Shelter

A shelter is a completely enclosed area, which can be a house, tunnels or a combination of both, which has a totem somewhere inside it. Dwarves will only sleep within a suitable shelter.

What Classifies as a Shelter

A shelter has several conditions that must be met before dwarves will sleep there:

• Every background tile within the shelter needs a wall or a window.
• The shelter must be completely enclosed with walls, floor and a roof. This can be accomplished with foreground walls, doors, hatches, or other solid blocks or objects.
• You must place a Totem within the confines of the shelter. Ideally it should be placed near the Stockpile in order to protect it from Ghosts.
• The house borders must be in the Totem's area of influence. This is shown by a orange-yellow star-dot trail that traces the perimeter.

NOTE: Totems seem to have a limited range. When the max range is reached, an orange star will mark the beginning of the area that is too far away from the totem (unconfirmed). EDIT: This note may be referring to the large orange star that appears when a shelter becomes incomplete.

Comfort Level

The comfort level of your shelter influences the dwarves recovery time while they sleep. A higher degree of comfort will reduce the time dwarves need to sleep to regain health.

In order to obtain highest level of comfort follow these tips:

• Each bed in your house (except the first) lowers your comfort level. The type of bed makes no difference (for now).

• The material used for the external walls makes a big difference. The following list sorts them from the best to the worst:

• Brick Wall
• Stone Wall
• Stone
• Wooden Wall
• Dirt

• Background material makes no difference, so you can use the cheapest material without impacting the comfort level.

• Doors and hatches type have an impact on the comfort level, the stronger the door, the better is the comfort provided. The following list sorts them from the best to the worst:

• Steel Door
• Iron Door and Iron Hatch
• Wooden Door and Wooden Hatch

• Roofs provide less comfort than walls, so is better to use roof tiles only for deco on top of a line of wall tiles.

• The shelter size impacts the comfort level negatively. The more dwarves you need to house, the larger the shelter needs to be, which reduces comfort.

• Currently, the comfort provided by furniture/deco items DO affect the overall comfort level.

Shelter Defense

A useful design of wall for dealing with large swarms of enemies is the Sand_Wall.