Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Xeirxes]

My fortress really is suffering right now from a major food shortage. Since the wiki doesn't really go into detail on any other methods other than farming, can anyone give me some tips on this?

Also, when you cook a meal, what is the point? Does it give you more eatable items, or is the meal simply more satisfying? I know that one advantage is that you can cook some inedible items into a meal. What about lavish meals; can you have 4 of the same item cooked up or must they be different items?

I also heard of some kind of herbalist trick that people use, but I can't figure it out. So anyway, thanks in advance for the help. My dwarves will appreciate it.

[Slartibartfast]

Extra food can be obtained in 4 other "major" ways:
1) Fishing -> Give a dwarf the Fishing job and he will fish. Some seafood needs to be processed at a fishery before it is edible. Turtles give you shell to use in crafting.
2) Herbalism -> Give a dwarf the job and then 'd'esignate shrubs to be gathered (shrubs are the little '"' symbols), some of the shrubs are edible (mostly after cooking), some can be brewed.
3) Hunting -> Give a dwarf the job and watch as he dies at the tusks of a herd of elephants. Hunting is not a very good idea at the moment, but if you really want to do it then go ahead. IIRC you have to have the hunter kill something, then drag the corpse back to a stockpile or the butcher's workshop, butcher the corpse and then you get body parts (meat/skin/bones/fat/skulls), the meat can be cooked for food, the fat can be turned to tallow which can also be cooked.
4) Herding -> Not really a job, but if you have enough horses/dogs/cats/cows/someothertameanimal that keep breeding, you can slaughter a few and process them for food (in a similar way to hunting). Some forts can have hundreds of tame animals if you get lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it), so can sometimes be made reliant solely on this herding technique.

[schnobs]

quote:Since the wiki doesn't really go into detail on any other methods other than farming,

That's because the other methods are so simple that there's not much to say about them. I'll go and look into it anyway.

[Slartibartfast]

quote:Originally posted by schnobs:
<STRONG>

That's because the other methods are so simple that there's not much to say about them. I'll go and look into it anyway.</STRONG>

Fishing and Hunting have their own pages. Herbalism is under Plant Gathering, and I don't really know what to search for in order to find herding.

[schnobs]

Try "Livestock". I've slightly modified that article, and added a "The way of the herbalist" paragraph to plant gathering.

I have contributed much to the "Agriculture" section of the Wiki, and have a high personal interest in it being useful. Expect some structural changes in the near future.

[TomTheHand]

As far as the point of cooking goes, see the wiki: Kitchen

Basically, it lets you consolidate food into large stacks, makes inedible items edible, and can make dwarves happier (prepared meals have a quality rating, and better meals make dwarves happier).

[Xeirxes]

Thanks, this is all a good bit of help to me.