How Much Created Wealth to start attracting Migrants?

[king.steve1]

Apologies for multiple threads today - still trying to learn. My fortress is in it's second year. I've watched a few beginner YouTube videos and they all seem to get migrants in their second year while I get none. I see lots of suggestions that suggest the main keys to getting migrants is Created Wealth and making trade deals that are very positive for the visiting trade caravans.

How much Created Wealth do I need to start getting migrants? Is the idea of giving very favorable deals to merchants valid and if so, what are reasonable trade rates that qualify as a "good deal" for merchants?

[Fel]

I don't know if there are specific numbers, since it is more about "how many" migrants you get with wealth and merchants getting profit.

For merchants at least it is rather simple, the more benefits they make between the value they have when they "spawn" on your map and when they exit it is all that matters.
If you want a lot of migrants, you need to "export" as much value as possible when the merchants come and allow them to leave the map without incidents.

That isn't all that matters of course, for starters the settings for the population cap can prevent migrants from coming, that setting is not tied to a save so it can end up preventing your fort from getting migrants if you had a previous fort where you set the value very low for example and didn't change it.
You don't get "no migrant this season" when it is caused by the cap thankfully so it is easy to know if that is what it causing a lack of migrants.

Migrants also need an active civilisation to pull from (you can make a fort even if your civilisation is "dead" but you won't get migrants outside of the hardcoded two waves).
Similarly they need a proper land path from the sites your civilisation owns and your fort.
Being on a different landmass or on an island can prevent migrants for example.
If there is a different dwarven civilisation that can reach your fort and you are not at war with them, you might receive migrants from them instead.

The overall stress levels of your fort's population as well as the recent amount of death does influence migrants to some extent.
Weirdly enough, if your population falls far enough it will attract a few migrants to allow you to try to stabilize (it often fails but the game tries to give you a chance at least).

[king.steve1]

Originally posted by Fel:

I don't know if there are specific numbers, since it is more about "how many" migrants you get with wealth and merchants getting profit.

For merchants at least it is rather simple, the more benefits they make between the value they have when they "spawn" on your map and when they exit it is all that matters.
If you want a lot of migrants, you need to "export" as much value as possible when the merchants come and allow them to leave the map without incidents.

That isn't all that matters of course, for starters the settings for the population cap can prevent migrants from coming, that setting is not tied to a save so it can end up preventing your fort from getting migrants if you had a previous fort where you set the value very low for example and didn't change it.
You don't get "no migrant this season" when it is caused by the cap thankfully so it is easy to know if that is what it causing a lack of migrants.

Migrants also need an active civilisation to pull from (you can make a fort even if your civilisation is "dead" but you won't get migrants outside of the hardcoded two waves).
Similarly they need a proper land path from the sites your civilisation owns and your fort.
Being on a different landmass or on an island can prevent migrants for example.
If there is a different dwarven civilisation that can reach your fort and you are not at war with them, you might receive migrants from them instead.

The overall stress levels of your fort's population as well as the recent amount of death does influence migrants to some extent.
Weirdly enough, if your population falls far enough it will attract a few migrants to allow you to try to stabilize (it often fails but the game tries to give you a chance at least).

Thanks again - seems complicated. I haven't been playing very long so I'm not really sure what's going on in the outside world. I got the two hard coded migrant waves and have a few visitors to my temples so I'm guessing that means there's a path to get to my fortress? I currently have 16 population and 10 are on the happy side of the spectrum with only 2 on the slightly angry side. No deaths so far (well, a camel somehow got into a tree and died...no idea how that came about).

I really didn't have anything to sell to the fall caravan, so maybe that's going to cost me a year of migration. Some Elves came by and I tried to trade with them but they got big mad when I tried to sell them turtle shell items and packed their wagon up and left. F'ing Elves...

[Fel]

Internally (for the game's code I mean) it is somewhat complex but for the player it is rather simple.

First, pick a civilisation and a place to embark where you will receive merchants and migrants, on top of the location matching what you want.

After that, produce stuff to export (cut gems, trade goods from stone or bones, later on prepared meals and junk you want to get rid of), make sure the traders are safe for their whole time on your map and allow them to make a lot of benefits.

And that's it.

[AlP]

It's not complicated. Sell a lot of things to increase exports, but also keep a lot of things in your fort when the merchants leave the map, so that they see that you are wealthy when they leave. Don't sell everything you have.

[Fel]

To be fair, even just digging to make room for your stockpiles, workshops, bedrooms and areas and the furnitures to go along with those is usually more than enough early on to create quite a bit of wealth.

[king.steve1]

Thanks to both of you - like I mentioned, very new to this and haven't played beyond my 3rd year yet so maybe I just haven't done enough to create wealth - my created wealth is about 22,000 dwarf coins and that was not enough to pull migrants. I am using the tutorial start, so didn't have much choice in where i started, but it does look like there are plenty of large population areas next to me. I'll try to give the next fall merchant more stuff and see if that helps my migrant pull in the following year.

[Fel]

An easy way to give a lot of wealth to the merchants early on is through cut gems.
You will be finding some gems here and there, each tile gives you a gem unlike with stone or metal veins too.
Of course a dwarf skilled at gem cutting can get more out of those but even an unskilled dwarf will get you cut gems with decent value just from the fact that gems have a high base value.

It requires little time or materials so it is great for the first year (or two).
Cut gems also have the advantage of being very light, which is a plus for trading with merchants early on, and even elves like them (just don't include the bin if you used one to store them when trading with the elves).

[BobthenotsoGreat]

Is there a benefit beyond ecstatic with the trader? I don't think there is so I see the value of the fort relative to time in it to be a high factor so I trade to ecstatic and keep the rest for my value to leave the best impression. But I could be wrong on that.

[Fel]

The trader's mood is only making the next trade (with the same caravan) easier or harder in terms of how much benefit you need to give them.
The real benefit is that your exported wealth increases and it is a major factor to migrants coming to your fort.

[king.steve1]

Thanks for the tip on gems - I've been cutting them and encrusting stuff (mostly shell jewelry and mugs) with them. Hopefully that will help make the difference with the next caravan!

[Perenti]

Keep masterfully decorated masterclass mugs for your tavern - happy dwarfs are busy dwarfs!

[king.steve1]

Originally posted by Perenti:

Keep masterfully decorated masterclass mugs for your tavern - happy dwarfs are busy dwarfs!

Not sure I'm there yet. I know how to zone for a tavern but not really what to put in it, lol. That's maybe the more advanced tutorial videos I haven't gotten to yet!

[Fel]

Well, the only thing such mugs would do is increase the value of the tavern anyway.

But for roleplay purpose it is definitely nice to decorate the mugs used in your tavern to entertain guests, even more so if you specify your own fort as the subject for those decorations.

[Empath demon]

When I start a fort I set rock crafts going non-stop, often right after beds, doors, tables, and chairs. Then forget it. Sell as needed for early basics, but you really don't have to DO anything because there's plenty of rock from digging out the fort.

Later, once my crafter floors are set up, I make a stockpile for masterwork trade goods by the jewelers and just roll out as many gem-encrusted masterwork trade goods as I can. The value comes from material type, quality level, gem type, and the quality of the encrusting job, so they can become surprisingly valuable from low value materials - not the cut of the gem though (cabochons, etc), so I set someone unskilled cutting them earlyish also, to stockpile for encrusting.

I also do bone/horn/tooth/shell/totem, but since I can't dump them on elves and the availability varies, I focus on rock primarily just for simplicity's sake. Metal goods/toys/goblets encrusted with gems become too expensive (and HEAVY) to bother selling in bulk, in my experience. Making some is great for the pleasure of your dorfs, but I don't keep cranking them out because I'd rather use caravans to dump old clothes and the tattered remains of failed goblin raids.

Be careful, once you get going the fort value will quickly bring larger raids faster than you think, so have a military-free defense system (full turtle) at a minimum by the time your population hits 80 (default population raid trigger value)

Originally posted by Fel:

Well, the only thing such mugs would do is increase the value of the tavern anyway.

Are you certain? I thought mugs could trigger 'drank from masterful goblet' and 'admired a masterful item', as well as being more attractive to mug lovers? But maybe that's just my head canon

[king.steve1]

Thanks Empath, that's very helpful, especially some of those hard-coded numbers that trigger raids. I'm in Mid-Summer, year 2 and so far I only had three dwarf zombies pop up on the edge of my map and then leave (which is good because I haven't watched tutorials on Squads/Militia yet).

It does seem like a bunch of beginner videos suggest making mugs and encrusting them for trade value but seems like as long as you've got cut gems, you can encrust just about anything to up the trade value.