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[G-Flex]

Short and simple:

Mead takes significant effort to produce, but bears the minimum value of any booze, making it half the value of most forms of drink in the game, including all those made with underground crops, and even less valuable compared to whip wine and sunshine.

In my opinion, a value of 2 or 3 would be more appropriate. That's about it.

[Granite26]

Given that supply and demand is imminent, is this worth it?

[G-Flex]

It's a quick fix, and by quick fix, I mean it would take approximately twenty seconds to slap in a material value token for two materials under separate creatures.

I don't know if I anticipate the supply/demand stuff working well unless we have a notion of which things actually taste/look/smell better than others, at least in terms of food (other materials and items have their own complications).

But yeah, it's just an issue of adding a material value token. Easy enough to mod in, of course, but still worth considering for the game proper.

[JohnieRWilkins]

Maybe that's a backwards approach and what you really want is for plants and other brews to be harder to get? I think that'd be cool.

Just throwing it out there.

e: This post is obviously far harder to program than just upping the value of mead in raws or wherever and making it cannon. But w/e.

[G-Flex]

Depends. I have no idea how "good" or rare mead was compared to beer and wine and such back then, or how difficult farming should be, or how underground plants should work, and that sort of thing (or at least, my ideas about that aren't necessarily relevant); it just seems weird that mead is as valueless as "gutter cruor" and "swamp whiskey".

[Solace]

As much as there should be gradients for food and drink (they're your fortress' fuel, after all)... I can't think of a way to have them be a big deal, that wouldn't hopelessly handicap you when you're off eating raw potatoes in the beginning of the game. Obviously, the things you scrounge up in your first year will have to be a workable minimum, so how do you go up from there?

I suppose there could be more limiting factors in skill, besides practice. A master chef is limited by the maximum skill of his knife, and maybe loses out on productivity if he's not eating and drinking well? Exotic foods could factor in to whatever magic system gets put in, I guess. Eat magic plants and magic booze to regenerate your magic? Maybe eating "ironroot" could increase your skin's resistance to damage for a while.

[sockless]

As a fortress grows it could require better food. If the food isn't good, they could get unhappy thoughts from eating it. Here's a real life example: When in the bush, I'm quite content to eat very plain food, like crackers and that's about it, I'm also content with inferior food (freeze dried food isn't as god as fresh). But at home, I wouldn't want to eat freeze dried food (except for the roast lamb and veges), instead I require fresh food.

I do sort of like the idea of magic, but I sort of don't. I think that food should have physical effects on dwarves, so that if a dwarf eats willow bark or poppies, he can take more pain. I don't know if we should go as far as to have magical food though.

[Solace]

Well I believe the plan is to get magic and alchemy, and in more of a physical way than just the "wave your arms to fireball". Drinking seer drought to increase your chance of a mood, or eat something to become resistant to poison or heat, and work in an industry that require such resistance, possibly.

I guess the main thing you'd need to do with the more "basic" foods is sacrifice something that won't matter in the first year or two of your fortress, but will when migrants start coming in. Maybe your first few guys, hardened expeditioners, might be more tolerant of such things, but migrants would expect more civilization? Beyond your first seven getting some sort of bonuses to survival type things, maybe poor food could impair developing friendships? If dwarven friendships are important, and you assume that the first seven have all they need for the time being, developing new ones won't matter until you have more migrants than origionals.

Or, how about spices? If foods need to be made of several ingredients to produce happyness, spices could be an easily packed way to increase variety for a while, rather than pack five years of whole meals. They'd likely be expensive, but maybe since it would be seen as a necessity, there could be a discount on it for the first year or two of the fortress. It'd also start running dry a lot faster if you suddenly acquire twenty migrants, now all of a sudden getting four-ingredient food for everyone is a big deal, since the spices ran out four times faster than you'd been counting on.

For that matter, flavorings for booze? The alcohol for beer is barley, but the flavor comes from hops. Ale has a wider variety of flavorings. "Toss fermentable thing in pot" might be enough to get away from needing water, but proper booze takes more than that. Taking with a few units of lightweight hops can jumpstart your decent-beer industry, but that rapidly runs out if you don't get around to farming hops... of course, happiness-producing hops takes second seat compared to harvests that are required for your dwarves to not die.

[Greep]

Much more important is making values/quality multipliers in general moddable.  As it is one legendary dwarf in nearly any discipline can supply your fort with pretty much all the items in a caravan.

[Bohandas]

Short and simple:

Mead takes significant effort to produce, but bears the minimum value of any booze, making it half the value of most forms of drink in the game, including all those made with underground crops, and even less valuable compared to whip wine and sunshine.

In my opinion, a value of 2 or 3 would be more appropriate. That's about it.

seconded

[Neonivek]

It is unfortunate but in this world not everything has equal value to effort.

Mead is tough to make because making drinks is pathetically easy in Dwarf Fortress.

Heck it is faster to make wine in Dwarf Fortress then it is in real life.

[Nikov]

Call me sadistic, but I'd like all sorts of alcohol to involve as much of a process as mead... we seem to be moving slowly away from the 3x3 workshop for quite a few tasks.

[Bohandas]

It is unfortunate but in this world not everything has equal value to effort.

Well, I know that IRL the cheapest mead I can find is more expensive than the cheapest grape-based wine that i can find. A LOT more expensive if you don't count half-assed meads that have been watered down with white wine.

[Neonivek]

It is unfortunate but in this world not everything has equal value to effort.

Well, I know that IRL the cheapest mead I can find is more expensive than the cheapest grape-based wine that i can find. A LOT more expensive if you don't count half-assed meads that have been watered down with white wine.

That is mostly because of both our ability to mass produce alcohol like never before as well as the increased relative price of honey.

So the price of other alcohol went down. Before you go like "But they drank alcohol all the time and it wasn't all mead" I will say that it is completely true... but apperantly it was watered down.

Alcohol in Dwarf Fortress doesn't have to be crushed, heated, fermented, or rested.

Also doesn't some mead have milk in it? or am I thinking of fermented Goat's milk?

[Babylon]

Well I believe the plan is to get magic and alchemy, and in more of a physical way than just the "wave your arms to fireball". Drinking seer drought to increase your chance of a mood, or eat something to become resistant to poison or heat, and work in an industry that require such resistance, possibly.

I guess the main thing you'd need to do with the more "basic" foods is sacrifice something that won't matter in the first year or two of your fortress, but will when migrants start coming in. Maybe your first few guys, hardened expeditioners, might be more tolerant of such things, but migrants would expect more civilization? Beyond your first seven getting some sort of bonuses to survival type things, maybe poor food could impair developing friendships? If dwarven friendships are important, and you assume that the first seven have all they need for the time being, developing new ones won't matter until you have more migrants than origionals.

Or, how about spices? If foods need to be made of several ingredients to produce happyness, spices could be an easily packed way to increase variety for a while, rather than pack five years of whole meals. They'd likely be expensive, but maybe since it would be seen as a necessity, there could be a discount on it for the first year or two of the fortress. It'd also start running dry a lot faster if you suddenly acquire twenty migrants, now all of a sudden getting four-ingredient food for everyone is a big deal, since the spices ran out four times faster than you'd been counting on.

For that matter, flavorings for booze? The alcohol for beer is barley, but the flavor comes from hops. Ale has a wider variety of flavorings. "Toss fermentable thing in pot" might be enough to get away from needing water, but proper booze takes more than that. Taking with a few units of lightweight hops can jumpstart your decent-beer industry, but that rapidly runs out if you don't get around to farming hops... of course, happiness-producing hops takes second seat compared to harvests that are required for your dwarves to not die.

Fermenting booze actually requites a fair amount of water.  to make beer you make a barley tea, wine is admittedly made just from juice, but if you get into distilling you again need water.  Mead also takes water in real life.  I'd like to see a bucket of water as a required reagent for drinks personally.