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v0.34:Workshop
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Workshops are where materials are processed by dwarves into more valuable or useful items.
Description
Anything that is created, refined, cooked, altered, or decorated, or generally "produced" is processed at a workshop. There are many different types of workshops, for different purposes and different finished products. Just as they have specific products associated with them, they have specific labors that are required by dwarves who build them or work there, and dwarves with more of the appropriate skill tend to produce higher quality objects*, and/or produce them faster.
(* If the finished product has any quality modifiers - not all do. Processed milk is just cheese, a stone block is just a stone block, and a tanned hide is just leather, etc.)
You can use workshop profiles to restrict the use of individual workshops to named dwarves, or to dwarves with specified minimum and maximum levels of skill.
Almost all workshops measure 3 tiles square, 3x3, but a few are 5x5, or even a single tile. Not all squares of all workshops are passable, in fact some, like the jewelry workshop, have what is in effect a three square wall down one side. These squares appear a dark green color during initial placement. Be careful not to block access when building.
If you have no stockpiles to put finished objects in, workshops will become cluttered and all tasks will take much longer.
Tier System
The tier system was developed to help understand how far removed a workshop is from the basic raw materials that can be found throughout your average map. Currently, containers are considered Tier 1 materials. In some cases, a workshop may fit into multiple tiers, (ex. Mechanic's workshop). In these cases, the workshop is listed in the lowest applicable tier.
Tier 1 workshops use Tier 0 materials (animals, ore, wood, plants, bone, etc).
Tier 2 workshops use Tier 1 materials and possibly Tier 0 materials.
Tier 3 workshops use Tier 2 materials and possibly Tier 0 and/or Tier 1 materials.
Tier 4 workshops use Tier 3 materials and possibly Tier 0, Tier 1 and/or Tier 2 materials.
Tier 1 Workshops
- b Bowyer's workshop:
- c Carpenter's workshop: Uses wood from trees to produce various goods.
- Uses Tier 0 materials: Wood
- Produces Tier 1 materials:
- Armor: Buckler, Shield
- Weapons: Training Axes, Training Swords, Training Spears
- Containers: Barrel, Bin, Bucket, Casket
- Building Materials: Block, Grate, Pipe section
- Furniture: Bed, Chair, Table, Cabinet, Chest, Armor stand, Weapon rack
- Furniture: Door, Floodgate, Hatch cover
- Trap Components: Cage, Enormous corkscrew, Menacing spike, Spiked ball
- Finished Goods: Crutch, Splint
- Tools: Animal trap
- j Jeweler's workshop:
- m Mason's workshop:
- u Butcher's shop:
- t Mechanic's workshop:
- Uses Tier 0-1 Items: Stone, Table, Rope
- Produces Tier 1 Item: Mechanism
- Produces Tier 3 Item: Traction bench
- w Farmer's workshop:
- Uses Tier 0 Items: crop, Animal
- Uses Tier 1 Items: Bags, barrels, vial, milk
- Produces Tier 1 Items: Pig tail or Rope reed thread, Quarry bush leaves, Dwarven syrup, Plant extracts, Milk, Cheese
- h Fishery:
- Uses Tier 0 Items: Raw fish
- Produces Tier 1 Items: Fish meat, Shells, Captured live fish
Tier 2 Workshops
- n Tanner's shop:[Verify]
- o Loom:[Verify]
- Uses: Adamantine strands, Cave spider silk thread, Giant cave spider silk thread, Phantom spider silk thread, Pig tail thread, Rope reed thread
- Produces: Cloth[Verify]
- f Metalsmith's forge:
- d Dyer's shop:[Verify]
- l Still:[Verify]
- Uses Tier 0 Item: Brewable Plant
- Uses Tier 1 Item: Barrel
- y Ashery:[Verify]
Tier 3 Workshops
- e Leather works:[Verify]
- k Clothier's shop:[Verify]
Tier 4 Workshops
- q Quern:[Verify]
- Uses Tier 0 Items: Blade weed, Cave wheat, Dimple cup, Hide root, Longland grass, Sliver barb, Sweet pod, Whip vine
- Uses Tier 3 Item: bag
- Produces: Dwarven wheat flour,Dwarven sugar,Longland flour,Whip vine flour,Dimple dye,Emerald dye,Redroot dye,Sliver dye
- M (Shift+m) Millstone:[Verify]
- Requires: Mechanical Power Source (Water wheel or Windmill), and a Millstone (Constructed at Mason's workshop)
- Uses Tier 0 Items: Blade weed, Cave wheat, Dimple cup, Hide root, Longland grass, Sliver barb, Sweet pod, Whip vine
- Uses Tier 3 Item: bag
- Produces: Emerald dye, Dwarven wheat flour, Dimple dye, Redroot dye, Longland flour, Sliver dye, Dwarven sugar, Whip vine flour
Uncategorized Workshops
- s Siege workshop:[Verify]
- S (Shift+s) Soap maker's workshop:[Verify]
- p Screw press:[Verify]
- z Kitchen:[Verify]
- Uses: Alcohol, Fish, Food, Meat, Plants, Cheese, Dwarven sugar, Dwarven syrup, Flour, Milk, Prepared organs, Seeds, Fat, Tallow
- Produces: Prepared meals, Tallow
- r Craftsdwarf's workshop:[Verify]
Management
As your fortress continues to grow and diversify, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep your workshops fruitfully busy without causing overproduction or underproduction or depleting your resources. Though no process can be truly automated, there are a few tricks to keeping your workshops working as needed.
The first is automation. Certain goods or materials are only useful for one thing, having no other use and requiring refinement before they can be made into something useful. Thus, workshops may automate certain tasks, keeping them queued at all times; this behavior may be changed in the "set workshop orders" menu (o - w). It can also be removed as with any other job, by pressing r on the orders menu, and reinstated just as easily.
- The Tanner's shop will automatically enqueue "tan a hide" whenever a hide becomes available, generally as a butchering product. The shop has no other function, and hides have no other functions and will rot away if left untreated; thus you can build a tanner's shop, make sure some dwarves have tanning enabled, and then leave it untouched for the duration of the game.
- Similarly, the loom's function is to collect webs and turn silk, plant thread, and yarn, into usable cloth - these products have no other function. All weaving jobs are automated.
- A fishery will have "Process a live fish" enabled by default. Uncooked fish cannot be eaten as they are, and must be processed before being edible.
- When an animal is marked for slaughter, "Butcher a dead animal" is added to a butchery by default, and once the animal is struck down a butcher should come along and rip it apart.
The second is the manager. The manager allows you to queue work orders, and although he has to first sign off on the orders (if you have more then 20 dwarves in your fort), using the manager has two major advantages. Firstly, it allows you to produce an exact number of items as opposed to putting a workshop on repeat, and secondly, it allows easier management of complex tasks: although you will get cancellation spam, the tasks will simply re-queue, to be fulfilled as soon as the prerequisites are in order. This makes complicated processes, such as the production of twenty steel breastplates for your military, much simpler and less time-consuming. You will be notified when your work orders are completed, so it has the advantage of timely organization as well.
The final method is to put a process on Repeat. By default, you can queue up ten tasks, or let a process run for as long as possible. This is most useful if you want to process all of a resource that you have into something usable (such as lye and tallow into soap), but don't know how much you have, or can't be bothered with exact numbers. If you want to keep a workshop busy, repeating a task for a period of time is the best way; most fledgling fortresses have craftdwarves making stone crafts 24/7. It is necessary to check back on your stocks every one in a while, however, as you might forget about your mason for a while and upon placing furniture discover that you have 99 doors but no tables. The easiest example would be gem cutting; just queue up all of the gems you've dug up on repeat, and use the cancellation messages to monitor progress through the stack.
| Workshops | |
|---|---|
| Furnaces | |
| Related articles | |