User:Desistance/Scratch

Unacceptable items

Elves view living trees as sacred and dislike the killing of non-hostile animals; they're the only unmodded civilization to do so. Offering them wood or animal-derived products will offend the merchant. The merchant will rebuke your broker and leave immediately. This offense reduces your civilization's diplomatic relationship with the elves' civilization, possibly leading to war after multiple infractions.

Items made from wood

"Once a beautiful tree, and now? It is a rude bauble, fit only for your kind."

Elves do not want to be offered items made from wood from trees you cut down, nor do they want most items that require wood as part of their creation process.

• All items made of or decorated with wood. This includes wood from tree-like subterranean fungus, such as tower-caps. Elves make an exception for the "grown" wood items they make themselves, but items made by other races using "grown" wooden logs are still not acceptable.
• All items made of or decorated with wood derivatives. This includes ash, potash, pearlash, charcoal, and lye. Note the exception for ash-glazed earthenware below, however.
• Items made from or decorated with clear or crystal glass, as these items require pearlash in their creation. Again, note the exception for raw or cut glass gems below.
• Obsidian short swords. These require wood in their production, for the handle.

Animal products

"I see your low race still revels in death. That poor, gentle creature..."

Elves also reject the majority of animal products. This taboo extends to items made from intelligent creatures, despite the fact that you may see elf historical figures wearing items made from the hair or bones of their enemies.

• Items and decorations made from body parts, such as hair, bone, shell, horn/hoof/antler, ivory/tooth, and parchment/vellum. This includes totems, which can only be made from a skull.
• Corpses and body parts themselves, although these are usually worthless anyway.
• Leather or parchment/vellum, and all items made from them. These are made from skins.
• Wool yarn and cloth, as well as all items made from them. It doesn't matter how well you treat your sheep, elves still associate animal products with death.
• Fat and tallow, meat (including prepared organs), and fish (both raw and prepared).
• Prepared meals made using any of the above products.
• Tallow soap

Examine your items carefully! Elf traders will reject containers holding a prohibited item, otherwise-acceptable items stored in a prohibited container, and all items «decorated» with a prohibited material. If you want to sell food or liquid to elves, it's best to use a large pot or one of their own grown wood barrels.

Note that elves only care about the items they are actually offered. It's perfectly allowable to use wooden bins to haul items to the depot, as long as you only offer the elves acceptable items from the bin and not the bins themselves.

Acceptable items

A non-exhaustive list of items acceptable to elves, as long as they are not otherwise disqualified by inappropriate decorations:

• Items made from or decorated with stone, as well as raw clay or raw sand. This includes items made from petrified wood, lignite, or bituminous coal; elves aren't concerned with items that were plants or animals in a different geological age.
• Items made from or decorated with metal (including steel), green glass, or ceramic. Elves are content to assume your dwarves fuel their craft with coke or magma rather than charcoal.
• All rough gems and cut gems, as well as items made from
• Silk items, including silk thread and cloth and items made from silk thread or cloth. Elves don't care if you're exploiting spiders.
• Plant and fungus products in general. Unless otherwise prohibited, all of these items are acceptable both as themselves or as the material for an item or decoration:
  • Plant crops, fruit/pods, seeds/nuts, and leaves/bulbs/flowers. Anything that can be harvested with herbalism or grown on a farm plot is one of these four, and considered acceptable. This includes non-wooden produce from trees.
  • Plant fiber thread and cloth, and all items made from them.
  • Processed plant products. This includes (but isn't limited to) booze, dye (and all dyed items), flour, dwarven sugar and dwarven syrup, oil, press cake, papyrus, and paper.
• Prepared meals made entirely with allowed ingredients.
• "Grown" wood items. These can only be obtained from elves, usually from elven caravans, and were made in a way in keeping with elven ethics. Note that these items can still become unacceptable if they contain unacceptable items or are decorated with unacceptable materials.
• Items made from certain spoiler materials, if you're willing to give these up.
• Live creatures or vermin. Since these can only be traded when in a cage or animal trap, make sure the cage or trap is also made of acceptable materials.
• Soap made from oil. This may be a bug^Bug:8571, as even plant-based soap requires lye, which is made from ash.
• Otherwise-acceptable items are not disqualified by ash glaze, which may be a bug^Bug:4652.

However, stone and metal items, even when charcoal is used in production, are acceptable (since the elves are unfamiliar with metalworking, and do not know that charcoal is used to make metal items). Items made from silk are acceptable, as are all non-wooden plant-derived products such as cloth and thread. You can also transport your goods to the trade depot in a wooden bin, as long as you do not try to sell the bin. Living animals are acceptable, as long as the cage or trap is not made of wood.

Be especially careful with reselling decorated items from other caravans, as non-wood/glass items may have decorations of wood or clear/crystal glass. Note that "grown" wooden items from elven caravans can be resold to them, as the elves know that they were made in an elf-kosher way.

Untested items

• Honey, mead, royal jelly, and wax
• Milk and cheese
• Extracts
• Gizzard stones, either as themselves or as decorations
• Remains (can these even be hauled to the depot? I forget)
• Items made from nail/claw/talon
• Items made from amber, coral, or pearl.
• Codices and traction benches. These items can involve parchment sheets or wool ropes in their creation. Due to a bug^Bug:9409, they can lose the material definition from these components as part of assembling a quire into a codex or a table, rope, and mechanism into a traction bench. Note that a codex made with a wooden binding or a traction bench made with a wooden table would not be acceptable in any case.
• Instruments are just a giant question mark
• Scrolls made with scroll rollers made from wood or clear or crystal glass, or codices bound with hair or woolen thread.
• Blood and venom. This is rarely relevant, since they can only be purchased in wooden barrels AFAIK.