Once I walled up all the entrances and thought that I'm safe. I managed to make the fortress quite stable, i.e. resources are replenished by dwarves and they always stay happy.
But eventually I started to lose dwarves faster than they breed. This is a list of causes of deaths in a sealed fortress which are easy to forget about. Please help me amend it:
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Dwarf is scared to death by a ghost which I forgot to bury before sealing the fortress.
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After few years clothes fell apart, which caused surprisingly severe bad thoughts and led to tantrum spiral.
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Dwarf fell into strange mood while I did not have a certain type of workshop. He went insane.
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One of dwarves turned out to be a vampire and killed a number of dwarves before he was caught. Moreover, I had to kill the vampire as well, i.e. lost one dwarf more.
So, what can be added to this list? What else to beware of?
Best Answer
There are plenty of things to worry about in a sealed fort. These are the ones that I tend to forget about.
Death by Player: The one that always gets me. Indifference, boredom, carelessness, whatever it is that will cause the player to do something stupid that gets dorfs killed, e.g. building and testing the spear-trap danger room before actually assigning all that metal armor I made for everyone.
Death by Nature: As in Forgotten Beasts and cavern fauna, especially in Terrifying biomes. A FB carrying a syndrome to infect your entire fortress is a classic way to experience Fun™.
Death by Mood: Dwarf going insane because you've shut yourself off from the world, and that oak-encrusted marble figurine he's trying to make just HAS to have an ingredient that can't be found without opening the doors. For me, I never seem to have any yarn thread when I need it.