40d:Mining

Mining is an essential part of building a fort in Dwarf Fortress. There are several reasons you might want to mine, such as gathering various stone types, or simply to create the basic tunnels and rooms in your fort. Only dwarves assigned to "Mining" will actually mine the areas you want to have mined, and then only if they have access to a pick and can physically reach the site.

Making a dwarf a miner

1. Specify your dwarf to be a miner via view, pref, labor.
2. Select "Mining" using + or -, press enter. It should be white rather than gray.

Miners require a pick: You can select picks in the Dwarf Fortress Mode preparation screen, create one using a Metalsmith's Forge, or obtain one via trade with Dwarves and Humans (?).

The material (copper, iron, etc) a pick is made of does not affect mining speed. Picks can be used as weapons, however, which is the only situation where the material is important.

Defining the area to be mined

1. Press designate to bring up the Designations menu.
2. Highlight Mine (it's highlighted by default) by pressing d again.
3. Move the cursor to the starting point, press enter. You should see a green flashing cross symbol indicating that it's in Selection Mode.
4. Move the cursor to another point to define the opposite corners of a rectangle, press enter again. A yellow area should now be highlighted, indicating the area to be mined.

Mined Walls

When a tile has been mined, the surrounding walls and floor will most likely be some kind of rough stone. To make these surfaces look less primitive, you can smooth them, and even engrave them. Soil such as loam or clay cannot be smoothed.

Stone Hauling

All the stone types produced by mining must be hauled away or they will soon clog up your tunnels. Loose stone will not impede movement, but it can prop open doors, slow construction, and prevent open space from being used as a stockpile. You can assign stone hauling duties to specific dwarwes just like you assigned them to be a miner. Make sure you have stockpiles where all the different stone types can be stored, too. Be careful which dwarves you assign to hauling if you have a massive dig going, or they might drop whatever other important stuff they were doing just to clear the paths. Typically miners will mine out stone far faster than haulers can properly clear it, particularly if the stockpile is a distance away.

There are alternatives to hauling. Masons or Stone crafters can build their respective workshops next to or on top of a large pile of stone for clearing, and then create items out of the stone to clear it. Masons can create furniture (which takes as much space as the original stone itself, but is at least useful); they can also create blocks, which unlike stone and furniture can be stacked in bins. Craftdwarves can create various smaller items which can also be stacked in bins. Assuming you have sufficient bins, place a stockpile right next to the worksite and your haulers will only have to take the items a very short distance to place them neatly in stacks. This is a huge timesaver on large projects. Just be careful about what you make. Stone blocks are useful, but a bin completely full of stone blocks is extremely heavy and hard to move around. Crafts of all sorts are usually very light, but certain job types make multiple products out of single stones, which will multiply your hauling problem. Stone crafts, as opposed to, for instance, mugs, will produce single, lightweight, somewhat valuable items that are easy to stack and move.

Not hauling at all is also possible. In that case, since there will be minimal floor space inside the stone portion of your fortress, you will have to designate stockpiles outdoors or in rooms dug out of soil instead of rock.

Caveats (warnings)

• Mining into damp walls can lead to breaches of water. Be especially careful near large rivers and aquifers. The game will typically warn you before this actually occurs.
• Mining into warm walls can lead to breaches of magma. The game will warn you before this occurs as well.
• Mining leaves a "floor" between z-levels. Your dwarves will not fall through z-levels if they are simply mined, unless the floor caves in. To deliberately remove the floor, designate channels.
• Building channels will not only remove the floor of the current level, but also mine the walls out of the level below. It is not possible to remove the floor without also creating empty space on the level below.
• Using stacked sets of Channels you can make huge pits as large as you like.
• To dig a a shaft designate a down stairway j on the surface. Beneath it designate a stack of up/down stairways i.

See Also

• Stone for a list of different types of stones and ores left behind from mining.
  
• Soil for a list of soil types.
• Digging.