40d:Statue

Statues are buildings which can be built from the build menu under statue. They can be made using one stone at the mason's workshop, one bag of sand at a glass furnace, or three bars of metal of the same type at a metalsmith's forge (via the blacksmithing labor).

Statues have a base value of 25, compared to 10 for all other types of furniture. This makes them a good choice for raising the value of room -- to create a legendary dining room, for instance, or to meet nobles' requirements for rooms of a certain value. The final value of a statue can vary greatly depending on its quality and material; a no-quality regular stone statue is worth only 25☼, whereas a masterpiece platinum statue is worth 12,000☼.

You can create a sculpture garden from a statue's query menu. Dwarves will spend time at a statue garden appreciating the statues (which generates a happy thought) and may even organize parties there. For the purposes of building appreciation, it is the quality of the statue, not its overall value, that is important: a masterpiece stone statue will generate a happier thought than a base-quality platinum one.^[Verify]

Be careful when placing statues, because dwarves cannot move through the same square they occupy. (This will also prevent dwarves from smoothing or engraving the floor underneath a statue.) A poorly placed statue can potentially seal off parts of your fortress.

Ore-based statues

It is more efficient, as far as value and time spent are concerned, to make statues from ore rather than to smelt 3 ores into 3 bars to make a metal statue. Silver, gold, platinum, and aluminum statues, especially, should be made from raw ore instead of from smelted bars (for instance, native gold instead of gold bars). Ore is treated as a type of stone, and making a statue out of it only requires one unit of ore at a mason's workshop, versus three bars at a metalsmith's forge plus fuel. A statue made from ore still has the same value as one made from metal bars, and it is easier to get a high-skill mason than a high-skill blacksmith, further increasing the reasoning for ore-based statues. Other ores may seem to be not a good choice if the resulting alloy is considerably more valuable than the base metals, but the 3:1 difference in materials consumed would not even be balanced by skill between the crafters (which at most could create a 2:1 quality value difference).

However, a dwarf's good thoughts do not come from value, but from perceived quality of items they enounter, and that quality can be affected by their preferences. Stone and metal preferences are separate, and listed in that order (ore first, metal second). It's possible for a dwarf to have a fondness for native aluminum ore but be unimpressed by that metal, and likewise a dwarf who prefers the metal won't be extra-satisfied by a statue carved from the ore. So, if a dwarf's preferences are for a metal rather than an ore, or a mandate calls for it, and that's your goal, there is no substitute.

By default, ore is reserved for use for smelting. To lift this restriction, press z, then go to "stone" and enable (make green) whichever ore(s) you wish to use. To get your mason to use the ore, it must be the nearest type of stone to the mason's workshop. This technique can also be used to make high-value ore-based stone crafts at a craftsdwarf's workshop.

Statues versus mechanisms

As an alternative to building statues to increase a room's value, you can use mechanism-based structures such as gear assemblies and levers, which have a base value of 30, versus 25 for statues. An additional advantage is that these structures, unlike statues, do not block the passage of dwarves. And levers are useful for, you know, controlling stuff.

To build high-quality levers and gear assemblies, you will need to make high-quality mechanisms, which requires a mechanic instead of a mason. By using the techniques detailed in ore-based statues, above, you can make very high-value mechanisms out of ore. (Unfortunately, this technique cannot be used to make magma-safe mechanisms, as ores have a different melting point from bars.)

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