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[jcnorris00]

Plant dyes are kind of boring.  Sliver barb would be sort of interesting if it weren't bugged, but it has the same value as dimple cup and blade weed, which doesn't seem to reflect how hard it is to obtain.

I suggest an animal based dye.  Tyrian purple was a very expensive dye made from a sea snail (murex, to be more precise).  It could be produced by either "milking" the snails one by one, or by simply crushing the whole lot of them at once.  One process is slow but preserves the snails; the other is fast but destructive.

Both routes could be open in DF.  A presser could produce dye really quickly, but you might run out of snails.  A milker could produce dye without killing the snail, but would take a really long time.  (An animal dissector performing "Extract from dead animal" would be better if not for the "dead" part; maybe add an "Extract from live animal" task?)

There could be multiple species of dye-producing murex, maybe one found in the oceans and another kind found in the caverns.  Others could be possible, e.g. freshwater varieties, or different species in different ocean biomes.  Also, in the real world it took a lot of snails to make an appreciable amount of dye.  Perhaps the DF snails could be larger.  Perhaps giant varieties could exist.  The giant cavern murex charges the weaver!  The weaver doesn't notice.  Okay, maybe not.

This could fit in well with the new trade system, since it potentially gives coastal settlements a valuable trade good not available inland.

[Monk321654]

Milking snails for purple dye?
That sounds as crazy as milking Maggots for milk.
Wait...
This sounds amazing.

[Reelyanoob]

I'd suggest creating a mod for this, as a thread in the modding forums. You probably will find interest to incorporate the idea into other existing mods, so better to DIY it and get the credit yourself.

As it would be easily mod-able, I don't see it as likely to be high on the dev list (i.e don't expect this anytime in the next X years without DIY). Look at suggestions from 3-4 years ago. Many of them are still not implemented.

[jcnorris00]

The only modding I've ever done has been to work around the various bugs concerning sun berries, sliver barbs, obsidian, etc.  It doesn't seem obvious to me that it'll be simple to add another dye that isn't a powder derived from plants, but what the heck?  I'll give it a go.  I'll use turtles for testing.

[Capntastic]

This sort of ultra-scarcity stuff will come about once trade is in properly.  If you're talking mostly about milking snails, you can certainly mod that in.

[jcnorris00]

I've done some !!SCIENCE!!, and unfortunately it looks like dyes must be powders.  I suppose I could try adding a reaction to convert the milk/extract into a powdered dye at a still, but the dye isn't a powder in the real world.

Doing this right will require modifying DF to

1. Add support for liquid dyes.
2. Add time-consuming but non-lethal "extract from fish" process.

I'll post about this in the mods forum later in case I missed something, being a noob and all.

EDIT:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=86745.0

[Pilsu]

I don't much care for the snail dye, especially being able to milk infinite amounts of it out of a few slugs. Drying and grinding the turqoise scales of merfolk into something valuable sounds more like it.