Dwarf Fortress > DF Gameplay Questions

How To Farm in 0.31.x and 0.34.x (DF2010/2012)

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greycat:
This is a beginner's guide to the wonderful world of dwarven agriculture in versions 0.31.x and 0.34.x (also known as "DF2010" and possibly "DF2012").  A few things have changed from the 0.28.x (or "40d") versions of the game, and there are frequent questions.  Fear not!  You too can be a farmer.

So far, there do not seem to be any significant changes to farming between 0.31.x and 0.34.x.  This guide was written for 0.31.x, but everything in it also applies to 0.34.x, as far as I know.

Growable crops in DF are divided into two major groups: above-ground and underground plants.  When you embark, you can only bring along underground seeds.  Above-ground seeds can be acquired either by gathering plants, or by trading with elven or human caravans.

Underground Farming

Underground farming is the biggest change in DF2010.  In order to farm underground, you need either mud or underground soil.  (In 0.31.1 through 0.31.18, dry soil won't work, and you need mud.  This changed in 0.31.19.)

A tile is considered "underground" if it has never been exposed to sunlight.  Any tile that has ever been lit by the sun is considered "above ground" thereafter, even if you build a dozen layers of solid stone over it.

If you need to get some underground crops growing right away, and if you're playing 0.31.19 or later, you can start planting on any underground soil tiles you find.  Not all embark locations will have soil (underground or otherwise), so you may not be able to do this -- in which case, you'll need mud.

Irrigation

Mud is created when a tile has been covered in water.  Of course, your dwarves cannot work underwater, so you must either use a very small amount of water, or remove the water after the mud has been created.  The process of creating muddy tiles capable of being farmed is called irrigation.

There are several ways to irrigate underground tiles, with your imagination and resourcefulness being the only true limits.  But for the purposes of this beginner's guide, we'll only discuss two of the simplest ways: flooding and bucket brigade.

Flooding is simple to understand, but carries some risks if you are not familiar with how water works in DF.  Always double-check your work before you take any irreversible steps, and have safeguards in place.  Simply put, flooding is the act of moving water to wherever you want your farm to be.  After that, you either move the water a second time so that it's out of your way, or you wait for it to evaporate (note: evaporation only occurs with shallow water).

One classic way to flood your farm is to dig out a large area near a murky pool, and then breach the side of the pool with a channel.  If you do it properly, the water will move from the pool to the dug-out area, and will eventually cover the entire area (including tunnels) to a uniform depth.  If you calculate the amount of water in the murky pool and make an area large enough that the depth of water covering it will be less than 2/7 then the water will eventually evaporate on its own.

If you don't want such a large area, or if you don't want to wait for slow spreading and evaporation, you could set up two areas -- one for the farm, and then one to drain the water into after it has muddied the farm.  Set up doors or floodgates to control the flow of water from the pool to the farm to the drainage area, and open/close them as needed.

You may also use pumps to move the water from one place to another, if you prefer not to rely on simple gravity (or if you need the water to be moved upward).

A bucket brigade is an alternative to flooding an area.  It simply involves your dwarves carrying water in buckets to the farm.  Unfortunately, there's no way to pour water directly onto a chosen tile, so a bucket brigade relies on tricking your dwarves into thinking they are filling a pond.  Here are the actual steps involved:


* Dig out the area where you want the farm plots to be, and dig a matching area directly above it.  Each plot should be no more than 2 tiles wide, but can be as long as you like.  (Make sure you're far enough underground that you aren't exposing the farm to sunlight -- that would make it an above-ground farm.)
* On the upper level, channel out the places directly above where you want each farm plot.  The channeled-out squares will be designated as pond zones.  A dwarf must be able to stand on a floor tile next to each channeled-out square.
* One by one, designate each channeled-out square as a separate pond zone.  The exact key sequence is i (movement) Enter Enter p P f Esc (i to begin a zone designation, Enter twice to define the 1x1 rectangular zone, p P f to make it a pond, and Esc to end the designation).  Do this for each channeled-out square.
* Make sure your dwarves have either a well or a designated water zone, and some buckets.  They'll fill their buckets at the well or water zone, and dump them into one of the ponds.
* As soon as any pond is filled, un-designate it.  The exact key sequence for this is i (movement) x X Esc.
* This results in a 1/7 water covering on each square of the lower level (directly beneath the designated well zones).  Build your farm plots here.
Farm plots

Once you have some suitable underground tiles, with no more than 1/7 depth water, you're ready to construct the actual farm plots.  Each plot can only be told to grow a single type of crop per season (and there are 4 seasons per year).  So if you want 6 different crops to grow at one time, you'll need at least 6 separate plots.  (Note, not all underground crops will grow in all seasons.)

Use b p to construct a farm plot (and the u m h k keys to resize, and finally Enter to place it).  A dwarf with the Farming (Fields) labor enabled will come along and "build" the plot (it acts like a building).  This does not require any materials.

Once the plot has been built, you can designate which seeds you want to plant in it for each season.  Use q to bring up the plot's "building" menu.  Use a b c d to switch through the seasons, and + - to change the crop choice for that season.  If you want the field to remain fallow (unplanted) for a season, use z.  (Don't worry about fertilizer yet -- it's optional.)

Above-ground farming

Tiles that have been exposed to sunlight are considered "above ground".  This remains true even if you build solid constructions above them later.

Above-ground farming requires soil rather than mud.  (Muddied outdoor stone tiles work in some biomes, as I'll cover below, but it can be tricky to tell whether they'll work or not.  For now, just assume you need soil.)  Thus, location is everything -- above-ground farming will either be easy or impossible, depending on whether you have soil available in your embark location.

The mechanics of creating a plot and designating crops to grow in it are largely the same as they are for underground farming.  There are two key differences:


* Crops will not appear on the season list until you have some plants or seeds of that type.
* All above-ground crops can be grown in any season.
Because you cannot embark with above-ground seeds, you will need to acquire them yourself post-embark.  The first way to do this is by gathering plants with an herbalist (that is, a dwarf with the Plant Gathering labor enabled).  Use d p to designate an area for plant gathering.  There must be visible, non-dead shrubs in the area.  Higher Herbalist skill levels give you a better chance of finding plants, and of getting a larger stack of plants, from each shrub.

Once you have plants, you need to process them in some way to produce seeds.  Cooking a plant destroys the seeds, but everything else you do to it will produce seeds.  Depending on the plant, you can brew it (in a Still), or thresh it (in a Farmer's Workshop), or mill it (in a Millstone or Quern), or eat it raw.  You'll get one or two seeds from each plant that is processed or eaten.

You may also purchase (or steal) above-ground plants and/or their seeds from elven and human caravans.  This is generally far less labor-intensive than gathering them yourself, and mature plants are purchased in stacks of 5 (far better than your herbalists are likely to produce).  Of course, you have to wait for them to show up; your herbalists can start work immediately.

How big should I make the plots?

There are many factors that determine how much food your plots will produce:

* Your Growers' skill level (when planting, not when harvesting)
* Which types of plant you use
* How efficiently you do the planting (seeds stockpiled near the plots, planters available)
* Whether you use fertilizer
A farm plot can produce 2-3 crops per season (depending on which kind of plant).  Each tile that is planted will produce a stack of 1 or more plants (planter skill level and fertilizer determine the stack size).  With no skill, a single tile of farm plot growing plump helmets will produce 3 plump helmets per season, which is enough to feed (and booze) 1 dwarf.  With higher skill levels, that same tile can feed 3 or more dwarves.

Quarry bushes (rock nuts) are 5 times as effective at producing food, since each quarry bush gets processed into 5 meals' worth of leaves.  (These have to be cooked before they can be eaten.)  However, quarry bushes cannot be brewed into booze, and they can't be planted in winter.  Similarly, sweet pods can be processed into dwarven syrup (instead of dwarven sugar) for a five-fold increase.

Most players don't bother with fertilizer.  Fertilizer is potash, which is created from wood, and must be reapplied each season.  It takes a considerable number of trees (and dwarven labor - the trees have to be chopped down, hauled, charred into ash, then leached into potash) to continually fertilize a plot.  Most fortresses overproduce food after their first year, so increasing farm plot yield is rarely a huge concern.  It is generally easier simply to build another plot if necessary.

A note on biomes

Your embark location may encompass multiple biomes.  The only way to know this for sure is to check before embarking, during the part with the three maps.  If your screen has something like F1F2: View Biome in the lower right, then you can press those function keys to cycle through the biomes.

The important thing to note here is that above-ground farming does not work in Mountain biomes.  At all.  Neither on muddied stone tiles, nor on naturally ocurring soil (clay) tiles.

Prior to version 0.31.19, this was less intrusive, because there was no soil in Mountain biomes.  Now, however, you can get clay in Mountain biomes, and the clay can even have grass growing on it, which makes it difficult to tell what the underlying terrain is.  The best clue you get that this clay won't support crops is the fact that only grass appears on it -- no trees, and no shrubs.  And if your animals eat that grass, it doesn't grow back.

The only kind of farming you can do in a Mountain biome is underground farming, which will work as described above.

gtmattz:
I vote sticky this.

BigJake:

--- Quote from: gtmattz on October 06, 2010, 08:33:54 pm ---I vote sticky this.

--- End quote ---
Seconded,

Fredd:
you need to add that stone needs to be removed, before flooding the area

BigJake:

--- Quote from: Fredd on October 06, 2010, 10:20:55 pm ---you need to add that stone needs to be removed, before flooding the area

--- End quote ---
It doesn't.  Why would you need to do that?

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