This article is about an older version of DF.
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Skills are used by dwarves to accomplish almost every task. Higher skills allows dwarves to accomplish tasks more quickly, but also more effectively (for example mining and crafting). Using a skill will grant experience in that skill, allowing the dwarf to reach higher skill levels.
To determine what skills a dwarf has, press v and highlight the dwarf, then press g to ensure you are on the general information page. The skills will be grouped in to three toggleable types, combat, labor and miscellaneous skills. The list will include the level of each skill and a note if it is rusty or very rusty in parentheses if applicable.
Skill levels are as follows:
- Dabbling
- Novice
- Adequate
- Competent
- Skilled
- Proficient
- Talented
- Adept
- Expert
- Professional
- Accomplished
- Great
- Master
- High Master
- Grand Master
- Legendary
Skill penalties[edit]
Dwarves that are hungry, tired, or thirsty will work slower and produce lower quality goods. For some tasks like wood cutting or furnace operating this is unimportant, but you may wish to halt construction of aluminum statues, or remove the designation on those diamond or native aluminum clusters if your blacksmith or miner is famished and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.
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Miner
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Other Jobs
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Miscellaneous
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Unused
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Skills, Attributes and Traits[edit]
- Skills:
- are trained by being used in some activity.
- train attributes.
- the same attribute can be trained by various skills.
- it's assumed that the skills also use some of the attributes that they train.
- certain skills are required or important for certain noble, military and civilian professions.
- certain professions require several skills.
- the same skill can be used by various professions.
- are increased by Preferences, but capped, so the dwarf will make items beyond its skill level but won't affect the chances of making more high value items at the highest skill level.
- Traits:
- cannot be modified in-game.[Verify]
- affect which social skills gain experience (if the dwarf has X trait it will not gain experience in X skill) at all.
- have other in-game effects that can be useful for certain professions.
- give thoughts when performing certain activities.
To summarize it goes like this:
Trait --> Skill <--> Attribute
| ^
v |
effect |
| v
'--> Profession
Since the same skills can be used by various professions, and the same attributes are trained by various skills, this allows for cross-training.
Being traits the unmodifiable[Verify], limiting factor on which skills can be learned or having useful effects, and certain professions requiring various skills, the need arises to:
- avoid appointing a dwarf that will never learn a certain skill to a profession that uses it:
- appoint a dwarf with an useful effect given by a trait to a profession that benefits from it:
The solution comes in the form of a nice sortable reference table:
coming soon! work in progress... please don't delete hidden comments... ;)
Skill Rust[edit]
Every skill has the following set of improvement and decay counters, which are caste specific:
[SKILL_RATE] (Default is [SKILL_RATE:100:8:16:16])
* % of improvement points you get (Default 100)
* unused counter cap (Default 8)
* rust counter cap (Default 16)
* demotion counter cap (Default 16)
Once per day, each skill's "unused" counter increments by 1, and if it reaches the cap (without the skill ever being used), it resets to zero and increments the rust counter. Once the rust counter reaches its cap, it resets to zero, adds a "layer" of rust to the skill (to a maximum of 6), and increments the demotion counter. When the demotion counter reaches its cap, it resets to zero and the skill level is permanently reduced by 1 (and must be re-earned). With the default numbers, it takes about 4 and a half months before rust sets in, 2 years and 3 months before rust maxes out, and 6 years before actual skill levels begin to decay.
The Rusty and V.Rusty descriptions which are appended to a skill within Dwarf Fortress are determined by the following conditions:
- Rusty: A skill level greater than 0, and the number of rust layers is at least 50% of the original skill level.
- Very Rusty: A skill level greater than or equal to 4, and the number of rust layers is at least 75% of the original skill level.
Since a skill can never gain more than 6 levels of rust, only skills between "Skilled" and "Expert" can ever show as "V. Rusty", and only skills at "Master" or lower can ever show as "Rusty" - higher level skills will silently accumulate rust until they are eventually demoted below "High Master", then the rust will become visible.
Whenever experience is gained, the skill's "unused" counter is reset to zero, its "rust" and "demotion" counters are decremented by 1, and one or more levels of rust are removed depending on the amount of experience gained:
- 50% of the gained experience (rounded down, plus 1) is lost
- 10% of the lost experience (rounded down, plus 1) is spent toward removing rust
- If it was enough to remove more rust than was accumulated, then the XP penalty is set to 10 points per remaining rust level, minus 10
Since most crafting jobs give 30 points of experience, this means it would take 3 jobs to work away 6 levels of rust, each giving only 14 points of experience; if the skill only has 1 level of rust, a single job would work it away without losing any experience.
