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Seed

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Revision as of 19:37, 20 August 2014 by Lethosor (talk | contribs) (link)
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This article is about the current version of DF.
Note that some content may still need to be updated.

Looking for information on world generation seeds? See Advanced world generation.
For information on seed management, see this page.

Seeds are used in farming to grow crops. They can be stored in bags (100 seeds per bag), which can in turn be stored in barrels or pots (10 bags per barrel/pot). Different seed types can't be mixed within a bag, so storing seeds of 10 different types requires 10 different bags.

Seeds can be brought on embark or obtained by trading. They can also be produced from plants (acquired by plant gathering or growing the respective crops). When a plant is eaten or used in brewing, milling or plant processing, it leaves one or two plantable seeds (see below for details). The exceptions are valley herb, bloated tuber, kobold bulb, and muck root, which will not leave behind seeds after processing. Cooking plants in a kitchen never produces seeds.

Seed List

The following seeds of 155 plants can be stockpiled:

Seed Production

Seeds are produced by brewing (at a still), milling (at a millstone or quern), processing (at a farmer's workshop), or by dwarves eating the plants raw (uncooked). For information on where to grow, gather, or process specific plants consult the specific plant's page or the general crops page.

In order to prevent your fortress becoming cluttered with millions of seeds there is a cap of 200 seeds for each type of plant and a global cap of 3000 seeds. Seed producing activities will only produce seeds if your fortress contains fewer than 200 seeds of that type. You can exceed the 200 seed cap by buying seeds from caravans, and seed production will restart when your stocks fall below 200. Seed production is not affected by the global cap; rather, the oldest seeds in the fortress will be periodically removed to remain at or around 3000. Note that this removal may affect "strategic seed stockpiles" (i.e. seeds forbidden for use in case of dwarf stupidity), any crops that you grow only occasionally, and potentially any crops which have been prevented from producing seeds by the specific type cap. Both of these limits can be modified in the d_init.txt file.

Note: In case you are confused about getting spam of messages like "Urist McFarmer cancels Plant seeds: Needs %seedname%", while you are sure that you have enough seeds, no burrow restrictions or closed doors, the reason for this is most likely this: the haulers see a seed somewhere and take the whole seed bag from stockpile to go pick it up, making the farmer cancel his job. The problem is exacerbated when barrels are used on the seed stockpile, because the dwarves will additionally store the seed bags inside barrels, blocking even more seeds during each hauling job and extending hauling jobs by first bringing the seed bag to the seed, then returning to the stockpile, picking up the barrel to bring it to the bag, storing the bag in the barrel and only then bringing the barrel bag to the stockpile. During all this time, the seed barrel and all its contents will be blocked from access by any other job.

You can simply disallow barrels from the stockpile, which requires a somewhat larger stockpile but makes seed collection jobs much shorter and less disruptive. Bags will always be used to store seeds in stockpiles, you cannot forbid that.

Another way to deal with this problem is this: set up 2 seed stockpiles, with the larger (primary) one set to only accept items from links. Set the secondary (smaller) pile to take from anywhere and give to the main stockpile. Now, when a seed showes up in your dining room or brewery, the dwarves should try to put it into the secondary pile first, which shouldn't have anything in it for long (so no bag for world tour). Once the seed arrives in the secondary stockpile, a new job will be created, moving the seed over into the main stockpile. Now the bag will be picked up to move that seed into it, but if the piles are next to each other it should only be in transit for a few seconds reducing the likelihood of cancellation spam.

As a workaround, you can finally make use of the peculiarities of stockpile commmands: setting a stockpile to "take" from a mill, still or farmer's workshop will prevent the workshop from sending its products to any other stockpile. If the stockpile in question doesn't accept seeds, all seeds produced by the workshop will stay in the building, readily accessible to farmers. This can be handy if the workshop is directly adjacent to the farm plot, but can cause cluttering of the workshop if other products like barrels of booze aren't moved out of the shop regularly.