Dwarf Fortress update adds babies for everything, and stops dwarves dying from thirst because they couldn't pick up goblets

Baby, child, and adult versions of monsters from Dwarf Fortress. — (Image credit: Bay 12 / Kitfox)

The famed dwarf-em-up dynasties sim Dwarf Fortress has been enjoying something of a second wind ever since its release on Steam, with its creators finally receiving plenty of richly deserved mountain gold and hunkering down to a regular update cycle for the 'new' release. Dwarf Fortress being Dwarf Fortress, it gets some pretty good patch notes. And today's theme is babies.

The baby update brings "sprites for children and babies for many of the creatures and outdoor plants. This also includes dragon hatchings!" So I'm guessing that capturing then raising your own dragon will be the sign of a true baller fortress now. It is undeniably neat, and completely in-keeping with how this game is designed, that the plants get their own babies too, with crops now sprouting before they become all grown-up and edible.

There are also some "important fixes for buckets and refuse stockpiles" which will please the more OCD Fortress commanders (apparently some refuse piles were degrading materials incorrectly), a bunch of graphical changes including the addition of "smooth ice wall[s]", various backend tweaks, and then the good stuff:

"Stopped dwarves without working grasps from trying to get goblets to drink, failing, and dying of thirst."

Those dwarves never do stop finding ways to die. Kitfox is quite open about plans for the game, with the most recent update before this being an Arena mode which, yes, you could probably use to test out the babies, while the big upcoming project is a major rework of the game's oft-meandering Adventure mode: "We're going to make the world more interesting to free roam," said Tarn Adams, promising a world where NPCs will "turn one of your dwarves using like John le Carré spy techniques" to steal artifacts. Say what you will about this game: It is never, ever boring.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."