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[SirHoneyBadger]

1: We need giant cave bees.

2: Beekeeping should be a skill, and you should be able to build apiarys.

3: This could be something that kobolds invented, since they're the "bug-loving" race. You'd then have a reason to trade with kobolds--for queen bees to build apiarys with.

4: Not only is honey useful as a food, and alchoholic beverage, it's also a potent antiseptic/antibiotic medicine. This could be extremely valuable, once Surgery gets in.

5: Beeswax also is extremely useful, for many different purposes.

 

[Foa]

1: We need giant cave bees.

2: Beekeeping should be a skill, and you should be able to build apiarys.

3: This could be something that kobolds invented, since they're the "bug-loving" race. You'd then have a reason to trade with kobolds--for queen bees to build apiarys with.

4: Not only is honey useful as a food, and alchoholic beverage, it's also a potent antiseptic/antibiotic medicine. This could be extremely valuable, once Surgery gets in.

5: Beeswax also is extremely useful, for many different purposes.

What about the previously mentioned Giant Burrowing Wasps!

Oh, and maybe we could have Blood Mead, which oozes forth from the Crimson Hives of the Berserker Hornets!
Be warned, the hives only flow with mead only when there is blood, and enough Berserker Hornets to collect the blood.

Note, you can make Crimson Hives, you just need extract blocks of Macabre Combs, or atleast get the Hornets to make you the Combs.

[ZeroGravitas]

oh come the **** on. who ever heard of beekeeper dwarves.

sure, there  should be bees in the game. yes, they should make honey. indeed, said honey should ferment into mead. and dwarves should really like mead!  but they should not make it.

HUMANS should do this, or maybe elves. this should not be a dwarf thing. mead should have a high value, like Sunshine. then you'd have more of a reason to trade.

the solution to everything is not "let's invent Cave XXXXX so dwarves can make it".  we already have plants that make cave sugar, cave syrup, cave milk, cave cheese, cave rum (which implies cave molasses), and cave cotton (well,  some kind of fiber anyway).


IN SUMMARY:
mead: yes
cave bees: no

[tsen]

Doesn't have to be underground bees. I'm perfectly sanguine about having topside beekeepers.

[Foa]

Absinthe anyone?

I mean, a cube of ( dried ) honey could be used.

[ZeroGravitas]

Absinthe anyone?

I mean, a cube of ( dried ) honey could be used.

But we already have dwarven sugar... and absinthe is distilled from the wormwood plant and served with a sugar cube... Sorry, I don't follow? Honey seems to be irrelevant.

[Pilsu]

On the one hand, frothy mugs of dwarf-hurl. On the other, frothy mugs of dwarf-hurl.

Goes down great with a little party dinner with fresh local meat

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, in my defense, "giant cave bees" was my unfortunate effort at humor.

And I think kobolds would have invented beekeeping way before humans ever did. I mean, considering that they're a major Civ, we have to leave kobolds something that they do better than everyone else.

[scale_e]

Done this way because it adds fun, not realism.

This is Dwarf Fortress, complicated is fun. Bring on the complications!

I, for one, can't wait for the day booze is handled in-game as it is in mundane life. It would make things quite interesting to have to warehouse your wine in casks in a sealed room for at least a season or two before it is drinkable... with further seasons adding quality modifiers right up to the point the stuff turns drinkable.

Hell yes!

Distilled pinecones that make you go blind (brand named 'Glug' for bonus points).

I would totally,totally, sell that to elves.

oh come the **** on. who ever heard of beekeeper dwarves.

Who ever heard of hall sweeping dwarves? Or toilet scrubbing dwarves? That's right, nobody. Just like nobody will ever write songs about Gloin the Beekeeper, unless he kills a dragon (or a murderous carp that has its own name and story).
Someone has to do these jobs.
Dwarves drink mead. So somewhere, behind the scenes, there would be a Dwarven bee keeper.
Not every Dwarf carries a war axe to work, and you're just going to have to deal with it... untill goblins are trainable. Then you can have slaves. But that.... is for another thread 

[Hectonkhyres]

Racial Specialties:

Goblins: A billion types of meat, leather, slaves, el-cheapo sweatshop goods, black market items, and whatever they just stole from your neighbors. Hell, they might sell the very same merchandise they just stole from you right back to your merchants.

Elves: Fruit of all sorts, plant based textiles, exotic live animals, wood, exotic dyes, medicines.

Humans: Huge quantities of really cheap grain, woolen and cotton textiles, a couple basic dyes at discount prices, meats a bit pricier than the gobbos' meat, higher quality (healthier and better trained than your generic peasant) but pricier slaves, boats and ships.

Kobolds: Cave critters and the products of cave critters of every kind... including spider/GCS silk and purring maggot milk by the tankard. A whole hell of a lot of stolen goods, some of which might be damn good, they are willing to use you as a fence for. As was stated, honey... but I would also add in paper harvested from some type of paper wasp that makes nests the size of refrigerators. Some gem/ ore trade too, most likely.

Yeah... I suppose that could work. But you are going to have to crank the kobold black market up to 11 to really balance things out for them.

[Footkerchief]

Yeah... I suppose that could work. But you are going to have to crank the kobold black market up to 11 to really balance things out for them.

Balance is overrated.  Kobolds are more appealing as underdogs who are curious enough to try anything but suck at everything besides hiding in caves and collecting bugs (with exceptions, of course).  It would be hilarious to see their confused attempts at trade.

[Foa]

Burrowing Wasp Honey!

The new and most delightful Honey, the weakest honey of it's Vim Hive Hierarchy, it is the easiest to collect, and the greatest product of the Kobolds, they have yet to harvest from the rarer, Aquatic Carp Hornets.

Don't try to collect it, get a Kobold.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Yeah... I suppose that could work. But you are going to have to crank the kobold black market up to 11 to really balance things out for them.

Balance is overrated.  Kobolds are more appealing as underdogs who are curious enough to try anything but suck at everything besides hiding in caves and collecting bugs (with exceptions, of course).  It would be hilarious to see their confused attempts at trade.

Underdogs is fine. I don't have a problem with that, but they should still be excellent at some things, or else they shouldn't be a Civ.

We can get a lot more use out of them than just mining them for comic relief. And just because they're fairly primitive, small, etc. in no way equates to their being unintelligent.

They might be masters at trading, for that matter, since they'd have to use the barter system, instead of coins, and since they're thieves.

I mean, let the leechmen or the batmen or the skunkmen or whatever be the total schleps.

And even *they* should have a few things they individually-as a sentient species-excell at (for instance, I'm really very fond of the idea that Leechmen have medical skills/abilities that trump everyone else's, and antmen could be a lot more developed in the game, possibly having their own aphid "honey" to trade.).

Kobolds I'd really like to see be representative of an "aboriginal" people who were in these lands before everyone else, and who may be looked down upon, but have their own lore, culture, and ways of doing things, that sometimes will be awesome.

Bug lore could be a part of that.

For that matter, the landscape could be dotted with kobold ruins, and kobold burial grounds.

The fact that kobolds are probably not good soldiers is enough to make them underdogs. It doesn't mean they have to be lame in all other ways.

I'm not saying that that's the way things have to be, I'm just saying if it isn't, then I hope it'll be replaced with something better/deeper.

[Nesoo]

BTW, has Nutritional Value as a food item property been discussed?

Yes.

[Stove]

Just to clarify: With point #1, I don't mean to suggest that it actually be changed. Alcohol made from mushrooms is so well ingrained into the culture of the Dwarf Fortress fan community that I don't think changing it is justified. I'm just pointing it out for the sake of discussion.

Mushrooms do have starches, so yeah, they should be fermentable in some sense (I think fermenting yeasts produce their own amylase? maybe?).  They also have chitin which could maybe be converted to simple sugars as long as you had the right chitinases, but I don't know what that would involve.

I couldn't actually find anything saying that mushrooms had sugars or starches. If they can indeed be fermented, I might be interested in experimenting!

Unless you can think of a better word, still it is. Breaking it into a dozen workshops wouldn't really add anything into the game. Making it bigger might make sense considering the amount of equipment it holds. Then again, I'd prefer if the equipment wasn't abstracted and the workshop was instead defined as a room

I think the word "brewery" might be better suited to the building, even if it is still technically no more correct. Splitting it up into multiple buildings for the sake of being able to name it all properly is a silly idea, but one might be able to justify it based on the importance of alcohol to dwarves.

sure, there  should be bees in the game. yes, they should make honey. indeed, said honey should ferment into mead. and dwarves should really like mead!  but they should not make it.

HUMANS should do this, or maybe elves. this should not be a dwarf thing. mead should have a high value, like Sunshine. then you'd have more of a reason to trade.

the solution to everything is not "let's invent Cave XXXXX so dwarves can make it".  we already have plants that make cave sugar, cave syrup, cave milk, cave cheese, cave rum (which implies cave molasses), and cave cotton (well,  some kind of fiber anyway).

There seems to be this attitude that everything Dwarven must be completely subterranean in origin, so that dwarves need not go outside to make it. Considering the association of mead with Dwarves in Norse mythology, I think it is fine to just have dwarves going outside to obtain the honey to make mead of their own.
I don't really like the idea of apiaries, though... Without apiaries to increase the availability of honey, mead could be a particularly valuable drink.