v0.34:Known bugs and issues

v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

Dwarf Fortress is a constant work in progress, and is thus full of bugs. Some of them are minor and completely harmless, some are small and annoying, and some are major and even game-changing. Some of the best-known bugs are compiled below; a complication of all bugs, and their development status, can be found on the bug tracker. Do not report bugs here; they should be sent to the Mantis BT instead.

Some bugs are fixed by a temporary binary patch made by Quietust and other users: [1]

• ^Bug:535 Equipping weapons/armor on military is erratic. This is a long-standing bug that has been slowly but surely rolled back.
• ^Bug:1582 Injured dwarf in bed in stocked hospital ignored by idle doctors. Medical jobs are too low-priority, and will be ignored in favor of pretty much everything else, hauling included, forcing players that need to administer medical care to disable all other labors; and even then, doctors tend to idle a bit in between their jobs.
• ^Bug:2712 Weapons, especially whips, cut through steel armor like butter. Crossbows firing metal bolts routinely pierce masterwork steel armor, and, counter-intuitively, whips cleave through it in combat.
• ^Bug:1451 Military equipment interferes with civilian equipment (picks/axes/crossbows/quivers). It is not possible to use a single axe for both wood cutting and combat, or a single pick for both mining and combat. Crossbows in the hands of hunters can also cause problems.
• ^Bug:296 Pools/smears/spatters of blood, dust and other materials multiply themselves, get tracked around too much. Contaminant physics are strange in Dwarf Fortress; instead of washing away, when exposed to running water, it will actually multiply to other tiles.
• ^Bug:2780 Aquatic vermin do not restock when fished, resulting in guaranteed eventual extinction.
• ^Bug:33 Bronze colossus, giant sponges, fleshballs, and others are impossible to kill. Certain creatures have body parts that cannot be destroyed, only torn, or (in the case of the bronze colossus) are completely immune to "inferior" weapon materials.
• ^Bug:412 Nobles job priority is weird (trading, diagnose, talking with liaison and attend meeting jobs have extremely low priority). Many very necessary jobs get glutted out by insignificant things like hauling spare stone around, requiring labor management when you want something done.
• ^Bug:4550 Dodging into river/lava/from cliff etc. Apparently, dwarves are stupid. Related: they tend to get thrown off of waterfalls and die from fall damage because they did not account for the current.
• ^Bug:425 Dwarves Not Cleaning Blood. Cleaning is done erratically.
• ^Bug:5895 Bins, bags used for hauling in situations when it is not necessary. This can lead to situations where items are "unavailable" because a dwarf is currently lugging them around in a bin/barrel/etc..
• ^Bug:5991 Dwarf tries to build wall standing on the construction site (see bug report for possible workarounds).
• ^Bug:5312 Undead reanimate too quickly (and forever) when killed in areas where corpses/etc. reanimate.
• ^Bug:2922 Population Cap not working (see bug report for details).
• ^Bug:5097 Names overwriting text with TrueType and ^Bug:5696 strange gaps in report texts. Hitting F12 to toggle True Type can often get you around this problem.
• ^Bug:5986 Designating large areas for smoothing slows game to a crawl.
• ^Bug:5994 Destroying a wall empties the wood stockpile. Basically, deconstructing constructions can cause items in nearby stockpiles to "teleport" to that location.
• ^Bug:3190 Long Patrol Negative Thoughts seem to escalate, even with long break. (Binary patch in bugreport.)
• ^Bug:4552 Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders.
• ^Bug:136 When embarking on large area, DF hits 2GB memory limit and crashes.