40d:Clutter

Workshops will get cluttered when they become full of goods that are not hauled away to stockpiles. A workshop that is cluttered will display (CLT) when viewed via the q or t menus. t, "View Items in Buildings," will show you what items are cluttering the workshop.

Dwarves working in cluttered workshops will work more slowly: even the lowest level of clutter (CLT) doubles the time a workshop task takes. Each successive level of clutter increases the multiplier by one, so tasks performed in a completely cluttered workshop will take ten times as long.

Clutter levels

With larger items (e.g. beds, stones, tables), clutter starts appearing when 15 of those are inside a shop. Every 3 small items counts as one large item, so a craft-making workshop isn't cluttered until there are 45 crafts littering the floors, tables, and possibly walls and ceilings. Siege engine components and ammo are especially large; the siege workshop can get cluttered after producing just 3 ballista arrows.

Levels of Clutter

(CLT)	15 Large Items	: 2x slower
(CLT)	20 Large Items	: 3x slower
(CLT)	25 Large Items	: 4x slower
(CLT)	30 Large Items	: 5x slower
(CLT)	35 Large Items	: 6x slower
(CLT)	40 Large Items	: 7x slower
(CLT)	45 Large Items	: 8x slower
*CLT*	50 Large Items	: 9x slower
☼CLT☼	55 Large Items	: 10x slower

Occurence

Certain workshops are more prone to clutter than others. A highly-skilled dwarf with plenty of materials nearby can clutter a workshop rapidly, even if you have many haulers employed. The butcher's workshop can get cluttered even after butchering a single animal: butchering a horse produces 9 meat, 9 chunks, 9 bones, 5 fat, one skull, and one skin.

Similarly, a kitchen producing lavish meals using alcohol, dwarven syrup, or quarry bush leaves can produce a stack of 20 to 100+ prepared meals, which are large items. The kitchen will be cluttered even before the meals are produced: four stacks of quarry bush leaves[15] is already enough to clutter, causing meal production to take a very long time. An unpleasant consequence of kitchen clutter is that food which is not stored in a stockpile will rot sooner or later, causing miasma (and unhappy thoughts in the chef if they were masterpieces).

Remedy

To remedy clutter, be sure to have enough stockpile space of the appropriate kind (using bins will increase stockpile efficiency), and employ enough dwarves with the appropriate hauling jobs (food/furniture/item/refuse/etc.) to get rid of the junk. The dwarf working at the workshop could also have the relevant hauling job enabled, pausing from time to time to move around goods. In case of inexperienced cooks, order only one or two meals at a time, and check clutter before issuing new orders. An alternate clutter control method is to build new workshops, optionally destroying the old ones (from the q or t menu).

Benefits

There is one upside to clutter, depending on your viewpoint and playstyle. As a workshop's production is slowed, so is their consumption of raw materials and their output if there is little demand. If there is sudden spike of demand, workshop gets uncluttered easily and can work at full speed. Benefits of this is that tasks can be left in repeat more with no supervision and will not produce much unwanted extras or consume more resources than needed.

A still, for example, can eventually get to the speed where dwarves consume booze at same speed as the cluttered workshops produce it.

Wood furnaces similarly will eventually be brought to a point where they produce fuel at same speed as other workshops consume it.

The advantage/drawback with this is that stockpiles may no longer be used (effectively, anyway), as the products are being drawn directly from the workshop.

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Furnaces	Glass furnace (Magma) · Kiln (Magma) · Smelter (Magma) · Wood furnace
Related articles	Clutter · Kennel · Shop · Trade depot