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Bone
v50.14 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF.Note that some content may still need to be updated. |
 | This feature has one or more outstanding bugs. Please view the Bugs section for details. |
Bones are obtained when butchering animals or taking apart skeletons. Some severed body parts also decay into usable bones, the same way a corpse rots into a skeleton.
Skeletons are the last step of the rotting procedure. After a corpse begins to rot, no food can be created from it, and it will eventually rot into a skeleton. The skeleton has to be taken to the butcher's shop and "butchered" to be torn apart into skulls and bones afterwards. Bone does not rot further or produce miasma. Note that many civilizations (like dwarves) consider it unethical to butcher certain skeletons Bug:1180. An exception is the stack of bone that can form after a severed part decays. This appears to happen when the part in question has bone as its only non-rotting material.
While bones are counted as "body parts" in the stocks menu, they have their own subcategory in the refuse stockpile menu. It is a good idea to create an internal refuse stockpile to handle bones near one's craftsdwarf's workshop for easy access. Dwarves in a strange mood may require several stacks of bones as ingredients, making it important to stockpile a few bones in a safe place.
Be aware, stockpiles with refuse enabled automatically degrade some items (clothes and armor) quite quickly; refuse should not be enabled in a multi-purpose stockpile. Refuse stockpiles also cause the degradation of stored body parts (such as bones and shells), though at a much slower pace. Even bones not stored in a refuse stockpile may eventually disappear due to vermin such as rats.
Uses for Bone
Bones are processed as follows:
At a craftsdwarf's workshop, using the bone carving labor:
- Bone crafts, for sale to visiting merchants.
- Bone armor, namely leggings, greaves, gauntlets, and helm. Bone armor uses bones individually, but may require one bone from several stacks. The first stack determines the material of the resulting armor. Note that armor made out of bone can be used by dwarves assigned a uniform of metal armor.
- Bone decorations. Any decoratable item can be decorated with bone, which adds to the items' value. Due to a bug, dwarves may refuse to use sentient creatures' bones for decoration (with an unhelpful "needs improvable item" error), while still freely using them for bone crafts.
- Bone bolts. These bolts are fired from crossbows. Each bone will produce 5 bolts. Each bone must be crafted individually (a stack of Yak Cow bone [7] becomes a stack of Yak Cow bone [6] plus a stack of yak bone bolts [5]). This renders the process for carving bone bolts very slow. Despite this, some players still use bone bolts for hunting animals for a long time, mainly because the remnants of animals killed become bones, allowing more bone bolts to be made.
At a bowyer's workshop, using the crossbow-making labor:
- Bone crossbows. They are one of the few weapons available without access to wood or metal. Making a crossbow from bone takes only one bone off a stack, yet, due to a bug, large stacks do not produce the expected number of crossbows.