I wonder how hard it'd be to make a simple mod and a simple workshop. Take anything flagged as "food" and some fuel and produce a generic "booze" item. Have it give hunger and hook onto TFC to give thirst. I'm not familiar with modding, but it seems like making a replica furnace with an input and an output wouldn't be hard.
That may or may not be harder than it sounds.
Although given the new meals system, we can make grain or potato meals (yeah, grains are usable for meals) and RP it as alcohols
Oh right - I played a bit with the meal system - it's awesome. Dibs on the cook position. It is random, yet with some common sense rules apparently - a slab of cooked pork with an egg on the side is way more filling than an onion and olives salad.
Also, buffs, yay! I can see it becoming the (legit) potions of TFC - I cooked up a meal with 6,5 minutes' worth of Haste II. Although finding such recipes will require some !!SCIENCE!! (Reminder: the recipes depend on the seed). The system has some limitations though, and I cannot discover what renders some recipes unfeasible - e.g. 3x olives and 1x orange didn't work, but 3x olives 1x cooked eggs did - I guess it has to go over a certain quality threshold.
The changes also make farming so much more important, since eating plain foods is less effective now. And yet it was made easier, by changing the water saturation system to something more like vanilla.
The thirst system makes it a bit harder to be a true dorf, unless we get some sort of plumbing.
Also, nate, you are officially the Blacksmith-Emperor of Dorfkind now, since now the impact of having weapons/armor is greater than ever: yes, the health is now increased to 1000, with damage scaled... but not for players without weapons, so if you are using fists, you could almost punch yourself for pretty much the same effect. And not only that: yes, the health is increased... but the regeneration rate is pretty much the same, so if your health gets low, have fun dying.
There apparently were some changes to the layer system to make it follow the surface curves, but I'm no miner.