The best garbage and corpse disposal methods in Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is all fun and games until something dies… or rots. This can be bad for a variety of reasons. Maybe the sight of a dead animal is upsetting to your dwarves, or maybe some very old cheese is producing room-filling stink clouds of miasma. Either way, your best solution is to find a way to destroy or avoid the trash that builds up in any fortress. Whether you choose a solution that’s simple, efficient, or a little silly is up to you.

Simple dumping zone

When you’re early in your expedition and you don’t have many materials or advanced workshops, it’s best to keep your trash solutions simple. Initially, all you really need is a dumping zone in an open air location. You can either put it outside, or you can put it inside while using the “dig channel” command to vent it to the outside. This zone can be relatively small, as you can always redraw it if you need more space. To assign an area as a garbage dump, simply press “z” to open the zones menu and you’ll find it there. Note that you can set your dumping preferences in the labor menu, in the standing orders tab under refuse and dumping.

Related: Dwarf Fortress is richly rewarding, if you can get over a mountainous learning curve – Review

Trash compactor

Building a trash compactor (sometimes called an atom smasher) is a common advanced waste disposal method in Dwarf Fortress. There are quite a few variations, but this method is a middle ground between being straightforward to build and low maintenance over time.

First, you’ll need to make sure you have a few mechanisms, which you can make at the mechanic’s workshop (or trade for when traveling merchants arrive at your fortress.) Then, mine out or choose an area where you want your dwarves to dump their trash, making sure the level below it has an open, easily accessible area (at least 4×3) where you can put your compactor. Next, dig a channel from the upper of these levels to the lower. Then, build a bridge surrounded by walls and a door, as shown in the image above, on the lower of the two levels. Note that your bridge should open toward the door.

Now, on the upper level, place a pressure plate (in the traps menu) on the square directly in front of the garbage chute. Make sure you set the pressure plate to reset, and to be triggered by creatures and citizens, as shown above.

Next, build a lever (in the machines/fluids menu) somewhere easily accessible to your dwarves. Then, link both your pressure plate and your lever to the bridge (this requires more mechanisms). At this point, be sure to lock the door to the compactor, since anything that gets caught inside (including dwarves) is in danger of being destroyed. Finally, set the two squares containing the chute and the pressure plate as a garbage dump (in the zones menu). The upper level should look like the image above.

Once this is complete, simply have a dwarf pull a lever to raise the bridge. From this point, any items set to be dumped should be thrown down this chute and destroyed when the plate is stepped on.

Magma pit

This is just a small modification on the trash compactor method that is slightly less fiddly, assuming you have easy access to some underground magma. Essentially, you can do everything you would to make a trash compactor, but instead of using a drawbridge in a small room connected to a pressure plate, you just have the chute drop into a magma reservoir of some kind.