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40d:Exploit
An exploit is a quirk of a game that allows players to gain what other players may consider an unfair advantage, usually by making use of a feature that is not working properly or which defies logic. 'Exploiting the game' is distinct from 'cheating' because exploits occur within the game as written and do not need any external utilities or modding. Whether a player chooses to make use of an exploit or not depends on their personal taste; given that Dwarf Fortress is a single-player game, the user alone can decide what liberties to take and what options to shun. Among DF players there is much discussion what actually should be considered an exploit, going from making sweetpod syrup instead of sugar, growing crops in winter, or even underground, as the one extreme, to justifying 'water wheel batteries' as the other. This page takes a rather relaxed approach in that you considering it an exploit is basically enough to add it, if you don't get too much opposition.
Some exploits are listed below.
Self-powered pumps
It is possible to produce a perpetual motion water pump where the act of pumping actually powers itself! See screw pump and water wheel for details.
Atom Smasher
A drawbridge, when rapidly triggered on and off, can be used to obliterate any creature or item beneath it. Nothing short of a demon or megabeast is capable of withstanding a drawbridge crush.
Trap fields
Laying a field of traps with a significant-enough depth can protect your fortress from all invaders with no need to maintain a military. Traps are somehow intelligent enough to distinguish between pets and allies while being dangerous to enemies and wild animals.
Many players do not consider this an exploit.
Parents are back, party over!
A party can be stopped right away by freeing (removing) the room the party is taking place in. The room can be recreated the same instance. Similarly, in times of high activity (e.g. mass dumping, trading; hauling) removing all rooms parties can take place in, prevents them. Since parties also have benefits this is not necessarily an exploit.
Get back to work!
When a dwarf is "On Break", it is possible to draft this civilian into the military and then undraft her in order to get her to cancel the break. This does give an unhappy thought (but only if the dwarf has no military and/or civilian skills), so it is not a significant exploit and some may consider it a perfectly acceptable gameplay method.
Frère Jacques
Need a sleeping dwarf to do some work? Kick him out of bed by deconstructing it. This does not cause an unhappy thought.
Quantum stockpiles
By designating a garbage pit zone instead of a stockpile, you may store an infinite number of objects in a single tile by dumping them, then reclaiming them when you want to use them.
A similar effect may be achieved by building a wall two tiles in front of a catapult and digging a channel between the wall and catapult. By firing the catapult at the wall, the stone falls into the trench. The stone will pile up in the channel, putting it out of sight and out of mind. Not only does this train siege operators, but it clears the stone that your legendary miners leave.
Another way to quantum stockpile is to not have appropriate stockpiles to move items back you moved to the trading depot. The depot can hold an arbitrary number of items, and those items will not be removed if there is nowhere else to place them. This is also useful for anything you want to trade anyway.
Cooking alcohol
Alcohol can be cooked without requiring many other ingredients, producing solid food that is eaten and not imbibed. Doing so is a highly efficient means of producing food, as each plant produces five units of alcohol.
Though some consider it an exploit, many people make use of this feature. It will eventually be plugged with Req129:
Req129, IMPROVE COOKING, (Future): More food. Food should require a substrate, rather than just being seeds etc. Seeds, syrups, drinks and other such objects can contribute to the likes/dislike checks as they do now, but they shouldn't add to the number created. A good roll could lead to the recipe being given a name and saved to the entity definition, where it can then be encountered in other cities in subsequent games.
Bling Bolts
Adding a decoration to a stack of bolts causes a huge value increase. The value of the decoration is multiplied by the number of bolts in the stack. This is considered a bug.
Bookkeeper Exercise Program
Changing your bookkeeper's settings to maximum accuracy causes him to work furiously in his office, training quickly up to legendary. Even if this is a bug it is not really an exploit, since a) you actually want highest precision anyway b) he attains highest precision rather fast (depending, for example, on how many stones you have mined) and thus one can not train an unlimited number of, if even several, dwarves that way.
Manager Exercise Program
As a Manager, skill is gained as tasks are approved, not completed. Simply by queueing lots of jobs (j m q), the manager will quickly level to legendary. The tasks can then be removed once approved.
Nudist Fortress
Dwarves get a bad thought from having clothing wear out[Verify], but nothing happens if they can't find replacement clothes. As long as you don't make new clothes, they will happily go naked. This also avoids the problem of messy dwarves leaving clothing strewn around the fortress.
Recycling Archery Range
In an archery range, bolts that hit the target are are always destroyed, but bolts that miss can be saved. Build a channel between the archery target and the back wall of the range, and stairs to get into it. Amazingly, the bolts will no longer shatter on impact with the wall, but fall intact into the channel. Reclaim the bolts, and your dwarves will re-use them for target practice. This exploit has the unfortunate side effect of splitting up stacks of bolts, so your dwarves will make a separate trip for each individual bolt.
This trick will work for a ballista as well. Be careful for friendly fire.
Merchant Swindles
There are a variety of ways to cheat merchants out of their cargo without seizing it. Tearing down the trade depot while the merchants are there is the easiest way.
Also, marking items for dumping, using view creature mode (v), the stocks menu (z), or items in room mode (t), lets you relieve merchants of their goods. Just reclaim the items from your garbage dump zone later. You can even take clothing and equipment off merchant and guards this way.
The merchants will still leave disappointed if they have less value in goods when they leave the map than when they entered [Verify].
The Castle of Ice in the Lake of Fire
Constructions are indestructible, regardless of material, and walls of wood and ice easily stand up to magma. Entire fortresses can be built of ice in temperate climates equally impervious to catapults, the summer sun, or a thousand tons of boiling lava.
On a similar note, all buildings and furniture are equally strong - indestructible to most creatures, tissue paper to others. Witness a single troll bashing through a multilayered set of adamantine and steel doors, while an army of Elite Hammergoblins are stymied by a single glass portal.
Miasma can't move diagonally
Miasma can only move horizontally and vertically. This means that if your refuse stockpile is only accessible on a diagonal, there is no way for the miasma to escape. This is more effective than the use of doors or even pairs of doors in an "airlock" setup, as doors can be stuck open if a creature or material is occupying their square. The same method can be used to create enclosures to prevent the spread of miasma from kitchens, tanneries, and butcher shops.
Extremely Intricate Artifacts
When a moody dwarf sets out to fetch some material he's craving, forbid all the other items he has gathered so far. The dwarf will set out to find a replacement for the forbidden item(s). When he returns, forbid the new one, and so on. After a while you should have a large stockpile of stuff on the moody dwarfs workshop. After you unforbid an item, the dwarf will retask it if the number of items of that type that were gathered before that one is not enough for the artifact. With careful forbidding and unforbidding, you can create ridiculously large artifacts.
Optimized-Value Artifacts/"Custom" materials
While a moody dwarf is about to fetch the items he's craving, forbid all the inferior/undesirable items he has gathered so far. The dwarf will set out to find a replacement for the forbidden item(s). When he returns, forbid the new one, and so on, until he has gathered the types of items you want him to. That way you can create artifacts with "optimized" wealth or make sure your armorsmith's artifact is actually made of steel, not copper. The streamlined version of this is to use the stocks menu to right away forbid all except what you want him to fetch. The non-exploit variant is to build custom stockpiles near (right under) your relevant workshops that only take highest value items, a typical choice being native platinum and steel bars.