I had animals still in cages after reclaim: they were on surface. All other cages were emptied.
If you are using quantum dumps or minecart routes: routes will have to be redone as well. De routes still exist after reclaim, but point to null locations.
The amount of change also depends on the time between retire and re-embark. When waiting more as the default few weeks many items will degrade that will hardly degrade in fortress mode: wooden buckets and beds, leather skins. Much of the clothing will be replaced over time by the (default) non crafted clothes. Unused clothing stays unused in the stockpiles.
Maybe it is best to put all artifacts, including books, in display furniture before retire. When they scatter, lots of item retrieval quests will be generated. Your adventurer might want to focus on the ones that were actually stolen...
Sometimes a volcano or underground magma source starts to leak into caverns after re-embark. Combined with item-scattering this can be very nasty. I used the recommended backup to wall it off first as a work around.
Upon entering a retired fortress quite often fight break out between dwarves and goblin residents. Train your goblin poets in a military squad, conquer some pits and send them off before retire.
The travel inclined residents (poets, scholars) sometimes will continue wandering after retire. Upon re-embark they will return. Most will return fairly fast. Some can take a year. Just as with regular used military squads, squad commands are unavailable as long as not all members did return. You can still issue individual commands.
While I didn't have fights breaking out between the other races after re-embark, I guess their wanderlust warrants removal from squads before retire.
A retired fortress will use its military squads. They will be send against nearby threats, some of them normally visible in fortress mode like night creatures. Squads will also try and reclaim artifacts. They might start following you around if you posses fortress artifacts. Meeting such a squad will either result in a crash or a confusing conversation where the dwarves will tell you they are on an important mission, but not anything else.
Now I rather use candy items. I tend to name them all so they cannot break in adventurer mode. Drawback is that all names are in dwarvish. You get used to the weird name of your axe. The crashes happened in previous versions were item duplication happened a lot - I don't know if it is still happening as I'm not taking artifacts anymore*.
* I did take items that were named by the adventurer while in fortress mode. This seems not to trigger artifact reclaim.
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Topic: Planning for Retirement (Read 7270 times)