40d:How do I increase the value of a room

Wall and Floor quality

Material

Digging a room within a layer consisting of obsidian or flux will inherently give it a higher value than a room built inside a mundane stone such as granite or gabbro. Additionally, veins or clusters of precious minerals (whether ores or gems) which pass through the room can provide a dramatic boost in value.

Engraving

Room quality can be increased by smoothing and engraving the walls and the floor. Stone can be smoothed by any skilled dwarf without decreasing quality, but always engrave with more skillful Dwarves as unskilled Dwarves will permanently prevent you from putting a nice engraving there.

Construction

Constructing floors in a room using high-value building components (such as aluminum or platinum bars, or perhaps soap made from megabeast fat) can dramatically increase the value of a room if its location is important but valuable stones do not occur in the region. Note that constructed floors cannot be engraved, and constructing a floor on top of an existing engraving will destroy the engraving, resulting in the usual consequences of art defacement.

Furniture

Any Furniture (such as statues, chests, cabinets or anything listed below) will increase room value. If made out of a material that the dwarf who owns the room likes, they will perceive the room as more valuable than its listed value, and be happier for it. For instance, if a dwarf likes copper and/or armor stands and you put a +copper armorstand+ in the room, she may view that as a *copper armorstand*. Whether this would be better than a +gold armorstand+, which would simply hammer room value without the increased perception, is in doubt. Dwarves that do not have such preferences perceive the room at its base value.

Lever

Levers count as furniture for the purpose of increasing room value, and an unlimited number of mechanisms can be connected to a lever simply by linking it to an object and subsequently deconstructing said object (either directly, or by simply pulling the lever if the object is a cage, restraint, or support).

Trap

Weapons not being used by your dwarves (whether due to your military structure or due to the weapon being inherently unusable) can be placed in weapon traps, and traps located in a room will increase the value of the room by the value of all components. A trap containing an artifact weapon can easily max out a room's quality. This works for both conventional weapon traps and upright spears. As an added bonus, a strategically placed menacing spike in an annoying Noble's room can also be employed for the purpose of arranging an unfortunate accident.

Cages

Cages seem to add the value of the animals occupying them to the room value, and you can store unlimited amounts of animals in one cage.

Roads

You can set a road to be built at maximum size and therefore use the maximum amount of building material (26 items), and still fit it on a single tile so long as all of the other tiles it would be built on are walls or empty space. This means you can have 26 pieces of aluminum or megabeast tallow soap adding value to a room with little effort.

Other items

Coffins not set to burial are not considered rooms and so can be built in other rooms without decreasing that room's value. This takes up space, but you do have to put the coffins somewhere anyways. You might as well get value from them.

Artifacts

Most artifacts will boost a room to 'royal'. Furniture artifacts can be built directly, weapons can be put in weapon traps, and buckets can be put in wells.