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Hey vets! Missing a feature? This might help!

admin
2023-03-16 10:11:47

Foreword

I'm a brand new player. Long time listener, first time caller, as it were. I don't presume to know more than you old hands, but I noticed in the discussions that a lot of you are having trouble finding stuff I'm finding rather quickly, assuming it's been stripped from the game.

A lot of these things, as it turns out, have either been packaged into other features, streamlined in some way, or are now accessed a different way. Reason I can find them and you can't? Most likely because you're so used to doing it the old way, and I've had to learn the new way from scratch.

You guys help me with wisdom and advice, so I felt like this was my chance to give back by helping you in the one peculiar way I can: By sharing things my fresh mind has caught that a lot of veteran players seem to be having trouble finding.

Hope this is helpful, and thanks to all of you for making this game what it is! A guy like me who can't wrap his head around ASCII would never be able to enjoy this game if you guys hadn't built such a dedicated fanbase, giving the devs your feedback and helping to make this game what it is today.

Important note: Despite my name, I'm not associated with Bay 12 in any way, apart from as a joyful consumer of their game.

The Meat

Military TabBottom right, the sword icon. (Evidently if you can't see it, you need to adjust your UI scaling until you can.) Seems to do all the same stuff the last one did, except...

Ammo ManagementThis seems to no longer be necessary. Just plop a chest in your marksdwarves' barracks to be filled with ammo, and they'll grab it when they need it.

Update: This has been screwy for a few, including me, and this fix worked: Fire all your marksdwarves and reconscript them. For some reason, if they had a job prior to becoming marskdwarves, they won't look for ammo. This fix worked for me.

BarracksIf you want your squads to train (marksdwarves of course can train at an archery range), you'll need to designate their barracks for training. You can also designate the barracks for bunking (bed icon), individually-assigned equipment storage (weapons, armor, etc; wardrobe icon), and/or squad-level gear like ammunition (chest icon).

PrioritiesWhen you have a job ready to go (eg. you've clicked the Pickaxe icon to start designating mining jobs), click the yellow arrow near the paintbrush icon to expand advanced options. This will allow you to prioritize that task.

StairsUp-stairs and down-stairs are no longer necessary. Stairs now automatically connect to eachother as necessary. If you want a stairwell four layers deep, click where you'd normally dig a down-stair, drop down four layers, and click again. The top stair will be a down-stair, the bottom stair will be an up-stair, and the stuff in between will go both ways. If you want your down-stair to start going upward, you can dig or build (as necessary) stairs upward from that location. Click on the EXISTING down-stair, go up however far you want, click again.

Crucially, UP, DOWN, AND BI-DIRECTIONAL STAIRS EACH TAKE UP A SINGLE "CUBE". There is no longer a need to build an up-stair in a "wall slot" and a down stair in a "floor slot" directly beneath it. Where necessary, the two merge into a two-way stair which takes up the same "wall slot" an up stair would have in the previous game.

Civilian AlertsA bit different now. They dropped a step (the actual alert). Now, you create a burrow, assign your civilians to it, and suspend it. When you want the civilians to get in, unsuspend it and in they'll go!

Forbid Animals Through DoorsNo longer necessary, just assign the animal to a pen/pasture zone and they'll stay put. The reason this was changed is because this mechanic was killing FPS (cutting it by a factor of 15-20, IE, 100 FPS -> 5 FPS) because the animals couldn't pathfind through the door but kept trying to do so, resulting in infinite pathing queries.

Specialists OnlyOpen up the labor menu (Y key) and create a new detail, ticking whatever it is you want done. Then tick "Only Selected Does This", and voila! Any type of work you want, done only by specialists of your choosing.

DoctoringSeems you have to assign doctors to a hospital zone to get them to work there. (Thanks to Knightnave for this one.)

Work Orders and SearchingIf you want to search for something, you don't need to type the whole thing. For instance, if you want a wooden bin, just type "bi" and it should come up fine. With work orders, no need to use the arrow keys to go from 10 to 100! Just click the "#" icon and type in the amount you want.

Assigning Dwarves to WorkshopsThis has changed. You can now assign only a single master to a given workshop, and can no longer assign by a skill range. According to Tarn in 2021, this was primarily to pave the way for the guilds mechanic (whereby apprentices can be assigned to a shop with a master).

Communal CatacombsIf you want to bury a bunch of dwarves in one place, there are two ways to do it now:

1. Build separate doored rooms for each coffin, memorial, etc., then drag out your zone with the Tomb designator, while the "Multi" option is active.

2. Build one big room, but draw out a separate tomb zone for each coffin, memorial, etc. within that room. So designate a Tomb, click "Accept", designate a tomb, click "Accept", and repeat as desired.

Cancel Multiple Build ProjectsCancel these the same way you deconstruct buildings: Mining tool -> stair icon with circle and line through it.

Afterword

I plan to update this as I come across new stuff that I see veteran players struggling with. I don't and won't have all the answers, and I probably won't. Some things may not have answers at all. (To my knowledge, there's no way to view all the logs after you close them.) But I'll help out as I can.

By the way, did you know hell is a myth born of mistranslation and Jesus saved the whole of humanity that day ~2,000 years ago? We're not all going to heaven when we die - no one is, the soul doesn't live on as a ghost after death - but we're all going to find resurrection one day, and eventually, that resurrection will be into immortality regardless of what we did or believed in this life. Our offenses are no longer counted against us by God, whatever it is we've done or do in this present life!

"For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe." - 1 Timothy 4:10

Just an interesting little word of good news that few Christians ever share (or even know about, bless their hearts).

Anyway, I'm in the process of working out if marksdwarves will strictly use wooden ammo for practice, but it's taking a bit because I've yet to strike metal. Hopefully I'll have that soon. Until then, enjoy yourselves, my brothers! Strike the earth!

Update: I've created a separate guide for fixing stairs when something goes awry.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2899322221

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898954765

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