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40d:Thirst
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Dwarves, given time, will eventually get thirsty, as indicated by a blue down arrow blinking over the thirsty dwarf. A thirsty dwarf prefers to drink booze. If none is available, they will go to the nearest water source and drink. This is usually a well inside your fortress, but they will drink from a river or brook if there are no wells nearby, and have been observed to drink from murky pools if there are no other sources of water. A dwarf can live on water indefinitely if there is no booze to be had, but will get unhappy thoughts from doing so - dwarves are highly dependent on alcohol.
A heavily wounded dwarf (whose icon flashes a red cross)[Verify], on the other hand, will not drink booze, even if they are capable of getting themselves to it. They instead require other dwarves (with health care enabled) to bring them water in buckets. If you do not have any dwarves with health care enabled (although you would have to turn it off on each dwarf yourself, as it is enabled on everyone but nobles by default), or if you do not have any buckets to carry water in, a wounded dwarf will die of thirst unless they heal quickly.
Animals like dogs and cats currently do not need to drink in order to survive. In fact, dwarves and player controlled adventurers are the only ones affected by thirst.