For almost a decade, I’ve enjoyed Dwarf Fortress greatly. When I started playing as a 13-year-old kid I greatly enjoyed the rich world, with the near-infinite amount of randomness. The details on engravings, statues and decorations were among my favourites, and I absolutely adored looking at the disgusting minced horror meals my cooks would throw together for my dwarves to enjoy. Yet, after the passage of time, I started noticing that the kitchen industry in the game lacked quite some depth compared to other elements. Raw meat that stores indefinitely as long as it is stockpiled, cooks that do nothing but mince and mince, finished meals ending up mixed in barrels to be retrieved years later, these barrels of nightmare-goop being so incredibly valuable that they are able to buy out entire caravans and dwarven preferences being so obscure that they are completely unsatisfiable in 90% of your population.
Food created society. For the vast majority of human history, nearly all of us were involved in the industry of putting food on the table. Of course, I understand that Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy game and it would be incredibly boring and undwarvenlike to have 97% of your population be plump helmet farming peasants required to keep your population alive, sustaining a fort could be a bit more challenging. Especially since the addition of plentiful fruit trees, obtaining food in the early game has become a complete non-issue in most biomes, and a small plot of plump helmets with some skilled farmers can easily supply a fortress ranging in the hundreds of inhabitants in the late-game. Adding some complexity and difficulty to food, in my opinion, could make gameplay and storytelling richer. Imagine a dwarven butcher tirelessly grinding up a forgotten beast into sausages, a besieged fortress slowly running out of their last stocks of salted plump helmets, a lavish feast with dozens of marvellous dishes laid out on near-endless tables to celebrate a victory in battle, a caravan ordering jars of a local delicacy, and a noble in a glacier-hall feasting on flamingo gizzards and apricot jelly while a revolt brews among the population that has eaten nothing but cave wheat biscuits for years on end.
I have a lot of ideas for this and so buckle up because it’s going to be a long one. Things concerning this have been on-and-off going through my head for a couple of years. I’m a bit afraid of seeming like I’m some stuck up dude trying to prescribe Toady how to make his game. This is by no means what I intend to do!! I just really like thinking about stuff like this and how to implement it into the game. I really hope it can serve as an inspiration or
food for thought if Toady ever decides to revisit cooking. I’m really interested in how you guys think it would affect the game, what seems lacking or would be cool to add or if it’s way too ambitious an idea. Alright, without further ado:
PreservationThe preservation of foods has been central in the history of civilization. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society was made because of the domestication of starch crops, of which the most important trait is their ability to be stored for years on end without spoiling. As it stands now, food that is not stockpiled rots, but preserves indefinitely if stockpiled. The only exception to this is, according to the wiki, raw fish, which will spoil as long as it is not prepared, and some things like flour, drinks and seeds, which will never spoil. My idea is to take this mechanic of imminent fish spoilage and preparation, diversify it and apply it to other foodstuffs such as raw meat, fruits and vegetables, while giving some crops and foods, such as cereals, onions, tubers, cheese and honey an exception or much longer storage time.
First, the diversification of the process. Preserving foods has a rich history, and I’ll list some of the methods that I think would be easy to code into the game.
DryingDrying foods is one of the oldest, simplest methods of preserving foods, though it is more time-consuming than most other methods. Meat jerky, stockfish, dried porcini mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and dried apple parts are all examples that you may personally know, that extend the shelf life of their original products with an incredible amount, sometimes years. This seems to me like the best early-game method for food preservation, needing only the raw ingredient, increasing the value of the product only slightly but making it last in your stockpiles.
SmokingContrary to popular belief, the process of smoking food to preserve it is very different from drying it. The chemicals in wood-smoke are used to sterilize and protect food (mainly meats and fish), yet smoking vegetables and fruits is also possible! Smoked eel is one of the amazing delicacies of my national cuisine (I know it sounds pretty disgusting but it’s actually the nicest, creamiest fish imaginable). Smoking would use a log of wood or charcoal (though it would be incredibly dorfy to also be able to make magma-smoked foods) to smoke a batch of raw produce, which would be more valuable than drying it and a much quicker produce. It could even impart the flavour of the wood on it, creating things like cherry wood smoked pork meat.
PicklingPickling is another method of food conservation, using acid or brine to preserve and/or ferment a product to increase its shelf life. Pickled vegetables are the most well-known, but historically, meats and fish were also pickled. Going back to my own national cuisine, one of our…. less appealing foods is pickled herring. Pickling would need an acidic substance, vinegar being the most common. And the most common way of obtaining vinegar is to let alcoholic liquid ferment again to obtain vinegar. This could be a task in the kitchen or brewery, turning apple cider into apple cider vinegar, or plump helmet wine into dwarven vinegar, which could then be used to pickle a batch of raw produce. This would also increase it’s value more than drying and result in a long lasting product. Another fun, possible mechanic is drinks spoiling to vinegar, the speed of which may be based on the quality of the barrel/pot it is contained in, though turning booze to vinegar actively may be the most desirable and fun for gameplay.
JellyingJellying is a more obscure method of preservation, using jelly to preserve a food. Jellied fruits are the most commonly known example of this as they contain a lot of sugar which aids in their preservation, but jellied meats and fish exist too. Jellied eel is a British dish and Aspic is common in eastern Europe. While I don’t really think broth and gelatin are necessary or good additions to the game, jellied foods could use sugar as a preserving agent. Sugar now exists in the game as an ingredient that’s fairly difficult to obtain and has no real other use than to be pricy. However, sugar is a great preserving agent and is traditionally added to both fruit jellies, but also to preserving brines for meat and fish. Jellied foods would be the most expensive and desirable preserved foods.
SaltingSalt is of course not in the game, but can not be missed when talking about food preservation. It was historically of incredible importance. Salt could be added, both as a type of mineable rock or something that can be extracted from saline water, and would make valuable and quick preservatives. Salted meats, fish, vegetables and yes – even fruits exist in cultures across the world and would be a cool addition.
On meatsWhile these above-mentioned methods are more than sufficient and expansive, I still think it would be cool to work with meat more. For example, using intestines and meat to create sausages, which I think are appropriately dorfy, using organs to create different types of charcuterie or even the ability to make blood pudding. I guess this could also be extended to fish, though…… yuck (dwarven seal of approval).
On cereals, tubers, etc.Cereal crops can already be turned into flour, which currently acts much the same as sugar in that it is somewhat difficult to obtain yet only serves as a foodstuff that is worth quite a bit. Making them in their raw form the few foodstuffs that do not need preservatives may elevate their usefulness in the game. Things like potatoes, onions and turnips could also use a no or slow spoilage modifier, and make room for some cool new cavernous equivalents to diversify the diet for our underground fortresses.
Other foodstuffsThat basically leaves us with eggs, milk, cheese and honey, though I may have missed something. Honey in the real world has basically no expiration date, milk is already turned into something preservable (cheese) and eggs… what about eggs? I’m not sure. I know pickled eggs exist, but I doubt smoking or salting eggs will keep them from spoiling, and drying them seems impossible. Maybe they’ll just have to be eaten fresh.
This seems to then cover everything. Though it may seem like this does away with all fresh produce, this is far from my intention. Fresh produce should still hold a position in the game, to be eaten raw in famines or to be cooked into delicious or less-delicious meals to be enjoyed in our taverns and dining halls. So, if that is the case, this just seems to complicate the whole process without adding too much. That’s why I’ve got some accompanying ideas!
Splitting up the kitchenAdding all this to the kitchen workshop would needlessly crowd the kitchen interface, so I propose a different option. A new workshop to handle most, if not all of these new tasks (maybe keep things like sausage making in the butchery and vinegar production in the still? And maybe add rendering fat to this new workshop? That may be the most useful way to do things). That still leaves us with the kitchen, basically unchanged, which still has some odd problems. Mainly in the way food is cooked (everything is minced), stored (everything tossed in a barrel together), and valued (cooked meals are of incredible value, and can be traded). Which is why I propose to rework the kitchen.
The kitchen should still have the purpose of combining ingredients to make enjoyable, diverse meals for your dwarves and guests. It could be stocked with both fresh produce and preserved foods, mixing them together to create a number of servings based on the stacks of ingredients that are put in. However, I don’t think it necessarily has to be a workshop. Maybe it could be similar to a hospital, as a room, or part of a tavern/inn or other location. How I picture it, a chef, or team of chefs, work there to create lovely meals, which dwarfs either come to pick up there directly like a buffet, or tavern workers come to pick up and serve on tables with hungry dwarves and guests. I imagine feasting halls being filled with varieties of dishes, nobles being served extravagant meals in their quarters, maybe a sad dwarf coming to get some takeaway to eat in their 2x1 shared door unsmoothed hole of a bedroom (I tend to build my fortresses efficiently, sorry dorfs).
Cooked meals could have more descriptors than just minced. Foods could be grilled, sauteed, steamed, broiled, stewed, served up raw, baked in a crust, et cetera. There’s a lot of cooking terms that could add some cool
flavour to your meals.
This leaves us with a lot of tasks and skills, and I think making cooking a category separate from farming, that includes existing skills like butchery, fish cleaning, cooking and brewing, but could also add new skills like bakery and food preserving (I think making salting, pickling, smoking separate skills would be a bit too much), would be a good idea to reduce clutter and keep the UI friendly. Of course, there will be a time in the fortress where a kitchen is not yet established. Getting food in this scenario would work no different than it currently does, I would suggest.
Culture and preferenceNow, to what I think would be one of the coolest parts. It’s going to be a bit of a mish-mash of different things that I group together here, but this basically comes down to how food affects your citizens. As it stands now, dwarfs have preferences for certain species of plant or animal, most of which you will never be able to obtain, and if they eat a meal containing that species, they’ll get a happy thought. Other than that, high quality meals and dining settings will give good thoughts and a repetitive diet will give bad thoughts. These are all good, but could be added upon. First of all, additional preferences for categories would be cool, as they are much more likely to be satisfied. For example, (Urists likes to consume fresh meat, pickled foods or jellied fruits). Secondly, acquired tastes could be a cool thing. Dwarfs gaining preferences for certain available ingredients, half-products or even finished dishes. Of course, if fed these in excess, they may start to resent them.
This leads to something I think is very cool: local cuisine. Every fortress has, or at least starts, with a limited amount of available ingredients. Maybe your pasture/harvesting area includes three cherry trees, your farmers grow celery, and your hunters bring back an ample amount of badger meat. These would of course only combine in a limited amount of ways. Cherry pickled celery may be something you tend to produce a lot, and many of your dwarves may acquire a taste for it. If it’s been served often enough, or if enough dwarves have acquired a taste for it, this preservative may become part of the local cuisine, causing chefs to strive to make it if ingredients are available, and an additional happiness modifier when consumed. Additionally, maybe foreign caravans will place orders on it or value it highly, or nobles will forbid its export and mandate its production. The same may hold for fully cooked meals: a platter of grilled badger meat, cherry pickled celery and jellied cherries may be served so often or to such delight that it, as a finished meal, becomes part of the local cuisine, and dwarfs will try to prioritize cooking both it and its components when tasked. These products or dishes should of course get cool little names based on their contents or the chefs that pioneered/popularized them. It would be cool for civs to start out with their own civilization-wide dishes, to be cooked in fortress mode or found and enjoyed in adventure mode.
Speaking on the mandates of nobles, nobles mandating the cooking of certain dishes would add some cool flavour. Nobles may demand traditional foods, foods they never tasted before or even foods unobtainable in the area. This would give a good excuse to keep the elves as friends for the variety of potential meals they bring in their caravans, or to raid faraway places for their animals and exotic crops, or to set out vermin traps so the noble can feast on something horrendously decadent like songbirds, axolotls or fairies.
Feasts could also be a marvellous addition. Chefs tasked with cooking up a variety of meals to serve, in honour of a marriage, the lifting of a siege, at a nobles whims, the killing of a great enemy, in remembrance of an event or just for the sake of it. Dwarves eating their fill in the tavern as dishes keep on coming and coming is just a lovely image. Churches and guild halls could also demand feasts, and fulfilling these demands would satisfy their members. Feasting also gives the opportunity for cooks to have a strange mood. I can just imagine a chef having a strange mood and demanding a variety of classes of food and using them to throw a legendary feast for all the fort, being elevated to legendary in the progress and the cooked dishes immediately being canonized as part of the local cuisine. To see the lavish menu the dwarf prepared in the announcement box would also be really cool.
Other possible additionsHerbs and spices could be additions to the game, having great value as trade goods and causing increases in moods, but carrying no nutritional value. They could maybe be used in a similar way like encrusting with gems works, creating products like thyme-infused apple cider vinegar or cinnamon spiced blueberry jam. Or, they could just be added to kitchen recipes for a mood boost.
Next to just combining ingredients, a kitchen could automatically stock itself with a variety of things, like a hospital does. Wood/coal, buckets of water, herbs and spices, or other basic cooking ingredients like vinegar, flour, tallow or oil. All of these could add positive mood modifiers to eating the meal without adding additional servings, and could be used up slowly. Things like pots, pans, bowls, jars, knives and other cooking tools could be stocked and speed up the process and maybe add new modifiers, like baked for a pan, finely diced for a knife, which could in turn be preferences for dwarfs (Urist likes consuming grilled vegetables for example). Adding extra furniture to the kitchen like tables, could increase working space and efficiency as well. This way, a kitchen could evolve from a single table with a chef and some stored items to a large working space with constant activity, serving out dishes that ever increase in lavishness and quality. “Head Chef” could also become a noble position much like chief medical dwarf, and maybe nobles can demand their own personal chef (valued on cooking skill) and even serving personnel. Noble-assigned chefs would be in charge of the daily food of said noble, the dishes they may mandate or even the feasts in their honour.
To increase the value of cereals, maybe a bakery could be added that turns flour into ingredients like biscuits, bread or cakes, using progressively more of said flour (somewhat like the current kitchen) for better mood boosters with less shelf-life as a result.
Recipe books could be written by skilled cooks, containing local or improvised recipes that can improve the cooking skills of the reader. Those would be cool to find in adventure mode as well.
Some concernsOf course, I’m suggesting a lot of changes right now, and no change comes without its drawbacks.
The first concern I have is noob-friendliness. DF is of course expecting a major influx of new players, which will be greatly aided by the new UI and graphics changes, but it remains a complicated game nonetheless. Dwarf Fortress definitely doesn’t shy away from further complexity, but much of it is at least somewhat optional. I, for example, have never even bothered with minecarts in my 10 years of playing the game. Something as essential as food getting more complicated, however, doesn’t really have an opt out. Food spoilage is already an existing mechanic, though easily addressed by just constructing a stockpile. However, with just the single step of drying foods everything is addressed. Still, it might be good to make this an automatic process like animal butchery or fat rendering, or at least something that can be toggled on or off. And maybe Good biomes could have a modifier that slows or even totally prevents the spoilage of food.
The second one is framerate. I’m not a coder by any means, but I remember modpacks deleting the species labels on food to increase performance, so by that logic, adding this immense amount of potentially creatable foods would not increase performance. Maybe finished meals no longer being stored in stockpiles actually decreases the complexity the game has to calculate, though?
Alright, that’s it! Thanks for reading and I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on these ideas
