Thanks! I spend way too much time on the mundane in Dwarf Fortress and have found that there's a whole game to learn just in the fundamental mechanics.
A garbage dump is also a fantastic way to order dwarves to quickly gather stuff from a site because you need to do something that will render them inaccessible. For example, while digging a trench that will be filled with water, dumping all of the resulting stone near your workshops and then reclaiming them will ensure this material is not lost in case you need it later.
1:30 I feel the need for a clarification: yes, a dump designation WILL mark everything for dumping, including constructed furniture and even blocks used in constructions. However. this doesn't mean dorfs will start tearing apart rooms, walls and floors; the designation will be ignored until said furniture or construction is deconstructed, and only then will the items become available for dumping. Yanno, in case you're wondering how your gold blocks and masterwork weapon rack got suddenly chucked in the magma alongside goblin rags, while you were rearranging the King's bedroom... 5:10 Furniture can become damaged if an enemy tries to bash it down; ie, a door, hatch, or floodgate that's been attacked by a troll or another building destroyer. These barriers aren't brought down instantaneously, the attacker needs to spend some time bashing them, and their state will progress from normal to (x), to (X), and then it breaks. From what I've seen, this is the wear progression for furniture, unlike for clothes that get 2 x indicators (x, xx, xX, XX). Fire can damage stuff too. Retiring then unretiring a fort might cause some damage calculations to take place; I had one 20-year fort that I temporarily retired to get an adventurer going, and when I returned most of my cloth & leather items (bags, waterskins, quivers, backpacks, and also bolts of cloth) were damaged, as well as a few beds in storage that were now xbedsx. The same fort had some worn-out crafts; I remember a x☼crown☼x that sat in the garbage pile for years, and never decayed any further. The last culprit is simply time, but for that you'll need a _really_ long-running fort. There was a small generational fort on Bay12, which reported that constructed beds started outright disappearing around year 400; further investigation found other beds to be very damaged. It's really fantastic the weird details that this game sometimes implements...
I assumed (but didn't test) that the items in the refuse sublist like cheese and food are for when those items rot. During bad management forts I've had roasts rot in the kitchen for lack of haulers to more it into a food stockpile.
Still relevant in Jan 2024 btw. I'm just now on the full graphics version (was waiting for the linux client), but I'm coming back to these to wrap my head around the workflows. 😂 The way you manage stockpiles has been so helpful for me.
This was exactly what I was looking for. After being away from the game for about a decade, my intuition about "corpses" versus "refuse" was exactly backward! I just couldn't wrap my head around it until I heard someone else explain it. Thanks!
in the case of clothing, I think you can designate what quality levels of clothing can be stored in a stockpile. If you have clothing that is all ratty and worn, you can designate it so that stuff won't be taken to your clothing stockpile. If your refuse pile has clothing enabled, however, the dwarves can take those worn out clothes there to be stored along with body parts.
This actually cleared it up for me. I do check the wiki regularly, but it's so much stuff that some of it falls through the cracks. But I really do need more info on food and seed stockpiling. I'm doing something wrong and I can't figure out what. Virtually all my seeds go poof within the first season. I think it's because some of them go into barrels that feed the kitchen, but since they're forbidden for cooking and the stockpiles they're in are set to only give to the kitchen, they never go back to the farm. Even after I set the pile to also give to the farm collector stockpiles. Even dumping and reclaiming the barrels just makes them go back to the kitchen stockpile. Actually, now that I write this, I'm gonna try to delete the "give to kitchen" setting and see if the farmers start going in and reclaiming the seeds.
Hmmm, I would be interested in poking around in your farm/kitchen setup to see what the problem might be. I'm collecting community forts for a video series, so stay tuned and if you like the upcoming series then maybe submit your fort. There's a few too many unknowns to say what they problem is just through brief TH-cam comments, but my first look would be at stockpile settings to make sure the seeds aren't allowed anywhere except where you want them.
@@Tekkud Well that fort went poof, with compounding problems. The Castle of Judges civilization still hasn't gotten a foothold away from the goblins surrounding it. They have already sent out more settlers. I'll have a simpler, easier to understand at a glance seed and crop route this time (with adequately named stockpiles), in case you want something to show newbie mistakes. Just made some more tests on a new fort, Ashenfear the Hope of Castles. The whole "dwarves take entire barrels of seeds when they want just one" doesn't happen with bags (at least the farmers don't take the entire bag to plant the seeds). Still, that doesn't explain why my seeds simply go poof when cooking and brewing them is forbidden. I'll design a simpler stockpile system, with centralized seed stocks for visual aid. The rest of the previous setup's failure might be explained over all the testing I was doing to find out what I could cook and what I needed to save for planting outside crops. It's a pain to manage and learn all about leaves, plants, seeds, spawn, vines, bushes, and so on, but I think I got the jist. In the process, different seeds/growables got mixed into the same barrels as cookable items. That's a problem when you already have a fairly complex give/take system in place. Getting those non-cookable seeds back is hard, and it might be a matter of them simply not showing up on the stocks menu if they're in a pile set to only give to the kitchen. More testing is needed... Also, if you could clear up the reason only one or two marksdwarves train at a time, that would be great. Tried all the tips on reddit and the first page of google to no effect.
@@Tekkud Figured out the seed problem... at least partially. It's complex, but ultimately, the fruit of a newbie mistake. I was unaware that stockpiles set to give to a workshop or stockpile will *only* give to that one, unless you define other takers. Concurrently, I was unaware that a workshop set to take from a stockpile will *only* take from that pile, unless you define other givers. This fundamental misunderstanding doomed my two previous fortresses. Here's hoping it won't doom the third. I would really like to get to the fighting portion of the game (although I still have to figure out why marksdwarves are only training one or two at a time).
Having constantly fought with the refuse pile, I can confirm that they do store sentient creatures of all sorts in the refuse pile. At least they do if you do not have a corpse pile which I tend not to have.
Refuse items is for when they are rotten or damaged, the 'corpses' category in refuse can enable all organisms, including dwarfs, and they will use them for it, the sentient thing on the wiki is either wrong or talking about a default setting.
I think there was a time where Corpse Stockpiles only contained the corpses of dwarves, and all the other sentinent beeings where put to the refuse stockpile. I guess they didn't clean up the refuse/corpses sub menu. I find it very frustrating that I can't put dwarves into another corpse stockpile than gobbos :S best would be an option to store buriable corpses somewhere different than corpses which will just rot
Oddly enough, even Dwarves are listed in the refuse > corpses pile. Unfortunately at the moment, disabling Dwarves, Elves, etc (all conveniently grouped in the list) is the only way to dodge buggy behavior. Something I really hate that I forgot to include in the video.
@@Tekkud I actually never experienced that any corpses of sentient creatures would be stored in a refuse stockpile. I never disable them, and they will even lie around in the mud if I don't provide a corpse stock pile. (Or do I remember that incorrectly)
Currently I have some corpses of previously undead dwarves that were placed in my butcher's stockpile (refuse>corpse). Corpses of undead attackers are actually called out on the wiki as part of this (presumed) bug. I'm not sure what other contexts may cause this to happen but ordinary colonists, goblins, traders, etc. should be stored properly.
Doesn't a dump have unlimited (or nearly unlimited) space it can stack items in? Or did that get changed? I recall someone used a dump to gather stones to clean the fort to one square, then removed the dump zone and unforbid the stones to keep them very close to a mason workshop.
@Resumos da Trinta e Um yeah I havn't needed to use dumps too often for my regular forts. Usually I use them to clear out clutter from a room or if I want to make a water pool without stuff inside.
I feel like the topic of the orders menu, the refuse section, should also be briefly explained while talking about the refuse stockpile. Some new players don't know of its existence and are lost when certain bits and pieces that are considered "outside" (while, seemingly, within the fort's territory) do no get hauled over to the pile. One thing they can do is o>r>o, to allow dwarves to gather from outside. There's an additional option for vermin remains in that menu, if it's a smaller dead visual clutter. Plus there are many potentially useful means of filtering the refuse, so some part of it goes to a dump zone... that can be placed above a magma tile, which would also need to be explained, and it was supposed to be a short video, I get it ;) Felt like I need to write this, since I was that lost player at some point. That out of the way, that was a good video, I learned from it (the peculiar objects in the refuse filter list). Thumbs up!
I totally agree. These two weeks are such a crunch for me that I had to rush even a 5 minute video, and kinda made some sacrifices. Most of all, I forgot to touch on how refuse > corpses piles do in practice (bugged, probably) hold on to sentient corpses depending on their circumstances before death (e.g. undead). I think I want to revisit this as a full Advanced Basics topic sometime in the future to touch on how to really make use of and control these stockpiles, especially in the ways you mentioned.
i'm here to figure out why my dwarves wont dump goblin corpses or monkey corpses they've decayed into skeletons by this time but still won't be picked up
Did the video help? If you're trying to move them to a stockpile then I I would check two things: First that you have a corpse stockpile accepting corpses of all creatures and second that your standing orders are set to have dwarves gather refuse from outside (if they're outside), gather corpses, and finally to store corpses rather than dump them. If you're trying to send them to a dump zone, make sure that your dump zone exists and is not 'paused' (paused zones are red in premium). Also make sure your dwarves are able to dump things in general, could possibly be a labor issue.
You make great videos, man. Been playing for 10+ years and still learning things here.
Thanks! I spend way too much time on the mundane in Dwarf Fortress and have found that there's a whole game to learn just in the fundamental mechanics.
love when i catch one of my favorite youtubers commenting on one of my other favorite youtubers videos 🤩
The man himself
A garbage dump is also a fantastic way to order dwarves to quickly gather stuff from a site because you need to do something that will render them inaccessible. For example, while digging a trench that will be filled with water, dumping all of the resulting stone near your workshops and then reclaiming them will ensure this material is not lost in case you need it later.
I do that a lot.
1:30 I feel the need for a clarification: yes, a dump designation WILL mark everything for dumping, including constructed furniture and even blocks used in constructions. However. this doesn't mean dorfs will start tearing apart rooms, walls and floors; the designation will be ignored until said furniture or construction is deconstructed, and only then will the items become available for dumping. Yanno, in case you're wondering how your gold blocks and masterwork weapon rack got suddenly chucked in the magma alongside goblin rags, while you were rearranging the King's bedroom...
5:10 Furniture can become damaged if an enemy tries to bash it down; ie, a door, hatch, or floodgate that's been attacked by a troll or another building destroyer. These barriers aren't brought down instantaneously, the attacker needs to spend some time bashing them, and their state will progress from normal to (x), to (X), and then it breaks. From what I've seen, this is the wear progression for furniture, unlike for clothes that get 2 x indicators (x, xx, xX, XX). Fire can damage stuff too.
Retiring then unretiring a fort might cause some damage calculations to take place; I had one 20-year fort that I temporarily retired to get an adventurer going, and when I returned most of my cloth & leather items (bags, waterskins, quivers, backpacks, and also bolts of cloth) were damaged, as well as a few beds in storage that were now xbedsx. The same fort had some worn-out crafts; I remember a x☼crown☼x that sat in the garbage pile for years, and never decayed any further.
The last culprit is simply time, but for that you'll need a _really_ long-running fort. There was a small generational fort on Bay12, which reported that constructed beds started outright disappearing around year 400; further investigation found other beds to be very damaged. It's really fantastic the weird details that this game sometimes implements...
I assumed (but didn't test) that the items in the refuse sublist like cheese and food are for when those items rot. During bad management forts I've had roasts rot in the kitchen for lack of haulers to more it into a food stockpile.
Helpful and Concise DF videos are so rare. Thank you!
Still relevant in Jan 2024 btw. I'm just now on the full graphics version (was waiting for the linux client), but I'm coming back to these to wrap my head around the workflows. 😂 The way you manage stockpiles has been so helpful for me.
Best guides in the game, hope you keep giving us more for the new version 💪
Thanks for the video! Idea for the next video: stairs, ramps and depot access with the ramps! Also, drawbridge fun.
This was exactly what I was looking for. After being away from the game for about a decade, my intuition about "corpses" versus "refuse" was exactly backward! I just couldn't wrap my head around it until I heard someone else explain it. Thanks!
Glad I could help. I made this video exactly because my intuition was wrong too, until I spent way too much time on the wiki about it.
Thanks for making these videos mate. I'm new to the game and value any of these tip vids.
in the case of clothing, I think you can designate what quality levels of clothing can be stored in a stockpile. If you have clothing that is all ratty and worn, you can designate it so that stuff won't be taken to your clothing stockpile. If your refuse pile has clothing enabled, however, the dwarves can take those worn out clothes there to be stored along with body parts.
I appreciated this video, very helpful!
You do amazing videos, never stop advancing this channel
This actually cleared it up for me. I do check the wiki regularly, but it's so much stuff that some of it falls through the cracks. But I really do need more info on food and seed stockpiling. I'm doing something wrong and I can't figure out what. Virtually all my seeds go poof within the first season. I think it's because some of them go into barrels that feed the kitchen, but since they're forbidden for cooking and the stockpiles they're in are set to only give to the kitchen, they never go back to the farm. Even after I set the pile to also give to the farm collector stockpiles. Even dumping and reclaiming the barrels just makes them go back to the kitchen stockpile. Actually, now that I write this, I'm gonna try to delete the "give to kitchen" setting and see if the farmers start going in and reclaiming the seeds.
Hmmm, I would be interested in poking around in your farm/kitchen setup to see what the problem might be. I'm collecting community forts for a video series, so stay tuned and if you like the upcoming series then maybe submit your fort.
There's a few too many unknowns to say what they problem is just through brief TH-cam comments, but my first look would be at stockpile settings to make sure the seeds aren't allowed anywhere except where you want them.
@@Tekkud Well that fort went poof, with compounding problems. The Castle of Judges civilization still hasn't gotten a foothold away from the goblins surrounding it. They have already sent out more settlers.
I'll have a simpler, easier to understand at a glance seed and crop route this time (with adequately named stockpiles), in case you want something to show newbie mistakes.
Just made some more tests on a new fort, Ashenfear the Hope of Castles. The whole "dwarves take entire barrels of seeds when they want just one" doesn't happen with bags (at least the farmers don't take the entire bag to plant the seeds).
Still, that doesn't explain why my seeds simply go poof when cooking and brewing them is forbidden. I'll design a simpler stockpile system, with centralized seed stocks for visual aid.
The rest of the previous setup's failure might be explained over all the testing I was doing to find out what I could cook and what I needed to save for planting outside crops. It's a pain to manage and learn all about leaves, plants, seeds, spawn, vines, bushes, and so on, but I think I got the jist. In the process, different seeds/growables got mixed into the same barrels as cookable items. That's a problem when you already have a fairly complex give/take system in place. Getting those non-cookable seeds back is hard, and it might be a matter of them simply not showing up on the stocks menu if they're in a pile set to only give to the kitchen.
More testing is needed...
Also, if you could clear up the reason only one or two marksdwarves train at a time, that would be great. Tried all the tips on reddit and the first page of google to no effect.
@@Tekkud Figured out the seed problem... at least partially. It's complex, but ultimately, the fruit of a newbie mistake. I was unaware that stockpiles set to give to a workshop or stockpile will *only* give to that one, unless you define other takers. Concurrently, I was unaware that a workshop set to take from a stockpile will *only* take from that pile, unless you define other givers. This fundamental misunderstanding doomed my two previous fortresses. Here's hoping it won't doom the third. I would really like to get to the fighting portion of the game (although I still have to figure out why marksdwarves are only training one or two at a time).
And here I was hoping I was going to finally learn how to handle all the discarded tattered clothes. :(
Having constantly fought with the refuse pile, I can confirm that they do store sentient creatures of all sorts in the refuse pile. At least they do if you do not have a corpse pile which I tend not to have.
Refuse items is for when they are rotten or damaged, the 'corpses' category in refuse can enable all organisms, including dwarfs, and they will use them for it, the sentient thing on the wiki is either wrong or talking about a default setting.
I think there was a time where Corpse Stockpiles only contained the corpses of dwarves, and all the other sentinent beeings where put to the refuse stockpile. I guess they didn't clean up the refuse/corpses sub menu. I find it very frustrating that I can't put dwarves into another corpse stockpile than gobbos :S best would be an option to store buriable corpses somewhere different than corpses which will just rot
Oddly enough, even Dwarves are listed in the refuse > corpses pile. Unfortunately at the moment, disabling Dwarves, Elves, etc (all conveniently grouped in the list) is the only way to dodge buggy behavior. Something I really hate that I forgot to include in the video.
@@Tekkud I actually never experienced that any corpses of sentient creatures would be stored in a refuse stockpile. I never disable them, and they will even lie around in the mud if I don't provide a corpse stock pile. (Or do I remember that incorrectly)
Currently I have some corpses of previously undead dwarves that were placed in my butcher's stockpile (refuse>corpse). Corpses of undead attackers are actually called out on the wiki as part of this (presumed) bug. I'm not sure what other contexts may cause this to happen but ordinary colonists, goblins, traders, etc. should be stored properly.
Doesn't a dump have unlimited (or nearly unlimited) space it can stack items in? Or did that get changed? I recall someone used a dump to gather stones to clean the fort to one square, then removed the dump zone and unforbid the stones to keep them very close to a mason workshop.
@Resumos da Trinta e Um yeah I havn't needed to use dumps too often for my regular forts. Usually I use them to clear out clutter from a room or if I want to make a water pool without stuff inside.
whats ur tileset? can u make a beginners get to go tutorial too?
It's Phoebus tileset. I probably will make something of a first fortress tutorial, but not until the steam release.
DF round table sent me here. Good stuff
don't you use dump to disarm caged enemies?
Thanks for the video!
Refuse! I never knew!!!!
Love your videos, subscribed.
I feel like the topic of the orders menu, the refuse section, should also be briefly explained while talking about the refuse stockpile. Some new players don't know of its existence and are lost when certain bits and pieces that are considered "outside" (while, seemingly, within the fort's territory) do no get hauled over to the pile. One thing they can do is o>r>o, to allow dwarves to gather from outside. There's an additional option for vermin remains in that menu, if it's a smaller dead visual clutter. Plus there are many potentially useful means of filtering the refuse, so some part of it goes to a dump zone... that can be placed above a magma tile, which would also need to be explained, and it was supposed to be a short video, I get it ;) Felt like I need to write this, since I was that lost player at some point. That out of the way, that was a good video, I learned from it (the peculiar objects in the refuse filter list). Thumbs up!
I totally agree. These two weeks are such a crunch for me that I had to rush even a 5 minute video, and kinda made some sacrifices. Most of all, I forgot to touch on how refuse > corpses piles do in practice (bugged, probably) hold on to sentient corpses depending on their circumstances before death (e.g. undead).
I think I want to revisit this as a full Advanced Basics topic sometime in the future to touch on how to really make use of and control these stockpiles, especially in the ways you mentioned.
Great stuff!
i'm here to figure out why my dwarves wont dump goblin corpses or monkey corpses
they've decayed into skeletons by this time but still won't be picked up
Did the video help?
If you're trying to move them to a stockpile then I I would check two things: First that you have a corpse stockpile accepting corpses of all creatures and second that your standing orders are set to have dwarves gather refuse from outside (if they're outside), gather corpses, and finally to store corpses rather than dump them.
If you're trying to send them to a dump zone, make sure that your dump zone exists and is not 'paused' (paused zones are red in premium). Also make sure your dwarves are able to dump things in general, could possibly be a labor issue.
Good Job!
What graphics do you happen to use in this video btw, I like the look of it
It's the Phoebus tileset. Pretty good "regular" flavor tileset for Dwarf Fortress.
@@Tekkud ah yes, the Superior Cultured Set
i mark it and they still dont remove shit when i need it gone they just let it rot
Sentient beings by OUR standards. Not necessarily dorf standards.
Obligatory comment!
-Going from RimWorld to Dwarf Fortress
What self respecting person 🤥. . .ummm what self respecting dwarf would be a cannibal?