v0.31 Talk:Trading

Colors of Containers

Question regarding the coloring of the items being traded, It says that items in white are are created by a source other then your fortress, while brown is fortress created goods. In my first trade with the dwarven caravan two goods I know I created, a barrel holding donkey cheese and a barrel with cow's milk were colored in white. I mean, it's not exactly an issue, but is this because they an animal derived source or what? --AdmiralDread 05:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe for liquids in barrels it looks at whether you made the barrel, not the contents. Perhaps for all barrel items, I'm not sure. I personally don't trade food or drinks --Todestool 14:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The color of a container is based on what it's made of. Anything made from tower cap will be white. Normal wood is brown. --Strangething 02:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that AD was talking about the color displayed in the trading screen, not the color of the item. Any container will display according to the origin of the container, regardless of the contents. So your barrel was foreign (listed in white), despite the fact that the cheese was local. When you (v)iew the item, the contents are listed, colored according to their origin (regardless of the container's origin). 202.156.10.234 01:14, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

No Dwarves

It seems to be possible in DF2010 to have no trade from the dwarves. If their civilization is too small to have any leaders of note, then there will be no caravans.

Vermin in caravans?

I wanted to release the bought warthogs out of their cages, tame bats and fluffy wamblers were in my list. I haven´t caught any vermin yet, so I put them in that cage, too. When I looked at the (elven) caravan they "stole" the vermin from them. Anyone has seen this, too?

I can confirm that elven caravans offer cages containing vermin. This vermin isn't shown in thr trade screen list, unless you view these cages separately. This vermin is not shown in your animal list of the status screen (hit z and then return to get there). It is, however, shown in the list of creatures assignable to a cage. (hit q, select a cage, hit a, and there they are.) --Doub 17:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The cages are not labeled as anything but normal cages. However, if you view the item in the trade depot screen ({k|v} when highlighting the "empty" cage) the vermin will be shown as a content.--Kwieland 16:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

No Wagons with Caravans

I never had wagons with DF2010. Is it just me or is there something needed except a 3wide path to one edge? Its always there and there is never a caravan with wagons, only with traders!--Niggy 20:32, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I've not had wagons in this current fort either. Think it may be because I'm in a mountain biome...--Nimblewright 10:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Wagons are out for now. This is most likely a bug as the access check screen is still in. Hm..or not? --Birthright 20:00, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

They're still in the raws - see creature_equipment.txt. --Quietust 21:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

It still checks if a wagon could make it to the dapot, but for me a caravan (Without wagons obviously) went through a two-wide tunnelGiantTiger11 08:01, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Late caravan

The caravan used to arrive for me at exactly mid-autumn. I got my caravan in the new version at just a few days before autumn ended. Is this the case with everyone? Greep 03:56, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

can confirm, caravans now always come late. --Confused 14:08, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

maybe this is intentional as a "delay" from where they travel from? --Eroing 17:41, 17 April 2010 (CET)

It's my first Mid-Winter the spring of the year after embarking now and i haven't seen just a wheel. Should I begin to worry? --Gnarker 11:37, 30 May 2010 (CEST)

Merchants going underground.

I just had a dwarven caravan leave the fortress through an underground edge of the map. Spawned from the top though.--Droid 04:07, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

In my fortress even an elven caravan took the way through the caverns! --Doub 07:57, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Confirmed. Humans entered from the top, and left through the first cavern. Killed an Serpent man tribe on the way out. 05:10, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Multiple Trade Depots

Has there been any change for this?

Traders go insane and starve

"If a caravan has arrived at your trade depot and is unable to leave for about six months after they arrived, the merchants and animals will go insane. This can result in a bunch of merchants attacking your dwarves, or just standing around moping until they starve to death." Is this correct? Traders can starve? Or do they only gain the ability to starve when insane?

I've only had this happen once. They went crazy after a while, and then starved. I don't know if it was exactly six months, but probably similar time scale. Experiment. Try locking the caravan on your map. Find out if it is really 6 months, if they go crazy, stave, and what happens!--Kwieland 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Verified (in .13.12), caravan (and their pack animals) went insane, they could not handle 1-tile wide bridges over our river. Probably expected 3-6 tiles wide bridges! Looks like they drop their items upon going insane.--TomiTapio 23:00, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

In .31.25 I've just had a merchant and his pack animal go stark raving mad without holding the merchants hostage. I had no Trade Depot. I usually build a depot so I'm left scratching my beard on this. Is this new behavior? --Jwest23 18:42, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

First Caravan Brings Nothing?

I've had this happen twice, where the dwarven caravan brings a whole lot of nothing. Is this to be expected? I generaqlly give them something nyways, in hope that the next year will be better.

No Dwarven Caravan

I'm in mid-summer of my third year and the only caravans I have been getting have been elven ones once a year. I Still haven't had a dwarven caravan show up ever. In the Civ screen it says that there are no important people in the civ.

My first year I got 7 migrants in total and haven't got any since. Does this mean my parent civ has been eradicated? --Flying Dwarves Hurt 14:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The same thing happened to me. My fortress is in a "small region"-sized world-- I'm beginning to wish I'd paid more attention while the world was created; maybe there just aren't any other dwarves inside it?

Caravan leaving through cave

I just had a caravan leave through a cave. I had a clear path to a ground exit from my trade depot, even for wagons. This was not the case for the cave level, as it was only reachable by stairs. I don't know if this is a bug or not. Strange, anyhow. /Josj 06:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Probably not a bug, as such. Firstly, because caravans don't currently use wagons, but only pack animals, they can path up and down stairs. Secondly... they probably picked the shortest path to an exit, and that just happened to be the cave level. Was the ground exit on the other side of the screen, or temporarily blocked by a drawbridge or something? --DeMatt 18:24, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The ground exit was quite close--about a screen away from the depot. It could've been temporarily blocked by a barrage of haulers or something. I don't quite remember. But it would have had to be blocked as they went down some fifty levels or so. Even if the caravan used my traffic designations (which I don't believe they do) that wouldn't have been a closer route. It makes me wonder if it's possible for the caravans to appear in the caves. /Josj 19:00, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Forbidden Depots

I used the ' d:b:f ' command to forbid all items on my depot so that they would not have to haul all the stuff back, subsequently forbidding the 3 pieces mahogany that made up the depot itself. When the human caravan showed up, the game gave me a message that said they need a depot to trade at. I used the ' t ' command to unforbid each piece, and they instantly started to move to it. This might be worth mentioning as a troubleshooter, or something, if I can get confirmation on it. --Bungler 03:45, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm that behavior. I used it all the time in 40d.--Kwieland 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I had traders go insane, probably because the depot was bulk-forbidden. --TomiTapio 20:59, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Traders taking forever to load up

The other lifesaver I found on this wiki somewhere relates to when you are trading a large number of items. I had the problem where caravans would take months and months to load up and get out. Once this lead to two caravans being on the map at the same time, (humans and dwarfs, I think) trying to load/unload at the same time and it was a mess (FPS suffered, too) However, there is way to prevent this. Pause the game after you get the "caravan has embarked" message, then go do d-t to designate trees (or mining, or whatever) and then hold down the mouse button. Watch the depot at the same time and you'll see the items dance as they get loaded up while the game is paused. Once the depot stops blinking, they're done and you can let go of the mouse. It took my traders 1.5 minutes real life to load up. But, then they take off on their merry way.--Kwieland 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Accessible and Inaccessible Depots

Im very new to the game and have been having trouble with making my depot wagon-accessible.

In the wiki it says that a 3-square wide corridor is needed to fit a trade wagon through(XWX in the D overlay). My problem is that Ive made a corridor 3 squares wide to my depot, but with the D command it still says my depot is inaccessible.

In the D overlay should there be 3 W makers side by side(XWWWX) for the depot to be accessible? If this is the case then the hall needs to be 5 squares wide...

Whatever the fix is, its not clear/helpful on the wiki. – unsigned comment by 173.217.232.2

The D overlay only requires a path of Ws one tile wide, but it must be continuous and orthogonal (i.e. no diagonal-only gaps). Trace it out from the depot to find what's blocking the rest of the way (probably a boulder or a tree outside). --Quietust 01:22, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

You might need to smooth some boulders, cut down some trees, or add some ramps.--Kwieland 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Experience

From the article: Several small trades, exiting the trade window each time, will increase the Broker's relevant skills during the early game. This isn't true for 40d. The experience was based solely on the number and value of the items brought by the trade caravan once a single trade was completed. Has this changed for 31.xx?--Kwieland 18:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. But the biggest thing was that it seemed like if you made that first trade for exactly 30%, your trader could get immense experience, even legendary. But it didn't seem to work when I tried it in .12 of late. Dorf and Dumb 05:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

My experience, when I've checked through dwarf therapist, is that a dwarf will get points in appraisal once, and only once, some time (within seconds) after the completion of the first trade with a particular caravan. Tested using dwarfs with 0 experience in appraisal, haven't tested if changing dwarfs at the trade depot will allow you to train more than one dwarf per caravan, will do so later today, if future caravans remain free of goblins/magma/other fun.--MadGreyOne 17:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC) Or they gain their experience on the first time looking at the goods, as I now remember it saying, somewhere... only one dwarf per caravan though =( And no experience gains shown at all for trading of items, so unless someone has seen clear evidence of multiple trades boosting experience gains we should probably remove that line.--MadGreyOne

Random breaking of "Trader Requested at Depot"?

I have the Broker's labors all turned off barring cleaning and the default health care entries. When a caravan arrives, he'll happily ignore my initial switching of the Depot status requesting his presence and continue to haul items to the depot (despite having all hauling labors off). I have to toggle it back to not requested and then back to requested and he's fine, he'll sit and trade...for a while. Then if he goes to get a drink, eat, or sleep, his action when he gets up will be to haul items again. Anyone else having this issue? Chronin 18:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Never have "only broker" set. It slows things down, and the benefit is, you don't get more than one dorf trained with appraiser skill (which means if the broker dies, you don't even see a price on anything). And the other benefit is, you can drive a harder bargain with the traders and therefore not get as much stuff brought in next time. What's the point? Dorf and Dumb 05:27, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

almost all dwarves "bring items to depot", I guess it's part of the non-toggleable jobs. --TomiTapio 21:03, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Even after turning off all other jobs, including hauling, I still get this problem. Even after confining him to a burrow consisting of nothing but the Depot, he'll still try to run off. The best solution is to request him as soon as the caravan is on the map, and it'll slide to the top of his job queue before it's gone. If you make a trade, he may run off again, so you might want to wait until everything you're trading away is there. Uzu Bash 14:10, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not certain(otherwise known as WAG time), but it seems like the trade at depot job doesn't become a priority until everything marked pending for trade has been hauled to the depot.--MadGreyOne

Emergency Supplies

It's fairly well known that caravans will bring lots of wooden logs if you don't have any in your fortress (including machine parts) or if you've forbidden all of them (something I've personally used numerous times - in my latest fort in 0.31.12, I managed to get elven and human caravans to bring over 200 logs each). It might be worth testing to see if caravans bring "emergency supplies" of things other than wooden logs - when I cooked all of my meat into prepared meals, the next human caravan decided to bring over 200 stacks of meat and prepared organs (it was enough to instantly overfill both of my 11x11 meat stockpiles, since my barrels were all full of booze). --Quietust 18:37, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe I've got reasonable evidence that meat is considered an emergency good - when the human caravan arrived, the first horse was loaded up with wood logs and plants (which I had requested from the modded-in guild representative) and tons of meat (which I did not request), and the second horse was loaded up with a bunch more meat finally followed by several bins of cloth and leather, and the 3rd horse was carrying the rest of the leather; the rest of the caravan also held some stacks of random types of meat. Normally, binned goods are loaded at maximum priority, but liaison requests and emergency supplies both seem to override that. --Quietust 04:24, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

A quick test suggests that there are quite a few other emergency supplies - when I forbade everything in my fortress just before the Elven caravan arrived, the first horse was carrying nothing but plants, and the 2nd horse was carrying 50 bins of cloth plus lots of wooden logs, the 3rd horse was carrying the rest of the logs and the mostly normal trade goods, and the 4th horse had the usual assortment. Repeating with everything unforbidden resulted in a much more "normal" caravan - 5 horses carrying 12 ropes, 9 instruments, 12 toys, 10 pets (7 large creatures, 3 vermin), 11 cages, 21 booze barrels, 18 empty barrels, 8 buckets, 7 weapons, 12 body armor, 8 pairs of footwear, 13 shields, 8 headgear, 12 pairs of handwear, 11 seed bags, 10 mill bags (all dye), 12 sand bags, 13 empty bags, 14 bins of cloth (all of which were on the first horse), 8 crafts, 13 stacks of arrows, 24 stacks of plants, 11 threads, 10 legwear, 11 splints, and 6 crutches. --Quietust 03:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

recent trading changes?

Has anyone else seen changes to the way traders trade? Looks to me like in .31.16 (as compared to .12) the acceptable markup is much higher (45% compared to as little as 10-15%), and appraisal and other broker experience seems to be deferred now (appraisal skill not rising with each trade anymore, it rises sometime after the caravan leaves)202.156.10.234 01:04, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

King offering

It looks like an offering of 5k is required to promote the city from barony. I sure would like to verify, but goblin seiges have pre-empted the liaison visits since becoming a barony. Uzu Bash 13:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

No Elven Cloth?

Something very interesting has happened in my current fortress - last Autumn, I captured a giant cave spider and started a silk farm, and so far I've woven over 200 pieces of cloth (and have plenty of thread ready to weave), and the Elven caravan just arrived in the Spring with zero bins of cloth (and about 11 of everything else they usually bring). Maybe they were only bringing cloth in the first place because I wasn't producing any of my own? Maybe they brought it as emergency supplies? More testing is definitely in order. --Quietust 03:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Just not an Elven Caravan without the useless bits of string, eh?

Tunnel paths?

There's a few spots on this page and others where it mentions caravans coming from the edge of the map, and some people mentioning underground tunnels, but the game wont let me mine at the edge of the map, am I misinterpreting things or is that info out of date?--Twilightdusk 03:04, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

You can't mine the edge of the map, but you can dig a tunnel all the way up to 1 square away, ending in a ramp to the surface. I think that's what the "Caravan Delay" section is suggesting. Also, above-ground walls and drawbridges cannot be built within 5 squares of the edge, but below ground ones can. Finally, if you've opened the caverns, it's reported (though I haven't seen it) that caravans can enter or exit there, so you may (or may not, I haven't tested this) be able to build a reasonably safe exit down there - i.e. you could wall up a path all the way to the edge - unless of course that Forgotten Beast happens to enter just where and when the caravan is exiting... 202.156.10.234 08:16, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Doors and traders

I had my depot safely locked behind a set of doors, mainly to keep my stupid cats from wandering outside and getting mauled by the wild life. This was fine for the first two caravans (dwarf and elf, respectively), but the third one (a human one), while able to arrive just fine, was not able to leave until I removed the doors. Is this just a quirk? --Shatari 04:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

After playing around a bit, I think the problem was simply a matter of the humans taking forever to leave after their 'departing' message had popped up. I've not run into this problem since. --Shatari 02:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Traders forgot stuff

They left their stuff behind. Quite a lot of it. I consider it a windfall, considering we had nothing left to eat or trade on the first caravan, so intent were we on our build.

Traders won't accept 1:1 trade?

I just tried to trade with a dwarven caravan, and it wouldn't accept it. "With your trade goods such as they are, I cannot fathom you ending up with these items." The trade was 1:1; no profit or loss for either side. They wouldn't trade for a -1 loss either, saying they wouldn't trade for a loss. .....Why? --Ruan942 12:20, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

To my knowledge, traders prefer to make a profit, especially if your broker is lacking in social skills. --Shatari 03:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Childish Games?

Hey, I've just recently started playing Dwarf Fortress. I've traded with caravans before, but on a new fortress the traders instantly said "Enough of your childish games." and set off, even though they had about a 100 DB profit. Help?

Dwarven Caravan Every Other Year

As the title says. It seems that they only come once every two years. Has anyone else seen this?--Mirthmanor 03:32, 5 April 2011 (UTC)