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40d:Alcohol
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Alcohol is one of the staples of the dwarven diet; it quenches their thirst and gives them positive thoughts. Healthy dwarves will drink alcohol exclusively when it is available. When dwarves are forced to drink water, they begin to work slowly as a result of their alcohol dependency. Note that in Dwarf Fortress, milk is not actually drinkable - it is only used to make cheese or be cooked into prepared meals directly. Dwarves drink only alcohol and water.
Alcohol can be brewed at a still, brought with you from the embark screen, or traded with visiting caravans.
Sobriety has no place in the fortress.
Brewing
To brew alcohol at a still requires a brewable plant and an empty barrel. Every unit of plant produces 5 units of alcohol. Brewing enough alcohol for even a medium-sized population requires a lot of barrels; be sure to keep plenty near hand.
A single stack of plants will be brewed in one go, and the resulting booze will be placed into a single barrel - a stack of Plump Helmet [5] will produce Dwarven Wine [25], and will only occupy a single barrel. Skilled growers, who tend to harvest larger stacks, can therefore reduce the number of barrels required to store alcohol, which in turn minimizes the required stockpile size. Brewing (unlike cooking) also yields plantable seeds.
Consumption
A healthy adult dwarf consumes approximately 18 units of drink per year. Each drink consists of the dwarf walking to a booze barrel (one not currently being drunk from), upending it over his alcohol-intake orifice (mugs are for simpering humans), and liquoring up. Because dwarves tipple so frequently, the main liquor stash is often the second-most heavily populated area of the fort (right after the main meeting) and dwarves spend much time walking to and from it. So: The booze should be both secure and accessible. An easy way to achieve this is to designate a booze-exclusive stockpile in the dining hall or statue garden. Fresh booze will be delivered directly to the party, and then a barrel-exclusive furniture stockpile by the still will return your 'empties' straightaway.
Cooking
Since a single brewable item will produce five units of alcohol, and each unit of alcohol can be cooked directly into food, it is profitable to brew any plants you intend to cook. In this manner, you may produce five times the food you would from simply growing and then cooking your crops. Be wary though, as you need to ensure enough remains behind for drinking. Note that some consider this an exploit.
Variety
- He has been tired of drinking the same old booze lately.
Variety in booze keeps away unhappy thoughts.
If a dwarf drinks the same old booze over and over, he will eventually get a bad thought from 'drinking the same old booze lately.', unless that dwarf has a preference for that type of booze. A dwarf who likes a type of booze will never get tired of drinking it.
Lack of variety causes bad thoughts, but will never cause a dwarf to stop drinking. Even after years of drinking a booze they don't like, a dwarf will never prefer water or dying of thirst to drinking the same old booze. You can therefore keep a fortress alive on only one type of booze so long as you have enough good thoughts to offset the bad thought from lack of booze variety.[Verify]
Happiness
Dwarves only get happy thoughts from drinking their favorite alcohol, and the intensity of this buzz depends on not only the value of the liquor (with sunshine giving better thoughts than gutter cruor) but also the fullness of the barrel in which it was stored - the first drink always tastes better than the second one, and using fertilizer to produce larger stacks of plants can dramatically improve the overall happiness in your fortress.
Dwarves also prefer a variety of alcohols to choose from, receiving unhappy thoughts if they drink the same alcohol more than three times over the course of 2 years. Fortunately, this does not apply to the dwarf's favorite alcohol.
Wounded dwarves
Wounded dwarves will not drink alcohol; they must be given water by a caretaker with a bucket. Therefore, a fortress cannot survive on alcohol in the absence of drinking water, unless dwarves are abandoned when wounded.
A permanently crippled dwarf, bedridden for life (whether from severe nervous system damage or from a severed limb), will never again drink alcohol, and upon inspection will have the thought "He needs alcohol to get through the working day, and he can't remember the last time he had some!" You may wish to put these poor dwarves out of their misery.
Fire
Players are advised to keep their alcohol stocks away from fire, as booze will very quickly boil away in red clouds. In previous versions, this was observed to inflict significant damage to dwarves, though in this version the only damage comes from the fire itself.
Brewable plants
Grown inside
| Ingredient | Beverage Produced | Beverage Value |
|---|---|---|
| Pig tail | Dwarven ale | 2 |
| Cave wheat | Dwarven beer | 2 |
| Sweet pod | Dwarven rum | 2 |
| Plump helmet | Dwarven wine | 2 |
Grown Outside
| Ingredient | Beverage Produced | Beverage Value |
|---|---|---|
| Sun berry | Sunshine | 5 |
| Whip vine | Whip wine | 3 |
| Rope reed | River spirits | 2 |
| Fisher berry | Fisher berry wine | 2 |
| Longland grass | Longland beer | 2 |
| Wild strawberry | Strawberry wine | 2 |
| Bloated tuber | Tuber beer | 2 |
| Prickle berry | Prickle berry wine | 1 |
| Rat weed | Sewer brew | 1 |
| Sliver barb | Gutter cruor | 1 |
| Muck root | Swamp whiskey | 1 |
Not Brewable
Plants that cannot be brewed include:
Overview
This is a complete chart showing possible plant uses.
