A well-oiled dwarven fortress relies as much on the blood and sweat of your dwarves as it does on properly implemented work orders. As you grow, the demands on your employees also increase, and there’s still more to do to keep them happy, busy, and thriving. To facilitate automation, a complex network of work orders can be set up at the start of the game. But there are situations when these setups fail and you wonder why no one is cooking, why the sheep are not sheared and why these beds are outdated by a year. Here’s how to fix work orders not working properly in Dwarf Fortress.
Related: How to Appoint a Dungeon Master in the Dwarf Fortress
How to Fix Work Orders Not Working in Dwarf Fortress
You can start setting up work orders anytime you want in Dwarf Fortress, although they won’t be very effective at first when your base is still quite small. You only have a limited number of dwarves, which means setting up complex production models can backfire. Regardless of what you configure, however, it will definitely work, but there are a few issues to consider, each of which can cause your work orders to fail and become unresponsive.
First, you need to set up a manager to take care of your orders and delegate. It will do its job well enough for a while, but once your fortress exceeds the population of 20 dwarves, your handler will stop working and with it your work orders will stop responding. This is because now you need to have a desk to work.
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It’s easy to miss this and just watch your strength slip away, and that’s the main source of the problem. The solution is simple, just create a new room with a chair and mark it as a desk, then assign the manager to it. You will then return to work and your work orders will resume as normal.
However, if the problem persists, there is another possible reason. If you’re assigned to the office and your manager, but work orders are still stuck, it could mean that your manager is upset or in a bad mood. If so, you have two options: find ways to improve the mood of the manager or replace him with a new dwarf in his position.
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