40d:Biome

A biome is a biotic area with homogeneous features, characterized by distinctive plants, animal species and climate. A biome will also contain only one set of stone layers, though these usually expand beyond a single biome. Your dwarves will find different resources depending on which biomes they select when starting a fort.

Selecting a biome

Biomes are important when choosing a fortress location in order to understand your surroundings. Individual biomes, which form at least one map-tile of your embark location, can be cycled with the F#-keys; for example, an area with 3 biomes present can be cycled using F1, F2 and F3. The selected biome will be highlighted with flashing Xs on the Local Map, and the biome's information will be displayed on the right side of the screen. (See the illustrated guide for more detail).

Understanding Biomes

Selecting different Biomes gives you some ability to influence the difficulty of your game. Each biome has a different set of resources; the availability of trees, sand, certain plants or animals, and sometimes water is specific to a particular biome, and different biomes may have different stone layers containing flux, coal, useful ores, or a high chance of magma. Mountains have a lot of ore and some exclusive features, but no soil.

Generally it is advantageous to plot your embark location at the convergence of multiple different biomes, the more the better (within reason) - which is made easier if you enlarge your starting embarkation area. However, it is not usually too hard to find three or four biomes using the default size.

• Note: Making the starting plot larger will slow your game down considerably; likewise, a small embark area can dramatically increase framerate.^{v0.28.181.40d}

By making use of several biomes you can provide more resources for your fort. Making sure one of your biomes contains either a broadleaf or conifer forest will provide you with an ample supply of trees, even if the rest of your plot extends into badlands and desert. You might get wood from a forest, ore from a mountain, and flux from hills that just happen to have a flux layer; many other permutations are possible.

Any biome can have any set of surroundings; for example a glacier could be haunted, wilderness or mirthful. However, a named region (which is a contiguous area of one category of biomes, such as forests or wetlands) will be either good, neutral, or evil. It is not uncommon to see a large mountain range with one alignment and a few mountains, disconnected from the main mountain range by a single region tile, with a different alignment. Therefore, the more biomes you have, the more likely it is to have several alignments, if so desired.

If your plot contains only ocean, lake or mountain biomes you will not be able to embark. The dwarves would have difficulty parking their wagon on water, while mountains are too barren and remote to reach.

The exact process is unknown, but no relation has been found between biomes and the stone layers that lie deep beneath them in the same area block. They do seem to be influenced by the first, top layer - a top layer of sand seems to cause drier biomes, where swamps rarely (if ever?) appear on sand, and (obviously) plants and trees do not grow on a top layer of stone. (More research is needed.)

Available Biomes

Arctic

• Arctic Ocean
• Badlands
• Glacier
• Mountain
• Rocky wasteland
• Sand desert
• Tundra
• Taiga

Temperate

• Temperate Broadleaf forest
• Temperate Conifer forest
• Temperate Grassland
• Temperate Freshwater lake
• Temperate Freshwater marsh
• Temperate Freshwater swamp
• Temperate Ocean
• Temperate Saltwater marsh
• Temperate Saltwater swamp
• Temperate Savanna
• Temperate Shrubland

Tropical

• Tropical Dry Broadleaf forest
• Tropical Wet Broadleaf forest
• Tropical Conifer forest
• Tropical Freshwater marsh
• Tropical Grassland
• Tropical Ocean
• Tropical Savanna
• Tropical Shrubland

Biomes at World Generation

Biomes are created at world generation based on the elevation, rainfall, and drainage of the tile as follows:

Biome	Elevation	Rainfall	Drainage
Water	0-99	Any	Any
Sand Desert	100-299	0-9	0-32
Rock Desert	100-299	0-9	33-49
Desert Badlands A	100-299	0-9	50-65
Desert Badlands B	100-299	0-9	66-100
Grassland	100-299	10-19	0-49
Savanna	100-299	20-32	0-49
Marsh	100-299	33-65	0-32
Shrubland	100-299	33-65	33-49
Hills	100-299	10-65	50-100
Swamp	100-299	66-100	0-32
Forest	100-299	66-100	33-100
Low Mountain	300-332	Any	Any
Mountain	333-365	Any	Any
High Mountain	366-400	Any	Any

More visually, for just the middle elevations:

		Rainfall
		0-9	10-19	20-32	33-65	66-100
Drainage	0-32	Sand Desert	Grassland	Savanna	Marsh	Swamp
	33-49	Rock Desert			Scrubland	Forest
	50-65	Badlands A	Hills
	66-100	Badlands B

See Also

• Regions for the possible values for Trees, Vegetation and Surroundings.
• Volcanoes which are not a biome in Dwarf Fortress, but may provide important resources
• Climate

V · T · E Worlds
World generation (Advanced)
Region · Biome · Climate · Surroundings · Map legend · Calendar
Civilization · Sites (Cave · Town · Fortress · Ruin)
Aquifer · Brook · Chasm/Pit · Island · Tunnel · Volcano · Waterfall
Badlands · Desert · Flatland · Forest · Glacier · Lake · Marsh · Mountain · Murky pool · Ocean · River · Rocky wasteland · Sand desert · Swamp · Tundra