Dwarf Fortress: How to Turn Obsidian into Sand by Editing Save

This does work on an existing save, but works a bit better on a new world gen. Using this on an existing save may require you to go back and forth between the game files and change things as you need. I would have just made this as a mod but I don’t have a clue how to do that and existing saves wouldn’t have been able to do this.

I figure this is a better solution to maps without any sand tiles than using DFHack to cheat and place a sand tile down.

As with whenever you edit files, please make a backup of your reaction_other.txt file located under …\steamapps\common\Dwarf Fortress\data\vanilla\vanilla_reactions\objects. This is the file we will be manipulating. Once that’s backed up. Let’s begin.

At the bottom of your reaction_other.txt file copy and paste in the follow.

[REACTION:MAKE_SAND_FROM_OBSIDIAN]
[NAME:make black sand from obsidian]
[BUILDING:QUERN:NONE]
[REAGENT:stone:1:BOULDER:NONE:INORGANIC:OBSIDIAN]
[REAGENT:bag:1:BAG:NONE:NONE:NONE][EMPTY][BAG][PRESERVE_REAGENT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:POWDER_MISC:NONE:INORGANIC:SAND_BLACK] — makes “black sand”
[PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[PRODUCT_TO_CONTAINER:bag]

Once that’s pasted in and the file saved, the next world you generate will have this as a job option by default.

Since Steam’s formatting is a bit wonky its supposed to be indented like this…

With an existing save the process is the same as with a new save but you need to overwrite one of the already existing reactions in the reaction_other.txt file.

Personally I select the [REACTION:MAKE_CLAY_HIVE] reaction, since its next to useless. I strongly advise against using something that may be important later down the line of your fort. Butif for whatever reason a noble or something wants a clay hive in their room, you’d need to go back into the file and restore the original text under reaction.

[REACTION:MAKE_CLAY_HIVE] keep the original reaction name, just change the rest
[NAME:make black sand from obsidian]
[BUILDING:QUERN:NONE]
[REAGENT:stone:1:BOULDER:NONE:INORGANIC:OBSIDIAN]
[REAGENT:bag:1:BAG:NONE:NONE:NONE][EMPTY][BAG][PRESERVE_REAGENT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:POWDER_MISC:NONE:INORGANIC:SAND_BLACK] — makes “black sand”
[PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[PRODUCT_TO_CONTAINER:bag]

Since Steam’s formatting is a bit wonky its supposed to be indented like this…

… and with that you should be able to now create sand from obsidian whether it be on an existing fort or a brand new world. Now queue up those orders for the dwarfs to get grinding.