I really dont know anymore, i feel like ive tried it all...
Anything short of haunted/reanimating/deathcloud seems bland and boring, but the ones mentioned are just not any fun.
Its the DF equivalent of shoving a screwdriver through your kneecaps. Slowly.
I really dont know how to keep the motivation up.
I haven't picked up Dwarf Fortress in almost a year. I still lurk the forums and give advice when I can, but there isn't much of a challenge I haven't tried or done. I started playing Dwarf Fortress in the Age of Megaprojects, where dwarves set upon an embark to build massive-scaled castles, underground cities and statues. Maybe we ought to start picking up these kinds of projects to fulfill the lives of the dwarves. Someone give me a spark.
Megaprojects are definitely what have kept me interested. You can spend weeks or months building a fortress you'd be proud to take to the forums. And please do take it to the forums.
Off the top of my head, here are a few ideas:
--Recreate Isengard (Saruman's tower from Lord of the Rings), complete with giant pit-mine-industrial-complex-thingy and dammed river which can be released to flood the fort. For bonus points, cast the tower out of obsidian.
-- Dig out a giant artificial cavern, and suspend your fort from its ceiling. A sort of chandelier fortress.
-- Mine ALL the things! That is, remove as much stone and soil from the map as possible. You should be left with an open-air
magma lava sea, at the minimum.
-- Build a giant wagon out of wagon wood and make your dwarves live in it. You'll have to murder a lot of caravans...
-- Find a cold/freezing ocean embark and build an ice fortress.
-- Build a sky fortress. It has to touch the ground at no more than one square (or zero, if you turn off cave-ins). Maybe suspend it, hangman style. Make it accessible only by projectile minecart, or something equally ridiculous.