How to set up a tavern in Dwarf Fortress

When you think of dwarves, you think of booze. And in Dwarf Fortress, your hardy dwarves will need their drink to maintain high morale and work hard. But when you work hard, you’d better play hard, which is exactly where taverns come in. If your fortress doesn’t have a tavern, then you have some seriously grumpy dwarves. Here is how to build a tavern in Dwarf Fortress.

Building a tavern in Dwarf Fortress

Before you go building the tavern, you’ll need to think ahead and plan exactly how big you want it, and if you want to be an inn as well. A tavern needs a dance floor (open space) for patrons to dance and play, a readily available stockpile of drinks, chairs, tables, and chests. If you want it to become an inn, then you’ll need to construct whole bedrooms within the confines of the tavern.

With the floor plan to your liking, carve out or build your tavern. Make sure there is room for performing and plenty of space to sit down and socialize. As for the inn, you don’t need to make the rooms big. As long as there is room for a bed, you’ll be fine.

You’ll also want to make sure the tavern has its own hearty stockpile of drinks.

With the designing out the way, use the meeting area zone to capture the tavern, and then click on the plus sign in the meeting area’s menu to specialize it as a tavern.

Note that drunk dwarves may cause brawls where some considerable damage could be caused. You will definitely want a hospital up and running before you have a tavern.

Now all you need to do is supply the tavern and assign staff.

Related: How to Set Up a Burrow in Dwarf Fortress

Running a tavern in Dwarf Fortress

With the tavern open, click on the button with a magnifying glass to expand the tavern’s menu. From this menu, you can assign staff and see the details of equipment in the tavern. Place a couple chests in the tavern to store goblets and instruments. You can choose the maximum amount of either item to be stored, as a means of control over the size of the tavern. Dwarves will instantly haul goblets and instruments to spare chests in the tavern.

You must also quickly assign a Tavern Keeper to distribute drinks among your patrons. You don’t need to assign performers to have dwarves play instruments and entertain each other, in fact they are quite good at simply doing that themselves anyway.

Finally, you can control the visitor policy, either allowing everyone in, to only citizens.

Simply make sure there is enough drinks and goblets, and you’ll have a happy tavern.

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