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v0.34:Textile industry
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
This article is a quick guide to running a self-sufficient textile industry, which includes making thread and cloth of plant fiber, silk, wool and hair[1], dyeing that material, manufacturing clothing, bags, ropes and plant fiber or silk crafts, and decorating with thread.
A textile industry is required for keeping your dwarves clothed and happy, and can be a very lucrative option for the creation of trade goods, especially if the goods are dyed and sewed with images as well. Common choices for textile trade goods are gloves, mittens, boots and socks at a clothier's shop because they are made in pairs or cloth crafts at a craftdwarf's workshop. A textile industry is also important for healthcare because cloth and thread are needed for bandages and suturing respectively. Another useful cloth product is ropes which can be used as restraints or as a part of a well or traction bench, both of which are important items. Bags are also useful for compact storage of seeds and are needed to mill dyes and certain food products. Clothing may also provide some protection against cold and damage.[Verify]
- [1] Hair can be spun into thread at a Farmer's workshop. However, the produced thread cannot be used to weave cloth, but can be used in Hospitals, or dyed.
Basic materials
Crops
There are six crops that can be grown for use in the textile industry, two of which can be processed by a thresher at a farmer's workshop into thread (and then into cloth by weaver at a loom), and four of which can be milled into dye.
The easiest way to feed your fortress is with subsurface farming, and consequentially the easiest way to establish a textile industry is with underground crops. The first of these are pig tails, which can be either brewed (for sustenance) or made into thread by a thresher. Pig tails can be grown in the summer and in the autumn. The second are dimple cups, which grows in all seasons and can be milled into blue dimple dye.
Above ground crops are a more varied and in many cases valuable commodity, however they are more difficult to establish, as you must rely on plants gathered on your map or seeds brought in by human and elven caravan; they do have the advantage of growing in all seasons. The counterpart to pig tails underground is rope reed above ground, a widely distributed crop that can similarly be brewed or processed into thread. Hide root is similarly widely available and can be used to make redroot dye, as is blade weed, used to make emerald dye. The highest-value and most difficult to acquire dye is sliver barb, a black dye-producing crop that only grows in evil areas; it is never available from caravans or from embark, and must be pulled from the earth itself via plant gathering, often under the risk posed by evil weather.
Wool and hair
Wool is a textile material obtainable by shearing one of a small number of creatures at a farmer's workshop, currently sheep, llamas, and alpacas. Trolls can also be sheared by their master goblins, explaining how many goblin thieves and besiegers come dressed in troll fur items that are fully wearable but cannot be otherwise obtained. These animals can be sheared once every months; as they also produce milk, they are extremely versatile animals that can supplement or even support your textile industry.
Hair is another textile material obtained from animals, but it obtained by butchering certain hairy animals (like horses and yaks), as a byproduct of the meat industry. Hair is the most reclusive of the weaving materials, as it can only be made into thread (and then dyed), and cannot be made into proper clothing. As such it is mostly useful as cheap suturing material for dwarven healthcare.
Silk
Raw silk is harvested from spider webs created by phantom spiders, cave spiders, brown recluse spiders, and giant cave spiders. The first three kinds of spiders are vermin that will leave webs lying around your fortress, which can be collected by the automatic "collect webs" job at a loom. These spiders can bite dwarfs, however, and although their bites are non-lethal, the dwarf in question will be very woozy for a while afterwards. Note that cats kill spiders mercilessly, so if you want to use them for textiles, "vermin breeding chambers", or at the very least locking up your cats, are necessary precautions.
Giant cave spiders, on the other hand, are extremely dangerous creatures, as they are the size of grizzly bears, do not feel pain, and can shoot webbing at any helpless dwarf who happens to be nearby. They reside in the caverns, and their webs can only be collected "in the wild" at extreme hazard, requiring significant military escort if you want your dwarf to return alive.
The advantage of silk is that, although harder to get and more irregular, it's also worth significantly more then normal cloth.
Trading and gathering
The raw materials for a textile industry can be acquired via trading, as caravans bring large amounts of cloth and some thread, dye, and finished clothing, and can bring more if you ask it. If you have the wealth for it, presumably generated by a different industry, you can simply buy caravan cloth in bulk and then refine it to your needs. Caravan trading is enough to clothe even the largest of fortress in fine clothing, but you shouldn't rely on it for wealth. One can also gather the necessary plants from aboveground, but this has a low overall yield, depends heavily on where you embarked, and is unpredictable.
Thread
Once you have the basic materials, you are ready to process it into thread. Crops, wool, and hair use two jobs under plant processing at a farmer's workshop: depending on your base material, you either process the pig tails or rope reed, or Spin the wool or hair. Making thead out of silk is easier - if there are spider webs on the map, dwarfs with the weaving labor enabled will gather the webs and automatically spin them into silk thread. Note however that this applies to giant cave spider silk as well - and collecting that requires military protection. To make sure they won't suicide in the caverns, be sure to check the units list often.
Thread is the finished product for animal hair. It can be dyed, which increases its value as well as the value of anything woven from it (cloth can also be dyed directly, see below). Thread's primary use is for suturing at a hospital - otherwise it is an intermediate good that needs to be made into cloth and, finally, the finished product.
Cloth
Requires: A loom, a weaver, and thread (either spider, wool, or plant based)
By default any thread produced will be automatically woven at the loom. Plant fibers will be queued for weaving into cloth as soon as they are processed at the farmer's workshop. If you prefer to create dyed cloth by dyeing the thread beforehand, you may want to Set Workshop Orders so that dwarves only weave dyed thread. Cloth can still be dyed after weaving.
Clothes
Requires: A clothier's shop, a clothier, and some cloth
Once the cloth is ready you can sew it into clothes, either for trading or for your own dwarves to wear. The clothier's shop is also where you can decorate cloth items with a sewn image. Decorating an imported item makes it local for purposes of trade offerings, and depending on the quality of the decoration can add significant value to an item. Ropes and bags are all also produced at the clothier's shop. Bags are critical to establishing a glass industry.
Dyeing
Dyeing is very useful because it adds to the value of the finished clothes. You can dye either thread or cloth to increase its value. Cloth created from dyed thread cannot be dyed again.[Verify]
Creating dye
Requires: A millstone or quern, a miller, an empty bag, and the appropriate plants
Once you have harvested or bought the plants, you can mill them into dye.
Using dye
Requires: A dyer's shop, a dyer, and some dye
Having the dye, you can dip the cloth or thread into it to increase its value.
Summary
Required worker / labor
- Grower / Field working
- Thresher / Plant processor
- Shearer / Shearing
- Spinner / Spinning
- Weaver / Weaving
- Clothier / Clothes making
- Miller / Milling
- Dyer / Dyeing
Required buildings
- Farm
- Farmer's workshop
- Loom
- Clothier's shop
- Either a millstone or a quern
- A Millstone requires power, while a quern does not.
- Dyer's shop which also requires
Quality Modifiers Applied
In these areas, the quality of your worker will affect not only the speed or the amount produced but also the quality of the product.
- Weaver
- Dyer
- Clothier
Sample Industry Plan
If your intent is to produce equal volumes of thread and dye (so that all of your thread can be dyed) then you could establish a year-round growing cycle with two equally-sized plots above and below ground as follows:
Spring Summer Autumn Winter Underground Dimple cup Pig tail Pig tail Dimple cup Above ground Rope reed Sliver barb Blade weed Rope reed
This will give you one cloth crop and one dye crop each harvest. This is not the only way to do it, and the above-ground and dimple cups lose any extra growth that comes by growing the same crop in the same plot over consecutive seasons[Verify], but it is an example of a growing plan that will keep a miller, a thresher, a dyer, a weaver, and some growers employed evenly year-round and provide high-value materials for any tailors in your fort. If you have access to silk on your map, you may prefer to substitute a food crop for one of the fiber crops, or brew the excess pig tail into dwarven ale.
Large fields, fertilizer, and skilled growers will produce more raw materials; skilled craftsdwarves will use up the materials faster. Choose the largest plot size you can sustainably plant and harvest, because eventually your craftsdwarves will be able to go through materials faster than you can grow them and you'll find yourself queueing up new orders each season. To boost profits, set your workshop orders to use only dyed thread, leave out hide root from your growing plan because of its lower item value, and keep the supply channels full of plant products so that you always have materials to support standing (repeat) work orders.
See Also