Food is an important resource that you need to feed your dwarves and families in Dwarf Fortress. Without it, your dwarves will starve, and things will turn ugly if you don’t feed them properly. There are some options available to you, but you have to go through a lot of processes to make sure that the food you give them is good. Here’s what you need to know about how to get food in Dwarf Fortress.
How to eat in Dwarf Fortress
How you collect food will vary, and it will change based on the type of resources around you. You can gather food by fishing, farming, gathering crops, breeding your livestock and slaughtering them, trapping, trading, or hunting. Common choices you’ll want to rely on include fishing, farming, trapping, and hunting. Trapping is a good way to catch animals, but it takes a lot of time. Hunting is also a decent way to get animals, but there is less risk involved. The fishing is good, but it takes too long. Finally, farming is efficient and probably the best way to get food for your dwarves. You need seeds if you want to farm.
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Each of these food sources also requires secondary workshops. For example, if you plan to send your dwarves fishing, be sure to create a Fishery, where you can process fish, cut them up, and prepare them for use in a Kitchen. The Kitchen is where your dwarves can make ready-to-eat meals for everyone and let them sit down to enjoy them rather than eating raw materials. You always want to have a Kitchen ready somewhere in your base and have someone working on making meals when they don’t have other projects that require their attention.
It all comes down to making sure you have workshops and dwarves actively working on these food rotations. We recommend that you focus on farming for most of your food, and consider other options as potential medicine for your dwarves.