Logical Encyclopedia of Dwarfs

Before Play

The game hates you, it's not made to be played by everyone. Afterwards rejoice the game's almost as easy to run as most games, understanding it is not you can spend 11 days binging it for 100 hours total trying to figure out most systems by brute force or hope the wiki is correct in such statements. I'll add militia and burrows when I get the hang of how fast and reliable they are or not.

World Gen, Site Pick

Custom settings are as confusing as ever, worlds failed don't say why they failed I'd start default since they did make ores abundant you will need to consider not hauling all your bar ingots but it's fine if you don't store them till you've got a forge which takes some time.

Smaller worlds save faster, history of 5 years makes you at peace with Goblins most of the time for around 3 years so you've got more time to adjust on normal difficulty.

Light Aquifers can be dealt with easily if the map is mostly flat (explained how later). Hilly ones stretch the aquifer along multiple levels, or worse they persist throughout the world in at least half a dozen layers just restart if you notice multiple layers before the first cavern layer you won't have fun making room art in that fort.

Since all ores exist ignore them, almost everywhere either choose a river/brook area and/or a light aquifer zone (both give water which you need on an injury or to "clean" themselves. Cleaning is only important for thoughts (early on), hospitals if you get injured which should only happen on mistakes that can be reloaded.

(Save often, manual saves to quickly roll back on a failure or a funny spell of testing)

Joyous Wilds can have vicious giant creatures as much as Untamed Wilds just with funnier names. Can be picked if secure fort building is done earlier than the first invasion. Bad animal spawns can end runs early so save as soon as you embark.

Terrifying biome, Freezing Temperature and embarking with the "tower" warning is not recommended. Google those if need be.

*Note the info is of the LEFTMOST UPMOST tile all 16 you have to hover over to get the description of, you will not start in the tile you hover over you will start in the center of the square (or close to)

Embark Carefully is simple (if on an island make sure you have every Strange Mood material from the get go since no trading will happen ever), you need:

Picks (I'd choose 7) for mining

Battle Axes (default 2 in case you lose one or a Kea snatches it is fine) for chopping

Any Cloth (5 or so)

Any Silk (5 or so, more when afraid of caverns)

Any Leather (more than 5 when in animal-hostile area)

Any Bag amount (can be made easily but it costs cloth/leather can bring in equal amounts instead)

Any Thread (5 or so, when not starting with Sheep, Alpaca or Llama)

Hens (Food won't ever be a problem with 10 of these, hens will attack eachother if cramped.) and Rooster

Probably Sheep, Alpaca or Llama as breeding pair for thread.

Probably Dog (to unveil hidden creatures early) breeding pair

Any food (Meat/Fish) (easier to gather, also drink is food when used as mincing) default is fine

Any drink (easy to get in temperate biome and after a few years farmers and plant gatherers will make it trivial also) default is usally too low grab a bit more

(*Note every 5 drink comes in barrel and (almost) every meat comes with a barrel each if you want to start with an absurd amount of barrels bring every 2 point meat rather than a batch of a single ingredient)

Plump Helmet seeds (food/drink) 25+

Pig Tail seeds (cloth) 25+

Iron Anvil (1)

(Nothing wood-made when starting with forest you can make all with Craftsdwarf/Carpenter bench in under a minute, if not Wheelbarrows for hauling rocks (1 per hauler), Bucket (1 for water, 1 for Ashery) Crutches and Splits can be made with Fungiwood later since in no wood areas cracking the first cave early is quite recommended and wood can be gathered there most of the time)

*after that it's preference, can bring ingots for smelting exploit, any breeding pair, sheets for early books/scrolls (they're hard to make from nothing) etc.

Embarking Skills requires previous knowledge of the game to effectively gain ideas how you're suppose to divide labor, important is:

Carpenter (quality) and throwaway skill

Fisherdwarf (yield is exponential to skill) and throwaway skill

Planter (yield is exponential to skill) and throwaway skill

Cook (quality) and Brewer (speed) *both are long-term tasks, once critical population multiple Still buildings and communal brewing is preferred

Herbalist (yield+speed) and throwaway skill *With high forestation not as required if you bring enough food/drink, it regrows quickly

Clothier (quality) and Leatherworker (quality)

Beekeeper (yield and speed) and throwaway skill

Axe/Sword/Mace/Hammerdwarf or Dodger(militia drill learning speed) and Observer (Scribe)

*note that militia drill training, followed by a request for a <skill> guild, would be faster than him hoping he'd write a book of Dodging, otherwise just use throwaway skill or both weapon skill and Dodger (Dodger is equally if not more as import as wearing armor or being skilled in the weapon)

(Diagnostician (speed), Bone Doctor (quality), Suturer (quality), Surgeon (quality) not as important to start with Migrants will have those eventually too. Injuries are cruel and rare, injured militia is a chore to sort and save and loading exists doctoring is a novelty most of the time in a peaceful biome and with safe playstyle.

Negotiator (trading leeway) and throwaway skill

*choose 7 of these, can go without all for example Carpenter will be Legendary from no skill in a year making Spike Balls or Wooden blocks in under a year given the biome allowes for such. Carpenter specifically is important since good beds early are useful since they need to be built, have to be made of wood and it will give more positive thoughts than the other furniture

Throwaway skills include:

Miner (will be Legendary eventually, first 5 levels won't take a quarter month to get if mining for half that time)

Woodcutter (speed, can go without easily)

Weaponsmith/Armorsmith (Late game skill, will get migrant wave with one eventually, training either one specifically is also beyond annoying since the bench does both)

Stonecutter (quality) since stone is more available than wood Carpenter is preferred get assigned skills of, after hundreds of doors, cabinets, coffers and statues he will be skilled faster than Carpenter is making just high quality beds. On heavily forested area (wood regrows faster than 8 Carpenters can make Spike Balls of) you could go without Stonecutter at all it's just statues you couldn't make of wood.

Stone Crafting (quality) since it's the most reliable way to remove rock, fixing fps problems, from your map it's a communal work taks no need to train one when a dozen dwarfs do it at a time not restricted on said labor (like Smoothing and Engraving)

Animal Trainer/Animal Caretaker(quality+speed) since every animal will be trained eventually and offspring will be tame even without training skill

Archer/Marksdwarf(efficiency) since in Fortress mode bow users will fire a single arrow followed by bashing the enemy's head in with said crossbow, getting into martial trance then never fireing another bolt in their life. Can use unskilled ones since even legendary ones will hit your own dwarfs.

Dancer/Singer/Instrument(+similar) user(quality) untrained ones can do almost the same and it happens too rarely getting better results with Legendary in those skills than no skill at all.

*Usually forcing the dwarf to do so goes against their moods and your entertainers will go berzerk faster than they calm your other dwarfs.

Anything dialogue related besides Negotiator, since it's MOSTLY useless to you in Fortress Mode

*Skill points are free, choose your preferred just split labor exclusive ones with rare tasks. Carpenters won't be good Farmers or Cooks or Brewers they're are mutually exclusive because of labor time required

*Specific problems require specific solutions, no guide can help in general when biome specific problems occur.

*Give the fortress and your people a funny name you will see it for the entire play sessions till the end! The logo isn't as needed

First Month: Work Detail

Logistically this will be the most painful screen without waiting but it's also the easiest to grasp.

"Miners" and "Woodcutters" are Tool tasks, they will seek Battle Axe or Pickaxe once assigned. On both they will swap around.

(Everything else below is a pain since it combines every task related to that specific category and forbids that task for every other dwarf. Only one you'd really want to use is Plant getherers and Haulers.)

Hunter forbids tasks everyone could do, hunting is done using militia best kept on on everyone. Symbols stop appearing after 5 so never even assign that one.

Fisherdwarf includes both fishing and cleaning unless you want your Fisherdwarf to clean their own fish ruining the efficiency you can use that one too. Or place the Fishery next to the [Fishing zone] but early on it's fine if the fisher cleans them too.

Planter includes brewing and cooking, animal care,milking,cheese making. Everything except planting is wasting time for the planter If you want your Planter to waste time doing things on other benches use that symbol.

Stonecutters is a fool's gold task since it's Stonecutting as much as it is Smoothing. Never even touch that one.

Engravers everyone should do, only affacts speed of operation.

Orderlies is a one-time task, when you want specific dwarfs to force buckets into ponds use burrows and leave the task unchanged.

Plant gatherer only combines GATHERING (duh) and PROCESSING you could lock a dwarf into only that task and keep marking the entire map to be harvested and he'll never stop hauling food and drink materials, weeds grow faster than a single Legendary Plant Gatherer can collect. Multiples is bad so either forbid it entirely or assign it to a single trained dwarf early on.

Hauling is useful but for the opposite reason you might expect, it's a task you set on everyone EXCEPT the ones you want to do your important chores. For the first 20 dwarfs it's still logical you set it to everyone except long-term duty jobs. Carpenters and Stonecutter. Later on you just keep assigning it so they can do hauling it's a weird system.

First dwarfs it's quite logical, this example has no Fisherdwarf yet it assigns one automatically fishing shells (no river) (made to crafts or wasting frames or filling up stockpiles). With rivers it would likely get fish instead (food if processed, fps dump if not). Sorted optimally would look like that after:

*Default starts with 2 axes, can assign Woodcutting to Expedition Leader and reassign after

*Farmer is Cook and Brewer, don't ask me what that's suppose to mean.

*Expedition Leader is a task given to someone with skill, or randomly, so you forget what job you gave him, mine was given to a Negotiator so it made sense replacing Peasant since he's otherwise untrained to anything but physical and verbal dodging.

*Unassigning the leader here will softlock you of leaders till I think a mayor is elected which happens years in so yeah don't do that. Reassigning is fine.

*Forcing Carpentry early is good for furniture quality but stalls wooden block production unrestrict it when using multiple benches with forced wooden block production

Now SAVE THE GAME, if the game crashes within the first 3 months, and even worse if you clicked Play Now after world generation the world is lost too, the embark and everything you set up will be lost.

First objective is to get a carpenter's bench, crafting a bed and a chair, digging/ 2 rooms for your Manager/Bookkeeper (which in most cases would also be the Expedition Leader assign both to him aswell) to get access to the Work Order tab and get a clear inventory at all times. After that most bulk tasks are best done in that menu rather than the manual workbenches.

After that it's quite varying what to do, building a fortress of wood blocks or digging to get stone, building a fortress of rock blocks, or digging deeper and building a cave fortress. Only issue now, for the first year at least, is the wilderness and aquifers. I'll explain those next.

Intermission: Light Aquifer

Aquifer layers drip water laterally and when digging below from above, leading to slow but progressing floods if not dealt with. Once above 1 water on every tile it's almost impossible to stop so the faster it's dealt with the better. First off delete all the stair designation below the Aquifer in case they keep digging down wasting time better spent on channeling the aquifer itself. Work plan for LIGHT aquifers is simple just dig out the shape you want your fort to go down in (preferrably least amount of corners since building only works laterally) in addition to one additional tile laterally. Afterwards designate every floor above the Aquifer to be Channeled follwed by cancelling where the stairway down was suppose to go, then designating a dug stair Up on the Aquifer layer. Down Stair Aquifer celings don't drip neither do Aquifer rock Up stairs. Looking like that before:

And after:

Partial construction: After complete designate the second stage:

*Make sure you have enough wooden blocks(4 times as effective than building with logs) or alike to cover every lateral outside wall of the aquifer layer since the walls do still leak. Floors with 2/7 water won't allow construction planning. Dripping only occurs laterally you could skip the diagonals but the diagonals would also drip a floor below. Make sure to fill any diagonals diagonals first so they don't forget them resulting in deconstructing a wall to fix it. Make sure they also don't suspend walls before progressing it does happen occasionally when trying to build a wall as a dwarf tries to build another wall while standing inside the construction spot (among others)

*Ramps are ignored by constructions they're just relevant for dwarfs getting themselves stuck on the wall the other has built but on an optimal hole there shouldn't ever be a reason for a dwarf to step on the wall that was built.

*One does not need to channel out one addition tile you could also just dig down, then after mark every lateral wall to be MINED (at once, to get rid of confusions and the cancelling of said mining tasks through [Damp stone located], then have a wall constructed, then accept there is a damp ceiling over that construction. natural floors above constructions can be CHANNELED and the constructed block below remains after aswell.

Now Every floor below the channeled area and the walls can be mined below, if the Aquifer is multiple layers deep (stairs down will reveal more damp floors below, but don't be tricked by water droplets on the already dug floor above designating it as wet it does so aswell. It makes sense it's just dwarf logic. Just Channel, cancel chair channel, designate 1 stair floor down and after every channel is complete designate mine 1 lateral direction. See picture example of already begun mining how confusing it can get:

*note when only digging lateral you could finish the entire wall construction in a single assignment, but it leaves annoying diagonal gaps that will also drip a floor below so the issue persists throughout:

When the floor below is no longer Aquifer designate the overdue ramps to be deconstructed using the (no entry sign) symbol, just beware it will also designate every wall and also the dug stairs to be deconstructed if selected stranding you on that level. Merging built and dug stairs currently is impossible is a patience act to make a stairway of built stairs down your fort this early on.

*note here the wet floor above cancelled some mining commands, ceilings no matter the material submerged in maximum pressure water will never drip the designation of "DAMP WALL" is a lie on that regard.

*Bulk designation would stop exactly where the next unmined block was, signaling the floor above is (most likely) damp. Do note here 2/5 stairs weren't completed since a 1/7 droplet cancelled the Stair Up so the MINE designation was ordered afterwards making it impossible to rebuild stairs there unless every floor above has it's stairs CHANNELED and then a stairway is contructed laterally on every floor while it is impossible to have it be connected to the future dug stairs below. It's a dwarf mistake made by dwarfs.

If only a single Aquifer layer exists in your embark congrats from now on the only hinderance is the one floor with damp ceiling dripping down useful water used for whatever it's useful for, creating farm soil, infinite water for wells and such etc. 1/7 water dripping down will evetually dissapate leaving a 5x5 centered around the dripping celing is guaranteed to have it disspate faster than it can drip just note how multiple dripping ceilings can easily overwhelm, or when flowing down the stairway it could also create single tile 7/7 flooded stairways at the bottom making it impossible to expand so be careful there.

(Alternatively when a smooth-able rock exists instead (no soil) Smoothing makes Aquifer walls stop dispersing water, the symbol (in addition to any wall that has seen water at all ever) will remain designated damp however)

A floor below that one can now be used freely for mining symmetry and pixel art. Congrats for beating Light Aquifer, Heavy ones follow the older Youtube tutorials they're accurate enough and follow the same logic just with quaint and restrictive access point. When multiple cave layers exist with damp rock it's easier to deal with since all rocks forward will be smooth-able, mine designations will still be cancelled every tile if not disabled with DFHack so it's still annoying but with advantages such as easy waterfalls.

Intermission: Building Logic

Building anything is a chore off of itself, starting with material:

Logs/Stones are 1 wall per item while rock/wood blocks are 4 walls per wall. Visually and functionally identical only descrepancy is the name ("Rough" tag for buildings, or "Block" tag for objects) so for building your favorite building type you require either none, mining and accepting lack of color selection, or you make blocks of exactly 1 rock/wood type since color mixing is awful.

*temporary building remaining permanent since overwriting doesn't give your blocks back and deconstruct for replacement takes too long and is confusing and dangerous especially walls, you keep the walls the same color you could rip out the floors sort of easily in a maximum of 4 steps on an easy layout like a circle.

Building in this game is a weird way of either grinding your way getting only processing a single type of block, easily done with restricted and assigned stockpiles later on with a couple dozen miners, while wood is near impossible to get decent house constructed with a single wood color. Early on it's usually preferred to just force them to make blocks of the nearest wood/rock around, leave a stockpile for a thousand blocks, and ignoring the color mismatches. They become part of you after a while, you want dwarfs to build it quickly you select the nearest block available and start to ignore the color. After a few restarts you eventually get a good balance between mining enough, forcing dwarfs to make blocks of only a single rock type while expanding the fort using furniture of the other rock types. It's quite impossible to learn through a tutorial you just get used to making blocks, then patching up a hole no matter the color whilst building a tavern carefully constructed of only a single type of rock, tables and chairs made of the same wood while statues, floors and walls of your most favorite rock. Meanwhile all other floors use mismatched parts but that's just fine you've got your tavern/inn the right color.

*wild wood might even look worse than the natural floor, so keep that in mind what paiting your fort in a rainbow assortment of wood and rock

From HOW you build is rather easy to explain, getting the hang of it early and you won't have to constantly contemplate why you're bothering with color perfection you get patient find more of your rock then continue the project. Onto basics:

Dwarfs will Mine, Dig Stairs, Smooth and Engrave laterally and diagonally, no matter what crazy orders are given.

Stairs can be dug up and down just fine, Slopes can be dug into walls turning it into floors with slopes on digging is very easy to get used to almost redundant to explain even. Slopes allows digging of one floor above but removes the floor above rather than replacing it with a down stair.

Building is slightly different, foremost dug stairs can never be combined with built stairs so once a dug stair is broken, like on a cavern layer or through dwarfen mishaps, you either accept imperfection or you spend effort rebuilding the entire staircase one at a time CHANNELING out the stairway (deconstructing leaves a Down stair behind which blocks built stairs) then building a stairway where every start and end has to be visible laterally to be able to even place the order, then have lateral connection on every floor to be able to construct the stairs. Stairs cannot be constructed downwards but can be built upwards without support.

(A constructed stair UP will merge with a dug stair DOWN but a constructed DOWN will not convert into an UP/DOWN on the dug up/down) above, combining stairs is only possible one direction!)

A dwarf on a pillar with crafting material can not get down whatsoever other than deconstructing the floor below him which he also can't do since you can't Channel into a built block below. Building can only happen on the floor the dwarf is on, he can't stand on a slope nor can he stand on an UP stair it has to be a Up/Down or a Down (which is just a floor really) once on that floor constuctions need to be seen to be ordered laterally (can be cheesed by setting designations ahead of time) and dwarfs can only build walls and floors laterally (funnily enough they can construct diagonally if the path before was laterally possible then obstructed by a built wall he'd complete the wall diagonally if the route was chosen before blocking)

Futhermore build commands can be removed by the dwarf if he is interrupted by any unexpected event, not exclusive to cave-in or getting attacked resulting in a "jumps away" result, not suspending the task but removing it completely.

*having large amounts of blocks around has advantages such as preplanning floor plans while leaving gaps for the walls by deleting floors, picture shows walls for visibilty purpose

As soon as anything is designated to be built the item (one specific item) is reserved and locked till it can be deliviered, if the item becomes unavailable during this time the job is cancelled (removed entirely), if the target is unavaiable or blocked (say a cat sits on your spot for the statue or water above 2 exists) it's paused (resumed in T tasks or by manually resuming by clicking). When hauling blocks to your target make sure to not designate the building first or it will lock the bin with blocks in place.

Getting the hang of building logic early and tampering/training your own patience will be the only way to get far into the game, losing the game to patience is the only way faster than fps or raiding or tantrum spirals since the player character's strange mood of completing the game wasn't met in time, the timer ran out and the game was uninstalled so make sure to once in a while forbid your own PC's ingredient for some time so the timer resets. Little ingame logic pun there.

Intermission: Wilderness

Animals are like dwarfs almost, just uncontrollable don't grief if they get spooked by a kea jumping away into your water pool and drowing. All they do is experience true freedom, animals truly are the end point of evolution. Onto serious matters, most animals can't be trained they're just there to give you meat, fat, bone, skin and refuse. Sheep, Llama and Alpaca give wool too but you don't need to slaughter them to get it. Some give milk that rots quickly and makes dwarfs unhappy, can be made into cheese dwarfs rarely haul that rots making dwarfs yet again unhappy. The lack of direct control and directed labor has it's greasy hands all over the animals tab.

*communal living on grazing lands is preferred for any fort as animals that graze will perish when locked in a stone room, a male and female next to eachother and you get a suprise within the coming months. Some animals don't need grass those ones are fine without any food, locked in a room they're totally fine check if your favorite animal can be assigned to your rock inside the pitch black today

Capturing is easy, cage traps everywhere and eventually one will become a meal. One could corral them with a mixture of walls and cage traps so every creature, including invaders, will get a fair share of forceful cage interaction. Once captured inside a cage they're fully harmless only your own misclicks can release them then, some animals are trap immune, most forgotten beasts surely are unless the trap is webbed up removing their immune status. It's a rather late game thing do note not even your own dwarfs are immune then. They will get hauled into a stockpile where they will slowly starve, like caged animals since they are because they're caged. Make sure the grazing ones aren't in cages for seasons Animal Caretakers only feed the wild ones.

Animals in pens will not stay in them, they're merely suggestions. One could leash every animal to a rope but that'd be cruel right? So just accept that one day animals will charge at your foe it'll make good stories. Chain breeding pairs and pen the offspring if you have to for a good comprimise. For war training unfortunately that's for militia where I have to deal with raiding quests, training them is fine but taking them with you is a mistake it will make your own squad worse almost every time. Hunter training is absurd just use your Marksdwarfs to hunt no need for animals to do so. Animals can't get medical tending you're risking valuable breeding partners unless you have an abundance of males bad choice.

Grown animals can never become tame, some animals can't be juvinile and some animals are set to not be fully tame-able without mods. It's a guessing game ingame but the wiki's rather helpful in that regard, I'd check there instead of Steam for help on the animal reproduction.

*an exploit perhaps in the game for a while, 1 tile pens animals won't escape once moved by dwarf, good for hatched animals that are too young to yield meat. Accidents happen your cooks won't have time cooking all the eggs and they will hatch accidentally.

Not sure animals need any more explaining they've been pretty logical, nest boxes no longer need to be assigned so just make sure the pen has enough of them around. Cats population will expand exponentially if you don't geld all but the youngest male and cage him just in case.

Intermission: Work Orders For Dummies

Manually assigning will eventually result in the player throwing a tantrum spiraling other humans around you into a tantrum aswell. That fact has been proven ingame since negative moods do spread like wildfire once it starts getting out of hand, it's prudent that it does not happen in your home, for you family and children's sake, to use Work Orders as much as possible.

Work orders come in all shapes and sizes, explained below:

Manual assignments have a unique property which has advantages, it can be repeated indefinity but it will be cancelled if the order can not be finished anymore. Such behavior can be useful to not clutter up your [Job Cancelled] tab (but eventually you will have no choice but to ignore that one)

Example being making something of a specific type of material (say bins or barrels, since the trading menu sorts by barrel material not by content) the shop will keep making the bin and/or barrel (which you can force a material to, showing the available amount) till the wood of that type runs out while then cancelling giving only one error. When not felling a tree in the meantime it's a predictable outcome therefore a logical way of placing such an order. Other furniture is possible aswell, like ordering a wood chair and a wood table the same amount of chairs and tables will be produced and with 1 more chair with an odd amount of wood of that type.

In addition the work can be forced:

Especially useful in kitchen when say beer is low. You designate Brew Plant and Brew Fruit both with the Exclamation symbol ticked and voila the cook will have no choice but to brew till he gives only 2 error messages when he runs out of plant/fruit. Similarily Cooking meals will also repeat till the cook runs out of materials, Lavish is recommended since after a year of cooking the food will be worth more than your average artifact. Make sure to have the cooking task prohibited by most other dwarfs or they may steal the bench the task requst is very immediate.

Work Orders are one time labor tasks assigning set amounts of tasks spread along every table valid for such a task (default 10). Word order will be set in motion with the Manager processing the request and will not change on you redefining the item. Once it's set in motion it's best to cancel the entire order and starting from fresh since the requests don't update with your descisions till he makes another request "the next day". Has quite a few advantages, albeit obvious. You want these items now, setting the same task manually takes too long so you set the order and wait till it's completed. Do note that once completed the items may still be in transit from the bench to the storage location, storing furniture is a fickle matter preventing workshops cluttering and not getting frustrated dwarfs trying to shift heavy objects around manually for a day till it becomes available again (Especially full cages and work order requests). Overall though quite useful easy to process, you want 20 willow tables order "N CHA" set 20 material willow and it will keep pestering you that the carpenter cancelled the willow table because Need Willow every 30 seconds or so. Alternativey you could chop the tree beforehand but chopping is not a high priority task since it's far away you can force him however with forcing the chopping task and forbidding every other work from him for a while. Errors from this is still manageable, however the next one surely isn't

"Endless requests" or dirty requests are just orders set to 9999 or similar since you want the dwarfs to keep finding the material and use it as soon as it becomes available. Other neat things include Unreliable workflow constraints like Miliking, Shearing, Soap from Tallow or if you're just too lazy setting a reliable constraint. Some labor is impossible to restrict it's either you don't make it or you make too much of too so no shame in doing dirty requests.

Soap has always been a tedious endevour, odds and ends never being able to effectively control, Render Fat is tricky since it can also be used as food so it's necessary to have it be requested at every opportunity possible, Since "when more than 0" is delayed by the Manager doing a dirty assignment is more effective and since the [Job cancelled] in mid-game becomes impossible to effectively manage meaning you dirty requests are your way to go. Others include making rock blocks of your stone forever, for a lazy dwarf a dirty request while being more reliable than a "more than 0" request the 9999 is easier to follow and easy to cancel and distinguish.

Realistic restraints are limited by the available objects on the map, everything except seeds and animal related tasks are almost reliable and can be logically set up. Most requests only need "If less than" since most tasks work that way. Some items are unreliable since dwarfs keep equipping and unequipping them, armor for example. Some items can only be made by trying to remember how many you've made and constantly being fumbled by the military not equipping or seeing them as reserved. I swear that system was made to infuriate the micro-managing perfectionist players. When you see a naked dwarf (now you actually can you didn't have to search through their thoughts of seeing someone naked) make 10 of each clothing item and see if they remain in stockpile. It's great the game sort of found a way to explain how a government is suppose to care for it's population, seeing a problem and adapting if only it'd give you a hint what system works best for what item. Guess they went full realism and dwarfs complaining is your wake up call.

*Realistically there should never be a time with more than 14 rock cabinets around, one could reserve 14 spots in the fort for 14 cabinets when done right. One could tweak it to only make 1 when there's less than 10 but then 1 requests would be made 10 times in a single bench and it'd take forever. Always have as many requests as benches at least. And when it's Make 10 when less than 1 you need to waste every single cabinet till they start making more while also "taking a day" for the Manager to get the order through.

*While you could also do a "make 20 cabinets" while you require of 20 cabinets I've noted how unfuriatingly slow the making gets when you request 20 cabinets, 20 doors, 20 statues and 20 beds for 20 bedrooms while you make the bedroom zones only have a few done. While having stockpile you can place 10, then draw the bedrooms then you end up with 14 of each done, it's also less typing in the work order tab. which you may need to do quite alot when chaning small things often.

I'd just make sure some are always around and make custom requests when requireing a door of a certain material for example.

Overall fine system, wish it'd tell you the logic so you don't spend days trying to understand the odds and ends resulting in wasted time.

Intermission: Work Orders In Practice

Automatic is a lazy man's job but also an intelligent man's job. Getting confused to what you've just made is natural, one accidental click on the giant X and one order is gone you made a dozen hours ago so you gotta follow your path around what you've just ruined. One can just leave them leave on infinite (done so in workbenches to take off Manager' slack) but inevitably it will leave you with hundreds of items stuck waiting to be built. It's probably easiest ot grasp by building in 2 ways and either swapping around when every work taks was completed or due to frustration, followed as such:

20 bedrooms were about to be dug, it requires exactly 20 beds, doors, cabinets and statues, so 20 of each is ordered. If all are made within the same rock type you're in luck it's just 7 more clicks to be done making sure every thing excluding beds is made of the same rock material. After designating, one must wait till all 20 bedrooms are dug and hopefully, with more than a single bench, all 60 Stoneworker' and 20 Carpenter' bench jobs were completed ready for placement.

*Statues block the tile so smoothing before placing is preferred

*Work orders by the manager will not produce less, they'll just be reserved to be hauled into a furniture stockpile for some time and rock items are heavy so it may take a minute

If not one could either wait or preferrably already place some of the produced goods (done in equal amounts, things like 2/1 chairs to tables means tables get done first), hopefully not forgetting to designate the actual bedroom "rooms" or worst of all getting another task somewhere else requiring more items of similar variations making the selection a chore when materials don't match.

Overall clever but with multiple tasks a reason to outright lose patience and continue to following assignments:

Always have 5 chairs, 5 tables, 5 beds, 5 doors, 5 cabinets, 5 statues, 5 coffers(they're rock chests), 5 weapon racks, 5 armor stands around, leaving you with either a fully cluttered workbench or a storage space in such a mess you'll start filling walking corridors with furniture storage (excluding bins/barrels/bags and other non-placeables). Advantages do exist while you'll always have things around at all times you'll never have a choice of what material they'll be in the future. One could have them made of a single rock but it will enenvitably run out (or one mines out your favorite rock layer fully ruining your perfect shapes of that area already dug out of that rock type (presumably the rock you most had back when). Alternativey leaving it without a rock choice leaves you with a grab bag of bedrooms eventually driving you insane but because you'll always have those items already made returning to the first way of dealing with suck problems is just another coping system of you getting sick of this game.

A truly vicious cycle, only overcome with playing it more, eventually disregarding perfection and accepting inevitable crudeness of reality. Once perfect bedrooms built a giant bat knawed your favorite dwarf, life at least in this game certainly isn't fair but it's manageable with just enough patience to get your through the inevitable bump of caring.

Both systems do work, although later on one would inevitly swap to the latter especially going past the "smooth everything" phase" realizing one table's the wrong color, a pink door on a gray wall, just accepting such minor feats while the Military's fighting a heroic battle outside. All it requires is basic logic and the storage space (and patience when put far way from the rock work benches) follwing:

When one has set to make 4 more tables when less than 5 exist one must always consider 5-9 storage spaces exclusively for tables. Either put seperately as a 2x5 stoage spot (artifact leeway perhaps) and at one glance you notice in your favorite storage layer if you've got tables around. Now just do that for every object available, staying in that perfect layer of one color building in another mined from a layer you don't care about (as if Chalk tables would look good in Chalk rooms) and all the other rocks are just made into crafts to get rid of the temptation of making objects of another color (except perhaps Microcline or Obsidian for Magma reasons they're easy to distinguish) and maybe just maybe you'll never get to break a perfect fortress. Of course similarily done to blocks the same color as your objects will eventually lead to the same issue of Chalk on Chalk so perhaps leave 2 rocks open for your favorite over-ground building projects and burn everything else.

*When Sand exists and Magma is available doing Green Glass is probably easier, glass doors may not look good but they're truly extravagant even when they don't fit at all in your blue rock fortress

*Wood is considerable but since forests are of 20+ wood types (and colors) unlike ASCII you'll see the difference of differently wood floors and blocks of only one wood type requires either micromanagement what to chop or some way to get rid of bad wood (Spike Balls perhaps, they're Carpenter task not Wood Crafter). Underground wood also works, first cavern only has 2 wood types but others have more and once cracked your custom-made forest production areas will inevitably become just as tainted with junk wood to be removed. It's also not nearly enough and no statues can be made of wood so whatever one does to wood it will never be perfect.

*Both work order ways can be combined, but generic furniture storage of over twice the amount of space you expect is recommended, it also gets absurd how they start hauling to the outside edges of large storage spaces first instead of what's closest to the dwarf.

Unreliable things:

*Seeds/ Armor/ Weapons/ Wheelbarrows/ Barrels/ Bins/ Buckets/ Cages are unreliable or unreadable in Work Orders, one must consider forcing one-time orders when item is required like and remembering at all times.

First Month: Creative Pipeline

The endgoal of this game is to thrive, meaning your own narrow minded thought process has to go early. This game has 3 dimensions but only 2 are visible at all times meaning the depth should always be remembered while getting creative in the 2 dimensions left to you. Multiple levels of room don't do anything except giving your flying pets ways to become wild and escaping, they are pretty but difficult to build and it's probably best keeping the natural floor around for smoothing and engraving a gigantic room is enough to get the best room quality without even putting in a chair. Dwards really like giant rooms smoothed out perfectly, they must have night vision or somthing sounds like a Backroom to me personally but pitch black since inside a mountain and all that.

For me personally I've noticed I always tend to end up making towers, most games giving me the option I need an edge to build off of then I build like a scyscraper up or down depending what's more appealing. This game I tried making rooms but they've just been inefficient and resulting in too much rock at once, protecting your frames is very important once you've got enough dwarfs to cause havok on the mines. Only limitation is when you've reached the first cavern layer, by that point difficulty is hit up a notch since creatures could climb into your fort taking down a few, causing negative mood causing spirals. Everything before is true bliss of creative freedom, mine out an ugly mess, turn it into blocks and build a fortress you can. Mine out symmetrical perfection and make the blocks into crafts saving your frames you surely can do that too. Only limits are the looming threats and eventual boredom of... yourself when your mind races faster than the game can follow, designating too much causing the game to slow which widens the gap of patience you have among the game. The first years it will go perfectly when suddenly it can go down to a crawl, say never designate Channels then forget about them they're a frame killer you can forget about. Earlier on there were several cases where frame death could occur, most funnily cats trying to path through forbidden doors or dwarfs hanging in trees.

*The center spire is limited by the room sizes, stairs connecting to diagonals into rooms highest efficiency of room density it's ugly but for fps it's perfection

After getting your bedrooms set up, with consideration of eventual doubling of your population at least in planning out the bedroom location one could speedrun to get to the cavern layer, then mine and build around there since spiderwebs start spawning in your dug area very slowly getting rid of the thread and silk issue. Or slowly start building down till you've got enough miners to exponentially expand while always considering the fps slowdown resulting in slower months going forward.

Creativity limited by the game's performance, truly an innovative way to adapt gaming, one can't really explain creativity that does not posess it themselves, early game is merely a race to find a fortress design that suits you, there may truly be no way to explain every feature and limitation by simple text it may have to be experienced so that part of creativity shall remain open up for interpretation. I'd still try to explain frame death and militia (by god if I get to it) or even the book writing system which could be a game of it's own trying to host your library.

Hopefully i get to explain every system in detail so the only thing infuriating left is the natural difficulty. It shouldn't come from lack of understanding and crooked/broken systems that only make sense once you've experienced it collapsing around you. Till then I hope they make the [Delete thing] button of stockpiles, burrows and militia become a hold to delete till I'm done here. It's gotta be a joke that those buttons are where they are.

Intermission: Storage Space

As soon as the Storage:All is pressed you've already lost the game, the way it is handled you wonder what's the point. If you get the hang of storage 10 minutes spent carefully planning out the storage spaces you will save hours, if not entire forts, of annoying questions why they couldn't split rings from ropes, bars from blocks and weeds from rocks.

It's rather simple, roughly explained like this:

[Ammo] should be kept near the fortress entrance, wooden bolts probably split from non-wooden ones in the training area or far away from your engagement. One can forbid them when a fight ensues before they're searching for ammo by bulk forbidding the bin with wooden bolts inside. Can be left for now since bows are a rare militia specialisation for now crossbows can be stored next to warhammers and picks in the same crate.

[Animals] is where every cage will be brought, unless empty cages get forbidden. Can be useful, when the trapping happens during a siege it's forbidden by default. Empty cages can flood that stockpile so make a full only one next to the empty only one

[Armor] before producing armor can be intermingled with [Weapons], afterwards it's recommended split and sorted by type although it will be stolen anyway to be put in armor stands inside of Barracks but keeping them sorted by type at least you where the overflow is brought to.

[Bars/Blocks] should be split like this:

-Nothing can carry [Bars: metal] till you smelt it or buy it even then having a stockpile for all bars causes a mess trying to split it up again. One bar job locks out the others jobs get cancelled using one deep down the bin it's a mess. Split up as verbose as possible.

For [Bars other material] Ash is kept seperate(near Ashery), Coal is kept seperate(near Furnace/Forge), Pearlash near Glass Forge and Potash near fertilized farms. Soap is stored seperately in hospitals, they will bring some to chests naturally but nothing else uses soap anyway. Don't forget to unforbid everything else else you don't want soap inside a block bin or ash near your farms.

On [Block: stone/clay] is tricky one can store all of them in a single stockpile if possible, then when one block type is needed it is restricted and a stockpile right next to it is placed where only that one block is allowed. After that bin is filled delete that stockpile and relocate that bin and pray to Armok they're not hauling either an empty bin or a single block. You can also increase the odds by making it bigger than 1x1. Make sure no other workshop can carry these they will waste alot of space and/or bins.

The [Blocks metal] is only needed when making a Gold or Adamantine Block since it's a Block and can enhance the quality of an artifact that requires a block, otherwise no need to make blocks since it's a 1:1 conversion and you can't use blocks for forging it's wasting material. You shouldn't ever need that storage unless it's for artifact tweaking.

Since [Blocks: other materials] is for any wood block, not sure why it's not showing the wood type but you can't split up wood blocks once they're merged in a bin. The glass doesn't matter since you would need to make it yourself and by then distance wouldn't matter and you wouldn't store wood blocks anymore either.

[Cloth] should be kept a tiny stockpile next to the Clothier' workshop

[Coins] only worth a stockpile once you make coins which is quite late game unless manager demands, kept split in a single box is preferred.

[Finished goods] is complicated:

"Make Crafts" creates 8 items: Amulets, Bracelets, Crowns, Earrings, Figurines, Rings, Scepters, Totems, these should ALWAYS be split apart from anything not from that category. Yes you do need to remember these 8 not as bad as the Refuse of useful junk. Always keep these as far away from other bins as possible, even the rest is weird

Tools include various items, see Wiki, so making tools to sell will always result in odd junk inside of crates to sell

Toys are a possible way alternatively to Crafts if selling these best kept these split. Make sure to keep some around though hard to do.

Musical Instruments are best kept split around anything secure, big ones best placed down and a Tavern with 999 Instruments requested rather than storing them in bins.

Others could be stored in a new stockpile for bulk, clothing can be split do note all bins will still have the "Finished Goods Bin" but when selling it's not a clicking simulator unless it's elfs. Splitting clothes from crutches is preference only.

[Food] is tricky have yet to find a way to have them forcefully haul Cheese they're seem to always leave it to rot. Food in stockpiles does not rot, game doesn't tell you guess you're suppose to know as such. However:

Seeds are kept seperate near any overground/underground farm, although they still want to store them in bags and refuse to haul them otherwise. Without bags in store they will seemingly never haul seeds. Everything else is difficult to not store together unless it's a logical reason like having a "below ground" burrow only zone where dwarfs aren't allowed to visit your main stockpile. The bigger the stockpile the more efficient they sort the thing so I think it's fine to store anything besides seeds together.

[Furniture/siege ammo] is tricky. Heavy ones should be stored close by the bench that produced it, efficiency speaking they're having a hard time using wheelbarrows on benches not sure they even do. Overall bulk storage would work but bins/barrels/bags/minecarts/sand bags will clog up the storage space quickly. Minecarts can be stored in quantum stockpile, sand bags are dumped to the glass manufacturing and best kept without storage system. Bags, Bins and Barrels are kept seperate since they're used seperately from furniture. Siege ammo parts are kept next to their workbench, truly wrong keeping them in the same stockpile as furniture.

[Gems] need 3 stockpiles: One for raw gems next to a jewler bench, Cut gems presumably also next to the jewler but with bins for bulk storage and a raw/cut storage for raw glass of any kind. When making a specific kind of glass forbidding it everywhere but the storage for only that glass raw glass type is preferred though.

[Leather] should be kept in a tiny storage next to a Leatherworker's workshop

[Corpses] is just to get rid of full bodies inside the fortress, otherwise never create it to prevent them hauling bodies INTO the fortress instead.

Intermission: Storage Space *p2

[Refuse] is probably best kept never created, one except is when the Butcher's table is full with skulls (junk item) and after that only certain Refuse is actually needed for recipes:

Bones (not mangled ones) for crafting, Shells for crafting and Alpaca/Sheep/Llama hair

Since it will always have identical priority to other stockpiles it's preferred one uses DUMP to get rid of most junk, corpses being the only important one since dwarfs "care" for them, Refuse stockpiles of most things wastes time since stockpiles can't be made under bridges to have them smashed, unable to sell most of them like clothes, anything but the mentioned above would waste time and storage space not to mention the view of little items like teeth spread along every one a tile.

[Sheet] is a weird stockpile, kept around a Craftsdwarf' to bind books but you'll never have enough to fill multiple boxes

[Stone] is split up to:

Metal ores: best never hauled up the fort unless specifically next to a Smelter or later on Magma Smelter in less than massive amounts. Work Orders of that many ores smelted the amount you see present next to the smelter, keep 10 spots open of one ore only for best convenience.

Other stone: Around both assembly of Stonework and Craftsdwarf, both of which are linked to only be allowed to take rocks from that stockpile (Craftsdwarf workshop will be forbidden from taking things from anywhere else but is preferred to crafting say traction benches on a seperate bench not linked to Work Orders)

Economic when playing on default difficulty is a joke, mix with Other stone but allow the stone to be used aswell or it will clog the system, keep some of the 5 specific rocks around near Smelter/Magma Smelter for Steel production.

Clay is a weird system outclassed by bulk stone crafting, linked to a crafting location and kept small

[Weapons/trap comps] is best kept together with [Armor] till bulk smithing begins, except Trap Components they will clog up the weapon bins (especially Spike Balls they will be everywhere) Afterwards keep the militia's weaponry in bins next to their training, neatly split up in weapon specifics (various amounts can be stored per box however) so a 2x1 zone per weapon and armor piece you're forging into your barracks. Can set to only bring high quality and low quality to be stored without bins to be smelted somewhere else although no system helps you sorting out storage like that.

Splitting your stockpiles, and remembering what you are storing and where you're storing it should always be remembered in case you're making a stockpile of any item and they're not hauled to there immediately. Dwarfs see distance as the crow flies (through rock even) and it's tasks are done sorted by absolute distance when priority is the same. Building, just like hauling, has no priority which makes it a true game of patience. With storing without them being forced to haul they almost exclusively prioritize other tasks since they see the target as distance measurement making far away constructions or hauling quite unappealing. Alternatively you could force a burrow onto just the building project or stockpile, assign a couple dwarfs (some could still pray, party or sleep for quite some time before actually caring to do so) and they will see only the tasks inside that burrow and haul things from outside into there (if the burrow allowes for such, it's a tickbox on by default). Best case scenario forcing building or hauling using burrows should work, but DF is less about efficiency and more about not losing your sanity getting headless chickens to lay down in your preferred position so using your stockpiles efficiently and remembering where they are is the bread and butter of your fortresses.

Intermission: Storage Area In Practice

Do note the only distance variable is when heavy items are hauled from workshop to storage, technically if enough wheelbarrows are assigned they should never haul heavy objects (rocks, ores, rock furniture, metal cages etc.) from storage to destination other than from and to workbenches. Distance of small objects has little impact other than multiple object tasks wasting the crafter's time since he has to run the distance several times or if one part is heavy (say Steel requiring coal, flux and pig iron while flux will always be hauled by hand). Always put storages roughly around by where things are crafted, or not and just have heavy items specifically forbidden everywhere else EXCEPT immediately closeby the workbenches.

Only heavy component being Ore, it's the only that needs to be close by to Smelter. Wood enters creating Coal, which then used for smelting said Ore then be deposited into specific Ingot storage to be used by the Metal Forge. Ingot storage is split by useful ones seperately and one storage allowing all but the ones selected previously. No way to do this cleanly however one has to remember what ingots were stored already and it's a manual untick task each time since copy/pasting settings doesn't exist yet. It would however make it extremely clear where and how many ingots are around. Storage is limited by the amount of bins can be stored, metal forge doesn't need more than a bin's worth anyway. Your useful ores won't be blocked by a barrage of unusable ones can be expanded with 2 full closed bins. Note fueled Metal Forge also requires Coal so the entire setup should preferrably close while wood being the only true bottleneck. Storing coal in multiple location is discouraged! Hauled wood ensures fuel is produced steadily with proper work order, perhaps Wood Furnace linked to the wood stockpile to restrict the dwarf from even leaving to get wood but not really necessary since wood is light otherwise fine system.

Finished Goods of Crafts have Craftsdwarf Workbenches below, still logistically close by originally there were 4 on the same floor in the visible gap in benches.

Leather stored split next to Leatherworker

Cloth stored split next to Clothiers', expanded by 9 since human traded cloth bins weren't stored.

Glass (rough/cut/block) stored since currently bought and stored for potential artifacts

Weapon/Armor storage for the bought and lying around unused armor, would get sorted and split by armor piece (and perhaps quality with a smelting stockpile without bins for lower quality) but without dozens of armors it can be safely combined. Just keep traps away since they will infect weapon bins.

Rough Gems, as Cut gems, stored next to Jewlers'. Stored box expanded once storage is full, best kept close but not too close to surface for selling but not too close for Keas to come and steal parts of.

New location of "Crafts", other finished goods stored seperately so they're not merged into crafts on selling "finished goods bins", 1 floor above the rock stockpile locked to be allowed to make crafts made of rock from only that storage location. Stonecrafters (4 since 4+ workers specialized for the task) linked to the rock stockpile to prevent them from trying to carry rock hundreds of blocks to craft furniture. Multiple rock stockpiles is not advised, it'd get too confusing with wheelbarrow assignment and labor requirement varies too quickly. If too many rocks (1000+) exist and no rock is usable for you in order roughly 500 Rock Crafts and everyone not locked to their specific task can make crafts. Communal work of crafting is good for mood (be creative, make object etc.) and the task of removing not needed rock saves up frames if put in bins then sold (and most of the time gifted later) to caravans. Wagon caravans can carry over a million dwarf bucks worth of rock crafts there's no need to specialize in that department. Specializing statue/table/throne crafting has the placeable objects so they're gonna be useful for way longer and are harder to sell (literally, hard rock weighs a ton but crafts don't seem to, even though they're 1 block per just as most furniture).

Corpse storage is tricky, best never selected to prevent dwarfs wasting time. When a cavern layer is exposed most items will be forbidden it's best to get a mindset going every time selecting a Corpse-, or especially Refuse-, stockpiles:

Once a body desires hauling forbid every corpse on the map (done so in Stocks screen) then unforbid the corpse desired hauling. Creating stockpile for it and delete once corpse was moved to prevent futher hauling of additional corpses that weren't forbidden.

Intermission: Storage Area In Practice *p2

[Food] takes time to understand, after a while it's an autmatic clicking spree of 5+ zones constantly MANUALLY copied around, following:

[Prepared Meals] (preferrably without barrels, only saves 2+ spots per tile and can't be split when selling) Closer to the fortress' spine since the target destination is prioritized over other meals (picture's simplified, multiple storages possible as long as this storage is always closer than ANY other storage space (since prepared food will rot and it'll be terrible)

[Unprepared Fish] preferred never selected since after fishing either the "Fisherdwarf" will prioritize Cleaning Fish anyway or he'll just drop it next to him and resume fishing (if Fisher and Cleaner is split using custom orders) he'll fill the fishing spot with fish instead of your storage spaces. When stored indoors preferrably in barrels, next to Fisher station, since output of fish and processing of fish is never consistant (and cleaning will be slower sometimes while Legendary Fisherdwarfs are beyond broken) and it will rot if left without one. Cleaner running over to fishing spot's preferred most the time, or a storage around the fishing spot which preserves the food without dwarf labor (without barrels it will add labor)

Pond fishing results in [Unprepared Fish] Mussel, which is [Refuse] Shells and [Food] Raw Mussel when processed, handed similiarily.

*Make sure only your Fishers will fish, or forbid it entirely it's a non-predictable task they'll fish even without designation zone now.

[Egg] is tricky, allow every egg and forbid your reproducing egg layers. In addition remove eggs available for cooking should be put close-by to Kitchen. When no hatching animals are required remove male counterpart and accept them lying in the Nests (unrottable for some reason) or keep Nest Box rooms close to kitchen and never worry about storing eggs at all. Barrels are possible

[Plants]/[Fruit] clutter up generic "Food" since it's many varieties exist. Barrels help with keeping storage from being absurd, storage always needs to be available or Herbalists will randomly drop them around random places throughout. Size depending on what and how often is gathered, how many Querns or Millstones exist and how busy dwarfs are not cooking. Most need processing before use in Brew or Cook. Probably easiest to put a constantly expanding storage around near the grazing pen/pasture (without barrels) since storage doesn't block the graze nor harvest ground and it'll always be empty) or next to Quern/Millstone in barrels.

*Mill needs bags, they will put single seeds into bags and getting them out of bags is nothing but impossible make sure enough EMPTY bags exist at all times by limiting the space [Seeds] is allowed to take up

[Drink] doesn't rot so preferrably put futher away than perishable Prepared Meals/Fish/Meat, never be optimized for hauling since Refuse of Butcher will always be futher away and it containing rot items. Probably put around drinking areas (and storage for Goblets) in or around dining rooms.

[Seeds] should always be split from generic "Food" (no barrels since logistically dwarfs don't see other seeds when one seed is accessed), used for cooking if selected or for farming outdoors or indoors so it'd probably should be around these 3 if combined. Dwarfs will only haul seeds into bags followed by bringing "bags" into storage for "seeds". Taming animals leaves seeds in cages that won't be hauled till dumped however (probably a bug currently) and makes cages unusable.

[Fat] is annoying since it's combined into butcher result FAT and processed in Kitchen TALLOW, Butcher left cluttered with fat and Tallow storage next to Soap Maker is likely preferred since fat is also used for cooking and Butcher next to Kitchen is preferred anyway. Selecting all Tallow will take forever so select Tallow of animals you have there's no easy way to split them yet unfortunately. Barrels are possible.

[Misc. liquid] Lye (in buckets) Kept near Soap Maker without barrels

Milk of lime (in buckets) kept near Screw press without barrels

[Paste] (in buckets) is for paper production near Screw Press without barrels

[Extract] is a mix of mostly useless liquid, food material "milk" and Soap material "oil" best left never made. Extract put in barrels will be there forever if not used the only other use is selling the entire barrel.

The rest is "food" can be combined near for kitchens: [Meat],[Fish],[Cheese],[Pressed Material],[Milled Plant].

Not including [Egg] best left in nest boxes

Not adding [Extract (plant)] (milk) cluttering up the storage with empty buckets

Not choosing [Fat] being a junk item left in Butcher table it either gets rendered (done automatically by default) or used for cooking quickly anyway

Not combined with [Drink] since it doesn't rot, should be prioritized in hauling than drink (done by putting drink storage futher away) Alternatively Still without drink storage, forcefully assigning a dwarf to only do Brew and receiving Equilibrium due to Bench cluttering slowing him down if not enough is being drunk.

*[Milled Plant] will leave empty bags in [Food] consider leaving it not selected or having a big storage of bags around with dwarfs willing to hauling empty bags

*Barrels used for tediousness, will waste alot of barrels irregularily

After a hundred hours this comes naturally, or you forget and it'll be hard to split again since randomly items than can rot lye (not the item, although it could) within. Do note if barrels are used is best done with clicking either [None] or [Food] since the latter will always assign the most amount of barrels while the former does not and then customizing. Not having barrels wasted sitting next to things never put in barrels wastes barrels, and storing food in barrels (for example) creates a weird mix of single items put in barrels reserving more empty barrels to be brought. 1 empty barrel will always be assigned if one is taken and prepared food sometimes is reserved blocking the barrel (presumably) so they waste storage space (and barrels). Every split storage make sure if barrels are desired or not, rotting will only occur outside of storage space barrels don't matter at all only for hauling efficiency and storage "compactness".

*Manager thinking spot included for consistancy, all he needs is a chair and a room of any size, don't get fancy unless you want to

*Drink can only exist in barrels, dwarfs will dehydrate next to a still (presumably built with something not a barrel and carved out cups) not being able to brew without an output barrel, technically true for things like beer and wine (taking time to produce alcohol) but for dwarfs drinking real booze out of hands is even worse than drinking water since they could just suckle on the output. Unfortunately not the case as of yet.

*Cheese is autmateable, milking is not, making it a truly horrific task to not just set (dirty work order) and ignore, after being made it will not be in a barrel and it can rot so storing [Cheese] as you would [Prepared Food] so it gets prioritized to hauling similar to hauling food out of Kitchen' table. Alternatively behaves like [Meat] does in butcher, but Cheese takes more effort it's tricky and more sad to see it rot.

*Farmer' shop will also be cluttered with [Refuse] Alpaca/Llama/Sheep wool (all bear milk too) and [Cloth] Yarn thread perhaps have 2 different shops specialized for Shear/Spin and Milk/Make Cheese to reduce the inevitable clutter of one affacing the other.

*[Furniture] Bucket storage only works with empty buckets, water buckets (and similarily annoying items like dropped clothes) inside of food storage will break that tile. 1 tile storage therefore can result in disaster, only stockpile important to exist for rotting reasons so always consider leaving room for expansion in case this happens either filling up or dwarven engineering ruining gameplay.

First Season: Dealing With Migrants

The moment the game becomes a strategy game, tasks become a mere minute task while trying to plan ahead for more to come. Things to always remember is splitting the important jobs from the garbage ones. First thing to consider, if not done so already to force the first 7 to attack a critter, is to create a militia of every dwarf that's not necessary for your survival. Excluding doctors assignments every dwarf should be considered, once they're injured permanently should be reconsidered but for now they're the last line of defense in case something dangerous is threatening one of your dwarfs.

Militia screen gotta be one of the most confusing menus there are, as it was originally aswell, Equip selects equipment, Schedule gets the scedule, the dwarf head is the recruitment screen, the weird symbol is what burrow they're assigned to patrol while on duty when given that order, the checkbox is what squad is currently marked. It's logical just keep in mind the delete militia button it'll always be there. One could just hire 10, given them Metal or Leather armor and they'll grab anything that's not a pickaxe automatically. Pickaxes can be used as weapons but must be assigned in one of the worst equip screens made by man. Just like the pen assignment screen it's sorted by age since built so it will not chance unless the item is lost and new weapons will added on the bottom. Making more than a squad of pickaxe wielders I wouldn't want my nemesis to suffer the consequences of miscounting. Note most menus accept changes but the equip screen requires the Confirm to confirm. Schedule is best you copy over the "No orders" one to the other 3 seasons and give them training once an actual militia is possible (weapon training above armor production, once 10 weapons of a type exist), I think there's no real way for them to be forced to wear the armor at all times while also working so keep the armor stockpiles (and later armor stands) close enough to where fighting would start.

After that you've got the backup plan done saving is always a consideration after doing ANYTHING major since a crash now would take any fun out of that fortress embark. The militia screen should also require a save before going in there since the delete button is always there, there should be a troll face on there honestly.

Afterwards assigning labor, is anyone a carpenter more talented than you? Stonecutter? Any work with quality one must consider swapping the old dwarfs if a specialized dwarf arrives. When someone's drained of blood an arriving dwarf with more than 2 expert skills was a vampire but that's later on. Hard to spot later on too since the menu's beyond cluttered and the brain has melted from all the oversight task giving and forced labor assinged to just patronage and scholarships.

Some specilisations hide under good ones, militia menu shows the combat related ones and picked for a junk militia then drafted to say patrol changes their "Profession" to Wrestler etc. so you can exclude the combat related ones immediately. Medical facilities show medical professions then add the "task" symbol behind their name to also exclude them from dangerous work types and mining (dangerous in it's own good also very distracting and it would move them far away from the hospital) other than that not much can be done other than setting custom tasks just to check if anyone's a hidden Beekeeper set profession "Farmer". Food tasks are exponentially useful (quality and quantity increases) when skilled. 25 farm plots per dwarf skill is very depending on outcome so it's impossible to predict a reliable outcome of crop yield. Fishing will cover food for a very long time it's the easy way of food collecting. Legendary Fisherdwarf can get enough food for almost 200 dwarfs or way more if only assigned to fishing and not Fish Cleaning they're easy mode. Beekeeping can get both food and drink but with negative mood of "getting stung" of several dwarfs in the near vicinity, impossible to reliably predict outcome of course. In addition beekeeping houses have unpredictable labor requirements although one dwarf can easily care for 10 hives once they're schedule of harvesting starts getting shifted between hives.

You will go mad trying to optimize them so it's best to keep it simple. For me I assign everyone to mining that's not specialized to long-time tasks, same with hauling although if you lock say the Cook/Brewer to only cook or brew he will get bored doing nothing for a long time so Hauling on them even locked on will be fine since you can "!" the drink and food production making him drop everything to cook and brew. Can't be done for Farming nor Plant Gathering nor Beekeeping though it's a tricky proposition locking away tasks for a dwarf. Always making sure he has something else to do while also not locking in a task he does more often than what you're expecting he'd do (Fishers will still mostly fish even with Hauling set but that's the exception to the rule) the system of task assignment even if you know the inns and outs has serious flaws if you try to micro the dwarf tasks.

Addendum: Practical Job Assignment

Probably easiest explaing the thought process of assigning directly:

Scribe (feathers) are set to write books/scrolls. So he doesn't get bored half the time he's set to hauling, always check if he's close to breaking but he'll be able to write a book just fine. Him being a Legendary Miner means he could write about it but don't trust on it. Getting a Miner Guild open for visitors is alot more reliable giving everyone skill in it than doing the Scholar route.

Farming & Hauling locked in is a mistake but with enough farmers they will prioritize farming most the time although not nearly as reliable as Fishing is.

Clothery is locked in since clothing production is a rare task (unless you make cloth/silk in bulk then sell it) so specialisation once a work order to get a full set of clothes is made specializing one already skilled is preferred. Not recommended to lock him in forever though unless you always have haul tasks, forcing clothing production isn't as needed they do prioritize bench working over hauling most the time and it's not a critically important task either.

Tavern keepers can be locked into only tavern duty with enough dwarfs, just check if he's getting unhappy they can and will get unhappy if locked with only one task sometimes. He became Baron after becoming Tavern Keeper royal professions are rare time wasters it's not mutually exclusive to anything besides dangerous tasks you can't have him mining or militia.

Fishing locked in with Plant Gathing only since this fortress doesn't even have anything to fish and he's assigned to check occasionally. You would notice hundreds of pond turtle shells in your fort clogging up the Fishery and Raw Pond Turtle around ponds, true fps killer if not noticed early.

Scholars can be forced into library duty, not a long term task but useful to not have him do dangerous task unless hauling around dangerous locations. Hauling might never be done since I think besides free time and sleep he may only do his main job but it's always nice to have Hauling after just in case.

Smithing without splitting dwarfs into a burrow weapon and armor sections is impossible I believe unless tasks are ordered manually. "Smithing" description is both Weapon Smith and Armorer either one had Armorer experience one had both from previously doing my several dozen pickaxes.

Stonecutting 5 people are specialized into, not using the "Stonecutters" task skince it includes Smoothing and everydwarf should be able to smooth that would exclude it for everyone. 5 dwarfs for 4 benches is useful to have them rotate occasionally optimally one would be asleep at all times to give it an example.

Bards should probably have Hauling assinged and be locked to the task to protect him from dangerous tasks. Good artists are both sort of useless and sad to lose it's always nice to see him collect a crowd for some time giving good thoughts. Anyone could but good ones do it slightly better.

Furnace Operators affact wood burning speed, it's a rare task to be forced upon, locked since fuel was needed for smelting exploit.

Doctors (doctor symbol, weirdly enough identical) are the 4 doctors tasks. Since it's not a long term task and hauling would become too boring exclusively it's not locked. Hard to task dwarfs to do things openly without annoying. On an injury it's recommended to lock it in though, if you remember to unlock it after. If the dwarf gets stuck in a corner remove that corner from the hospital immediately, just a little kink with hospitals.

Mining CAN be specialized into, locking them into Mining and Hauling and never changing such. However since dwarfs with pickaxes can defend themselves better, could do the same with Battle Axe, everyone assigned to mining (with picks to go around) is quite effective. Even moreso with Steel Picks they're quite good tools including for defense. Citizens will only attack if attacked first though, military is still the preferred way to go through raids and dangerous beasts. Everyone as miner will only have the unfortunate effect of them wanting a Miner's Guild which is the least of your concerns once you're beyond the threshold of caring for micromanaging every dwarf. Mining is an easy task to assign to everyone since underground bases require stone to process and quantity outweights quality in mining by alot. Legendaries are only 5 times as fast as no skill no matter the pick it's a strange balance act since you will have more dwarfs idle than legendary dwarfs outweighing by more than factor 5. Picks are easy to forge copper is plenty for usage however getting rid of copper picks is tedious they'll equip them with no preference unless they're manually assigned by military and they grow attached to them (undrafted they will drop them which has got to be a joke since they will pick it back up after when assigned to mining). Remembeing the amount of picks in storage at all times is easy too, start with 7 if you assign more miners make 10 more you have 17 total around. Storage also has a category PICK.

*That fort specifically has 85 picks around and 10 are unequipped

Addendum: Task Priority

Work tasks are done by absolute distance, disregarding walls, of task destination only restricted by allowance and burrows. Burrows need to be "realized" before they care.

(Note sometimes you restrict a military personnel to a burrow it will stay there indefinitly (a bug) since it's not actually a valid dwarf to restrict so always assign everyone you want to and use the "pause" button for all assignments in the future.

Priority of digging, chop, gather and smooth menu tasks can be set from 1-7 lower being of higher priority. Building, as is hauling, are on the same priority at all times if you want dwarfs to haul something desginate only the stockpile, or custruct site, in the burrow (maybe drinks too for long term building) and force all set builders to the burrow till it's complete. Especially important for Kitchen and Farmer shop to haul Cheese and Prepared Meal out before it rots, since the kitchen will be futher away than most other non-important stockpiles in most senseful fortress layouts. Alternatively one could put the stockpile for the kitchen utensils before every other stockpile in the fortress (distance from fortress spine), distance to target is always considered first no matter where the Kitchen or Farmer shop is they will fill the Food stockpile first then.

Knowing this, without burrow insanity since Worship!, Socialize! and Sleep dwarfs will ignore burrows for quite a while. Do note the unconspicious button allowing dwarfs to see items not inside their burrows making them virtually useless for over half the things burrows are used for. Multiple burrows can overlap but viewing of it is rather confusing. Designations can't be marked through multiple levels, contrary to things like mining, and no "fill" exists designations are all manual on every new burrow. Always remember the 2 button locations of the "DELETE BURROW", since it moves when editing, to never click around those areas while expanding the burrows. Probably best to save before considering to open the thing just in case one accidentally tries dragging a box then accidentally clicking on said button and it's gone permanently.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955282749					

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