v0.31 Talk:Soap

Is Soap needed?

More specifically what happens if your hospital zone has no soap?

Wounded dwarves won't be cleaned, which (probably) leads to an infection which is very bad. --dUMBELLS 05:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Actually they will be cleaned but only with water. It probably is more likely they will get an infection without soap. --202.124.123.107 03:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, this happened to me, where I had a legendary mason who was injured in a cave-in, and was all patched up and casted at the hospital, but went from faint to pale and then died while resting. The announcement said he died from infection. I decided to try making soap after that one.

There's the infection fighting properties, but also dwarfs can get a "wonderful soapy bath" good thought --69.151.63.186 19:39, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Soap Quality Question

Does soap have quality modifiers (like food and statues) or not (like coke and cut gems)? That is to say, do I need to pay attention to the skill levels of my soapmakers?

Well soap is a type of bar, so like other bars, it shouldn't have a quality level. 94.9.171.251 22:40, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Buckets?

My dwarves put lye in buckets, but the soaper cancels, asking for lye bearing barrel.

Will they fill the lye in barrels when i have 5? or 10? --92.202.121.225 00:02, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

They'll do it once there's an empty (or lye-containing) barrel sitting in a Food stockpile which accepts lye, though it may take a while before a dwarf takes the initiative to actually do it. A single barrel should be able to hold up to 100 units of lye, assuming it hasn't changed since 40d. --Quietust 00:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I think I've discovered a bit of a bug in regards to this. Dwarves use buckets to clean patients and provide water to wounded & prisoners... but this doesn't use up the entire bucket of water, leaving you with a bucket containing "stagnant water [x]". Lye-makers don't care that the bucket has water in it, so they go ahead and put lye into it, giving you a bucket with both water and lye. Then, said bucket sits in your ashery. Why? Dwarves who want to empty out the lye see the water and forget it, while dwarves who want to use up the water see the lye and forget that. It might've been fixed after .31.04 (what I'm playing with right now). --DeMatt 21:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm running .12 and have the same problem. 202.156.10.234 01:37, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

And again in .14 an .15 (though I hadn't figured out how the buckets were getting filled). What's worse, you can't dump the liquid any more than you can dump blood or ichor out of a barrel. --Romeofalling 07:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Still an issue in .16; I'm attempting to get around this by designating a burrow containing an ash stockpile, an empty barrel stockpile, and an empty bucket stockpile, in addition to the ashery, wood furnace, and carpenter's shop. We'll see how this works. Ademrudin 04:52, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Note: I believe this is fixed in .18 Ademrudin 19:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Response to the note up there: no, its not fixed, i run the .18, and i have tons of bucket with both (lye and water) sitting in my lye workshop. :/

Right, same with me.. Eventually used the Manager option and spammed Barrels, Ash, and Buckets until it worked. Lots (20-30) of errors about no lye-bearing barrels even while waiting for the Manager option. Seems bugged to me. I think there should be a note on this page, if someone can find a citation in the DF Forums. 71.181.41.95

A straight-forward fix for this problem is simply purchasing the finished barrels of lye from the embark and the caravan menus. 71.181.41.95 01:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Pets

I have several pets (cats and racoons seen so far) carrying around bars of soap in their mouths. I am not sure if it is their "cleaning" task or if it is something else. Matakuka 13:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

how much soap is used

After using some soap does it get used up?

Still bugged?

I'm having no problems with soap in my fortress, I've got soap, I've got dorfs and pets, but no error message spam. I am getting an unable to reach area clean self error, but I'm pretty sure that's cause I need another well or ten, since there's only two tiles that can access my current well.

As far as the lye bucket/barrel issue, I usually use magma forges, so I prefer not to burn wood anyways(not an elf or anything, just would rather use the results of my clearcutting for furniture and cages etc), I just embark with 10 to 25 lye, and request it each time from the caravan, and I've never needed to make any. I'm not even sure of all the steps actually.

I'm using the latest release.--MadGreyOne

The "Urist cancels Clean Self: Area Inaccessible" is the error message spam currently associated with soap. Niveras 01:27, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm noticing now, I was confused by the talk about pets carrying soap in their mouth because the mouth was the only part needing cleaned on the dwarfs generating messages. Then I saw some bloody eyeballs etc too. I have still not seen it from pets, but I'm using cages to keep FPS up so maybe I'm just missing them. Hmmm, makes me wonder if dwarfs have an aversion to washing thier mouths out with soap. I know I wouldn't want to. Great, now we need toothpaste too. Come on guys, you're dwarves that blood in your mouth, that's for next time you get thirsty, haven't you ever gone adventuring. --MadGreyOne

I wasn't getting these messages but I've started getting them. It's obviously associated with specific dirty areas.--58.122.40.118 13:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Imported lye

It seems that when I get traders to bring me lye they bring it in stacks of then in a barrel (i.e. lye [10]). Unfortunately the create soap job seems to use the whole stack of 10, while when I make lye myself the lye never stacks and each job only uses one unit. I just thought I'd put this somewhere in case someone cares. Also if someone wants to verify that I'm not just insane that would be nice. --Dapanman 01:07, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Confirmed. It's been doing this for me for the last 5 or so releases. I haven't checked homemade lye yet (due to a huge lack of coal, meaning my trees go to more important things), but for imported lye the stack gets used up all at once, only to make a single unit of soap. Also, I've only done this recently with rock nut oil, not tallow, but the first time I tried, I used tallow and got the same results. --68.232.113.106 12:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

As far as I remember, homemade lye comes in one unit per stack. In any case, this works as expected. Qwertyu 17:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Still exists in .25. The workaround I use is a lye-only food stockpile with barrels disabled. Buckets of one lye each will be stockpiled there, and they work just fine for potash/soap production --69.151.63.186 19:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Will your dwarves split imported (lye [10]) into stacks of 1 in order to store them in buckets? Or are speaking strictly of homemade lye? If they split the stacks this is a pretty important workaround. I will try it out next time I get a chance (though if I am completely honest I rarely have success with lye stockpiles anyway). --Dapanman 18:52, 14 April 2011 (UTC)