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[Derro]

I get that under normal circumstances, dwarves will consume booze or (if they absolutely must) water. However, I was wondering if dwarves consume any of the other liquids in the game when faced with dehydration.

Specifically, I'm looking for a way to prevent dehydration on a glacier embark with no skills and items, which basically requires magically conjuring up some kind of fluid to not starve.

[Immortal-D]

Melted ice counts as drinkable water.  It is possible to obtain barrels of blood, ichor, and other substances, but I don't think Dwarves will drink those.  The only non-standard consumable that I know of is vermin and insects, which a Dwarf will eat when starving.

[Derro]

Melted ice counts as drinkable water.  It is possible to obtain barrels of blood, ichor, and other substances, but I don't think Dwarves will drink those.  The only non-standard consumable that I know of is vermin and insects, which a Dwarf will eat when starving.

I don't suppose one can melt ice with three wooden logs and no skills?

[Staalo]

Melted ice counts as drinkable water.  It is possible to obtain barrels of blood, ichor, and other substances, but I don't think Dwarves will drink those.  The only non-standard consumable that I know of is vermin and insects, which a Dwarf will eat when starving.

I have witnessed a dwarf drinking vomit, but that might have been accidental.

"...was disgusted at being forced to drink vomit."

[bloop_bleep]

Melted ice counts as drinkable water.  It is possible to obtain barrels of blood, ichor, and other substances, but I don't think Dwarves will drink those.  The only non-standard consumable that I know of is vermin and insects, which a Dwarf will eat when starving.

I don't suppose one can melt ice with three wooden logs and no skills?

Unless you are near a volcano, no, there is nothing you can do.

[Fleeting Frames]

You can attack a yeti or hit dwarves in stomach with logs from above to force some of them vomit.

You can also make a tavern, and hope one of the visitors wishes to join; then accept petition right before your leader dies. If it is goblin, problem solved. If it is not, it should still manage to last till first migration wave, which should manage to last till first caravan.

Provided the yeti doesn't eat them, of course.

[TubaDragoness]

The vomit thought usually comes from when they are drinking from a brook outside; contaminants are factored into complaints about the water, and if they're cave adapted, they'll barf all over the ground they're drinking from.

[Staalo]

contaminants are factored into complaints about the water

That's kind of what I suspected; the dwarf in question was probably standing in a residual puddle of filthy water after a session of combined swimming lesson and civilian combat training. I don't know what made him think it was a good idea to take a sip from that sludge.

[PatrikLundell]

I've read about a fortress on a glacier where the only source of drinkable fluid was vomit from getting hit by yeti (which is probably the same source as hinted at above). I suspect such an approach would require extensive save scumming, though.

Dorfs presumably would prefer any water to vomit, so a map with a stream and a complaint about drinking vomit is probably a case of contamination, as TubaDragoness said (although I guess it could happen if the dorf gets trapped on a part of the surface so he'd have to hunt vermin and drink vomit. I suspect vomiting dorfs caught in trees won't be able to "reclaim" their vomit to sate their thirst, though).

If the fortress somehow gets old enough to get cave adaptation the vomit production problem is solved, of course, but in the time it takes to develop cave adaptation there should have been enough time to get booze production going in a cavern (and one of them is probably going to have water as well).

I haven't heard of drinking of blood (except for vampires, of course), pus, or tears.

[Derro]

Melted ice counts as drinkable water.  It is possible to obtain barrels of blood, ichor, and other substances, but I don't think Dwarves will drink those.  The only non-standard consumable that I know of is vermin and insects, which a Dwarf will eat when starving.

I don't suppose one can melt ice with three wooden logs and no skills?

Unless you are near a volcano, no, there is nothing you can do.

Out of interest, what exactly could I do if I were near a volcano to melt the ice? Carve fortifications to make the magma flow over the ice?

[Starver]

Out of interest, what exactly could I do if I were near a volcano to melt the ice? Carve fortifications to make the magma flow over the ice?

Magma+water becomes obsidian, so (apart from some self-limiting obsidianising then stopping just short of converting the next lot of melted water) you want to keep them separate. But heat will flow through floors (and walls), so running a magma-channel in the rock beneath ice (without puncturing the floor) is the usual way. With controllable magma-flow, you can 'harvest' all but the dregs from the first melt, then let what's left freeze back into full 7/7ths ice ready for another cycle.

Cave-ins (used to?) convert ice to water, but it's messy, so you might want to avoid that. But it's messy, so of course Dwarves should do that!  (Caveat miner...)

[Derro]

Out of interest, what exactly could I do if I were near a volcano to melt the ice? Carve fortifications to make the magma flow over the ice?

Magma+water becomes obsidian, so (apart from some self-limiting obsidianising then stopping just short of converting the next lot of melted water) you want to keep them separate. But heat will flow through floors (and walls), so running a magma-channel in the rock beneath ice (without puncturing the floor) is the usual way. With controllable magma-flow, you can 'harvest' all but the dregs from the first melt, then let what's left freeze back into full 7/7ths ice ready for another cycle.

Cave-ins (used to?) convert ice to water, but it's messy, so you might want to avoid that. But it's messy, so of course Dwarves should do that!  (Caveat miner...)

What if I don't have picks, or any other equipment for that matter?

[PatrikLundell]

Out of interest, what exactly could I do if I were near a volcano to melt the ice? Carve fortifications to make the magma flow over the ice?

Magma+water becomes obsidian, so (apart from some self-limiting obsidianising then stopping just short of converting the next lot of melted water) you want to keep them separate. But heat will flow through floors (and walls), so running a magma-channel in the rock beneath ice (without puncturing the floor) is the usual way. With controllable magma-flow, you can 'harvest' all but the dregs from the first melt, then let what's left freeze back into full 7/7ths ice ready for another cycle.

Cave-ins (used to?) convert ice to water, but it's messy, so you might want to avoid that. But it's messy, so of course Dwarves should do that!  (Caveat miner...)

What if I don't have picks, or any other equipment for that matter?

That's a weird question. If you don't have any equipment you can't do anything until you get some. If you've brought building materials, ore, and wood (the embark wagon might be sufficient for a pick: there are calculations out there for no item embarks, but they got turned on their head when wooden training axes ceased to be able to cut trees, which isn't really an issue on a glacier) you can make equipment. Otherwise you'll have to wait for migrants with equipment (provided you have migrant labors turned on). If you've got building materials you can make a tavern and rob visitors, or make a trade depot and trade (if you have anything to trade away...) for equipment.
Apart from that, you can of course DFHack things in various directions, but if so, you might just as well have started with proper equipment.

[Starver]

Tricky, as getting hold of magma is also often reliant upon digging. (Magma-safe pumps need suitable raw materials for workshop(s) and the components and perhaps power-source components, but as you seem determined to carve fortifications, it sounds like you're even more minimally equipped.)

I'm going to hope, then, that you have enough raw materials to build a floor over the ice, and enough guiding walls to keep the magma on that whilst still (somehow) getting side-access to the meltwater. I can't right now picture if the heat transmission will spread far enough (heat down, through floor, then melts sideways sideways at least two tiles to get under the retaining wall and then at least one 'open' tile.?). At least with underfloor heating, you know you have access to directly above the meltwater.

And if you're block(/rock/log/etc)-light, we're talking an absolute minimum of two units of materials (one floor, one blocking wall, and assume the magma doesn't spill around that wall to stop access to the hypothetical meltwater) or a very lucky spread of free-flowing magma. Possibly, if the terrain is conducive, you could let the magma drip through a natural ice rill, or against the side of an ice-slope, obsidianising its own wall and (hopefully) melting the ice the other side without overflowing it... But it'd need some specific conjunctions of ground features to do what I'm thinking of here. Is there a screenshot or diagram of the locale we can look at?

(And was this a minimalist embark, or the result of an accident in which you lost the usual standard equipment? Either way, good luck!)


((Might be ninjaed, whilst I was thinking hard about your problem...))

[Fleeting Frames]

Directing magma to melt with just 3 logs and seven dwarves, on any possible theoretical landscape...

Hm, falling obsidinazing impact can temporarily melt four diagonal tiles on level adjacent/below. If temp is close to zero enough, maybe could use that in an emergency drinking session before water refreezes, but I doubt the feasibility of that. Otherwise, just above and below.

For transporting magma, if it is ultra-flat volcano, could use a screw pump. It wouldn't last long, obviously, but it'd pump at least some magma. Otherwise, if it is bit elevated with 1-thin ridge, a fortification could be carved indeed. But one can't create a self-contained overhang over magma to hold water like this, I think.

If you've got building materials you can make a tavern and rob visitors, or make a trade depot and trade (if you have anything to trade away...) for equipment.

Well, can also do those two if you don't have building materials for the first or don't have anything to trade for the second (though there's always clothes).