v0.34:Stockpile

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v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

Stockpiles are where dwarves will store items of various types, usually in a safer, closer or more convenient place for the consumers. Dwarves with the corresponding "hauling" job on will seek out items that aren't already on a stockpile that accepts them and carry them to the appropriate stockpile. It's important to place your stockpiles carefully to minimize the amount of time spent carrying items to and from them. Items in a stockpile may be stored in bags, barrels or bins (see Using bins and barrels). Seed bags, flour bags, and dye bags can go inside barrels, empty bags, however, cannot be stacked.

Allocating stockpiles

To allocate an area as a stockpile, use the p menu. The right-hand menu pane will list all the stockpile categories, and the appropriate key to press to begin allocating that type. Allocating an area works exactly the same as designating an area. Press Enter to specify the first corner of the stockpile, use the primary movement keys to move the cursor to the opposite corner, and press Enter again. This will create a stockpile of the chosen type that occupies the area between the two corners specified. If the chosen area has parts that cannot be made into a stockpile, like a wall, a workshop, or an already existing stockpile, a stockpile will be created but they will not be part of it. Movable items occupying the designated area (e.g. stone, unbuilt furniture, etc.) still allow a tile to become designated as a stockpile, but this tile will not be used to store anything else until the item occupying it is moved.

Removing a stockpile works exactly the same, but choose x: Remove Designation. This will un-designate the specified area. It is possible to create a single stockpile with a shape other than a rectangle by using the Remove Designation tool to remove only part of the stockpile.

Stockpiles cannot be expanded once created; you must delete the pile and create a new one.

Using stockpiles

Once a stockpile has been allocated, dwarves will automatically move items to the stockpile when they are available, and as long as the stockpile has available space. Note that the dwarves will place the item into the empty spot that is nearest to the item, not counting any obstructions^[Verify]. Additional behavior also includes the fact that dwarves will stockpile the newest item first, which may not necessarily be the nearest item to the stockpile.

When dwarves need an item for a particular task, they will head to the nearest (again, not counting any obstructions that may lie in the way) item of the correct type, regardless of whether it is in a stockpile or not. Apart from some exceptions, items do not have to be stockpiled at all. Players are generally advised to avoid stone stockpiles, because stone hauling jobs take an extreme amount of time for unskilled dwarves, due to the weight hauled.

One method to ensure a workshop has raw material on hand is to place a small stockpile next to the workshop. This will speed up production as the crafter in question only has to take a few steps to obtain the material. It also has a useful side-effect, in that as soon as the crafter picks up the piece of material, the stockpile will issue a new task to fetch another piece of that material. Because that crafter is busy, that hauling job will be taken by another dwarf. This speeds up a queue of jobs, as other dwarves perform the time-consuming distant haul whilst the crafter actually makes the items.

It's not necessary to place stockpiles for all types of objects. If no storage is available for a certain item type, dwarves will seek out items wherever they might lie as mentioned earlier. This can be advantageous -- if you don't have a stockpile for gems, your jeweler will go pick up fresh gems without waiting for them to be carried to a pile first. However, this also means your jeweler has to spend a lot of time fetching the gems. If you have enough haulers available, it's generally more advantageous to designate stockpiles than not. Also remember that your workshops will get cluttered and suffer production slowdowns if you let items pile up in them, so it's important to regularly clear out workshops when they get cluttered. This can be done either by having a stockpile available so that haulers will remove the items or by removing and rebuilding the workshop, which will empty its contents onto the ground.

Take from a stockpile

Another feature of stockpiles allows you to tell dwarves to fill one stockpile not only with unstockpiled items, but also those located on another stockpile that accepts those items. To specify such a flow, use the q menu, and highlight the destination stockpile. Press t, and, using the cursor, highlight another stockpile and press Enter. Your chosen stockpile will now list the stockpile it will take from. This will cause items in the second stockpile to be hauled to the first stockpile. To stop the first stockpile from taking items from the second, use the q menu on the first one, highlight the unneeded stockpile in the list using + and - and press delete Selected.

Each stockpile can take from any number of other stockpiles, but can only have one stockpile taking from it in turn. This limit applies even if the two stockpiles you want it to feed into don't share a single material that can be stored in both of them. Additionally, you can't make two stockpiles feed into each other, although larger loops (e.g. 3 stockpiles that feed into each other in a circle) are allowed.

However, despite these limitations, enough micromanagement will allow for effective and (relatively) streamlined supply chains. For example, you can speed up lumber harvesting, carpentry, and ash and charcoal production by putting several wood stockpiles near the various tree-felling areas, then one large "primary" stockpile near the carpenter's workshop that takes from those small ones, and then finally, a small stockpile near the wood furnace that takes from the primary one.

Give to a stockpile/workshop

Conversely, the g key allows a pile to give items to another pile.

This can also be used to specify that a workshop or forge will only get its materials from a certain stockpile. This provides a way to make sure everything that workshop produces is of a specific material. For example, setting a granite stockpile to give to a mason's workshop ensures that the workshop will only use granite as its material.

This option should be used very carefully, as the linked workshop will now only take from the stockpiles set to give to that workshop. Make sure that the workshop gets all of the materials needed for its jobs there if you use this feature. For example, if you link your ore stockpile to a non-magma smelter, but don't also link a stockpile that includes a fuel source, then your dwarves will be unable to smelt your ores at that smelter due to a lack of fuel. If you set a fuel stockpile to give that smelter, it will still be unable to melt down items marked for melting, because it only takes from the ore and fuel stockpiles. Another common mistake is setting a plant stockpile to give to a still, but forgetting to also link a furniture stockpile to the still so that it has access to barrels.

Max wheelbarrow

Another feature of the stockpile system, max wheelbarrow allows the player to control the number of wheelbarrows assigned to the stockpile. It can be set to 0, 1, 2, or 3.

If set to 0 (which is the default for all stockpiles other than stone stockpiles), the stockpile will generate a separate hauling job for each item that needs to be placed in it -- potentially one job per tile in the stockpile, simultaneously.

If set to non-0, then that number of wheelbarrows will be brought to the stockpile. Once a stockpile has wheebarrows assigned and moved to it, the number of wheelbarrows will act as a limit on the number of simultaneous hauling jobs for moving items to that stockpile. Each hauling job will be performed using a wheelbarrow, rather than by hand.

Will take from anywhere

A stockpile that will take from anywhere does not restrict the source of its goods. Other stockpiles will only accept goods from its assigned workshops and other stockpiles.

Stockpile categories

Ammo

This stockpile contains ammo for all forms of ammunition-requiring weaponry (except siege engines). It can use bins to consolidate stacks.

Animal

Animals stored in cages that are not affixed to a location will be stored in these stockpiles. Traps used for capturing wild animals and empty cages are also stored here.

This type of stockpile cannot use bins or barrels.

Armor

Armor of all types is stored here. There is no preference for specific body parts, but usable/unusable armor may be specified. All types of armor can be stored in bins.

Bar/Block

Bars of smelted metal and blocks of cut stone and glass are kept here after being processed by the smelter, mason's workshops, and glass furnaces, before being used for other purposes. Weirdly, ashes, potash, soap, charcoal, and coke from the wood furnace, ashery, soap maker's workshop and smelter will also be stored here. As with all stockpiles, this can be changed to allow for specific blocks and bars to be stored with custom settings. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 5 bars/blocks.

Cloth

Woven cloth and thread are stored here (plant fiber, animal hair, and silk). Bins can be used to consolidate items.

Coins

Minted coins are kept here. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 3000 coins^[Verify], which is equivalent to six new coins stacks.

Corpses

Dead dwarves and pets that have no burial location will be placed here. If placed indoors, decaying bodies will generate miasma, but bones will not be removed at the end of the season. Rotting pets or friends gives dwarves unhappy thoughts unless they are given a proper burial in a burial receptacle.

Finished Goods

Finished goods created by the craftsdwarf's workshop, as well as the clothier's shop and the leather works, are placed here before being used in trade or other uses. This type of stockpile can use bins to consolidate up to 25 items^[Verify].

Since this stockpile can also contain supplies that player might not want to trade away (splints, crutches, ropes, waterskins...), it is wise to make separate custom stockpiles for these goods.

Food

As one would assume based on the name, food is stored here. In addition, a wide variety of inedible plant and animal products are stored here -- seeds, lye, giant desert scorpion venom, bags of dye, and liquid fire, to name a few. Raw fish is brought here before being processed by a fishery and turned into edible meat. Drinks are always stored in barrels or large pots. Seeds are stored in bags (which may in turn be stored in barrels/pots); other food items can be stored in barrels or pots.

Note that prepared meals in stacks larger than about 30^[Verify] (☼Dwarven Beer Roast [200]☼ is possible) will not fit in a barrel, but will still only take up one space. To free up barrels, you may decide to have separate prepared food stockpiles that do not accept barrels. If you cook larger meals, this shouldn't be a problem.

Food will never spoil while in a stockpile, although it may attract and be eaten by vermin.

Food stockpiles should in most cases be restricted to desired types (e.g. seed stockpiles or meat stockpiles or unprepared fish stockpiles); there are simply too many things that go in them.

Furniture Storage

Completed items from the carpenter's workshop, mason's workshop, and mechanic's workshop will be stored here, along with furniture created from other shops, until placed or used in another building. Bags filled with sand can also be stored in furniture stockpiles.

Since this is a very broad category, it may be useful to create stockpiles for a specific type of item (like barrels, bags, bins, mechanisms) via the stockpile settings.

Furniture cannot be stored in barrels or bins.

Gem

This stockpile stores gems and raw glass, both cut and uncut, before being used in a construction. It can use bins to consolidate gems.

Leather

Leather, which is produced at a Tanner's shop, will be kept here. Like most stockpiles, it can use bins to consolidate items.

Refuse

Since dwarves hate rot because of the miasma it spreads when in an enclosed place like a cave, any garbage item that can rot will be stored in a refuse stockpile. Also, any XXdamaged itemsXX will be moved to the refuse stockpile. Many players prefer to place this stockpile outside their cavern, usually a small distance from the entrance, as rottable items on tiles that are Outside Light Above Ground do not generate miasma.

If placed on a Subterranean tile, decaying items will generate miasma, which will spread through your fortress and generate a small unhappy thought in any dwarf passing through it. For this reason it is sensible to build doors (preferably several, separated by a few tiles to create an airlock) to all of your indoor refuse stockpiles. Miasma won't spread through a closed door, so only dwarves with business in the room will be bothered by the rot.

An alternative to this is to dig channels down from the surface, creating an area of tiles considered to be Light Above Ground, yet still located within your fortress. You can place your refuse stockpile here, and although it will be in your fort, rotten items on those tiles will not generate miasma. If you choose to cover them with walls or floors for security and/or aesthetic reasons, it will convert them to Inside, but they will remain Light Above Ground tiles, which again do not generate miasma in rotten items. (For even more creative methods to restrict the spread of foul rotting stench, see the miasma page.)

Bones, skulls, and shells are also stored here, whether they be from defeated enemies or raw food processing. If left in an area with high vermin levels, these will randomly disappear. Refuse stockpiles can be restricted to store only bones, skulls, shells, teeth, and horns/hooves.

Note that a refuse stockpile is not the same as a garbage dump. A garbage dump is only for things manually marked to be dumped. Additionally, refuse types specifically marked as Dwarves Dump refuse type in o-r will be hauled to the garbage dump instead of the refuse stockpile.

Also note that if you allow bins to be used on your refuse pile, damaged clothing will be stored in it, allowing for more efficient use of your pile.

Stone

Rough stone will be stored here, as well as ore. These stockpiles cannot use bins or barrels, but the use of wheelbarrows is strongly advised.

Stone management is a complex topic; in simplest terms, stones are extremely heavy, so you want to minimize the distance they are hauled by hand (e.g. from the stone stockpile to the mason's workshop or smelter) by putting such stockpiles very close to the workshops that they feed.

Weapons

Weapons of all types are stored here by default, including picks, trap components, and weapons too large for dwarves to use. Bins can be used to consolidate weapons of any type.

Wood

Chopped trees are brought to the wood stockpile before being used by the carpenter's, woodburner's or siege workshop. Because wood takes a long time to haul and tends to travel a long way, the stockpile should be rather close to a fortress entrance (which does not necessarily mean on the upper z-levels - moving down one z-level is only one tile), unless you have an underground tree farm. It is a good idea to position this stockpile close to your carpenter's workshop (or the other way round) since he is likely to be the main "customer".

Note that traders consider amount of wood in stockpile to judge whether to bring logs for trade or not and in case of elves, amount of wood you logged.

This type of stockpile cannot use bins or barrels.

Custom stockpiles

With custom stockpiles you can change which types of materials, goods, etc, can be stored in that pile. Any types of things can be mixed, so you could have a stockpile that will hold raw turtle, mechanisms and all stone types apart from onyx if you wanted, or only high-quality steel crossbow bolts (Ammo), all quivers (a Finished Good), and metal Crossbows (a Weapon) - the combinations are endless, and can be finely tuned. Highlighting a stockpile with q, then pressing s will allow you to adjust the stockpile settings or in the p menu you can press t to adjust a custom stockpiles settings before placing it with c. Note that many sub-menus consist of several pages ( the 'other' menu of stone e.g. consists of several pages while 'metal ores' and 'economic' consist of only one ).

Note that using q also allows you to adjust the number of bins or barrels that a stockpile will use. By default, if the item can be stored, it will try to fill the entire stockpile with that type of container. This can be troublesome, especially early in the game when you don't have nearly enough to go around.

Stockpile Settings

The Stockpile Settings screen is weird to use. In the first column are the major categories. In the second column there may or may not be subcategories. In the third you will see the individual items. The second and third columns are only visible when a category is enabled and selected.

You navigate this screen with + and -, and left and right on the arrow keys. e and d are used to enable and disable the categories. a and b are used to allow or disallow all the subcategories. p and f will permit or forbid individual subcategories. These six keys work no matter which column you have selected, though the last 4 will not always be available.
Enter will toggle individual item types.

Be careful when selecting 'block all' on the subcategories as it can make your stockpiles useless. For example, if you block all the furniture subcategories and then re-enable beds under types, the stockpile won't actually accept anything because it still registers all materials and all quality levels as forbidden. The correct way would be to 'forbid types' and then re-enable beds.

Notes

Some categories will have a special extra type of item(s) that can be toggled with u and sometimes j.

Categories	Item type
Animals	Empty cages and Empty animal traps
Food	Prepared food
Weapons	usable and unusable
Armor	usable and unusable

If you disable an item or items that are already sitting in a stockpile then they become loose items and your dwarves will move them to a more suitable stockpile should one exist.

Uses for Custom Stockpiles

A custom stockpile is most useful for food, furniture, and bar/block stockpiles, to prevent your lye and venom sitting next to the kitchens, your floodgates and mechanisms near the rooms that need statues and doors, your stone blocks next to the forges, and your metal bars by the farms.

One use for this is to have an outdoor stockpile next to your gate that will accept all refuse except bones, shells, skins and skulls, and then an indoor pile near your craftsdwarf's workshop that will only accept these things. If you have set the option for dwarves to gather refuse from outside, the bones will be brought in once all the meat has rotted off of any carcasses outside. This means added risk to your dwarves if they try to gather refuse that is far from your gate, and additional hauling.

Another effective use of custom stockpiles is Elven trading. Make a stockpile just for elf-safe trade goods: most categories where it's relevant have a 'materials' option.

A highly efficient method is to have wood burning furnaces feeding into a 'charcoal only' bar/blocks stockpile, which in turn is near the smelting furnaces and forges. Bonus points if you also place a small wood stockpile near the wood furnaces.

Other good uses:

• Planter's stock: seeds and potash. If your ashery is nearby, include ashes and lye.
• Smelter stock: ores, flux and, unless you're using Magma smelter, coal.
• Sandpile: sand bags.
• Clothes Plus: a cloth stockpile that also includes dyes. (Dyes normally count as food.)
• Food Plus: a food stockpile that includes barrels. This spares your dwarves from carrying empty barrels to and from the furniture stores.
• Skins: a refuse stockpile limited to skins, a bit like the bone & shell stockpile above. Place near the tannery.
• Brewer's stock: brewable plants.
• Refreshment stand: Since dwarves drink twice as often as they eat, having several small food stockpiles that only accept drinks scattered strategically through your fort can minimize smoko breaks. The usefulness of this kind of stockpile is often disputed as dwarves go to the fullest barrel first, so if you can't keep your stockpile constantly filled with new full barrels of alcohol your masons might decide to run all the way over to the alcohol stockpile you have setup for your brewers or your metalsmiths. If you can keep each stockpile constantly being filled with fresh supplies of full barrels of alcohol then this can increase productivity greatly. A simple way of doing this is by keeping a brewery near each separate alcohol stockpile, or locking dwarves in so that local stockpile is the only one they can path to.
• Artifact materials: The massive value and effectiveness of artifacts means the materials used in them can have drastic effects, sometimes even into the millions. Having special stockpiles for high-value metals, stones, gems, and other such materials will make it that much easier to ensure that you will get the most out of each strange mood. (However, even with materials-specific stockpiles, it can take a fair amount of micromanagement to get a moody dwarf to use a specific material.)
• Artifact storage: Artifacts add a great deal to the created wealth of the fortress and the loss of an artifact can result in a very bad thought for the creator. Keep valuable artifacts safe from thieves in a special stockpile.
• Ingredients: Store things that are cookable but not edible, like milk and quarry bush leaves, near kitchens. For that matter, store both fat and tallow near kitchens for efficient rendering.
• Mason's Stone: Linking a single- or limited-type stone stockpile to a mason's workshop can drastically increase the value of that shop's output.

Bugs

• Currently there is no stockpile category for finished goods made of gems ^Bug:4430
• Any 'metal' in second column have stones, oozes, jewels in third column. Very unexpectedly.