D&D 5E What Do Dwarves Eat?

[Remathilis]

The assumption is that dwarves live deep in the mountains and never leave. In fact, that the dwarven halls are completely underground. (Think Moria).

I'd wager most dwarves live in the lower foothills and mid-mountains (hence HILL dwarves) with part of their cities above ground, part underground. Hence, some hearty grains and mountain-adapted animals would be available. Mix in some fungi and mushrooms, and you have a good diet of mutton, sausage, goatsmilk, pork, rye, root vegetables, and beers.

 

[BigVanVader]

They eat the same things as an dragon in a 10' by 10' room: dungeon steak. A.k.a. cockroach.

I know this is a joke, but when my cat goes hunting for insects, he'll eat anything but a cockroach. Roaches, he'll just leave on the floor the moment he thinks they're dead. Somehow I'm not sure how appetizing those little awful critters are.

 

[BigVanVader]

The assumption is that dwarves live deep in the mountains and never leave. In fact, that the dwarven halls are completely underground. (Think Moria).

I'd wager most dwarves live in the lower foothills and mid-mountains (hence HILL dwarves) with part of their cities above ground, part underground. Hence, some hearty grains and mountain-adapted animals would be available. Mix in some fungi and mushrooms, and you have a good diet of mutton, sausage, goatsmilk, pork, rye, root vegetables, and beers.

This makes a bit more sense, actually.

 

[Patrick McGill]

The only dwarves that live deep deep underground in my campaigns are the duergar, deep dwarves, and they usually eat underdark nasty fair. A certain type of corpulent and meaty cavern maggot is a favored delicacy, usually roasted with a fork over open flame until the flesh starts to pop.

Nom.

Mountain Dwarves however I see similar to (don't hit me) World of Warcraft dwarves; their city is indeed in a mountain, but it's not deep underground. There are villages among the foothills, shepherds, and the like.

I actually really went into detail about my hill dwarves. I love hill dwarves.

 

[Lidgar]

 

[I'm A Banana]

I presume that dwarves have access to the surface, and use it. Though they live underground much of the time (mountain dwarves more than hill dwarves), they have tunnels that access croplands in the mountains.

In the Real World, mountain living civilizations include the residents of the Himalaya and the Andes...and the cultural inspiration for a lot of dwarves is the rather-poor-for-agriculture world of the nordic mountains. Taking that as a model, they probably do agriculture in secluded surface regions, perhaps warmed by the forges deep within the earth. Their products may include...

• Potatoes. Indigenous to the Andes, useful as base starches and you can even make bread out of 'em. Makes a good vodka. Also includes sweet potatoes
• Corn. Also an Andean staple. Makes tortillas, a bread, you can roast it up, eat it raw, it's resistant to drought...
• Barley. This can explain the profusion of dwarven ales - lots of barley. Something like tsampa might be a dwarven staple
• Juniper trees. Useful in brewing gin. Goes well with meats.
• Various berries such as blueberries, lingonberries, raspberries. Resilient in cold, and grows in northern climates. Useful for jamming in the winter.
• Herding of goats or sheep (or yak or alpaca in a more exotic sense). Make a good wool, fine leather, and a passable meat. Meat is a big part of the diet here.
• MILK. With those animals, and the cold temperature, warm milk is going to be a choice drink on cold nights. Cheeses and butter creams come from here as well.
• The main spice is probably salt -- it's mined. Anything else is going to be traded for. Though with the berries, various sauces can serve as condiments, and the meat can make some good gravy.

Which might mean that our typical complete dwarven meal might be something like a potato-and-mutton stew, with a great flagon of beer, some buttered barley bread to sop up the gravy, and a wedge of cheese. Dried berries make a frequent snack. Maybe some warm, salted goat milk (similar to butter tea) sipped in the morning to warm the body, with beer the rest of the time. When dwarves want to get loaded, potato vodka and gin are their main drinks.

 

[aramis erak]

In every edition of D&D I've ever seen, Dwarves are consistently shown to live in mountains and generally underground. Sometimes near to the surface, but sometimes they're shown to be deep, deep down in the dark. They collect gems, they're dedicated miners, so far so good.

But they're also shown to enjoy fairly mundane looking food, just large portions of it. They eat sausage and bacon, they eat bread, they love beer, and that's where it starts to get a bit hazy. Because, uhhh...where does all this come from? Do they raise pigs and grow crops underground? It would be cool to see a "farming room", where farmers go in and pluck potatoes and carrots from the dirt 'ceiling' above them, and it would also make sense if Dwarves relied heavily on trade with other races. It would explain why Dwarves seem to be considered a "common" race despite living at the center of the earth, playing pranks on sleeping Balrogs and whatnot.

But if they don't do their own farming, and if they don't trade with others, really, what the hell do they eat? Do they just eat fungus and worms? Do they hunt Drow and eat them, and just lie to the outside world that the Drow are "evil" for this reason? Do they just soak in minerals from rocks somehow?

What is going on with these little dudes?!

Under AD&D I had come up with "lots of mushrooms, plus whatever they choose to grow in caverns lit with continual light."

Lacking the same spell and the same level of durable magic, it's far less clear.

But there are several major possibilities:
1) they grown food on the surface above/around their underground halls.
2) they have similar magic to Continual light as it appeared in AD&D (where it's "nearly full daylight"
3) they use spells like cornucopia on a regular basis
4) they use magic items embodying spells like cornucopia

 

[Remathilis]

So I opted to check out TSR's takes on this...

Dwarves' Diet
Dwarves enjoy a wide variety of food, with a preference for meat. Hill, mountain, and sundered dwarves keep cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and fowl. These animals are grazed above ground on upland meadows or plateaus. Sundered dwarves keep their livestock close to home, hill and mountain dwarves allow their stock to roam.
In high ranges, mountain dwarves keep animals more suited to subterranean existence: giant lizards and beetles. Deep dwarves and duergar also keep lizards and beetles, and these are selectively bred for cooking. Gully dwarves eat anything they can scavenge and rarely breed or maintain any animals for food. The few gullys who have tried were so wretched at it their animals sickened and died.
Although meat is a staple of their diet, large quantities of grains are also consumed. When possible wheat, rye and barley are grown close to the stronghold. They are harvested and kept in underground granaries. Many who live close to humans or halflings buy large quantities of grain to supplement their own production.
Dwarves who live in the deep earth substitute various types of fungi for grains. Like the giant lizards and beetles, many of these fungi have been carefully bred to produce a wide variety of flavors to excite the palate. Most are very careful about the kinds of fungi they eat, but gully dwarves will eat anything. As a result, many gully dwarves suffer from indigestion and bowel disorders.
Dwarven cooking also makes use of vegetables for flavor and variety. They do not eat spicy or heavily seasoned food, and consequently dwarven cooking tastes bland to humans and elves, but the food is wholesome, consisting of thick stews served on broad slices of bread. While they are not voracious eaters like halflings, few humans or elves can eat as much as a dwarf in a single meal.

Races of Stone mentions a few tidbits, but no solid info on dwarven diet.

 

[Minigiant]

Beer, water, jerky from assorted bests for protien, and traded citrus to prevent scurvy.

Ale, water, goat jery, and lemons.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Not what I would call a "credible source," but in the third Hobbit movie* Dwarves ride both boar and ram mounts. One could easily extrapolate to wider domestication of those and other "mountain" animals for food.





*Predating Jackson's movies, there is at least one mini with a dwarf on boarback. There are also older drawings of such; I wonder where those images came from.