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[GenJeFT]

I dont find this game very difficult but yet Im on my 6th fortress now and its dieing.

Not because of goblin invasions.

Not because of Megabeasts.

But because my dwarfs refuse to brew ANYTHING.

Now they are all dieing of dehydration. Every single one has the brew labor on but nobody will brew and everyone is dieing (plenty of supplies). They wont even drink the imported drinks. Its like all my dwarfs have signed a suicide must drink water pact (and the river is frozen over). I have lost 3/4ths of my dwarfs to this "Fort Stupidity Syndrom".

Anyone else ever run into this?

[TKGP]

Do you have free barrels/rock pots?
Do you have brewable plants?
Are the above items accidentally forbidden?
The job cancellation message should tell you what the issue is.

It's also a good idea to dig out a cistern for the river to fill, as underground water won't freeze and you can make a nice well.

[Psieye]

Is the kitchen menu accidentally ordering every plant to be exempt from brewing? Are the plant supplies you have actually brewable?


All else fails, upload a save.

[SRD]

Do you actually have a guy with brewing enabled?

[Sphalerite]

It's possible you accidentally screwed up a staircase or ramp and the dying dwarves can't actually reach your still or food or water source.

[ddonohu2]

Every single one has the brew labor on but nobody will brew and everyone is dieing (plenty of supplies).

Do you actually have a guy with brewing enabled?

Yes he does.

It's possible you accidentally screwed up a staircase or ramp and the dying dwarves can't actually reach your still or food or water source.

^^this.

Screen shots of your announcement page (a) and job list (j) would probably be helpful.

[melomel]

They wont even drink the imported drinks.

Can they path to the booze?  Because if they can path to the booze and the traders are not actively in possession of that booze, the little bastards will run out amid a massive goblin siege for the elves' special sunshine.

Mass reclaim everything on the map, and check burrow assignments/alerts if you're using them.

[Dr.Propz]

If your booze supply is in the soil level, check for trees that may be blocking the way

[Garath]

activated a burrow? If you own some booze someone should tun out to drink it IF they can reach it.

In reaction to your thread title: Experience has taught us that often the player is stupid. The most catastrophic things are usually caused by a simple oversight.

[AWdeV]

This is either a really peculiar bug-type thingie or a classic case of PEBCAK. Did you try giving a dwarf brewing enabled but everything else disabled? Can all the stuff be reached by everybody? Do you get warning messages? If yes, what do they say?

[Broseph Stalin]

The difference between difficulty and stupidity is generally whether the blame lies with the developer or the player. I have never had anything even close to this happen. It sounds like you've probably damaged a path in some way, if your dwarves were cancelling the brew or drink labors I imagine you would have reported that I'd check for locked doors or removed stairs if there's non salty water on your map that they aren't drinking that's almost certainly what it is.

[Alidus]

Dwarfs aren't dumb when it comes to finding booze. They are like booze seeking missiles - usually the problem ends up having important dwarfs off drinking when you really need them to be doing something else.

They will wall themselves in, cross bridges at wrong times, run out to fix traps in the middle of a siege... but their booze drinking is what they are good at. If they aren't doing it, then something is wrong with how things are set up.

[tommy521]

I place my bets on across z-level up stair removal, blocking access to booze. That or a tree grew in.

[xar23]

I've had this happen in the past too.  Most commonly, it's when I put the fort on a war footing, forgot about it and then had some part of the reaction placed in a new stockpile that was outside of my predefined civilian safe zone. 

Most likely, it's a pathing issue.  Since you say you have imported drinks available, they are probably forbidden, unreachable, or outside of the area you have allowed the dwarves to go.

Since you say brewing doesn't work I would do the following:

1) make barrels/stone pots.  Lots of them
2) check your stocks to make sure you have brewable plants.  One thing that can prevent brewing is the accidental extinction of plump helmets thanks to overcooking.  Eating and brewing produces seeds, cooking doesn't.  If you cook your last plump helmet, you won't plant anymore.
3) check your fort layout.  Has anyone been inside the still since it was built?  Did you build something else so that it covered the door to the still
4) Is the imported booze outside your fort?  Can your dwarves go outside?
5) Check your military alert status, if you have something set up for civilians.
6) How accurate is your record keeper?  If you "have booze" but your records are out of date you maybe don't have booze.
7) try burrowing somebody right on top of your food stockpile, can they get there?

[GhostDwemer]

Just my opinion, but I think if you come to the forums raging about some failing of the game itself, you should stay engaged and let everyone know what the real problem was when you figure it out. Even if the real problem turned out to be that you pulled a stupid. Especially if the real problem turned out to be that you pulled a stupid. We all have, trust me, there is nothing new about pulling a stupid in Dwarf Fortress. So, if you find out that it was something like, you destroyed all the paths to your booze or something, well, that may be embarrassing to admit, but then the rest of us don't have to waste our time puzzling over it anymore. And just FYI, you sound kind of silly when you say, "I don't find this game difficult, but here is this difficulty that I'm having that I need help with." Which is it? Again, no insult intended here because I (and I think most of us who play the game) have been in the fail-RAGE-whoops-it-was-all-my-fault situation before.