Storage

v50.15 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

Types of items used for storage include boxes*, cabinets, barrels, large pots, bags, bins, and bookcases. All storage objects are used to hold items, from personal possessions to gems, alcohol, seeds, quarry bush leaves, and even living creatures, but their use is context-sensitive, so you cannot for example use your barrels for storing coins.

To examine a storage object's contents, select the object location with the mouse. If the storage object isn't selected (say, if there are multiple items or units on the same tile) it should be selectable as a tab on the upper right of the window.

(* In game, a "box" refers to any wooden or metal chest, stone coffer or glass box, three in-game names for the same storage-item serving the identical in-game function. In previous versions, they were known collectively as "containers", with bags also included under this label. This article will preferentially use "storage-item" to avoid confusion, however nothing is perfect and a Wiki is a collective effort, so take any casual (mis-)use of the term "container" in context, especially in other articles.)

Barrels, bins, bags, pots

Barrels are wooden or metal storage-items that are useful for storing items in a food stockpile and are used to store alcohol, plants, seed bags, meat, fish, dwarven syrup, quarry bush leaf bags, flour bags and dye bags, cooked food, fat and tallow, and all prepared organs. They are made at a Carpenter's workshop with 1 log or at a Forge with 3 bars of metal. Barrels can be disabled in a stockpile to prevent haulers from running off with everything else inside to pick up a stray seed.

Pots, an alternative for barrels, can be made of wood, stone, clay, glass, or metal. Pots can also be used to store alcohol and other related liquids, though clay pots (earthenware) must be glazed to hold liquids. Pots hold the same amount as barrels (60 total units of food, or 30 units of alcohol) and weigh 1/4th as much as a barrel of equivalent material. Except for a few barrel-specific requirements, pots are generally a superior replacement.

Bins are storage-items, again made from wood or metal, used for most non-food items. They are sent to all the other stockpiles (with the exclusion of the refuse, stone and graveyard piles) and will hold much larger stacks of items, making organizing those endless piles of +giant cave spider silk socks+ and trade goods much easier to manage. They are made at a Carpenter's workshop with 1 log or at a Forge with 3 bars of metal. Bars and blocks will stack into a bin, but not into any other storage-item, so a stockpile with bar/block enabled will default to requesting bins.

Bags are used to store seeds, quarry bush leaves, mill products (flour, sugar, dye), gypsum plaster, quicklime and sand ("powders"). They are made from plant fiber (or silk) cloth, leather, or adamantine. Bags are used to gather and transport powders the same way buckets are used to carry water. Bags can be placed inside some other storage-items, such as barrels. They are made at a Clothier's shop with 1 cloth or at a Leather works with 1 leather.

Empty barrels, pots, bins and bags can all be stored in a furniture stockpile.

Chests and cabinets

Except in their specific workshop order menu, any in-game reference to a "container" or "box" or "chest" refers to any of a wood or metal chest, stone coffer or glass box, three different names for storage-items that are interchangeable for in-game purposes. Chests, coffers and boxes are listed under boxes in the stocks screen, and these can be built as "chests" from the building menu, furniture submenu to satisfy the "Needs: X Chests" requirement for nobles. Each other storage-item type has its own entry.

Both cabinets and chest only work when placed as furniture. They must be built in bedrooms assigned to dwarves in order to fulfill the dwarves' room requirements. Cabinets are used to store clothing, and containers in bedrooms are used to store everything else.

Locations like taverns, temples, libraries, and hospitals also need chests for their specific supply storage needs.

Once built as furniture, their contents can be viewed by clicking on them with the mouse.

Quick reference

Container	Stockpile	Furniture	Solid Capacity (in cm3)	Liquid Capacity	Can Store	Graphic	Made From
							Stone	Wood	Glass	Metal	Cloth	Leather	Ceramic
Animal trap	Animals	Yes	30000	—	Vermin, Bait		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Armor stand	Furniture > Type > Armor Stands	Yes	60000	—	Armor		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Backpack	Finished Goods > Type > Backpacks	No	30000	—	Food		No	No	No	No	Yes3	Yes	No
Bag	Furniture > Type > Bag	No	60000	—	Seeds, Leaves, Powders		No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Box Chest Coffer	Furniture > Type > Boxes	Yes	60000	—	Bags: Seeds, Leaves, Powders Others: Owned items		Coffer	Chest	Box	Chest	No	No	No
Barrel	Furniture > Type > Barrels	No	60000	60000	Food, Alcohol, Extracts, Milk, Lye, Bags		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Bin	Furniture > Type > Bins	No	60000	—	Items, Jugs, Flasks		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Bucket	Furniture > Type > Buckets	No	—	6000	Milk, Lye, Water2		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Cabinet	Furniture > Type > Cabinets	Yes	60000	—	Owned clothing		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Cage Aquarium Terrarium	Animals	Yes	60000	60000	Creatures, Vermin Aquarium: Water		No	Cage	Terrarium Aquarium	Cage	No	No	No
Coffin Casket Sarcophagus	Furniture > Type > Coffins	Yes	60000	—	Creature/Vermin Corpses/Remains		Coffin	Casket	Coffin	Sarcophagus	No	No	No
Flask Vial Waterskin	Finished Goods > Type > Flasks	No	—	1800	Alcohol, Water Vials: Extracts		No	No	Vial	Flask	No	Waterskin	No
Hive	Finished Goods > Type > Tools	Yes	5000	5000	Honey Bees, Royal Jelly, Honeycomb		Yes4	Yes4	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Jug	Finished Goods > Type > Tools	No	—	10000	Royal Jelly, Honey, Rock Nut Oil		Yes4	Yes4	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Large pot	Finished Goods > Type > Large pots/food storage	No	60000	60000	Food, Alcohol, Bags		Yes4	Yes4	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Minecart	Furniture > Type > Minecarts	No5	500000	500000	Hauled items; scooped, but not loaded: Water, Magma		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Nest box	Finished Goods > Type > Tools	Yes	2000	—	Eggs		Yes4	Yes4	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Pouch	Finished Goods > Type > Tools[Verify]	No	1000	—	Coins (in adventurer mode)		No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Quiver	Finished Goods > Type > Quivers	No	12000	—	Ammunition		No	No	No	No	Yes3	Yes	No
Weapon rack	Furniture > Type > Weapon Racks	Yes	60000	—	Weapons		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Wheelbarrow	Furniture > Type > Wheelbarrows	No	100000	—	Hauled items		No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No

¹ - Large Pots can be made from any hard material, including wood and metal

² - Used to carry water, can store Milk and Lye but will be emptied into Barrels

³ - Backpacks and quivers can only be made from Adamantine cloth, though ones made from other cloth can be purchased from caravans

⁴ - Rock and Wood versions of these items are made in Craftsdwarf's workshop rather than Carpenter's workshop or Mason's workshop as usual.

⁵ - A minecart can be placed where you need it and used for storage, but technically it's not built furniture

• Tools have capacity set in units 10 times smaller; liquids have a capacity 60 per 1 unit, i.e. capacity 180 = 3 units of water, 50000 = 833 units, etc.
• Large Pots are equivalent to Barrels except for a few specific uses (e.g. process plant to barrel).
• Bins are like Barrels but store different items.
• Buckets are used for temporary storage of Milk, Lye, and Water.
• Bags are mini storage-items for powders, seeds, leaves, and other items, and can be stored inside Barrels/Large Pots if holding food items.
• Jugs are mini storage-items specifically for honey and royal jelly, and can be stored inside Bins; in this sense they are like Bags.
• Flasks (metal), waterskins (leather) and vials (glass) are different names for the same storage-items depending on the material it's made from.
• Chests (wood or metal), coffers (stone) and boxes (glass) are different names for the same piece of furniture depending on the material it's made from.
• A terrarium can be designated as an Aquarium. A dwarf will use a bucket to fill it with water. If deconstructed it'll stay filled with Water[10] and can even be sold with the water inside. The water costs 1☼ each, so you get 10☼ for the water.
• A hive won't be destroyed if you don't have a stockpile for its products. You could use t on the hive and dump the item to use it.

Spilling

A storage-item that moves fast and collides with an obstacle spills its contents. If the obstacle permits (i.e. fortification), these continue to move in the same direction with some scattering, otherwise displaced 1 tile above and retain velocity. This was introduced for minecarts, but applies at least to other tools and cages. If the tile above also contains an obstacle and the spilled item is a storage-item, the process repeats on the next tick, until it runs out of either nested storage-items or wall height (see the first link above).

Bugs

• Hauling jobs can block access to all the items in the destination storage-item until the hauling is complete. This often results in cancellation spam and work delays.^Bug:9004 One workaround is creating a "feeder stockpile" with barrels and bins disabled.
• Storage-item size works in mysterious ways. Items only have "SIZE" determining the volume of their material and thus weight, but no separate external volume. For storage-items, CAPACITY is not added to it, i.e. they all are treated like soft bags: you can put 30 other bags inside a bag, and you can load a minecart with minecarts. At the same time, storage-items are assumed to not be soft bags - while weight of contents adds to the storage-item's weight, the ambiguous SIZE is constant. Together, these facts make storage-items nest-able indefinitely, as long as CAPACITY>SIZE (which normally is the case) and potentially act like bags of holding - have the same stated volume whether empty or holding an arbitrary total amount of items via nested storage-items. The only nesting that normally happens in Fortress mode is minecart > barrel > bag, but this still makes a minor exploit.
• Stacks made by a single job tend to ignore capacity. For one, dwarves picking up items may stuff a quantum stockpile worth of items into one storage-item.^Bug:6063 The same applies to brewing and extracting.
• Conversely, a freshly produced stack, no matter how small, will be put into a new storage-item and not added into the old ones. This may be justified with brewing, but also happens to production of many other items/substances without quality modifiers.

V · T · E Buildings
Workshops • Furnaces
Furniture	Animal trap • Anvil • Armor stand • Bed • Blocks • Box (chest • coffer) • Bucket • Cabinet • Cage (aquarium • terrarium) • Coffin (casket • sarcophagus) • Restraint • Slab • Statue • Table • Throne (chair) • Weapon rack
Tools	Altar • Bookcase • Display (display case • pedestal) • Hive • Nest box
Access	Bars • Bridge • Door (portal) • Floodgate • Grate • Hatch • Road • Window
Constructions	Floor • Fortification • Ramp • Stairs • Wall
Machine and trap parts	Axle • Gear assembly • Lever • Mechanism • Millstone • Pipe section • Pressure plate • Roller • Screw pump • Support • Trap • Water wheel • Windmill
Other buildings	Archery target • Vermin catcher's shop • Siege engine • Trade depot • Wagon • Well
Related articles	Design strategies • Bedroom design • Furniture industry