Dwarf Fortress – How to Quickly Bump a Work Order to the Top

How to Quickly Bump a Work Order

I’ll use workshop orders to prioritize a work order instead of the work orders menu. When the task appears on the task page after the work order is validated, check the exclamation point and that task becomes the most important job, no matter how many other work orders you have.

(It’s industry specific, so making rock cabinets won’t have a globally higher priority than making booze, unless your booze maker is also your cabinet maker).

For instance, I want a never ending supply of raw green glass for my jewlers to cut, limit of 100.

I have 10 glass furnaces total – 5 regular and 5 magma-powered.

For sand collection:

• I create shop orders to gather sand in the regular furnaces
• This creates 5 separate hauling jobs
• Dwarves will collect sand until the stockpile is full
• These jobs are set as low priority, so dwarves do other tasks first
• I can make sand collection urgent by clicking the exclamation mark

For making furniture:

• When I need lots of furniture (like 50 pieces)
• I can order 10 statues, 10 cabinets, and 10 boxes from the main orders screen
• Once the orders are assigned to shops, I click the exclamation marks
• This pauses glass production to focus on furniture

For training new glassmakers:

• If I have a beginner who should only make basic glass
• I go to their forge’s work menu
• Set general orders to zero
• Remove all tasks except making raw green glass

This system lets me control what gets made, when, and by whom.

Once I got this method down, I’ve never clicked on that priority arrow again.