Gems? A problem? What kind of dwarf are you?
Heh. One of those few despised ones...an organizer
@uncool: spider webs are nearly unrenewable as well, since the only way to get more is to find a GCS and lure it to a dwarf so that it webs it. Some strange moods request silk as well, and those may be near impossible if all of the webs are already harvested. . . . . . .anyways, get that stockpile built and lined with flashing windows stat
You are correct; I should have specified a moodable item. However, the threads and cloth are renewable via trade.
I personally like to save my gems, because of a rarely-noticed fact:
Uncut gems are the one and only unrenewable resource in the game.
Not to forget stone.
Stone is renewable in multiple ways.
If you only need generic stone, mix magma and water. If you need a specific stone, then you can trade another renewable resource with your civilization for it (albeit rather slowly at 4 a year).
Absolutely everything else (that I can think of) can either be regrown or traded for, but you will always eventually run out of gems by moods.
You'd have to run a fort for a very long time indeed for this to be a potential problem.
I'm generally a slow planner for my forts; nearly all of them are designed to follow some goal (e.g. make a megapyramid encompassing the entire map, survive on a glacier/volcano map and obsidianize hell, etc.)
Some kinds of rock are unavailable depending on location, but as far as I know all mandate-making nobles right now are either appointed by the player or can be replaced. Shells are another nasty one, though I've never seen a shell mood in .25.
I'm still playing on 31.18, and haven't seen any shell anything since 31.12 or so.
=Uncool-