Source
r/dwarffortress•
Merit

A very smelly barracks

My hunters have slain many elephants. The plains around my fortress swim with pachyderm blood, my craft-dwarves are joyous at the influx of bones and my butcher's block strains under the weight of the elephantine quantities of meat.

But in my barracks some idiot dwarves keep going to the containers where I am hoard my ammo, armour and weapons and dropping all the elephant goodies they are carrying. The elephant entrails eventually go rotten and miasma spills across my barracks and sometimes out into adjacent rooms.

I know there are good and effective ways to make miasma-free garbage dumps, but I was wondering what I can do to stop the food-dropping from occurring in the barracks to begin with. Who is sabotaging my barracks with rotten elephant and how do I stop them?

Exhausted of ideas of my own (I tried banning storage of personal items in the barracks, but to no avail) I am on the verge of drowning random dwarves until the colony learns its damn lesson. Does anyone have a better solution than arbitrary murder?

Posted Jan 23, 2012, 3:25 PM UTC

67
ZeitPolizei•

Arbitrary murder is undoubtedly the best solution.

7
Techrival•

This also worked in The Sims.. all of them.

3
dfohio•

Sounds like you need bigger food stockpiles.. if it's consistently elephant meat you might set up an elephant meat only stockpile as a placeholder inside your barracks, and have your main food stockpiles 'take' from that one with q t.

Also, ensure you have enough barrels, or if wood isn't available for barrel construction, stone pots work reasonably well.

2
Kar98•

Yup the issue is not enough room in food stockpiles. I believe the dwarve takes a stack of food eats 1 but since the stockpile is full he can't return it so he leaves it there and it rots. To get rid of it you have to dump it by designating

1
[deleted]•

I don't know the answer. Perhaps your military drop them when going on duty. There is a Military Carry Food option somewhere for which they need a backpack.

Also, you could put your ammo area in a room with a door, then at least the miasma is kept in one room :)

1
theguruofreason•

Look for the supply option (or something like that) in the military screen and stop them from carrying food at all. Not exactly sure what causes them to casually dump it. Might be a bug. Happened to me before. I'll look into it more when I'm home today (gonna be much later).

1
MeritOP•

I'll give it a go, thanks. My military aren't currently on patrol schedules or anything like that, so I can just micromanage them when they are on duty and watch out for hungry dwarves I should send home for a munch.

1