Managing Dwarven Jobs — PeridexisErrant's DF Walkthrough (2024)

In-game interface¶

Hit u! You will be presented with a list much like this:

On the left, a list of dwarfs with their name and current profession(the game works out the dwarf’s profession based on their best skill,unless you assign them a custom profession name, more on that later).On the right, we have the current job the listed dwarf is doing. Youwill note that the list includes more then just dwarfs. You can scrollup and down using PageUp and PageDown as well as thearrow keys so have a look around. This is the full list of all livingcreatures in the current area (excluding vermin), so it’s a good wayto see how many goblins you’re facing when the inevitable siege occurs!

Had a good look? Great! Now lets get on with working with our dwarfs.With the first dwarf selected, hit c for Zoom-Cre.Using this shortcut will become extremely familiar to you as you jumpto this list, select a dwarf, and whack c to see what on earththey are up to now!

Lets examine what we can see here. On the left we have a yellow X overthe dwarf we selected. If we were to move the X around using the arrowkeys we’d see the info on the right change as the closest dwarf to theX changes. By the way, you can pull up the X directly without goingthrough u just by hitting v from the main map. This isreally handy for when you’re trying to work out which dwarf isskulking around the dining room not doing any work!

So, lets focus back on Ingish Noramshem, Miner. You can see some infoabout this stunty. First up, you can go to the l for “Labour”menu, the e for “Work Dogs”, s for “Soldiering andHunting” or you can A “activate” the dwarf. Don’t worry aboutany of those just yet! Instead, look at the bottom menu list. We’vegot z, “View profile” and a list of other shortcuts.

Things can get a little confusing from here, so follow alongcarefully. For some reason known only to Toady, the coder, the menusget extremely circular, but we’ll get there in the end!

So, hit z, and you’ll see this:

Not much to see. We can see that this dwarf owns 14 things (snore),has a modest quarters. The text is in blue, which I’m guessing is agood thing which means that it is over and above the quality demandedby that noble (thank Ookpik). Below, we can see we have three options,we can hit enter, view relationships with “r” or customize with “y”.Lets go ahead and hit “enter”. Oof! Wall of text!

You’ll have to read this on your own screen to see what it says. Inessence it’s a blow by blow of the happy thoughts and sad thoughts ofthe selected dwarf as well as some bio details. As you will read fromthe first paragraph Ingish is quite happy, except for the verminproblem (erm, my fault, I forgot to bring any cats with us. A coupleof cats will hunt vermin away). On the whole, a content dwarf, whichis good. Upset dwarfs go crazy and kill other dwarfs. It’s annoying.

The text in blue concerns the religious and group affiliations of thisdwarf. I’ve never found much need to worry about this stuff, althoughof note is that the god the dwarf worships can be read about inLegends mode. Reading about the gods, creatures and civilisations inyour world can be quite an amusing post-game sideline.

Next you’ll see a list of things the dwarf likes. Over time it’s quitepossible your dwarf will accumulate items based on the things theylike, especially once the dwarven economy kicks in. Of note is thatthis dwarf likes “cows for their haunting moos”, how strange! Mindyou, we could take advantage of this later on by putting a cage inthis dwarf’s quarters and shoving a cow in it. Then the dwarf will behappy ever time they see the cow, because it’s a favoured animal oftheirs.

Food preferences are interesting as well. This dwarf likes quarry bushleaves. We’re not growing any right now (you need to grow them in anindoors field and then at a Farmer’s Workshop, process them to a bag),but it might be a good idea to grow some if we ever worried about thisdwarf’s happiness, or just to ensure those dwarfs that do like quarybush leaves are kept extra happy.

The next block of text covers the personality traits of the dwarf.There’s not much to act on here, although it’s interesting to note thedwarf’s tolerance for the outside world. Over time dwarfs that spendall their time underground will become nauseous at the sight of thesun, which slows them down when they go outside. This can have a bigimpact on your military and so some fortress designers like to buildopen air spaces into their fortress. But more on that later.

Don’t be alarmed by the note on drinking. All dwarfs love drink!

With this examining done, space back a menu and hit r.

To be honest, I seldom view this screen and I’m not sure if we reallyneed to. I just noticed that with the selection over the deity you canhit v and get information on the god worshipped, cool! Thisdwarf worships Agesh, who “often takes the form of a female dwarf andis associated with fame, rumors, agriculture, the rain and rainbows”,sounds delightful!

You also get a list of friends here, and in time, partners andchildren. It’s interesting, but not particularly useful

Anyway, back out of that menu and hit y for “Customize”. Youget an option now, customize nickname and customise profession. Somepeople use these to tag their dwarfs for more easy viewing, or to namethem after friends and family for general hilarity, I leave thisoption alone because I have plans for them using the Dwarf Managerutility, but more on that later.

Hit Esc and back out to the main dwarf menu. Hit g for“Gen”. You’ll see some skill information and stat information for thisdwarf:

As you can see, all of this mining and digging has made our dwarftough and agile. Ingish is also becoming a skilled miner and is alsoan adept mason! Other skills have been built up through time in ourfortress. There’s more to see than this list though, I’ve highlightedthe down arrow which indicates that there are more skills and so use“alt”+”down arrow” and have a look. You should see “Dabbling Grower”at the bottom, looks like our shorty has been picking some plants inthe fields!

Now, next menu item, hit i for “Inventory”. You will see a listof items your dwarf is carrying, it should look something like this:

If you want to make this list easier to read, hit Tab a fewtimes until the menu takes up half the screen. Then you can see allthe item names in full (this tip is especially helpful with someworkshop menus where item names are long). You can use this list ofinventory items to check closely what your dwarf is carrying. Scrollthrough each item using the alt-scroll method, and hit Enterand v if you want to learn more. The inventory screen is oneyou’ll use often when dealing with the military side of DwarfFortress. Don’t worry too much about it for now.

Lets move on and hit w. This is a list of wounds:

White is good. Nothing injured. Light grey indicates bruised, yellowindicates broken, red, mangled and grey is “lopped off”. In a game I’mplaying now I currently have a goblin I stuck in a special goblin pitwith both eyes missing after a fight with my dwarfs (and those are theonly wounds! Good shot marksdwarfs!). He keeps wandering around andpassing out before waking up and wandering around again, no doubtbumping into other goblins before collapsing again. Ok, so I found itamusing, anyway…

What you can’t immediately see in this list are organs. Yes, DwarfFortress does model internal organs! If your dwarfs, or critters, getwounded, you can see exactly how much and to what degree from thisscreen. Dwarfs that get wounded will be taken (or make their own way)to your barracks where they will be fed, watered (you need a bucketmade in the carpenters for your dwarfs to fetch water for the injureddwarf) and left to recover. This can take a substantial amount oftime, weeks, months or even years! And they may never recover fromsome injuries.

Hit p to be taken back to the info-screen about that dwarf. Fornow, ignore the “Activate” and “Work Dogs” option (we have no traineddogs yet) and lets focus on “Labour”. When you hit l you’ll seea screen like this:

What you’re looking at is a big, big list (it goes down a couple ofpages) of different “labours” that the dwarf is enabled for. The jobsin white are turned on, the ones in grey, off. At the bottom of thelist are all the hauling jobs, from stone hauling to cleaning.

An important job in DF is thinking about and managing the labours ofyour dwarfs. For example, do you want your wood cutter to also havehauling jobs on? If they have that job on they’re going to spend theirtime cutting wood and then walking half way across the map to move apiece of food to a food store, and then walk back across the map to goback to chopping. Perhaps it would be best if you turn off the haulingjobs on your woodcutter? How about your miner? Do you have a lot ofmining work to do? Turn off all the jobs except mining and your diggerwill drink, eat, sleep, rest and dig, and that’s all. No distractions!

But hauling jobs are important, so how about turning all theextraneous labours of all those lye makers and potash maker immigrantsand turning them into full-time peasant haulers. You can’t go wrongwith up to 1/4 of your workforce just hauling stuff and the restdivided between important jobs. At times you’ll want to do a lot ofbulk job modifying so you can get a lot of hauling done, or a lot ofdigging, or whathaveyou. This is especially the case once yourfortress grows to a substantial size and you have multiple dwarfsdoing about the same sort of job.

Dwarf Therapist¶

But how does one do this without working ones way through dozens oflabour settings for dozens of dwarfs? Well thankfully the answer is atyour fingertips! Remember the “Dwarf Manager” shortcut we made rightat the start? Good! Run it! If you skipped that step you’ll find“Dwarf Manager” in your Dwarf Fortress folder. Run the exe in there.

If the program doesn’t run, you may need to do some .net installing.You can check this all out at the Dwarf Manager website. ** NOTE:Dwarf Therapist is currently the favoured dwarf management program.You may wish to try it instead. It is fairly self-explanatory andworks in much the same way. **

Once you get the program up and running, the first thing you should dois hit the “Load from DF” button in the bottom right of the program.The program will pull all the dwarf data from DF and you should see ascreen something like this:

The extremely cunning among you may have noticed that my Dwarf Manageris v0.2, but the one on the website is v0.6. I suggest we all go tothe Dwarf Manager website, grab the latest version, and install it ontop of the Dwarf Manager folder in your DF folder. Come back whenyou’re done!

What you’re looking at now is a very neat way of adjusting the labourof large numbers of dwarfs at once. It also gives you a great way ofquickly seeing what your dwarfs are set to do, and it allows groupingin useful ways. Please note, in my screenshot I’ve had a fewimmigrants, so don’t worry if your numbers next to professions don’tmatch mine.

Now, go through and double click on each profession and expand themout. The green blocks show what labour the dwarf has, the grey dot inthe middle shows how skilled they are at that labour – the bigger thedot, the better they are. If you double click on any dwarf name youcan pull up more information about the dwarf including their name andprofession and what they’re skilled in.

Note that the grey bars across the profession names indicate what isturned on in that profession group. Clicking on those boxes turns onjobs for everyone in that profession. And this is where we can makethings easier for ourselves. I’ll show you how:

• Look at your miners in Dwarf Manager.
• Double click on the first one, change their “Profession” to “Digger”.
• Hit enter.

You have now created a custom profession. Now right-click on the nextdwarf, chose custom profession, click on “Digger”, like the picture.

Do this for all of your miners, and then hit the bottom right button“Write to DF” (you need to do this to make any change stick, andalways click “Load from DF” before making any modifications to!). Withthis custom profession I now have easy control over groups of dwarfs.I group dwarfs into the following groups, how you do it is up to youthough:

• Diggers (miners)
• Farmers (dwarfs who farm!)
• Minions (dwarfs that only haul)
• Crafters (dwarfs with all the craft skills on)
• Brickies (dwarfs who engrave and do masonry)
• Chippies (dwarfs who cut wood and do carpentry)
• Metalers (dwarfs who smelt/armor/weaponsmith)
• Foodies (dwarfs who cook and brew)

…And so on. I’m sure you can come up with a scheme of your own.Anyway, the point is, once you get beyond a dozen dwarfs Dwarf Manageris an awesome way of herding your shorties easily and quickly. Give ita go yourself!

Managing labour is how you get things done. If you see a building orworkshop not being built, hit “q” and check to see if there’s a “needXYZ labour” message. If there is, check to see if anyone has thelabour on. If they don’t, find someone, and turn it on. Your dwarfscan do just about anything you set them to do, but remember they doit better when they are good at it, not only quicker, but with higherquality.

Keep in mind that mining and wood cutting require specialist tools (apickaxe and a waraxe respectively). Also note that farmers with noskill may screw up and lose your seed, producing no food. While thisis ok when you’ve got a lot of food and farmers and you’re training upsome new recruits, it’s not so useful when you are low on food andsupplies!

I think this may be enough for this lesson. I am sure I will come upwith more useful tips as we go, but now you have the tools to lookafter your dwarfs so taking advantage of my tips will be no problem!

Next lesson we’re going to get back to expanding the fortress andincreasing our uberness!