40d:Stockpile

Stockpiles are where dwarves will store items of various types. Dwarves with the "hauling" job on will seek out items that aren't already on a stockpile that accepts them and carry them to the appropriate stockpile. It's important to place your stockpiles carefully to minimize the amount of time spent carrying items to and from them.

Allocating stockpiles

To allocate an area as a stockpile, use the p menu. The right-hand menu pane will list all the stockpile categories, and the appropriate key to press to begin allocating that type. Allocating an area works exactly the same as designating an area. Press [Enter] to specify the first corner of the stockpile, use the primary movement keys to move the cursor to the opposite corner, and press [Enter] again. This will create a stockpile of the chosen type that occupies the area between the two corners specified. If the chosen area has parts that cannot be made into a stockpile, like a wall, a workshop, or an already existing stockpile, a stockpile will be created but they will not be part of it.

Removing a stockpile works exactly the same, but choose x: Remove Designation. This will unallocate the area specified. It is possible to create a single stockpile with a shape other than a rectangle by using the Remove Designation tool to remove only part of the stockpile.

Using stockpiles

Once a stockpile has been allocated, dwarves will automatically move items to the stockpile when they are available, and as long as the stockpile has available space. Note that the dwarves will place the item into the empty spot that is nearest to the item, not counting any obstructions. Additional behaviour also includes the fact that dwarves will stockpile the newest item first, which may not necessarily be the nearest item to the stockpile.

When a dwarf needs an item for a particular task, (s)he will head to the nearest (again, not counting any obstructions that may lie in the way) item of the correct type, regardless of whether it is in a stockpile or not. Apart from some exceptions, items do not have to be stockpiled at all. Players are generally advised to avoid stone stockpiles, because stone hauling jobs take an extreme amount of time for unskilled dwarves, due to the weight hauled.

One method to ensure a workshop has raw material on hand is to place a small stockpile next to the workshop. This will speed up production as the crafter in question only has to take a few steps to obtain the material. It also has a useful side-effect, in that as soon as the crafter picks up the piece of material, the stockpile will issue a new task to fetch another piece of that material. Because that crafter is busy, that hauling job will be taken by another dwarf. This speeds up a queue of jobs, as other dwarfs perform the time-consuming distant haul whilst the crafter actually makes the items.

It's not necessary to place stockpiles for all types of objects. If no storage is available for a certain item type, dwarves will seek out items wherever they might lie as mentioned earlier. This can be advantageous -- if you don't have a stockpile for gems, your jeweller will go pick up fresh gems without waiting for them to be carried to a pile first. However, this also means your jeweler has to spend a lot of time fetching the gems. If you have enough haulers available, it's generally more advantageous to designate stockpiles than not. Also remember that your workshops will get cluttered and suffer production slowdowns if you let items pile up in them, so it's important to regularly clear out workshops when they get cluttered. This can be done either by having a stockpile available so that haulers will remove the items or by removing and rebuilding the workshop, which will empty its contents onto the ground.

Using bins and barrels

Ordinarily, each item or stack (e.g. ≡Dwarven Ale Stew [59]≡) of items occupies one space of stockpile room. You can consolidate stockpile space by building bins and barrels that can hold many items at once. Barrels store and preserve food and drink; bins can store many types of smaller items, such as finished goods, metal bars, ammo, or gems. Building a steady supply of containers helps reduce the space you need for storage.

It is possible to set whether bins can be used in a stockpile with q → C and q → V. For barrels, E and R are used instead of C and V. By default, bins are used in Bar/Block, Ammo, Gems, Finished Goods, Cloth and Leather stockpiles, and barrels are used in Food stockpiles. Also by default, the stockpiles that use barrels or bins to store other items will permit a barrel or bin on each of their spaces; such a stockpile will claim an empty container whenever it doesn't already have one. You can override this by specifying the maximum number of barrels and bins that an individual stockpile is allowed to utilize. To access this stockpile feature, use the q menu and move to the stockpile in question.

"Reserved Barrels/Bins" is a global setting that reserves a certain number of barrels or bins, preventing them from being claimed by a stockpile until they are filled by a task that requires their use. This feature is most often used to ensure that a fortress has ample empty barrels for the production of alcohol, although empty barrels are also necessary for other jobs. You can change this setting in the stockpile menu p. If there are 5 reserved barrels, no stockpile will claim an empty barrel until you have at least 6 lying around. In this way you can ensure that jobs like making alcohol always have free barrels available.

In the case of barrels necessary for producing alcohol (which will keep your dwarves happy and alert) and potash (which can be used as fertilizer to increase plant stack size), they do not have to be located on a furniture stockpile. This is because the "Store Item in <container>" task only looks at Furniture stockpiles for available containers. Normal production tasks behave as mentioned earlier, they will just grab the nearest barrel. You can exert some limited control over this by setting a number of reserved barrels; however, you cannot set where these barrels will be.

Take from a stockpile

Another feature of stockpiles, currently in a limited form, allows you to tell dwarves to fill one stockpile not only with unstockpiled items, but also those located on another stockpile that accepts those items. To specify such a flow, use the q menu, and highlight the destination stockpile. Press t, and confusingly the right hand menu will empty out. Don't worry, using the cursor, highlight another stockpile and press [Enter]. Your chosen stockpile will now list the stockpile it will take from. This will cause items in the second stockpile to be hauled to the first stockpile.

Taking from a stockpile can only happen one way. Telling stockpile #4 to take from #13 will stop #13 from taking from #4. This is probably a good thing, otherwise your dwarves will continuously move items between the two stockpiles. To be truly evil though, you can introduce a third stockpile, at which point #4 taking from #12, #12 taking from #13, and #13 taking from #4, is perfectly valid.

One stockpile can be set to take from any number of other stockpiles, so in theory it is possible to construct supply chains of material. For example, you may have a small stone stockpile next to some mason's workshops, and a much bigger 'central' stone stockpile. Using this feature, you can get your dwarves to keep the workshop stockpile filled from the central stockpile.

Stockpile categories

Ammo
This stockpile contains ammo for all forms of ammunition-requiring weaponry is stored here. It can use bins to consolidate up to 100 units of ammo. Since the only ammo dwarves can currently use is crossbow bolts, it might be wise to disallow arrows and blowdarts.

Animal
Animals stored in cages that are not affixed to a location will be stored in these stockpiles. Traps used for capturing wild animals and empty cages are also stored here.

Armor
Armor of all types is stored here. This kind of stockpile can use bins to consolidate up to 10 items. There is no preference for specific body parts.

Bar/Block
Bars of smelted metal and blocks of cut stone are kept here after being processed by the smelter and mason's workshops, before being used for other purposes. Weirdly, ashes, potash, charcoal, and coke from the wood furnace, ashery, and smelter will also be stored here. Like with ll stockpiles, this can be changed to allow for specific blocks and bars to be stored with custom settings. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 10 bars and blocks.

Cloth
Woven cloth and thread from the loom is stored here. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 10 items.

Coins
Minted coins are kept here. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 3000 coins, which is equivalent to six new coins stacks.

Finished Goods
Finished goods created by the craftsdwarf's workshop, as well as the clothes maker's shop and the leather works, are placed here before being used in trade or other uses. This type of stockpile can use bins to consolidate up to 25 items.

Food
As one would assume based on the name, food is stored here. Unexpectedly, though, tallow, lye, giant desert scorpion venom, and liquid fire are as well. Up to 10 food items may be stored in a barrel (and the stack +Cow meat roast [8]+ would count as eight items). Fresh fish and animals are brought here before being processed by the butchery and fishery and turned into raw meats. The raw meat is then brought to the kitchen for cooking. Note that prepared food stacks larger than ten (☼Dwarven Beer Roast [200]☼ is possible) will not fit in a barrel, but will not rot once placed in a food stockpile, and still only take up one space. To free up barrels, you may decide to have separate prepared food stockpiles that do not accept barrels. If you cook larger meals, this shouldn't be a problem.
Food stockpiles should in most cases be specified as things like seed stockpiles or meat stockpiles or unprepared fish stockpiles; there are simply too many things that go in them.

Furniture Storage
Completed items from the carpenter's workshop, mason's workshop, and mechanic's workshop will be stored here, along with furniture created from other shops, until placed or used in another building. Since this is a very broad category, like food, generally more specific stockpiles should be created.

Gem
This stockpile stores gems, both cut and uncut, before being used in a construction. It can use bins to consolidate up to 10 gems.

Graveyard
Dead dwarves and pets that have no burial location will be placed here. If placed indoors, decaying bodies will generate miasma, but bones will not removed at the end of the season.
Are dwarf and pet bones removed at the end of the season ever? --Savok

Leather
Leather, which is produced at a Tanner's Shop, will be kept here. Like most stockpiles that use bins, it can use bins to consolidate up to 10 items.

Refuse
Since dwarves hate rot because of the miasma it spreads when in an enclosed place like a cave, any garbage item that can rot will be stored in a refuse stockpile. Many players prefer to place this stockpile outside your cavern, usually a small distance from the entrance. If placed indoors, decaying items will generate miasma, which will generate a small unhappy thought in any dwarf passing through it. Bones and shells are also stored here, whether they be from defeated enemies or raw food processing. Outdoor refuse stockpiles are emptied at the turn of the seasons, but indoor refuse stockpiles are not, so you may wish to make an indoor refuse stockpile that takes bones from the outdoor stockpile.

Stone
Rough stone will be stored here, as well as ore. Given the extreme abundance of stone, it is very likely for this stockpile to fill up quickly, if the hauling is ever completed, meaning that the player may want to create several stone stockpiles, or possibly one giant one. It is a good idea to position these stockpiles close to your mason's workshop or your mechanic's workshop. An alternative option is to merely make a small stockpile near your masons and leave stones where they lie, eliminating dwarves running around carrying stone all the time. This can have the effect of blocking expandable types of construction if there is not enough space around to move the stones into. Some dwarves regard the existence of stone stockpiles as a sign of divine displeasure, cursing dwarves to scurry around the fortress carrying rock to and fro for all eternity. To avoid stone hauling when you don't want it, set the dwarves to ignore minerals in {key|o}}rders and options.

Weapons
Weapons of all types are stored here by default, including the weapons that dwarves do not use and trap components. Bins can be used to consolidate up to 10 weapons of any type.

Wood
Chopped trees are brought to the wood stockpile before being used by the carpenter's workshop. Given the relative scarcity of trees, a wood stockpile need not be too large. It is a good idea to position this stockpile close to your carpenter's workshop.

Custom stockpiles

With custom stockpiles you can change which types of materials, goods, ect, can be stored in that pile. Any types of things can be mixed, so you could have a stockpile that will hold raw turtle, mechanisms and all stone types apart from onyx if you wanted. Highlighting a stockpile with q, then pressing s will allow you to adjust the stockpile settings or in the p menu you can press t to adjust a custom stockpiles settings before placing it with c.

Stockpile Settings
The Stockpile Settings screen is weird to use. In the first column are the major categories. In the second column there may or may not be subcategories. In the third you will see the individual items. The second and third columns are only visible when a category is enabled and selected.

You navigate this screen with + and -, and left and right on the arrow keys. e and d are used to enable and disable the categories. a and b are used to allow or disallow all the subcategories. p and f will permit of forbid individual subcategories. These six keys work no matter which column you have selected, though the last 4 will not always be avaliable.
Enter will toggle individual item types.

Notes
Some categories will have a special extra type of item(s) that can be toggled with u and sometimes j.
Categories - Item type
Animals - Empty cages and Empty animal traps
Food - Prepared food
Furniture - Sand bag
Weapons - Local and Foreign
Armor - Local and Foreign

If you disable an item or items that are already sitting in a stockpile then they become loose items and your dwarves will move them to a more suitable stockpile should one exist.

One use for this is to have an outdoor stockpile that will accept all refuse except bone and shell, and then an indoor pile near to your craftdwarf's workshop that will only accept these things. That way, once all the meat has rotted off of any carcases outside, the bones will be brought in for processing rather than disappearing at the end of the season. While this strategy can be useful, it only works if you have set the option for dwarves to gather refuse from outside. Otherwise, the dwarves will ignore the bones in the outside stockpile. This means added risk to your dwarves if they try to gather refuse that is far from your gate, and a potentially large amount of useless hauling.

Another effective use of custom stockpiles is Elven trading. Make a stockpile just for elf-safe trade goods: most categories where it's relevant have a 'materials' option.

This feature is probably most useful for food, furniture, and bar/block stockpiles, to prevent your lye and venom sitting next to the kitchens, your floodgates and mechanisms near the rooms that need statues and doors, your stone blocks next to the forges, and your metal bars by the farms.