Are you using a mod? I've never heard of building materials wearing like that. Interesting.
It is modded, but the only relevant bit is the sawmill I think. I was making wooden blocks with it from logs, and was building with those blocks. I was under the impression that blocks used to build things were indestructible, but apparently that only matters for actual constructions like walls and floors. Lesson learned.
The wood template has a default [COLDDAM_POINT:9900], so any biome that manages to drop to -68oF will cause wood to take damage. (Of course the only biomes that will ever get this cold are freezing ones and very, very, rarely cold ones unless you have a crazily temperature modded advanced world gen).
Ah, thanks, now
that makes sense. This is the problem with the wiki, sometimes it explains things like this and sometimes it doesn't. In this case, it just says that cloth and wooden items wear out in freezing biomes but doesn't say it's because of the actual temperature. I was thinking it was something special about the tiles in the biome.
This is a bit puzzling though, since I don't think the workshops were anywhere near the freezing biome area and the murky pools nearby weren't frozen. I certainly don't expect it to have gotten that cold nearby.
Still, this is the only explanation that makes sense. I'll have to take more care.
Can anyone tell me why all my dwarves started dying at 50? It didn't say why. I had about 160 plants and made a decent amount of easy meals.
Dying at 50? You mean when they turn 50 years old? That's well below their death by old age point, so that shouldn't be it unless you're playing a mod.
If they died near someone it should give you an announcement on what the cause of their death was. If you missed this, you should be able to see it in the announcements screen (hit 'a'), or if it doesn't show up there because it happened too long ago, you can check the game log in your dwarf fortress directory. Sifting through it could be time consuming though.