v0.34:Age

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v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23 This article is about an older version of DF. More Info · V

This article is about creature age. For world generation "ages", see Calendar#Ages.

Age is a creature attribute describing how long the creature has been alive, including creatures born before the beginning of time in terms of world generation (year zero). Age determines the life stage of creatures and, until it is fully grown, is the most important element of the creature's body size. All creatures have an age associated with them, but in fortress mode only your own dwarves will have observable ages in the thoughts and preferences screen. The age of a creature is probably a floating value (to account for growth throughout the year), but is displayed in the game as an integer that is ticked up every time it reaches a birthday.

Effects

The age of a creature has an important effect on its overall size, as most creatures are not born adults. The starkest example of this in the game is the case of the dragon, which is born 6,000 cm³ in size and takes a thousand years to mature to full adulthood at 25,000,000 cm³. However, the vast majority of the non-sapient creatures your dwarves encounter take only a year to mature to adulthood; elephants and giraffes are a notable exception, as their young take ten years to mature. All non-sapient creatures that have not yet reached adulthood have a "baby" moniker attached to their species name. The life cycle of dwarves is slightly more complicated: juveniles ages zero to one are considered babes, and must be carried about by their mothers; between the ages of one to twelve are they are considered children, and can perform some limited tasks; and once they reach 12 years of age, they are considered adults. The process is the same for other civilized races, animal people, and the humanoid semi-megabeasts.

Another aspect that is controlled by age is lifespan. Most organic creatures will eventually die of old age (including fortuitous fortress dwarves), but a few, such as elves, goblins, and some unintelligent and unnatural creatures, will live until killed. Megabeasts, the undead, night creatures, and the procedurally generated forgotten beasts and titans are similarly immortal. Immigrants may sometimes show up with incorrect ages (future birthdates) ^Bug:3945 or incorrect life stages (4 month old children) ^Bug:3752. This normally does not cause a problem, and life stages get rechecked every birthday. Note that only an intelligent civilized creature vulnerable to death by expiration will seek necromancy, which means goblins and elves never become practitioners of the dark arts.

Sample list of lifespans

Name	Minimum Age of Death	Maximum Age of Death
Ant	1	1
Cave lobster	1	1
Bat	2	3
Antman	5	8
Cat	10	20
Dog	10	20
Lion	10	20
Unicorn	10	20
Elephant seal	15	25
Sponge	20	30
Carp	20	30
Ogre	20	30
Elephant	50	70
Serpent man	60	80
Sperm whale	70	80
Human	60	120
Dwarf	150	170
Kobold	150	170
Elf	99999—	99999Immortal
Goblin	99999—	99999Immortal
Dragon	99999—	99999Immortal
Minotaur	99999—	99999Immortal

Mechanics

The mechanics of aging are defined within creatures' raw files, and can easily be modified by those looking to make changes to their game.

• [CHILD:#]: Age at which children become adults. 1 for most creatures, 10 for a few others (giraffe, elephant) 12 for sapient creatures, 1000 for dragons.
• [BABY:#]: For sapient creatures, age at which babies become children. Always set to 1.
• [BODY_SIZE:#:#:#]: Controls the body size of the creature, typically two or more are used to constrain its growth pattern. The tag is interpreted by age; strangely the second parameter always appears to be set to zero. The third number is its size in cm³. The age points may be larger than the age of adulthood for the animal: for instance, according to their tags deers double in size between one and two years of age.
• [MAXAGE:#:#]: The first number given is the minimum natural lifespan of a creature, while the second is the maximum. The distribution of deaths from natural causes in between the two values is unknown, but likely linear; interestingly, receiving even the most severe of non-lethal wounds has no effect on a creature's lifespan. If this tag is not present at all, the creature is biologically immortal.