The Beginning (Optimizing Your Dwarves Jobs)
So let's say that you've just started a new game (or you've already started and are tired of things taking forever to build). Before we start talking about optimizing the base, we can get A LOT more work out of our dwarves by optimizing them. I beat the game and have a great base... with 12 dwarves. Even at the bottom of the mountain (normal size), it usually takes less than a minute to build something. More dwarves will not make your base more efficient. You really don't need more than 10 dwarves to beat the game.
Step 1: Specialization!!!!
Just like in real life, an economy flows much more efficiently when it has specialists. A specialist is someone who focuses on a specific career/job and eventually becomes really good at it.
So the first step is to have ONE dwarf per main job, and ONLY one dwarf. So one dwarf is the blacksmith and no one else is allowed to be a blacksmith, and the blacksmith isn't cooking or making bandages, they are JUST the blacksmith and maybe one or two side things.
This does 2 important things.
1. Only one dwarf will be getting XP from a task so they will level up really fast and quickly start producing very high quality items or producing items very quickly.
2. Dwarves won't be halfway across the map and then decide "Hey, I'm going to run across the map and go make 1 hammer out of 50."
When you click on a dwarf and their little menu pops up, you can see their skills. If you left click on a skill, it will be grayed out and they can't do that job. If you right click on a skill it will add a star, giving that job priority for them.
The following professions should have ONLY ONE DWARF WHO IS ALLOWED TO DO THAT JOB:
Blacksmith/whitesmith (I have 1 dwarf who does both)
Metallurgist (the person who makes ingots)
Tailor (making clothes)
Arcanist (who makes bones and maps and stuff)
Trader (it can take a bit for one dwarf to sell lots of items, but having one trader fully decked out gets you great prices when selling things)
Guard (someone who wears heavy armor and has multiple weapons)
Cook (not needed in the early game)
Stonemason (who can also focus on other things)
Everyone else is not allowed to do their job, and they are allowed to do a few extra things, such as hauling, building, militia duty. EVERYONE ELSE is not allowed to do these things and they are basically the ants, hauling things around the base, building, and farming.
Using this system, you don't even need to worry about job priorities or anything like that, the base will run itself.
Now some people might say "That doesn't make sense, I have 20 dwarves and it takes forever to do anything". Well that's because we are going to combine our specialist system with good base building. But first, we aren't done with our dwarves just yet.
Equipping Your Dwarves For Max Productivity
So now that we have the most important jobs in the mountain being done by 1 specialist each and everyone else is just a hauler, we are ready to make them into high productivity machines.
Each dwarf has stats in their little info menu, and if you hover over a stat, it shows you what attributes effect what jobs. For example, if it says that a hauler gets bonuses from robustness and deftness, then we want those to be as high as possible (30 is max). So in the trait/talent tree give them perks that are useful for their profession and THEN just throw on any perks that increase those attributes.
So now the skill/talent tree or whatever is optimized to give them max attribute bonuses to their dedicated jobs. Now they need the right tools.
Obviously, give the black/whitemsith their hammers, the tailor a needle, etc etc, the highest stat items possible (see other guides for ideal tool materials)
Everyone but the guard should have the BEST possible beaver worker outfit because it provides huge bonuses to hauling capacity and move speed. IIRC, mythic beaver outfits with mithril clasps will give you hauling boosts of 400+. To level up the tailor so they can make mythic clothes, you can plant lots of trolltails and make a bajillion hauler sacks that you sell to a market.
Then, everyone who is a hauler gets a hauling sack, the highest quality of course. Heavy pickaxes will give you a bonus to mining resources, but you aren't going to use them (explained later), so give all the haulers the best light pickaxes for getting through stone.
You can also create rings that give stat bonuses based on the ring and the gem, with different gems giving different stat boosts. If you can make rings that boost the stats you want and a dwarf isn't already lvl 30 in their stats/attributes, then give them those rings.
So, with our maxed out stats, lovely beaver outfits, and giant hauling bags, let's talk about having a good base!
Building A Great Base
So now let's get into the meat of it, building a good base. As I said before, you don't need a bunch of dwarves if your base is a well-oiled machine.
3 things/technology are going to be absolutely critical to an efficient base
-Storerooms
-Minecarts
-Drills
With these 3 things, we can take our productivity into the stratosphere and eliminate the waiting time for doing stuff while still expanding across the whole mountain.
In the beginning, you can basically just place things anywhere and when you need to remodel your base, you just destroy the buildings and build new ones. A bit of a pain, but it will be much faster than having a poorly optimized base the whole game.
Step 1: A central mineshaft. The "super-highway" of the mountain.
This is one central shaft that goes straight down, all the way to the bottom. It is the main artery of your operations. I recommend doing ladders all the way down with a mine track that runs right next to it, also going all the way down. When you need to go get resources, you destroy a piece of the rail/ladders and throw in an elevator station, then build a straight track to whatever you need, like so.
So where does this central mine cart lead? To the storage area of your base, like so.
SUPER IMPORTANT PRO TIP
All of those storage rooms and production buildings are connected to one massive mine cart system that connects with the central shaft. this is REALLY important because it means that we can use the real MVPs of the game, MINE CARTS!!! A mine cart can automatically carry resources that are along its mine cart track!!!
So basically, you can put a drill in the deepest depths of hell that is directly connected to a mine cart system, and if there is a storage room on the same mine cart system that accepts the output/ore in your base, then a mine cart will automatically carry resources from the drill and directly into your storage room. It can then take things from your storage room and dump them into the foundry, carry the ingots to storage, then take out ingots and drop them off for the blacksmith. NO HAULERS/DWARVES REQUIRED. The mine carts can refuel things as well!
Every production building and storage room, really the whole base, should be connected to this one central mine cart system because those little minecarts will endlessly run around the map carrying resources, allowing your dwarves to focus on things that aren't connected to the mine cart track or their production jobs.
Using this system, your dwarves will start doing your production orders and construction orders almost immediately, even in the end-game, because the mine carts are doing most of the real hauling.
Storage rooms:
In the picture from earlier, the storage rooms closest to the where the highway meets the base, is where all of the ores and gems and water goes, the resources you are extracting from far away. This cuts down on travel time and allows you to set up a production line.
Each resource should have its own storage room, and each ore should have its own too.
A production line looks something like this:
To the left of the ore storage is a foundry, left of the foundry is a storage room just for ingots. Left of the ingots storage is the blacksmith. Next to the blacksmith is storage for tools, blacksmithing parts, and misc objects like plates, machine parts, mine tracks, etc.
The production chain goes in one single direction where everything is properly stored and placed for minimal travel distances.
This also allows you to cap resource output so that your storage rooms don't fill up with slime, seeds, etc.
You don't need to worry about production quotas/maximum outputs if only ONE storage room accepts the resource, it will reach 600 and then haulers will stop collecting it.
You can build up instead of down!
The natural desire is to build down into the mountain, but above the entrace is just a whole lot of empty space with nothing but copper and coal, so use it! I built my "neighborhood" section here, above the entrance, and the storage/production down below, with everything connected by mine carts of course (the houses don't need them, it's a short walk)
Build a central water reservoir
It can also be a big help to have a central water spot near your base, or at least with easy access to the main mountain highway. Just like with real fluids, you can build a little tunnel off to the side of the bottom so that water can come in but it won't spill over. Here's an example of a water reservoir:
Yup.
That's pretty much it. Keep your dwarves focused on a specific job with max stat boosts, connect everything (ESPECIALLY THE DRILLS AND STORAGE ROOMS) with mine carts, build lots of mine carts (NOT JUST THE HAND CARTS), build a storage room for every resource, and group up your buildings by what resources they are using for minimum travel distances.
No need for 20 dwarves, no frame rate issues, minimal waiting times for your orders.
I probably left a few things out so if I missed something, feel free to leave a comment!
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2998419769
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