40d:Door

Doors are furniture which can be built from rock (at a mason's workshop), wood (at a carpenter's workshop), or metal (at a metalsmith's forge). You can also make glass doors (called portals) at a glass furnace. The symbol for a stone door is that of a solid tile, the color of its material, with a cross of a different color across it (e.g. ┼) Doors of different materials use different tiles, because Toady hates tileset makers. Glass doors (or portals) use the symbol O. Metal doors use the symbol ╪. Wood doors use the symbol ║.

Doors made of all materials function identically, although doors made of more valuable material will increase the "value" of a room it is used in. High-quality doors give a happy thought to any dwarf seeing them, especially when a door is part of a room that the dwarf personally owns.^[Verify] Items made of a material a dwarf has a preference for will give an even happier thought.

Doors, when closed, will prevent the passage of fluid (water and magma). However, if a dwarf opens the door, the fluid will come spilling through.

Door settings

There are three options one can specify on a door from the q menu:

• l Forbid/Permit Passage
  • A door set to Forbidden is impassable to everyone in the game. A door cannot be set Forbidden if the door is open. Invading thieves may lock-pick and bypass a Forbidden door.
• o Keep Tightly Closed/Make Pet-Passable
  • A door that is pet-passable allows through traffic of pets. A pet can still pass through a door that is tightly closed if it does so while it is being held open by an object or dwarf. This also affect the door's permeability to wild animals - a tightly closed door is a good way to keep wild animals from blundering into your fort.
• s Set as Internal/External
  • A door set to external functions as a wall when defining boundaries of a room such as a bedroom. A door set to internal allows the room boundaries to pour over.

"Building" doors

After constructing a door at any of the above workshops, they must be "built" (placed) like all other furniture. Doors can now be placed on any open square adjacent to a wall. Locked doors and statues do not count as walls for door-building purposes anymore. For the same result of the statue-door-move statue trick in previous versions to build an infinite line of doors, instead use a constructed wall segment. Doors will not "fall down" when the constructed wall is removed. They will, however, fall down if a non-constructed wall they are attached to is mined out and they have no other support.

Door construction

A door built will not create a floor above it the way a wall will. If construction is to be done above a door, walls, fortifications and floors can be built on top of doors. Doors cannot be built on top of other doors – there must be a floor. Stairs and ramps, of course, cannot be built on top of doors either.

Door strength

Not all doors are built equally. Stone, wood, and glass doors can be destroyed by the trolls which usually accompany goblin sieges and presumably other large, horrible creatures like dragons. Iron doors, however, and probably other doors made out of strong materials, are impervious to troll attacks and will keep them at bay indefinitely. There are, however, rare and unusual creatures who can break down any door; a bronze colossus, for instance, can break down a steel door.^[Verify]