Dwarf Fortress Wiki - User contributions [en]

DF2014 Talk:Animal trainer

2015-10-31T16:36:50Z

Electrolisk: /* War dogs don't breed? */ new section

{{newpage|type=cp|101.103.148.67}}

== War dogs don't breed? ==

On my latest fortress, I have trained all my dogs (around 50) to be war dogs and locked them into a fairly large room using a pen zone. This was some in game years ago. Since that time, there haven't been *any* puppies, while most other tame animal species I have breed freely. I remember that female war dogs can give birth to puppies, but these may have conceived before being trained. None of my males are gelded. 1So, to me, it very much appears that dogs upon receiving war training miraculously lose interest in mating and turn into canine battle monks, which to me is kind of a bummer as I have to restart my dog breeding program from scratch by purchasing new dogs of both sex from merchants while my four-legged warriors are good for only two things, fighting and being slaughtered before they happen to die of old age. [[User:Electrolisk|Electrolisk]] ([[User talk:Electrolisk|talk]]) 16:36, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Hive

2015-10-25T12:31:17Z

Electrolisk: The marvel of indoor hives

{{Quality|Exceptional}}{{av}}
{{Building|name=Hive|key=Alt + h|job=[[beekeeper|Beekeeping]]
|construction=
* Hive
* Honey bee colony
|construction_job=
* [[beekeeper|Beekeeping]]
|use=
* [[Hive]]
|purpose=
* Producing [[royal jelly]] and [[honeycomb]] for further processing
}}

A hive is a building used to house [[honey bee]]s. A [[tool|hive]] must first be created in a workshop before it can be {{k|b}}uilt. Hives can be created at a craftsdwarf's workshop, kiln, glass furnace or metalsmith's forge using stone, wood, ceramics, glass or metal. Once a hive is created, it is {{k|b}}uilt using the {{k|Alt}}+{{k|h}} hotkey. Hives are categorized as [[tool|Tools]] in [[Finished goods]] [[stockpile|stockpiles]].

In order to house bees, a hive must be constructed on or adjacent to a tile that is [[Tile attributes|above ground]]. Incidentally, this means a constructed shed or tower whose inside is completely walled off is a suitable location for hives, and allows your beekeepers to work safely even during a siege, though also making them subject to [[cave adaptation]]. If you want a more realistic feel, though, you can replace at least one wall tile with a fortification which ostensibly would allow the bees to fly out to collect nectar, although this may allow some hostiles to enter by jumping through the fortification.

A dwarf with the [[beekeeper|beekeeping]] labor enabled will place bees in any hive toggled to "install colony when ready," so long as he or she has access to a preexisting colony of wild bees, or another hive that is ready to be split. You can find out if a hive has bees, and whether or not it has a honeycomb ready to collect by using the View I{{k|t}}ems in Buildings menu.

Once a hive contains bees, it will eventually become "ready to be split," which will allow a beekeeper to populate an empty hive using bees from the original. In order to do that, you only have to place an empty hive and your beekeeper will do it automatically if the original hive is set as "Install colony when ready". Doing this leaves the original hive populated, however it will be some time before it again becomes ready for splitting. Bees cannot be brought with on embark, so starting the beekeeping industry requires at least one wild colony.

Populated hives will produce a honeycomb and a royal jelly at some point in time after they become ready to be split. If the hive is toggled to "gather any products," a beekeeper will harvest the [[honeycomb]] and [[royal jelly]], assuming he has access to a suitable [[jug]] in which to put the royal jelly. Deconstructing the hive manually ({{k|q}} {{k|x}}) will release the honeycomb for collection but waste the royal jelly which will spill out on the ground. Both these processes kill the bees. Royal jelly can be eaten or cooked, and the honeycomb is processed at a [[screw press]] workshop to yield [[wax]] and [[honey]].

It may be possible to move a hive, but the easiest way to move it is to simply split one into the new location, turn off the original one, and harvest it.

Honeybees in their artificial hive can and will sting your dwarves. Worker bees occasionally appear within a few tiles of a hive and are presumed to be responsible for stinging dwarves. It is likely that an inexperienced beekeeper will receive a bee sting when gathering the products of a hive. Additionally, it has been observed that placing a [[Activity zone#Meeting Area|Meeting zone]] next to hives puts idle dwarves at serious risk of being stung.

Bee stings currently seem to be inconsequential. Bee stings do not appear to be recorded as wounds, but the [[Health screen]] will show "Slight pain" for the stung dwarf, which can trigger a "recover wounded" task. This can trigger good thoughts about being rescued and resting, even though the hospital stay was instantaneous. Being stung does not seem to produce a bad thought. But don't be surprised if your refuse pile fills up with bees that die after stinging your dwarves.

There appears to be an upper limit of 60 active colonies in built hives. Once you hit that limit, additional hives will have the message "Too many hives *No output" when examined (though this limit can be exceeded by installing wild colonies into artificial hives). There's also a "soft" limit of 40 active colonies, past which hives will have the message "Too many hives *Restricted output"; presumably this means that these colonies grow more slowly. {{Verify}}

== Forging and Melting ==

* Metal hives cost '''one''' [[metal]] bar to forge, or '''one''' [[adamantine]] wafer.

* When a hive is melted down, it will return '''0.3''' metal bars/adamantine wafers for an efficiency of '''30%'''

[[Category:Buildings]]

DF2014 Talk:Catsplosion

2015-10-23T17:56:06Z

Electrolisk: Gelding makes this article largely obsolete

As of DF2014, this article, funny as it is, should probably be replaced with a redirect to [[Gelder]]. I don't dare to be the one who ''butchers'' it like that, however, at least not without getting feedback first. [[User:Electrolisk|Electrolisk]] ([[User talk:Electrolisk|talk]]) 17:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Fishing industry

2015-10-17T13:55:52Z

Electrolisk: /* Fishing Zone */ Useful for toggling fishing

{{Quality|Exceptional|12:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)}}
{{av}}

'''The fishing industry''' is one of five [[food]]-producing [[industry|industries]] (along with [[farming]], the [[meat industry]], the [[poultry industry]], and the [[beekeeping industry]]). In addition to sustaining your hungry dwarves, the fishing industry produces non-edible raw materials that can be used by your workshops, like [[shell]]s and [[extract]]s. Fishing is an excellent way to initially feed your dwarves, requiring very little setup or maintenance, available as long as you have access to some form of fish-bearing water and a cheesemaker or two looking for something to do between breaks.

==Fishing==
[[Fisherdwarf|Fishing]] is the primary activity associated with the fishing industry, as it is the main way to acquire fish. Fishing is unique in that unlike [[hunting]] or [[trapping]], dwarves need no special equipment to catch fish; they just pull the hapless critters right out of the water with their bare hands. The [[fish]] that they catch are usually [[vermin]] fish (or really aquatic animals in general, not just fish), which makes keeping track of stocks much more difficult. Each fish caught will each yield one meal, once prepared. Note that the presence of vermin fish on-screen does not signify there are fish there for fishing.

If you simply tell your fisherdwarves to go fish, they will do so in the nearest source of water. Most water sources more than a few tiles in size have some stock of fish, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you want your dwarves fishing there. While stocks of fish in bodies of water that do not [[flow]] are now renewable, unlike in the past{{bug|2780}}, a fisherdwarf can still have lots of [[fun]] at his secret fishing hole next to the goblin's favorite arrival area. Zoning is highly recommended, but keep in mind an agile Urist McFisherdwarf assigned to an out of the way fishing spot with a nearby lockable escape tunnel can make an excellent sentry.

== Fishing Zone==
Fishing [[zone]]s are preferred areas to fish and changing [[standing orders]] to zone-only fishing with {{k|o}}-{{k|z}}, and then setting fishing to zone-only will force all fishing to be done in the zone. To set up fishing zones, designate a zone({{k|i}}) as usual, on shore tile adjacent to water. You can only set the zone to be used for {{K|f}}ishing if there is some fish-bearing water inside, or if it is not yet known if there are any fish there. If there are no fish in a particular region, you will get the [[announcement]] "There is nothing to catch in the [region] swamps", and designating a zone next to water in that region will show "0" for fishing.

Fishing zones are also an effective way to temporarily disable all fishing without changing labor preferences, particularly if your fisheries already have trouble keeping up. Activate zone-only fishing as described above, and create a fishing zone. Then you can toggle the zone's active flag to control fishing. However, dwarves that had already made up their mind about it will still carry out a single fishing task.

==Fish cleaning==
Freshly caught '''raw fish''' cannot be eaten; they must first be cleaned at a [[fishery]]. The presence of raw fish automatically triggers "Prepare a raw fish" to be queued up at the nearest fishery. So long as you have enough [[fish cleaning|fish cleaners]] and [[fishery|fisheries]] to keep up with your fisherdwarves, fish cleaning should be an automated process. Raw fish is a classification in the [[stocks]] menu for fish that have yet to be cleaned, useful for seeing how backlogged the [[fishing industry]] is, or isn't.

Once a dwarf catches a fish, he will carry it off to the nearest stockpile and return to fishing; even if the dwarf has fish cleaning enabled, he will almost never perform the task on his catch, as fishing is regarded as higher-priority, even if fish in your stockpile are in danger of rotting. A rule of thumb is to have twice as many fish cleaners as fishers, as fishers generally catch fish faster than cleaners can process them. To this effect, mature fortresses often have dedicated cooks/brewers/fish cleaners tasked to their food preparation areas. It is especially important to have [[barrel]]s and/or [[large pot]]s in stock if you have a fishing industry, as openly stored fish rot very quickly.

Once a fish is cleaned, it is known as a "prepared" fish, and can be immediately eaten. Fish, both raw and prepared, can also be cooked into food at a [[kitchen]].

==Shells==
Animals with shells, like [[pond turtle]]s, will also leave behind their [[shell]]s, useful for the purposes of [[bone carving]] and appeasing [[strange mood|moody]] dwarves. Since cooking unprepared shelled creatures loses your shell, you probably want to disable this behavior for animals that have them ([[turtle]]s, [[mussel]]s, and [[oyster]]s) until after the fish cleaner is done with them. In addition to being used to create low value crafts and some passingly useful/sellable shell armor, ''every'' item type can be [[decoration|decorated]] with shells. Given that any halfway decent fishing industry in a location with [[mussel]]s or [[oyster]]s will keep a craftdwarf or five swimming in shells, this can be VERY lucrative. Setting up a few craftsdwarf workshops next to a dedicated shell stockpile near your kitchens with constant repeating orders of "decorate with shell" and assigning bone carving to all dwarves with spare time lets them quickly train bone carving to legendary levels, while delighting your dwarves as every statue, door, and sock they encounter is bedazzeled with shell images of shell items decorated with shells and guaranteeing that merchants will pay top dollar for your <s>useless junk covered in recycled kitchen trash</s> masterful craftmanship.

[[Pearl]]s are a as-of-yet unimplemented [[mussel]] and [[oyster]] product. Although you can tell your dwarves to decorate with pearl at a craftsdwarf's workshop, nothing will actually happen, as there are no pearls in the game; this is actually one of the longest-running and most obvious missing features, having persisted since 23a.

==Trading==
You can buy processed fish at embark and from traders, in which case the key word is processed; they will always already be prepared, and will never require preparation or have a shell. Buying fish from [[caravan]]s is often a good idea if you do not have a strong fishing industry, as it adds to the dwarven diet variety, which is always a good thing.

==Fish dissection==
Fisheries can also queue up a "capture a live fish" task; to fulfill this task a fisherdwarf will grab an [[animal trap]] and set it in the river, retrieving it when it catches something. Note that if no animal trap is available, the task will occupy the fishery forever, preventing its other functions from taking place. [[Captured live fish]] can serve as an attraction in an [[Cage|aquarium]], or be made into [[extract]]s with the "dissect a live fish" task at the fishery, using the [[fish dissection]] skill. In particular, dissected [[moghopper]]s yield five units of [[mog juice]], each worth 50☼, making it quite lucrative for something that would otherwise have served little more than a single meal.

==Fish hunting==
Larger, non-vermin fish cannot be caught with bare hands for obvious reasons. Large fish like [[carp]] and [[shark]]s are individual [[creature]]s, and appear as such on the [[Menu|unit list]], and must be [[butcher]]ed, producing dozens or, in the case of [[sperm whale|whales]], hundreds of meat products. Note that fish hunting is mostly an oceanic activity - rivers will only ever have occasional carp runs and the like.

Advanced fortresses located near the [[ocean]], a [[lake]], or large and well-occupied sections of [[river]] may make use of a fishing-adapted [[drowning chamber]]: a large room lined with all sorts of traps into which water is allowed to filter through via [[Screw pump|water pump]] pressure. No creature knows of the evils of the chambers as do the [[Merperson|merpeople]], whose numbers were, in the past, constantly reduced by dwarves seeking their extremely valuable innards.

Large fish can be caught in or killed by [[trap]]s located along the river bottom. The issue is setting the traps and retrieving their bodies for butchering, both tasks that require a dry riverbed; this means that you must dam or redirect river flow, build the traps, funnel it back through, and then have a way to quickly get rid of the water (probably with [[screw pump]]s) so your dwarves can drag them back to the butcher's shop. Such river control, as well as the construction of genocidal chambers, is a fairly complex engineering project.

==Industry management==
For the most part, the fishing industry is self-sustaining. Have some fishers, have some fisheries, and have some fish cleaners, and everything should run smoothly. However, a big part of fishing inefficiency is hauling the fish from the river to the table; solving this requires bringing the river closer to home, necessary for [[well]]s as well and potentially doubling or even tripling your production as dwarves can toss fish right into the nearest food stockpile.

The largest challenge in the fishing industry is ensuring the safety of your fisherdwarves. When working outdoors, they are susceptible to [[ambush]]ers. The process of building an artificial river is out of the scope of this article, but creating an internal fishery is easy once you have the [[pressure]] worked out: simply [[channel]] down to your river, just like with a well, and build some [[floor grate]]s, as dwarves have no trouble fishing through them. Doing so removes the danger of being far from home in case of a potential siege or ambush and keeps your fisherdwarves happily inside at all times.

==Industry Flowchart==

{| style="border-spacing: 0;"

|-
{{Skill Block|skill=[[Fishing]]
|color=7:0|
| |E|| |
|E| |C|#ccc|L|#ccc|
| |A|#ccc| |
}}
{{Arrow Block|
| |E| | |
|L|#ccc|C|#ccc|E||
| |A|#ccc| |
}}
{{Empty Block}}
{{Empty Block}}
|-

{{Item Block|title=Raw Fish
|background=#000|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
}}
{{Item Block|title=Live Fish
|background=#000|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
}}
{{Empty Block}}
{{Empty Block}}
|-
{{Workshop Block|workshop=Fishery|skill=[[Fish cleaning|Fish<br>Cleaning]]
|color=6:0|
| |L|#AEE| |
|E| |C|#AEE|E| |
| |L|#AEE| |
}}
{{Workshop Block|workshop=Fishery|skill=[[Fish dissection|Fish<br>Dissection]]
|color=6:0|
| |L|#EEE| |
|E| |C|#EEE|L|#EEE|
| |E| | |
}}
{{Arrow Block|
| |E| | |
|L|#EEE|T|#EEE|A|#EEE|Extracts for trading
| |E|| |
}}
{{Empty Block}}
|-
{{Arrow Block|
| |L|#AEE| |
|E| |C|#AEE|L|#AEE|
| |A|#AEE| |
}}
{{Arrow Block|
| |E| | |
|L|#AEE|C|#AEE|A|#AEE|
| |E| | |
}}
{{Item Block|title=Shell
|background=#000|
|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|
|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|²|#FFF|
}}
{{Arrow Block|
| |E| | |
|L|#fff|C|#fff|E| |
| |A|#fff| |
}}
|-
{{Item Block|title=Fish
|background=#000|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|α|#FFF|
}}
{{Arrow Block|
| |E| | |
|L|#fff|C|#fff|A|#fff|
| |E| | |
}}
{{Industry Block|industry=Industry{{!}}Food industry
|background=#fff|
}}
{{Industry Block|industry=Industry{{!}}Craft industry
|background=#fff|
}}
|}

==Bugs==
*If you designate a fishing zone in an [[cavern|underground pool]], fishers will never give up fishing there even when there aren't any fish to catch. {{Bug|1854}}
{{Category|Guides}}
{{Category|Industry}}
{{Industry}}

DF2014 Talk:Sperm whale

2015-10-14T08:44:33Z

Electrolisk: Water-breathing whales?

== Water-breathing? ==

I suspect DF whales to be water-breathing by virtue of having the [AQUATIC] tag. Here's an idea for testing this: Create a two level fishing chamber near an ocean containing sperm whales. Both levels should be below the ocean surface so they will flood from the ocean while connected to it. The lower level contains the intake from the ocean and will be used to trap the whale(s). The upper chamber has at least one channel to the lower chamber, covered by a floor grate. It may consist of a single tile. An optional channel to the air above improves realism but is inconsequential for the experiment.

Now, when a whale arrives in the lower chamber, it is closed off from the ocean using a raising bridge or floodgate or door. Done right, the lower chamber should be filled with level 7 water and the upper chamber should be at least partially filled with water, let's say 2-3 minimum. If the whale doesn't drown in reasonable time, it is water breathing. The upper chamber prevents formation of air pockets inside the lower chamber and allows to quickly check whether the lower chamber is really full. The floor grate prevents the whale from surfacing to breathe. I'd try it myself but I only just started an ocean cliff fortress and haven't seen any whales in the unit list yet.

Oh, yes, final precaution: Disallow animal rights activists access to your embark site for the duration of the experiment unless you're prepared for a PeTA siege… [[User:Electrolisk|Electrolisk]] ([[User talk:Electrolisk|talk]]) 08:44, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Sperm whale

2015-10-14T08:25:39Z

Electrolisk: Added speculation on the reason for drowning

{{Quality|Exceptional|23:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)}}
{{creaturelookup/0
|bone=160-240
|meat=660-940
|fat=140-220
|eye=2
|lung=110-160
|heart=25-45
|intestine=170-250
|liver=55-85
|tripe=55-85
|sweetbread=26-42
|spleen=26-42
|kidney=55-85
|brain=55-85
|skull=1
|skin=hide
|contrib=no
|wiki=yes
}}
{{av}}
{{creaturedesc}}

The '''sperm whale''' is the [[List_of_creatures_by_adult_size#end_of_list|largest "normal" creature]] in the game, as in one that you actually see in the real world, and produces A LOT of products when butchered. It can be captured with a [[drowning chamber|fish-catching chamber]] and then air-drowned; out of the water a sperm whale will turn into a corpse relatively quickly. The products of an average sperm whale can feed an entire fortress of dwarves (all 200 of them) for just over a year, making it an enormous boon if you manage to catch one, providing an enormous food surplus and months of work for your [[bone carver]]s. Occasionally sperm whales will [[beaching|beach]] themselves on the shoreline, leaving a corpse ready for butchering by lucky dwarves.

[[File:Mother and baby sperm whale.jpg|thumb|center|400px|[[preference|Admired]] for their ''vengeful nature'' and ''teeth''.]]

{{D for Dwarf}}

The reason why beached whales drown, in defiance of their mammalian nature, is not sufficiently established. It is possible that the stress of the situation causes a spontaneous and fatal swelling of the tissue surrounding the blowhole. Alternatively, they may be committing suicide, as dolphins have been observed to do, to avoid the more horrible death by dehydration, being crushed by their own weight, or drowning in the returning flood. Rumors that the whales, being very proud creatures, hold their breath in protest, and may even be talked out of their stubbornness by a legendary flatterer and animal trainer are baseless lies, however.

{{gamedata}}
{{creatures}}