My miners won't mine anymore!

[ErWenn]

I'm 4 years (36 hours) into my first fortress, and my fortress is up to a population of 198, and suddenly all my mining orders are being ignored. By "ignored", I mean that when I set a digging order, the little pick icon appears over the spot where I want them to dig, but that's it. The order does not appear in the "Tasks" list. (This one worries me a bit.) No dwarf does the job. My miners will continue to work on other jobs, or drink or sleep, or even just sit there with "no job" for a while. I don't get a canceled job notification.

I'm playing the new Steam version v50.04. No mods.

Mining is set to "Only selected do this" as the default, and I have 6 dwarfs selected as miners. All of my miners have picks, and none of them have been set to other duties as well. They're not woodcutters, hunters, etc. They don't have titles. They're not in military squads.

None of my burrows are active.

Most of my miners are happy, pleased, or content (one is displeased). There's nothing terrifying going on right now (no sieges, no forgotten beasts, no rampaging wild animals).

I've even tried canceling every single digging order, waiting a bit, and then starting one new digging order in an easily accessible place. Still nothing.

Any ideas about what could've gone wrong?

[jeetrix]

have you tried to use the specialised icon in labors? (red hammer+lock)
have you tried designating a mining job very close to your workers to 'test'?
are you absolutely sure you cancelled each and every digging order as well as all structural removal designations (they are also done by miners) as to eliminate possible unreachable loophole designations?
have you tried saving your game then removing the zones where they loiter , f.e. an inn , to see if that fixes the problem?
have you tried assigning other , active dwarfs to mining job to test if the miner's status is [locked] due to some unknown reason?
have you tried saving (named save) and loading?
have you tried to remove them from the (inactive) burrow?

[Kujila]

is it because they cannot get to it?

like, if you have a set of stairs missing in one direction sometimes they will ignore jobs they can't physically get to

[harlequin_corps]

check what jobs those miners are doing. No Job, or Pray to Ngalak the Unhinged!. Socialize.. etc. If you want to check pathing, take one of your military squads and have it station next to the place you want to dig. If they can't get there then you know you are task locked due to pathing. Miner's don't need to carry to dig so they can squeeze through tight spaces and through holes in the ceiling/floor to get to areas so.. Check your priority on the mining tasks. Generally everyone sets it to priority 1 (it's the yellow arrow to the right of the mining clicky's at the bottom of the screen) but when you reload a game it resets to priority 4. and that's a LOW priority in DF. Check to see if you have given them other uniform based tasks like hunting/woodcutting. That will also cause them to do nothing.

[jeetrix]

also check with mining interface there is a yellow arrow for advanced options, maybe you accidentally fiddled with priority setting or conditions

[ErWenn]

It's not a routing issue, as I definitely tried assigning mining jobs close to where my miners were.

I have made other dwarves into miners, and that didn't help.

They were doing a variety of jobs. Some were doing farm work (I think planting and gathering are very high priority, so that makes sense). But some were just hauling stuff. And I even caught one with literally "no job". Not even sleeping or socializing or eating, just "no job".

I've been able to get some digging done by increasing the priority using the advanced mining tools which I just learned about, but I still haven't figured out why there's suddenly an unending supply of higher-priority jobs around.

[Mac_Aroni (Ger)]

craft pick

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by Mac_Aroni (Ger):

craft pick

the long version of this is check your stocks and see how many picks you have. Sometimes your people die during a siege and the pick will get locked, check for all your picks to see what their status is. And make more picks.

[ErWenn]

For posterity: I'm pretty sure the issue was a priority one, and it's an issue that sorted itself out with a little (in-game) time. In particular, when it's planting or harvesting time, those tasks often seem to take a higher priority even than digging, even for dwarves who are set to only do mining, and even for priority 1 digging.

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by ErWenn:

For posterity: I'm pretty sure the issue was a priority one, and it's an issue that sorted itself out with a little (in-game) time. In particular, when it's planting or harvesting time, those tasks often seem to take a higher priority even than digging, even for dwarves who are set to only do mining, and even for priority 1 digging.

If they are set to mining only no other job matters what-so-ever other than things that also fall into the mining category (stairs and building removal for example), as in they flat out will not do them and will die first even if said job could save them (with the exception of "special" forced jobs such as vermin hunting / cleaning off particularly disgusting contaminants).

You have probably confused the mining icon beside their name with being mining only, this is not the case, and that only means that they are ALLOWED to mine based on your settings. To force them to stick to that job you have to go to their name in the labor menu and lock in the only allow selected jobs option.

[AlP]

It probably wasn't a priority issue, because a miner with no other labors will not do other labors.

[Walli]

How much Fps do you have?

[Sminky]

when this has happend to me it's allways because i had forgot to turn borrows off.

[Other]

If you thought you had them set to only mining, but they were still harvesting crops, check the "everyone/only farmers harvest" standing order. If that is set to everyone, then a ripe crop can show up even for specialised workers.

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by Other:

If you thought you had them set to only mining, but they were still harvesting crops, check the "everyone/only farmers harvest" standing order. If that is set to everyone, then a ripe crop can show up even for specialised workers.

This only applies if they didn't actually set the miners to mine only. It sounds like they set them to mining ENABLED, but no mining ONLY. Even if you have someone set to mine, and have the "only selected do this" option on for mining, that IS NOT the same as setting the person to ONLY mine. To achieve that you have to go to the person individually and lock them to only do selected tasks (while mining is one of / the only selected tasks obviously). Even if everyone is set to do something it doesn't apply to workers that were specialized and set to only do the selected tasks, as they will not do any other tasks at all once correctly set up.

Having said that, it is good to designate only 1-2 dwarves for harvesting and planting crops (2 different icons on that menu) so as to maximize farming gains. Also worth noting, if you are harvesting plants near trees you need to build a stepladder in order to collect the fruits within them... and if you ever notice your harvesting dwarves are missing after doing so make sure some other dwarf didn't move the ladder on them, as they may be stuck in a tree (has happened to me).

[Skywalker]

Too bad it gets complicated so quickly to figure out why the miners don't want to work?
In my opinion if they get hungry the miners then they are busy with food and if they are outside the fort then you just have to hope they come in soon.
I also read a comment here that read a miner is only put on mining, then you would expect him to mine no matter what, but of course it doesn't work that way: if he gets hungry and thirsty then his mine focus is less.