Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

3rd fortress is going OK.
Learning with every iteration.

OK, I'm stuck here. I've had two dwarves get strange moods, and subsequently go mad / berserk due to lack of bones (I think - they have the other things they are muttering / screaming / doodling). I have skeletons within my fortress, but they don't seem to want them. Can I do anything about this? I don't seem to be able to process skeletons into some protean Bone Stuff they can use. Googling hasn't really thrown anything up, other than the concept that they might need the bones of a specific creature and not just generic Human/ Horse bones.

Now a dwarven child is sitting in a craftsdwarfs workshop and has everything else but not the skeleton they're drawing. Any ideas? Or is this another dead dwarf waiting to happen now?

I think some skeletons aren't 'legit' for crafting purposes, like anything 'mangled' such as from being crushed, anything that starved or rotted somehow. So if you're looking at a single skeleton object wondering why it's not useful, maybe one of those is it.

If you're looking at piles of XYZ bones, then something else is going on. Maybe the crafter is assigned to a burrow and the stockpile or bones are outside the burrow?

The most straightforward method would be to butcher some livestock

IIRC you need to butcher the skeleton to make bones. Been a long time but I don't think dwarves will butcher dwarf skeletons to make bones, only animals.

Thanks, I'll try that

It's what tboon said. Dwarves won't use bones from dwarf/elf/human/etc skeletons. You have to butcher an animal to get the bones for crafting.

DonD wrote:

It's what tboon said. Dwarves won't use bones from dwarf/elf/human/etc skeletons. You have to butcher an animal to get the bones for crafting.

@DudleySmith You also have to butcher them to keep the game from slowing to a crawl for having 300 assorted animals prowling about. But also pay mind not to butcher *pets*, you know they are pets because they have names.

Thanks to all, yes, I had to butcher an animal and they immediately grabbed those bones.

Grab those bones. Grab 'em. Make 'em artifacts. Create the riches. Sell to Elves for food. Teach them a lesson in economics.

OK, stuck again. I must be doing OK because the Her Maj the Queen has taken up residence in my fortress, and wants a Royal Throne Room, Royal Dining Room, Royal Bedroom and a big tomb. I've made her a 10x12 office, engraved the walls and floor, and it now has 24 good quality statues in it along with sundry other furniture, the best I've got. I've excavated the floor above and made it into a 2 story with a balcony. This has brought it up to an Opulent Throne Room, but clearly not up to the standards of a Royal Throne Room. Is there anything else I am missing, or do I just need to make a larger room for her?

DudleySmith wrote:

OK, stuck again. I must be doing OK because the Her Maj the Queen has taken up residence in my fortress, and wants a Royal Throne Room, Royal Dining Room, Royal Bedroom and a big tomb. I've made her a 10x12 office, engraved the walls and floor, and it now has 24 good quality statues in it along with sundry other furniture, the best I've got. I've excavated the floor above and made it into a 2 story with a balcony. This has brought it up to an Opulent Throne Room, but clearly not up to the standards of a Royal Throne Room. Is there anything else I am missing, or do I just need to make a larger room for her?

You can add valuable junk to her spaces (besides the furniture and statues) Try placing your best artifacts in these chambers, along with pedestals to display them?

Norfair wrote:

So I've had two fortresses end the same way.

I get attacked by a were-animal and they get defeated but afterwards all my surviving dwarfs refuse to work. They sit there all marked with no job despite I've got digging assigned and cleaning needs to be done.

Can't figure out why nobody is working.

So I might be turning this fortress around.

I cleared out all the work orders and everybody still just sat around getting killed by an increasing number of were creatures

I decided to just let it run to let it collapse and it was down to about 6 dwarfs with one were donkey.

But then, migrants showed up and started to actually work. Dwarfs actually dug out the room I asked for. I made it into a burrow for just the were donkey and am now slowly letting them starve to death.

We're now up to 39 dwarfs and a closet nobody talks about.

DudleySmith wrote:

OK, stuck again. I must be doing OK because the Her Maj the Queen has taken up residence in my fortress, and wants a Royal Throne Room, Royal Dining Room, Royal Bedroom and a big tomb. I've made her a 10x12 office, engraved the walls and floor, and it now has 24 good quality statues in it along with sundry other furniture, the best I've got. I've excavated the floor above and made it into a 2 story with a balcony. This has brought it up to an Opulent Throne Room, but clearly not up to the standards of a Royal Throne Room. Is there anything else I am missing, or do I just need to make a larger room for her?

I have never had to deal with the issue myself. But my understanding is that the community enjoys coming up with creative death traps to "fix" the problem nobles.

Finally playing again after a decade. First thing that I couldn't handle immediately was a ghost made when I tapped a magma vent for my workspaces... didn't know about memorial slabs, so a lotta folks got spooked. Whoops.

Next up: looks like I may have not adequately prepped defenses, was just getting started with a militia when gobbos started sneaking in and did a surprising amount of damage!

... Still need to figure out how inns work. Is it just beds in a tavern...?
And mine carts. mine carts are new to me, too.

I got an alert I can't seem to find a way of understanding from any wiki or other search.

A dwarf 'revealed' a location of something to another dwarf. I tried searching the world view for it - but nothing..

Bruce wrote:

I got an alert I can't seem to find a way of understanding from any wiki or other search.

A dwarf 'revealed' a location of something to another dwarf. I tried searching the world view for it - but nothing..

Sounds like an emisary giving updates about the world to your mayor perhaps?

Bruce wrote:

I got an alert I can't seem to find a way of understanding from any wiki or other search.

A dwarf 'revealed' a location of something to another dwarf. I tried searching the world view for it - but nothing..

In my game they were drunkenly revealing the existence of a treasure in my fort to someone in the tavern. If you look in the Objects list (the earring icon) you might be able to find it and think about defending it. I've turned off Enemies in my game so stopping assorted people from stealing my stuff is my main threat. I've had to get into the Justice system a bit to deal with it.

DudleySmith wrote:
Bruce wrote:

I got an alert I can't seem to find a way of understanding from any wiki or other search.

A dwarf 'revealed' a location of something to another dwarf. I tried searching the world view for it - but nothing..

In my game they were drunkenly revealing the existence of a treasure in my fort to someone in the tavern. If you look in the Objects list (the earring icon) you might be able to find it and think about defending it. I've turned off Enemies in my game so stopping assorted people from stealing my stuff is my main threat. I've had to get into the Justice system a bit to deal with it.

This was exactly what it was. The receiver of the info tried to steal the artifact from the meeting hall in front of 20 dwarfs. He did not get far.

Are my Dwarfs just lazy?

I finally got down far enough to hit magma and I'm pretty happy with setting up some Smelters and Forges on it successfully. I setup a stockpile of ore right next to them and that was quickly filled - but no one is smelting!

So I look at what folks are doing and discover out of the 200 Dorfs on site:
39 children are playing (which I guess is fair enough)
35 adults are listening to a story.
28 are meditating on various things
26 are praying
10 are just socialising.
16 are eating/drinking/sleeping (necessary downtime sure)

154 unproductive dwarfs out of 200.
Is this normal?

Bruce wrote:

Are my Dwarfs just lazy?

I finally got down far enough to hit magma and I'm pretty happy with setting up some Smelters and Forges on it successfully. I setup a stockpile of ore right next to them and that was quickly filled - but no one is smelting!

So I look at what folks are doing and discover out of the 200 Dorfs on site:
39 children are playing (which I guess is fair enough)
35 adults are listening to a story.
28 are meditating on various things
26 are praying
10 are just socialising.
16 are eating/drinking/sleeping (necessary downtime sure)

154 unproductive dwarfs out of 200.
Is this normal?

Probably about accurate for my workplace . Can't speak for DF though as I'm still enjoying reading the stories and not sure if it is for me yet!

I gave up on that fort, but I suspect it might have got clogged up with the Doctor bug.

My latest story is a sad one. Cog the legendary carpenter was so depressed. She ate in a legendary dining room on a masterpiece lavish meal - yet felt nothing. I tried putting her in the military for some famous Dwarven Discipline - no change. She would create masterpieces of furniture yet took no pleasure from it.

Eventually the poor haggard soul wandered out of the fort never to be seen again.

So I created a moat and then I created an underground waterway that cascaded down 24 z levels and out the end of the map using the carved fortifications trick.

This waterway has fortifications on both ends with an constant rushing of water. Somehow two giraffes got into this and have been stuck in this position for years now.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/IARqDMd.png)

I've reached magma and I was going to learn how to make a pump stack to get it up to where I want it but it turns out the tubes for the pumps require glass and there's no sand here. The only civ trading with me are elves now that I am the capital and they don't bring me sand. I may just start a new fort at this point.

OK, another noob question from me. I'm crafting rock mugs specifically to export, but the trading interface seems hard to use.

I have a special stockpile just for finished goods, but the bins tend to be 95% mugs with the odd quiver or backpack sprinkled in there. I can enter FINISH into the search box and then I get a list of all the bins, including lots of bins with bars or blocks or cloth. I want to just bring the finished goods bins to the trade depot, maybe choosing the set by value. I have to do this manually. Not as slick as it could be, but it's OK.

My workflow during the trading screen is that I want to easily sell lots of just mugs whilst picking and choosing things to buy from the trader. The text box on the right seems to have no effect at all, and I have to either sell a whole bin as a lot or spend a lot of time clicking each mug in the RHS.

Am I missing some trick to make this easier (at the point where I'm defining stockpiles perhaps) or is it just a sh*tty trading UI? Actually, both of these could be true.

Lil of both I think.

The trade UI is a little rough. But you can make it easier by having more specialized stockpiles. If you just want to make mugs to sell, make a mug-only stockpile. What should happen is, eventually, you will get bins that are just filled with mugs. Sadly they will still be labelled as "Finished Goods Bin"s. But you can click on the bin to see what's inside it in the "select what to bring to the depot" UI. Then you just bring those filled with mugs to the depot and sell as many bins as you need to cover your purchases.

Easier but still a bit of a hassle.

Question: why mugs? They used to be more profitable to make for export but I don't think that has been true for a while now. OTOH they are not worse than other trinkets either.

Quill18 does mugs, and I don't know enough about the game to have developed my own foibles yet. He does say that there's nothing special about them.

Thanks for the advice.

Mugs are useful, unlike a lot of other crafts, so making a bunch and selling your surplus is certainly reasonable. Having a huge list of workorders can get unwieldy so having a single object that's both useful and valued saves you a line.

Mugs are definitely very important, you need a lot for your dwarfs to not get negative thoughts when drinking directly from the barrel. They are as good as anything else to export the excess. Was just wondering

polypusher wrote:

Mugs are useful, unlike a lot of other crafts, so making a bunch and selling your surplus is certainly reasonable. Having a huge list of workorders can get unwieldy so having a single object that's both useful and valued saves you a line.

Crafts combine all the trinkets in one work order: amulets, bracelets, crowns, scepters, toys, etc. It is a nice QoL feature added since the last time I messed with DF.

My fortresses are pretty young, but so far every named monster or forgotten beast have gotten utterly destroyed by 7 to 8 iron-clad militiadwarves. The creatures may kill 1 or 2 civilians but then get absolutely torn apart. In one case, an ettin was attacking my livestock and got murdered by a single miner armed with only a pick.

It's also funny when the monsters spawn in the deep cave systems, which are visible to me but inaccessible. A very scary sounding forgotten beast got destroyed by a couple of ratmen.

But so far the worst disaster I've had is when a visiting snakeman turned into a wereiguana during the full moon and attacked everyone in my tavern. It didn't last long but it set off a neverending death spiral of dwarves turning into wereiguanas during the full moon and infecting other dwarves before they died. I ended up abandoning that fortress.

This is a dangerous area, with pockets of magma hiding behind walls that sometimes don't even register as "warm". Also hidden within the walls are... unpleasant monsters.

But directly above is a huge underground lake that I plan to use to counter the magma. Hopefully my soldiers will counter the beasties.

The goal? Adamantine!

The problem? Dwarves are idiots and will watch magma inch closer and closer and then engulf them and they will just stand there.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/KXu7Ryc.png)

It's hilarious watching stealthed goblin snatchers trying to sneak into my fort but setting off the weapon traps. They're completely invisible but then suddenly the hallway is full of body parts.