This article is about an older version of DF.
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See also: Combat skill
Skills are used by dwarves to accomplish almost every task. Higher skills allow dwarves to accomplish tasks more quickly and more effectively (for example, mining and crafting). Whenever a skill is used experience is gained for that skill, allowing the dwarf to reach higher skill levels.
If a dwarf does not use a skill for a prolonged period of time, the skill will be labeled "rusty." If the rusty skill continues to remain unused, it will eventually be labeled "very rusty," or "V rusty" in game. Skills remaining at very rusty for prolonged periods of time will gradually suffer permanent experience loss. It is not possible in-game to know whether a given skill has suffered level loss, but any utility capable of reading exact XP levels will show a skill with a lost level as being at 100% of the XP required to take it to the next skill level. See Rust below for more details.
To determine what skills a dwarf has, press v and highlight the dwarf, then press g to ensure you are on the general information page. The skills will be grouped into three toggleable types: combat, labor and miscellaneous skills. Included on the list are the levels of each skill, and, if applicable, "rusty" or "V rusty" notifications.
Skill levels are as follows:
- Dabbling
- Novice
- Adequate
- Competent
- Skilled
- Proficient
- Talented
- Adept
- Expert
- Professional
- Accomplished
- Great
- Master
- High Master
- Grand Master
- Legendary
Skill penalties
Dwarves that are hungry, tired, or thirsty will work slower and produce lower quality goods. This is unimportant for some tasks such as wood cutting or furnace operating but you may want to halt construction of aluminum statues if your blacksmith is famished and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.
Skills
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Miner
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Other Jobs
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Miscellaneous
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Unused
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Skills, Attributes and Traits
- Skills:
- are trained by being used in some activity.
- train attributes.
- the same attribute can be trained by various skills.
- it's assumed that the skills also use some of the attributes that they train.
- certain skills are required or important for certain noble, military and civilian professions.
- certain professions require several skills.
- the same skill can be used by various professions.
- are increased by Preferences, but capped, so the dwarf will make items beyond its skill level but won't affect the chances of making more high value items at the highest skill level.
- Traits:
- cannot be modified in-game.[Verify]
- affect which social skills gain experience (if the dwarf has X trait it will not gain experience in X skill) at all.
- have other in-game effects that can be useful for certain professions.
- give thoughts when performing certain activities.
To summarize it goes like this:
Trait --> Skill <--> Attribute
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v |
effect |
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'--> Profession
Since the same skills can be used by various professions, and the same attributes are trained by various skills, this allows for cross-training.
Being traits the unmodifiable[Verify], limiting factor on which skills can be learned or having useful effects, and certain professions requiring various skills, the need arises to:
- avoid appointing a dwarf that will never learn a certain skill to a profession that uses it:
- appoint a dwarf with a useful effect given by a trait to a profession that benefits from it:
Skill Rust
Every skill has the following set of improvement and decay counters, which are caste specific:
[SKILL_RATE] (Default is [SKILL_RATE:100:8:16:16])
* % of improvement points you get (Default 100)
* unused counter cap (Default 8)
* rust counter cap (Default 16)
* demotion counter cap (Default 16)
Once per day, each skill's "unused" counter increments by 1, and if it reaches the cap (without the skill ever being used), it resets to zero and increments the rust counter. Once the rust counter reaches its cap, it resets to zero, adds a "layer" of rust to the skill (to a maximum of 6), and increments the demotion counter. When the demotion counter reaches its cap, it resets to zero and the skill level is permanently reduced by 1 (and must be re-earned). With the default numbers, it takes about 4 and a half months before rust sets in, 2 years and 3 months before rust maxes out, and 6 years before actual skill levels begin to decay.
The Rusty and V.Rusty descriptions which are appended to a skill within Dwarf Fortress are determined by the following conditions:
- Rusty: A skill level greater than 0, and the number of rust layers is at least 50% of the original skill level.
- Very Rusty: A skill level greater than or equal to 4, and the number of rust layers is at least 75% of the original skill level.
Since a skill can never gain more than 6 levels of rust, only skills between "Skilled" and "Expert" can ever show as "V. Rusty", and only skills at "Master" or lower can ever show as "Rusty" - higher level skills will silently accumulate rust until they are eventually demoted below "High Master", then the rust will become visible.
Whenever experience is gained, the skill's "unused" counter is reset to zero, its "rust" and "demotion" counters are decremented by 1, and one or more levels of rust are removed depending on the amount of experience gained:
- 50% of the gained experience (rounded down, plus 1) is lost
- 10% of the lost experience (rounded down, plus 1) is spent toward removing rust
- If it was enough to remove more rust than was accumulated, then the XP penalty is set to 10 points per remaining rust level, minus 10
Since most crafting jobs give 30 points of experience, this means it would take 3 jobs to work away 6 levels of rust, each giving only 14 points of experience; if the skill only has 1 level of rust, a single job would work it away without losing any experience.
