Bay 12 Games Forum

How much furniture do you have to put in your dwarve's bedroom suites?  I've read that the standard is "1 bed, 1 chest, 1 cabinet", but I've never seen my dwarves actually USE chests except for some of my military personnel stashing away '+Plump Helmet Roast+'s.

Beds: I understand the need for beds.  It's a BED-room, after all.  No questions here.
Cabinets: They seem to exist for the sole purpose of making your military dwarfs put away their gloves and shoes which they dropped on the floor after having been given armor.
Chests/Bags: They...are for storing equipment?  Does a dwarf need a chest before they'll put stuff in a cabinet?  My impression from reading the wiki on bedroom design was that Chests and Cabinets were sort of like "salt and pepper" in that they just go with each other, but I'm having my doubts.

So basicly I'm asking about Chests: Do we need them at all?

Second question: How much dwarven-detritus will one cabinet hold?

Bah! "Lead poisoning" is only for societies with some knowledge of epidemiology.

In the times we're talking about, Lead(II) Acetate was known as "Sugar of Lead" and was an artificial sweetener.  Lead barrels add flavor.  Besides, do you seriously think that a DWARF would be affected by lead poisoning?

Drainage is the enemy of the swamp.  I think.

Can muddied above-ground rock support trees?

To truly follow in the footsteps of the great Soviet Union, you must do the following:

-Never touch a workshop-menu.  Ever.  All production is to be done through the manager who will issue quotas.  To make sure that you will always have the facilities to meet your quotas, you should construct one each of every type of workshop and furnace. But ONLY one.  Waste must be avoided at all costs.

-Recordkeeping is to be kept at maximum, but you should never actually check the stocks, just trust in a job well done. 

-Stockpiles should all be set to accept all items.  We do not discriminate.

-Make sure to fulfill every mandate that your Bureaucrats(nobles) make, since through them the spirit of the revolution lives on.

-Your dwarves will all sleep in the People's Dormitory.  No private property, except what is needed by your Bureaucrats.

-Your entire population should be in the militia, so that they can be called upon to defend the homeland in times of need, and so that you can enforce a strict dress-code.

-Jobs are to be assigned to Dwarves in alphabetical order, regardless of skill or specialization.

-Plump helmets are the universal foodstuff.  You can eat them, cook them, and brew them into wine.  Truly the food of the people.

-And lastly...Zero Idlers.  There can be NO UNEMPLOYMENT in the fortress EVER, since unemployed dwarves are parasites on the society.  Haul rocks from one end of the fort to the other if you have to. Operate a bank of dry screw-pumps.  Designate holes in the ground as both pond and water-source.  Anything to prevent laziness.  Efficiency is paramount; Nothing can be more efficient than having all your dwarves working hard all the time.

You're lucky it was a non-fatal illness.  Based on what I know of contaminants, I'm not certain whether the water-supply itself is contaminated.  When a dwarf fetches a bucket of water from the well, look into the bucket to see if the water is "laced" with any foreign substances.

I have found that the area in front of wells is often covered in all the crap that dwarves wash off of themselves, and that THAT might be what's spreading the contamination.  This would also correlate with dwarves getting sick when they use the well.

How to fix it though...  Can you block off the well's water intake, empty the water from it and then do construction down there?  If you can't get your dwarves to clean the walls, you may have to mine them out and then construct new ones.  Maybe a constructed floor too, since I think building things on contaminated ground clears up the contaminants.

Your safest bet is to make a new well though for your water.  You might consider placing a "dwarf dip" in the path to it to stop your dwarves from contaminating THAT one as well.

Check to see what their current job is.  Were they trying to remove ice-boulders when the river thawed?  They are probably desperately hoping to move non-carryable blobs of molten ice which would appear as "puddles of water" contaminating your brook somewhere.

Every time I make a new fortress my dwarves all die of thirst when it is winter.  How do I fix this?

Get water underground.  Water with a natural roof above it never freezes.