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 only if they can physically reach it.

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 (?).

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 tiles will most likely be some kind of rough stone. To make the walls look less primitive, you can smooth them, and even engrave them.

Stone Hauling

All the stone types produced by mining needs to be hauled away or they will soon clog up your tunnels. You can assign 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.

Caveats (warnings)

• Mining into damp walls can lead to breaches of water, be especially careful near large rivers and aquifers.
• Mining into warm walls can lead to breaches of magma.
• 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.
• Building Channels will remove the floor of the current Z-level AND mine the walls in the Z-level below.
• Using 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.