Normally if you don't roll at least one Cooking Dwarf, you can't do anything else. If there's a farm though, you can do something at that same depth (that nine square area)
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So if I don't roll a cook and I want to build and dig I can only do that on the level with mushrooms? So if my mushrooms are on the first depth and I now want to build lets say a mine but the 4th depth is my lowest point so I want to build there and also dig, but since the mushrooms are the on the 1st depth that is not possible. Am I understanding correctly?
I started playing that you have to choose which depth you want to use the buildings on after you roll and put the cook die (or one of the discarded ones) on that depth. It helped make the mushrooms make sense to me and also added a level difficultly that I enjoyed. I also color coded the unique buildings so it's clear which ones I built already, it's not clear you can only build one of those unless you print out the sheet with just the shafts on it.