DF: Burrows and accept-all stockpiles

Sat, Nov 10, 2018

In Dwarf Fortress, it may be desirable to restrict most of your civilian dwarves to specific burrows, e.g. to prevent your dwarves seeing the sunlight or to meet outside Fun. However, if you still want resources from outside to come in, such as wood or gathered plants, there is a slight catch with a workaround.

The problem

Creating a stockpile inside the burrow that accepts goods from outside leads to job cancellations: the inside dwarves will not realize that the goods are inaccessible until they start their job, which is promptly cancelled when they contemplate leaving the burrow. Thus, even though some dwarves may be allowed outside the burrow and they will haul the items inside, the burrowed dwarves will spam job cancellations on a (usually) large scale.

The solution

As a workaround, create a stockpile outside but adjacent to the burrow that accepts goods from everywhere, or at least from the desired source outside the burrow. Then create a minecart route that accepts goods from this stockpile and runs into a track stop set to dump inside the burrow onto a stockpile that is set only to accept from (nonexisting) linkages. Then, other stockpiles inside the burrow (also set to accept from links only) can take from the minecart-receiving stockpile without problem. The non-burrowed dwarves will haul the item to the staging stockpile, put them on the minecart, and dump them inside the burrow. The burrowed dwarves will see the goods arrive in their burrow and happily put them to dwarfish use.