Ever embark and be shocked to find that there is literally zero sand on your map? Well fret not children of Armok for I have a solution for you. You simply need to grind obsidian into sand. How do you do this? Let me show you.
First Things First …
This does work on an existing save, but works a bit better on a new world gen. Using this on an existing save may require you to go back and forth between the game files and change things as you need. I would have just made this as a mod but I don’t have a clue how to do that and existing saves wouldn’t have been able to do this.
I figure this is a better solution to maps without any sand tiles than using DFHack to cheat and place a sand tile down.
Whenever you edit files, please make a backup of your reaction_other.txt file located under …\steamapps\common\Dwarf Fortress\data\vanilla\vanilla_reactions\objects. This is the file we will be manipulating. Once that’s backed up. Let’s begin.
New Save
At the bottom of your reaction_other.txt file copy and paste in the follow.
[REACTION:MAKE_SAND_FROM_OBSIDIAN]
[NAME:make black sand from obsidian]
[BUILDING:QUERN:NONE]
[REAGENT:stone:1:BOULDER:NONE:INORGANIC:OBSIDIAN]
[REAGENT:bag:1:BAG:NONE:NONE:NONE][EMPTY][BAG][PRESERVE_REAGENT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:POWDER_MISC:NONE:INORGANIC:SAND_BLACK] — makes “black sand”
[PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[PRODUCT_TO_CONTAINER:bag]
Once that’s pasted in and the file saved, the next world you generate will have this as a job option by default.
Since Steam’s formatting is a bit wonky its supposed to be indented like this…
Existing Save
With an existing save, the process is the same as with a new save but you need to overwrite one of the already existing reactions in the reaction_other.txt file.
Personally I select the [REACTION:MAKE_CLAY_HIVE] reaction, since its next to useless. I strongly advise against using something that may be important later down the line of your fort. Butif for whatever reason a noble or something wants a clay hive in their room, you’d need to go back into the file and restore the original text under reaction.
[REACTION:MAKE_CLAY_HIVE] keep the original reaction name, just change the rest
[NAME:make black sand from obsidian]
[BUILDING:QUERN:NONE]
[REAGENT:stone:1:BOULDER:NONE:INORGANIC:OBSIDIAN]
[REAGENT:bag:1:BAG:NONE:NONE:NONE][EMPTY][BAG][PRESERVE_REAGENT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:POWDER_MISC:NONE:INORGANIC:SAND_BLACK] — makes “black sand”
[PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[PRODUCT_TO_CONTAINER:bag]
Since Steam’s formatting is a bit wonky its supposed to be indented like this…
It’s Coarse and Rough and Irritating and it Gets Everywhere
… and with that, you should be able to now create sand from obsidian whether it be on an existing fort or a brand new world. Now queue up those orders for the dwarfs to get grinding.
That's everything we are sharing today for this Dwarf Fortress guide. This guide was originally created and written by THEOTHERJESTER. In case we fail to update this guide, you can find the latest update by following this link.