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v0.34:Wheelbarrow
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
A wheelbarrow is a tool used to increase the speed of hauling. Wheelbarrows can be made of metal or wood at a metalsmith's forge or carpenter's workshop, and can carry the equivalent of a single stockpile tile, be it a single stone, a bin or barrel (with its contents included), or stray items. This is equivalent to one fifth of a minecart's capacity.
Construction
Wheelbarrows are constructed of either wood or metal:
| Material | Worker | Workshop |
|---|---|---|
| Wood (1 log) | Carpenter | Carpenter's workshop |
| Metal (2 bars) | Metal crafter | Metalsmith's forge or Magma forge |
Utility
Each stockpile may have up to 3 wheelbarrows assigned for hauling items to that stockpile, with stone stockpiles having 1 wheelbarrow automatically assigned upon designation. This setting can be changed from the Set Building Tasks/Prefs (q) menu with the w hotkey. Wheelbarrows will be stored in their assigned stockpile when not in use, potentially sharing a tile with a stockpiled item.
Dwarves carrying items in wheelbarrows ignore the weight of the contents, moving always at their top speed. This makes them particularly useful for hauling heavy items like stone, which slow haulers a lot. There's little benefit to carrying light items in a wheelbarrow, as dwarves won't load multiple items in it. They will, however, load a single bin full of items in a wheelbarrow.
Although wheelbarrows carry less stuff than minecarts, they do not require a track to be preconstructed, and they can go up and down stairs.
Notes
If wheelbarrows are assigned to a stockpile, dwarves will use them exclusively and cease hauling items to it with their bare hands, meaning that the number of assigned wheelbarrows is also the maximum number of active hauling jobs for said stockpile. This limit can be circumvented by splitting large stockpiles into several smaller designations (although this can make assigning "give" and "take" options much more tedious).
A particular stockpile's wheelbarrows are only used to carry items to that stockpile; they will not be used to carry items from it.
Once a stockpile has an assigned wheelbarrow and a bin/barrel, storing an item in this bin/barrel will be split into two separate jobs: hauling the container by hand to the location of the item to be collected, and fetching the wheelbarrow to return the errant container. Since this doubles the number of trips, it is generally inadvisable to enable wheelbarrows and containers in the same stockpile. As a workaround, a "feeder" stockpile with wheelbarrows enabled can be designated to "give to" an adjacent "storage" stockpile with containers enabled.
If all of a stockpile's tiles are occupied by wheelbarrows, it will stop requesting new items even though the tiles under the wheelbarrows have no stockpiled item. Consequently, stockpiles need to have more tiles than wheelbarrows to work correctly.