Known bugs and issues

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v50.14 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

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; an official compilation of all bugs, and their development status, can be found on the bug tracker and an informal poll of the worst bugs is available in the forums. Please do not report bugs here; they should be sent to the Mantis BT instead. If you have issues signing up for the bug tracker, see the forum bug tracker board for instructions (but don't report bugs on the forum either).

Some bugs have been fixed by a temporary binary patch made by Quietust and other users; hopefully these will be rolled into the next version of the game.

• ^Bug:6334 Creatures, including dwarves, born in the fortress do not grow to full adult size. Butchering results for animals born in the fort are less than the expected adult size result. Dwarf soldiers born in the fort are much less effective with blunt weapons compared to their migrant peers.
  • Solution: apply growthbug plugin for that comes with DFHack (as of r4).
• ^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.
  • Solution: appropriate modding to nerf these weapons
• ^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.
  • Solution: routinely run clean on DFHack
• ^Bug:2780 Aquatic vermin do not restock when fished, resulting in guaranteed eventual extinction.
• ^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.
  • Solution: routinely run clean on DFHack
• ^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.
  • Solution: 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 Deconstructing constructions can cause items nearby to "teleport" to the construction's location.
  • Solution: Apply relevant binary patch.
• ^Bug:3190 Long Patrol Negative Thoughts seem to escalate, even with long break.
  • Solution: Apply relevant binary patch (automatically done with DFHack).
• ^Bug:4552 Siegers waiting by bodies of dead leaders.
• ^Bug:136 When embarking on large area, DF hits 2GB memory limit and crashes.
  • Solution: Until a permanent fix is made, the player can use NTCore's 4GB fix, which will not only increase the memory limit, but will improve performance overall. (This is not a permanent solution for the devs; it could lead to unforeseen problems if incorporated within the .exe downloaded from the server.)
• When smelters are specified as a "Give" destination from a stockpile that does not possess any/all of the necessary materials, or are located inside a burrow, while one of the necessary materials is outside the burrow, the smelter makes those smelting options unavailable.