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Author Topic: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.  (Read 4284 times)

Szkeptik

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I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« on: May 23, 2012, 08:25:22 am »

I have 20-30 drinks, but all my dwarves are standing in the meeting area, blinking of thirst. Why is that? The barrels are accessible, and some of them are drinking since the drinks do disappear, but still I just got a message of someone dying of thirst.
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Sphalerite

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2012, 08:30:55 am »

20-30 drinks is nowhere near enough.  You should aim to have a quantity of drink on hand at least 10 times your population in dwarves.

Each barrel of booze can store multiple units of booze.  Typically up to 10, although I think it can be significantly more under some circumstances.  Only one dwarf can drink from a barrel at a time.  Your 20-30 units of booze might be stored in 2-3 barrels, which means only 2-3 dwarves can drink at a time.  And they take a surprisingly long time to drink.

You need to brew much, much more booze.
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SauliusTheBlack

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #2 on: May 23, 2012, 09:05:59 am »

^this
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hjd_uk

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #3 on: May 23, 2012, 10:30:15 am »

Its also very advisable to have a well or another water-source as in desparate, sober, times dwarves will drink *shudder* water to quench their thirst.
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greycat

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #4 on: May 23, 2012, 01:56:57 pm »

Each barrel of booze can store multiple units of booze.  Typically up to 10, although I think it can be significantly more under some circumstances.

A barrel/pot of booze gets 5 times the stack size of the plant being brewed.  You can trade, gather or farm stacks of size 5 without fertilizing, meaning you would get up to 25 units of booze in a single container.  With fertilizer you can farm stacks up to size 11, meaning up to 55 units of booze in a single container, although that's the exceptional case, rather than the norm.

I generally aim for booze = 5 * population at first, moving up to 10 * population once I stop getting immigrants and have sorted out most of my fortress.  If I fall below 5 * population, I consider that an important thing to fix, on par with an ambush showing up.
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Komra

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2012, 04:28:19 pm »

Going by the 25 count, you may have as few as two barrels' contents, and therefore two Drink "jobs."

In conclusion: "Urist McThirsty cancels Live: read my creature description, ya elf! 'needs alchohol to get through the working day.' LOTS OF IT."
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2012, 05:35:01 pm »

Yea see, your dwarves dont drink one booze per drink. That is, they dont go to a barrel of 25 and leave it with 24. A fort of 100 dwarves will tear theough 1000 alcohol in less than a year. Less than half a year, really. Also, only one dwarf can drink from one barrel at a time, so you need to have a a good many barrels about, so dwarves aren't standin about waiting their turn forever. And since everyone gets drawn into the siege-of-the-day and forgets to queue up some liquor sometimes, have that well around so nobody dies.
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weenog

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #7 on: May 23, 2012, 05:44:59 pm »

Having one dwarf who does nothing but brewing (not even haul or clean jobs), and another who does nothing but growing, and keeping vigilant for messages like "Urist McMoonshine cancels Brew Drink: Needs empty food storage container" helps.  You might want to make it two or even three each, depending on whether you're more concerned with skill growth, or keeping a steady stream of alcohol flowing in spite of sleep and breaks.
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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2012, 08:28:56 pm »

Its also very advisable to have a well or another water-source as in desparate, sober, times dwarves will drink *shudder* water to quench their thirst.
...and wounded dwarves in the hospital will only drink water.
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Quietust

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2012, 09:01:51 pm »

Yea see, your dwarves dont drink one booze per drink. That is, they dont go to a barrel of 25 and leave it with 24.
Err, yes they do - a single "Drink" job will consume exactly 1 unit of booze from the barrel once it finishes.

A fort of 100 dwarves will tear theough 1000 alcohol in less than a year.
This, however, is a bit closer to the truth - in older versions, dwarves appeared to drink about 16 times per year, or a little over once a month, so they'd actually go through that much alcohol in about 8 months.
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vassock

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2012, 09:44:20 pm »

I usually establish a few wells on top of a reservoir first. Pretty much guarantees no such deaths. It's also easy and permanent.
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Finn

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #11 on: May 24, 2012, 03:09:55 am »

A fort of 100 dwarves will tear theough 1000 alcohol in less than a year.
This, however, is a bit closer to the truth - in older versions, dwarves appeared to drink about 16 times per year, or a little over once a month, so they'd actually go through that much alcohol in about 8 months.

I just did some recent tests on 34.07 and observed my dwarves going an average of 20 days between drinks.  I only ran it for 3 seasons though, so my sample size was low.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #12 on: May 26, 2012, 03:49:16 am »

Quote
Quote from: dunamisdeos on May 23, 2012, 05:35:01 pm
Yea see, your dwarves dont drink one booze per drink. That is, they dont go to a barrel of 25 and leave it with 24.
Err, yes they do - a single "Drink" job will consume exactly 1 unit of booze from the barrel once it finishes.

That seemed.... really unlikely to me given the rate these guys drink at, until I watched it happen just now. Q knows all. But the point(s) remains, sir, that

1: you need an unseemingly large pile of booze around at all times.
2: wells are also extremely important to a healthy fort.
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Garath

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2012, 04:07:02 am »

wells actually have the same limitation as barels do iirc, only one dwarf can drink from it at a time.
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Rhenaya

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Re: I have drinks but dwarves still die of thirst.
« Reply #14 on: May 26, 2012, 06:01:28 am »

if you only got one type of booze dwarfs will ignore it later on, you need to vary at least 3-4 kinds of booze so they dont swap to water... beside the "need a lot of barrels"
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