 1 of every metal bar from your civ, for picky nobles. Start stockpiling them all, and if you get a picky noble that wants a ton of a certain type, increase your order for that. You can request ore instead but ore is heavier, that may impact the amount of other trade goods they bring.

I usually make a tiny graveyard stockpile (s - y) as a backup, so that if I forget to build or designate coffins, corpses go there and stand out more. ("Hey, that stockpile that is always supposed to be empty has something in it...") They also don't cause miasma outside so I place it outside to start with, until I have an indoor refuse area.

Edit: To make bags out of plants, build a farmer's workshop and set it to process plants, it will process pig tail and rope reed. To weave that thread into cloth, build a loom. To make bags build a clothier's workshop and optionally a dyer's workshop. If you want to use undyed cloth, remember to set that in workshop preferences or something like that... I forget the exact name of the menu entry...

To get rid of excess clothing, designate a garbage dump zone outside and dump the unwanted clothing. Or make a pit zone that drops into magma.

Depends on the target's amount of armor and the material it is made from.

It sounds like you really want to try an evil area, so go for it.

If you are still unsure of what evil areas are like, remember that evil areas spawn zombie/skeletal monsters like regular areas spawn animals. So every time you see a deer or whatever in your current map, remember that it will be a zombie deer that wants to eat your dwarfs on an evil map. Mixed biome forts spawn mixed creature sets, if you want to mix it up.

Each embark area offers it's own challenges - even good areas can be precarious.

If you build statues in the same world you will eventually get a statue of those dwarfs. Same with crafts, you will eventually get figurines of the dwarfs you want. You can build a big tomb (no bodies but whatever) as a monument and decorate it with statues and stockpiles with those figurines.

For a more dangerous area, try a freezing cold place, a boiling hot place, or any evil place. Look for purple woods and mountains, and gray and red mottled plains.

Extreme temperature will provide environmental difficulties, while evil areas will provide lots of things to fight.

To find magma, dig down. Avoid the special pillars since they go through the magma, or stick to the outer edge of one to find magma. If all else fails, use the Stonesense visualizer and shift-H to unHide the hidden stone. (This only unhides the stone in Stonesense, there are no dangers to your saved game)

Remember to never dig into the side of magma if you can help it. Channeling down or digging stairs down from above can safely reveal it.


For combat reports, press "r". The red C in the upper left corner shows up when there are combat reports. Each one shows details about who got hit where with what, etc, for each attack.  Since your fort ended and you can't check the reports now, legends mode may show some details about the battle.


For lack of barrels, be careful not to over-gather or over-produce. Smaller, individual stockpiles help manage this. I put a "drink only" and a "prepared food only" stockpile in each main dining room, and cookables-only in my kitchen area, and plants-only in my brewing area.  Remember a dwarf doesn't need a thousand drinks available when they are thirsty, they just need one.