Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
Turkeys grow up a bit slowly (2 years instead of 1) but they lay a whole lot of eggs and butchering adult turkeys gives you leather.
If you don't collect the eggs for food, or at least leave a batch to make new fowls every year, you will be able to get a whole lot of leather as well as bones and meat.
Pigs and dogs are usually fairly good animals to breed for leather since they don't need to graze and grow in 1 year.
Sows can also be milked.
Sheep, yacks and cows also grow up in 1 year and they have extra products (milk for all of them plus yarn for sheep and yacks).
Usually you start drowning in leather after a few years of animal husbandry, especially if you get a stable amount of females and a few males (replace them with younger ones when those grow up).
4-5 females and 2 males gives you a decent amount of products yearly, double that is enough to have a whole lot of stuff to play with.
And it's not like you have to limit yourself to a single type of animal either.
Having several different ones also helps with food variety.
Bones, horns, hooves and skulls also make for cheap crafting materials for rings and other trinkets, both to sell and to keep your dwarves happy (many need to regularly create something through crafting, quite a lot also want new trinkets every now and then).
If you are in need of a quick batch of leather, getting some from the caravan (asking for some if they don't usually bring much) is not a bad idea either.
Since caravans sell leather and cloth in full bins, they can usually sell you a decent amount each time they come unlike most items.
Add: Cats are very good sources of early-game leather, btw. Let them run loose, breed, cat'splosion, then cull... That's enough for small-pop needs, at first.
You're still at the early stages where resources like this are in high demand and short in supply. :)
So, you need to make a bunch of stuffs in a short period of time and you have no appreciable stockpiles of the needed material. That equals "Typical Early Game Issue." (And, depending on the materials, could be an "Any Progression-Point Issue." :)
Don't sweat it too much. For one, giving them Leather Armor isn't doing them a whole bunch of favors. It's about as useful as an '80's leather Bomber Jacket. Though, I do agree that flavor and roleplaying reasons are ALWAYS "good enough." If that's why you want them wearing leather, that's fine by me!
I trade for large amounts of leather, usually from Human Traders. How's your rep with them? Are there any Humans nearby? If so, you should begin to get some as you grow large and prosperous enough to be noticed. Otherwise, get your Dorf Civilization trader to bring some on their next trip.
Hunters can usually supply you with some decent early-game amounts, but it may not be enough for a full squad's needs for initial equippage. Check to see if you're using it for other clothing items, too, and that it's not rotting in place since you don't have anyone working hides into leather. The resources there, to tan the hides, are usually in short supply in the Early Game, too. (And, sometimes finicky to keep in stock.)
IOW - This is a typical Early Game roadblock that motivates you to start looking at deeper mechanics, like getting a good trade network established, Dorfs on the job doing their stuffs, and creating appropriate stockpiles for "bursty" sorts of needs just like this one. Don't sweat it too much, just work through it, get more Dorfs, get more prosperous, attract Human Traders (who traditionally have lots of stuff like that) and... do what you can to have an effective defense. That may mean... not having Crossbowdorfs so early and pushing for Axe and Mace Dorfs. Later, you can switch the Mace Dorfs to Crossbows. (There's some buggy issues with Crossbow dorfs and it may be best if you avoid them at this critical stage and only play around with them later in your playthrough.)
Add: On the "Can you ever get enough Leather" question - Yes and No, depending on what you're doing and if you allow all caravans and/or have/haven't ticked off potential trade partners. Caravans coming into high-prosperity/value/pop Fortresses are very capable of supplying very large amounts of Leather. One can usually have enough trade goods to buy everything that is needed from them. Though, spurts and bursty tasks may need some existing stockpiles. Also - If one is making a lot of leather non-combat clothing, that's going to be a drag as Dorfs love them some "new and betterer" clothing of all sorts, so they'll be yanking stock when they want it. Typical inventory limit controls mean a slow-drain on leather being used for these items. I assume that "self-supply" is possible, but it takes a lot of determination and that it would generally mean one has sealed oneself off from surface contact, meaning large underground grazing fields and the like for larger leather-bearers.
That admittedly doesn't help much in year one or two, since the first caravan that will deliver things you have ordered does not arrive until the second autumn, and even concentrating on high-value trade goods, I can't always buy all the leather I ordered that first time, but after that it tends to stop being an issue.
Exactly.
In a large fortress play, awhile back, once I had gotten enough for critical needs, or needs I thought were critical, I was then in "stockpile maintenance mode" and didn't realize it.... So, i was ordering "All the Leather, All the Time, Every Year, Ever, From Everyone" and then... glanced at my stockpiles, only to see "So Very Much Leather." :)
I didn't change my purchasing habits when those habits were no longer necessary... It did teach me a valuable lesson about paying more attention to stuff like that, though. The game's reporting features and the ability to get useful historical data ain't great, so it's an easy issue to run afoul of. It didn't matter too much, but I could have been buying other stuffs or ramping up more leather crafting for civilian clothing or some such.
If it hasn't changed, the size of the animal doesn't affect how much leather you get. So livestock that grow up faster than others make the best leather production. Turkeys take 2 years, Peafowls take 1 year while cats, dogs and pigs have yearly cycles so you could use those birth'plosions for leather. Its what I do.
ANd by year 3 I can greatly reduce the populations of these animals freeing up room for larger and more dangerous exotic creatures for me to use in my war industry.
Good luck
You usually have to request it from the ones that allow you to do so... and the next year they will bring a lot more of what you checked in the list.
Now you have a solid sack of points to spend on a start group of cows or pigs. You really only needs like 20 drink and 20 food in my experience launching. Just get on the food creation right on launch then make the wood items you left without.
Pen your animals somewhere safe. They always seem to be the first casualties to a raid in my experience...
Request all the leather you can and buy all the leather they bring.
Even at requested prices leather is super cheap if you have a decent finished goods/weapons and armor/prepared meals industry.
Dogs are also a pretty decent source of leather, especially that they don't need food and you want them for early fort defense/sentries anyways.
You've also got the adjust leather amount by animal size mod (because yes, vanilla an elephant and a dog all give the same amount of leather), If you hunt/breed/cage trap some big animals, you'll soon be overflowing in leather.
Tbh I almost never use leather armor because it's so meh. Unless it's for civilian use, for dwarves that go into dangerous areas very often.
Water buffalo. they are expensive to embark with, but as long as you have a bit of skill to set up an underground grazing and you break the first cavern very quickly, you can start with 2 water buffalo in a mating pair. Once they get going you can generally slaughter 5-6 a season.
Dogs though, are generally the best way to go, they are cheap on embark, don't require grazing and have lots of puppies all the time.
The only real problem with dogs is right in the first 3-4 days of embark, they are a PAIN to pasture, you have all these things you are doing and the dogs will run all over the map before you set the pasture and your dorfs will spend days getting them all in. So, generally expect to lose 3-4 dogs on embark just because they like to attack just about everything and they aren't that good at killing things. They are also not alphabetically separated by gender.
Note: I have a peacock bias.. be warned... Pea fowl are categorically better than turkeys in every measurable sense for poultry industry. They reach maturity in just a year and the males are alphabetically separated in the list from the pea hens.
I would say though, generally, that the armor encumbrance modifiers for chain mail/chain leggings aren't that bad that it's bad enough to go all leather to avoid it. And Iron, although it's technically worse that Steel, isn't THAT much worse than steel compared to leather, and iron is generally relatively easy to start with. You get 4 (?) iron bars per smelt, 50 dorfs to outfit, 2 for the mail/leggings, not counting boots, that's.. eh.. 300 ish iron bars so.. 75 ores to smelt up, 75 and 300 charcoal.. eh.. yeah it racks up but generally not that bad comparatively.
I am moderately sure that suiting up in iron, as long as you have some picks and a lot of wood in the area is faster than trying to suit up in leather. You will need leather for the quiver/backpack, but the flask can be made of copper which is also super common. Elves will generally give you a warning year after contact so you can generally go woodcutting crazy on initial embark without too much damage. Unless of course your starting civilization started off at war with the elves which you generally don't check for when embarking. And they will ambush you a LOT. It's called an ambush, but technically it's a raid, just don't go outside. Outside is where the bad things are.