Summer has Arrived

Before my workshop level was finished being dug out, I built the two mason's workshops and a carpenter's workshop. The first three things I queued up for construction were a door, a table, and a chair. With these three items I furnished the office upstairs for my manager to use to assign work orders. The interface for work orders is much easier to use than going to each workshop and queueing tasks individually. I also set my bookkeeper to highest precision so I have accurate stock counts.

Queuing up the table/throne/door in the mason's workshop.

Placed the furniture, assigned the room to be an office and set the owner to my manager.

Once the office was completed, I immediately queued up a whole slew of workorders. 20 beds, 20 doors, 20 coffers, 20 cabinets, 4 tables, 8 chairs, 10 pots, and 10 bins. I can create bedrooms with just the bed and a door, so those come first. I could craft the table and chairs for my dining room second, but I like to finish furnishing the bedrooms with a coffer and cabinet each. The rock pot works like a barrel to store booze, but uses my surplus of rocks instead of my limited supply of wood. The wooden bins hold miscellaneous items like crafts and gems I'll be using to trade later. There's no stone equivalent that I'm aware of, so those are made out of wood.

Miners working to clear the workshop level while a mason and carpenter get started on their workorders.

I noticed brown down arrow icons flashing on my livestock, which indicates they're hungry. Some animals like dogs, cats, and my turkeys are fed by the dwarves. My sheep and horses, however, require a pasture to graze in. I didn't have to spend points to bring the horses, as every caravan starts with two random work animals (horses, donkeys, mules, buffalo, etc.) I don't want my livestock to die, so I quickly zoned a pasture area right outside my tunnel and assigned my two sheep and two horses to graze there.

My last project as spring came to an end and summer is beginning to arrive was to designate my residential floor. I dug down to -10 levels (my tunnel is on -2) and designed a floorplan.

I used to be a big fan of the 1x4 basic rooms that the quickstart guide uses. They're very compact, hold everything a dwarf needs, and don't look too shabby. My last fortress had 3x2 rooms very similar to RadGH's layout, but this time around I'm going with some 2x3 rooms. Having six tiles not counting the door increases the room's value and lets me place random things in them like a pen for pets in their owner's rooms. The large room to the right of the stairwell is going to be my hospital.