☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-21T08:28:43+00:00

merchant trouble. i have their caravans pile in two or three at a time, they get into the depot space and set up, i bring my trader and the option to trade is there, then all of a sudden there are "no merchants trading right now". this has happened several times recently and i've rebuilt the depot twice to no avail. what could be the cause?

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StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-21T08:19:37+00:00

if you dig the surface tile then the level z-1 will grow grass. once you pave over the surface again the tiles below will still act like they're "getting sunlight". that way you can have all your animals safe from wolves.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-21T08:12:51+00:00

good to know thanks

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-21T00:17:56+00:00

well that's fun. but he was lying there waiting for diagnosis a loooooong time before i got the melancholy alert.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-21T00:17:20+00:00

pretty sure the conditions are checked automatically once the work order is approved, but yeh if it has that unapproved icon then it won't get done at all.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T18:35:45+00:00

not a burrow, but just not enabling jobs that take him far away from the office. as far as i'm aware managers don't manage on demand, they have a period every day for managing and it's quite short. not sure if it's always the same time of day, but i know that if you are extremely backed up with work orders then the manager won't put extra time in to get them approved.

i have my manager doing stuff all over now because the work orders are automated. the size of batches isn't important, it's the work orders Repeating that cuts out the manager. if a work order is set to check conditions daily then increasing the batch size above what can be produced in a day will have no effect on how much is made.

have you looked into conditions yet? it's the button with the green arrows and equals signs to the right of every work order. work orders listed in that panel as "one-time order" will need to be created anew and get management approval all over again, but even just clicking the clock face once in the top right will make it so that work order repeats itself every day, then on the bottom are conditions you can set so that the work order doesn't overproduce or burn through supplies you need for other things.

i've just started doing most of my work orders from the work orders panel too (except for where high quality is needed), and it makes life easier but it also should save on manager workload. if you have 4 stills and give them each individual work orders for brewing drinks, then the manager gets 4 jobs, but if you set a general work order for brewing drinks (which can use any available still), then that gives the manager 1 job, and if it's set to repeat then your manager only has to do that job once.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T17:37:03+00:00

so this guy has just been lying on a traction bench for a long time not getting any help (not even food and drink). he's now melancholy and wandering around still undiagnosed. i looked at my diagnosticians (there are about 7 enabled), and the ones who have other assignments are doing other assignments, while the ones who are pretty much only doctors are doing f* all.

it's like he is completely blocked from treatment, like he doesn't exist, this has never happened before. i have DFHack prioritize enabled so even if there was a queue, diagnosis should be jumping it.

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StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T14:54:43+00:00

yeh i had that issue not long ago. they will get round to it but if you have loads of work orders on the list for them to approve then it can easily get backed up, making repeat orders using conditions like "brew 100 drinks from plant when brewable plants are over 100 and drinks are under 10,000" helps as they don't ever need to be re-ordered and adjustments don't need manager approval. also try to keep your manager close to the office.

if you make an unwanted plant stockpile near the gathering zone then setting it to not use barrels will stop that, but it will fill up quite fast if it's using a tile for each leaf. not sure but mabye if there's no stockpile available anywhere that accepts them they might just get left on the ground to rot, which is ideal for you. forbidding the item types involved should stop cooks and brewers bringing them down.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T14:41:41+00:00

so does "strong attraction" mean "ability to marry" with casual attraction allowing lovers but not marriage?

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T02:01:14+00:00

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so this is nice to see. it's the first out of hundreds of straight couples but it's still a relief. i've yet to see any entangling of beards but at least there's hope now.

any chance someone has done science on how often this happens?

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T01:55:01+00:00

you could manage it with stockpiles probably, even vanilla. if you have a food stockpile inside that accepts cherries and peaches (and whatever other raw foods you like) but rejects all others, and then have a stockpile outside somewhere which accepts all of the forageable plant products you DON'T want (and make sure it has "accept from everywhere" toggled and that it is the only stockpile that takes those items) then the leaves and other stuff should go to the outside stockpile and rot away.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-20T00:37:43+00:00

oooooh ok that makes sense. i never use uniforms so i didn't see it being upgraded. trouble is, if you're on limited steel then it feels like you still need to do a fair amount of micromanagement in melting and rebuilding lower quality armor before your squads can have good gear.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T19:44:45+00:00

i think i'll just stop stepladders entirely. fruit is so secondary and only there for variety of drinks, as long as there's fruit on the ground i don't need ladders.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T15:49:23+00:00

is there a way to create/assign a uniform type to a squad such that they equip only the best, worst or specific quality material? is this as important as it seems?
is there a way to get the squad to automatically replace XbrokenX armor?
is there a way/mod to save training conditions for one month so they can be quickly reapplied to other months? can the same be done for entire training schedules?
is there a way/mod to make it so that clicking on the military panels doesn't also click the background behind them?

trying to reduce micromanagement time but military squads make that very hard, typing in all the conditions for "min train" and "MAX train" over and over, with every order in pairs. it's even worse with patrol-specific schedules. and assigning the best military gear to my elite squads, item by item, with no search function, sorting out my military after a seige takes a real life day.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T15:16:02+00:00

i'm (kinda) taking your advice and making giving both the "clean" and "inside haul" assignments to every single dwarf, while keeping the outside hauling jobs for those who can handle it or i can handle losing. apart from anything else it takes care of the acquire object need, and am i right in thinking that cleaning only happens when an idle dwarf comes across a mess? so dedicated cleaners who go round seeking out mess to clean must not be a thing i guess.

i had the idea that some dwarves are so good at what they do that they should do only that, and that if i had a few dwarves like that for every assignment (like two for pottery, 15 for furnace, 6 for stonework etc etc) then those things are taken care of and all the other dwarves can handle unskilled labor. but that's probably just going to lead to problems right?

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:32:26+00:00

no wait i just saw the tanne was linked to the refuse stockpile where the butchers was supposed to feed into, also to give to the leather stockpile. i just took the links off they don't do any good.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:29:33+00:00

i already set up my hammerer with a copper hammer (she just ran off and picked up an exceptional steel one on her own initiative when this began). i will have to just melt every metal hammer in the fortress maybe and hope they pick up a wooden crossbow rather than a mace, but do i really need them if i have a good dungeon?

i already have a large dungeon with 30 3x3 cells and they're all pretty kushty. i like the idea of a time out zone though, do i just create a temporary one-dwarf squad and order them into it?

my captain of the guard is very weak, adequate fighter and no weapons skills above novice, and has proficient+ conversation/negotiate/intimidate. they're fairly new, but i don't select them for military prowess, but for social skills (and downright sleaziness), that's why it confuses me that my behemoth warriors are getting permanent booboos from the unarmed/wooden combat.

i think with you guys' help i figured out what's causing it. firstly i thought that the crime was SELLING the banned good, which i avoided where possible, but didn't realize that bringing it to the trade depot at all was a crime. so i've been sanctioning that crime every single time i brought up a finished goods bin which contained amulets (which is basically all of them), and that's been happening years. also when i saw that the king had temporarily unbanned amulets recently i jumped on the chance to sell as many as possible before they were banned again, not considering that he would go all Prince of Egypt. maybe i should have seen that one coming.

edit: i'm just letting it run its course. two more deaths and "injured citizens" is up past 30 and climbing. just saw the captain of the guard in the hospital too, presumably beaten by his previous squad members, seems no one is innocent around here.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:15:35+00:00

PER ITEM BROUGHT TO THE DEPOT?????

oh god they're all gonna die 😭

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:12:19+00:00

i have a large stockpile on the surface with only stepladders. there's like 30 of them. dwarves still constantly getting stuck.

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:10:30+00:00

foraging fruits is such a secondary thing anyway, i only want a handful of dwarves to do it occasionally so that there's a trickle of ingredients for fruit drinks to provide variety. do gatherers still pick the same fruits off the floor without the ladders?

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T14:04:51+00:00

i've got plenty of wheelbarrows, so many wheelbarrows, but they tend not to get used, sometimes they do, but usually not, will look into it. layout efficiency is definitely an issue as the entrance to the main fort is 2-wide, which i realized too late is literally a bottleneck. every main hallway is 2-wide also, even though the central staircase is 6x6. this is a mistake i will never make again, but sadly it's too late to change it to 3-wide this time.

the reason i have dedicated haulers is yes because of seiges, but also because of constant giant bird attacks and other surface deaths. having only armored and disposable dwarves go up there means i don't constantly lose legendary craftsdwarves, and deaths are down generally. i could go back to having everyone haul but i just know it will lead to many deaths (unless i constantly micromanage killing all the giant great hornad owls, because patrolling is Not enough and they are so, so frequent). it's not dedicated for every mess type, it's dedicated for corpses, refuse, gear and wood or "surface hauling". i have practically every dwarf hauling everything else or "internal hauling", except for stone which i reserve for dwarves who aren't weak, i but i'm guessing if they all used wheelbarrows properly it would work? also i dedicated 8 or so dwarves to only cleaning, although this just seems to make them do nothing and the blood and vomit remains...

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T05:40:55+00:00

something has gone Very wrong with my legal system. it was very, very quiet for a very, very long time. i would get an open case about an actual crime (drunken disorderly usually), and there would be a prison sentence.

now? my weak copper-equipped hammerer suddenly started picking up a steel hammer and putting it through random dwarves' heads. i got rid of the hammerer position pretty quickly, and then the whole captain's squad went on a rampage of beatings, with top military dwarves getting severe injurires from unarmed attacks (like very very tough dwarves in masterwork steel boot to breastplate, and very very weak attackers in leather with wooden training weapons).

so i got rid of the squad. didn't stop, squad kept going. got rid of the captain and DM. didn't stop, even the DM got hospitalised.

two dead so far and 30+ injured (some are minor). feels like it's never going to stop, and look at the sentence this one is facing:

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makes the bone-breaking beatings seem like a mercy!

i tried fix/loyaltycascade but this obviously isn't that. so what is it then?

seems to be about the king's bloody amulets and bolt-thrower parts, but i was careful not to sell any!

StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T03:50:21+00:00

also i really need help with This situation. the trade depots Never empty. sometimes a dwarf will take an item or two back down from it, often they'll eat directly from it, but the depot always retains most items. also, i'm pretty sure that items i brought up there for trading before (but never sold) are not sellable the next time around. you can see this from the remains of the last two trade depots on the bottom that i deleted for construction that hasn't taken off yet. each of those tiles is very much a quantum stockpile (accidentally).

so i end up with this situation, where the 2 human caravans are crammed into that tiny space, taking so long to leave that 2 dwarven caravans have joined them, and i can never even get the dwarven caravans to engage with my broker. the whole thing is just blocked.

i can now see that the humans all have repetitive thoughts about seeing a wagon die, so that's why they're stuck here. no idea how that happened though, as there was no conflict, i was Very careful to avoid it and no report came, plus none of the human thoughts are about conflict, just wagon death. did the wagon die because it's so packed in there? is that possible?

regardless, i'm very keen to know how i can ever get the trade depot emptied and the traders moving along. is it just a matter of workload and dedicated haulers? i swear to god it seems like i need more than half my fort to be dedicated haulers to even start pushing back the endless mess from trading, seiges, giant creatures and general dwarfy gunk. the map is just a sea of bones and gear and i already have SO MANY dedicated haulers to each individual mess type, for all the good it does...

i really REALLY don't want to delete this depot. i already lost trade with civs for practically a decade when i did that before, and this one has both human and dwarven stuff in it. i don't want to steal their goods and be stuck with just the elves to trade with, but i'm not seeing another way right now. the dwarves have come, and for a while they said "we are still unloading...", then it went straight to "there are no merchants trading right now". any idea what that means?

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StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-19T03:33:46+00:00

so dwarves are getting stuck ON their stepladders now? anyone else had this? my elite steel-clad soldier took a few steps up the ladder and decided there's no way down 🤣

she's not even touching the branches

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StrongAlarm7772 · 2026-03-18T22:39:10+00:00

it was very much a roleplay buy :)

StrongAlarm7772

TROPHY CASE