Dwarf Fortress 40_24 Tutorial: Step 6 - Dwarf Therapist, Nobles, and Numbers

You've established a foothold. You've learned a lot in a short amount of time. Your small outpost is self-sufficient and starting to take form. So far doing everything manually without worrying about assigning jobs, appointing nobles, or going too deep into the stock lists. You could theoretically continue playing without worrying about such things but learning them now will save you headaches later on.

Introduction to Dwarf Therapist 

Dwarf Therapist is an app that you can run parallel to Dwarf Fortress that allows you to manually set which dwarves will do which tasks. This can be useful for a number of reasons. For instance: making sure you have enough farmers to feed your colony; ensuring you have at least 1 dwarf assigned to essential tasks (brewer, farmer, butcher, tanner, wood chopper, carpenter, mason, architect, mechanic, etc); ensuring that your craftdwarves don't have to bother with hauling duty so they can keep crafting things.

Note that if you are playing with DF Hack enabled it will override any changes you make using Dwarf Therapist.

You can start up Dwarf Therapist at any time before or while playing Dwarf Fortress, simply minimize the game, find Dwarf Therapist in the Lazy Newb Pack Launcher and start it up.

If you're dwarves and their assigned tasks do not appear then click "Connect to DF" or "Read Dwarves" as the app does not read the game in real time.

Any changes you make to your dwarves job profiles will need to be saved by clicking on "commit to changes"

I personally find it most helpful to list the dwarves by migration wave... that way when you get 20 new dwarves you can quickly find them and assign useful tasks to them (since a legendary milker / grandmaster bee-keeper may be of more use to the fortress gaining skill as a farmer or mason...)

In addition to manually tweaking dwarves one job at a time you can also create templates to apply a specific list of jobs to dwarves quickly. If there are dwarves with useless skills I either assign them to work that will build useful skills or give them my customer made 'pleb' template which allows them to do basic hauling and manual labour while also showing me who gets to join the emergency militia to protect the more valuable dwarves.

For now just familiarize yourself with Dwarf Therapist. Play around with your dwarves' jobs and when you have them the way you like finish by clicking "Commit to Changes" and Dwarf Therapist will apply your changes to Dwarf Fortress.

Introduction to Nobles 

Nobles provide special functions to your fortress but can become a pain if their requirements and demands are not met. Open the [n]oble panel to take a look. Here you can see how many nobles you have and what they require / demand to keep them happy. You should have one noble already, the expedition leader, and your outpost is probably still small enough that he hasn't become mayor or baron to start making demands.

There are a variety of noble positions that you can appoint, and any dwarf can be appointed to multiple positions, just make sure that their schedule allows for enough time to fulfill their responsibilities.

For now I'm just going to cover the most important nobles for starting out.

• Name a Broker – The Broker is your expert in trade. His / Her appraise skill will be taken into account when trading with caravans. Pick the dwarf with the highest appraise skill for this role.
• Name a Bookkeeper – The Bookkeeper is who makes your stock lists accurate. It is also the only position with [s]ettings. You can choose anyone for this role, just make sure you set the [s]ettings to "all counts accurate." The bookkeeper will require an office. You can create an office by Qing over a chair and creating a room.
• Name a Manager – The Manager allows you to queue up multiple jobs (up to 30) that automatically distribute themselves to existing workshops and notify you when the stack is complete. The manager doesn't need to have any specific skills but will require an office and I usually appoint the position to the Bookkeeper.
  
  To queue up jobs use j-m and press q then start typing the thing job you want done and the list will populate with options to choose from.
  
  To try this out lets mass produce the basics of 10 bedrooms. So that will be 10 beds, 10 rock doors, 10 rock cabinets, and 10 rock coffers. 

Other nobles may have specific needs (decent bedroom, 2 cabinets, meagre office, etc) and the larger your fortress becomes the more its expedition leader / mayor / baron / duke will need. Not fulfilling these needs makes the noble cranky and prolonged exposure to inadequate working conditions may lead to depression, bursts of anger, and tantrums. To keep demanding nobles happy be sure to build their living quarters extra large (5x5 is fine), designate that their rooms be smoothed and then engraved, and try to place high value furniture / decorations in their rooms. Item Value is determined by [base value] * [material multiplier] * [quality modifier]. (See Value in DF Wiki)

If you run into a situation where a noble claims he / she doesn't have their need met for a specific room try Qing that room and manually assigning it to that noble.

Eventually your leader will begin creating mandates which will either require you to make specific items or prohibit you from selling certain items.

Introduction to the "Z Menus" 

Pressing Z brings up the powerful Status Screen from which you have access to all of your fortresses inventory and statistics. I'll go through each panel briefly and why they are useful.

Animal - This panel shows all the animals / creatures that belong to your fort. Animals that are not pets (stray) can be butchered for food / leather / bones. Some animals can be trained for hunting or war. Animals can also be adopted as pets except for cats who do as they please and adopt dwarves instead.

Kitchen - Here you can tell your dwarves what to brew into alcohol and what to cook in the kitchen. Why does this matter? It matters because plants that are cooked do not drop seeds whereas plants that are brewed (or eaten raw) do drop seeds. Some seeds can also be cooked or brewed which, depending on the amount you have on hand, may be helpful or unhelpful.

Typically I try to keep seed producing plants out of the kitchen to ensure that the fortress doesn't accidentally find itself all out of strawberries and no way to get more until more seeds can be found / traded for.

Stone - This panel allows you to control which types of stone masons can use. By default stones with a purpose besides that of masonry are not used. (by default stones that contain ores are not used for masonry)

Stocks - This panel provides you with a full inventory of the fortress. Every item is accounted for here. If using DF Hack you can search the stocks with [e] and find what you are looking for quickly. This panel also allows you to label items as Forbidden (dwarves will not touch it) or unforbidden. You can also label items for smelting.

Hunters and crossbow dwarves who miss their targets will not retrieve the fired bolt as it defaults to forbidden. It is worth checking the stocks everyone once and a while to unforbid bolts that lay strewn about the countryside.

Health - If you have a chief medical dwarf noble assigned then you will be able to see the health of all of your dwarves in an instant and what the doctor recommends to treat them. More on this later...

Justice - If you have a sheriff or captain of the guard then the justice panel will become available. This panel displays the number of cages and chains (including ropes) available for the purposes of meeting out punishment for criminals. It also displays known criminals and their punishments.




So, you now have Dwarf Therapist running the background and some new nobles to help run things in the fortress. Have we reached information overload yet? Don't worry too much, this is just a 'make you aware of' tutorial. Play around with what you've learned before continuing on to the next part.



Continue on to Part 7 - Trading