Lock them all in the room and watch as each one gets thirsty, the one that doesn’t need drink will never get thirsty or hungry.Look through the Bio information of each dwarf and look for tell-tale signs such as, enjoyed slaughter recently, can’t get through the day without alcohol but can’t recall the last time they had any, lots of previous connections or groups they are associated with.

You then have a couple of options to identify a vampire within a squad The dwarves that will then start to pop up dead will tend to be members of your military which helps to narrow down who is and isn’t a vampire. So at the moment I have discovered vampires by paying attention to their targets, due to their nature they will usually have some sort of military ability and so if you pick your squads based on their skills then they will end up in a squad in a barracks. When the bodies of your dwarves are discovered you will generally find there are no witnesses unless the vampire was caught in the act, but even if caught in the act they won’t appear as hostile but either finish the job or run away leaving your dwarve injured and low on blood. The vampires will appear with different migration waves or sometimes slip in from the wilds between migration waves, sadly there is no obvious way to detect them. The first sign of a vampire appearing in your fortress will be dwarves popping up dead and drained of blood, sometimes going missing for weeks beforehand. They will target your dwarves while they’re alone and asleep. However they don’t eat, drink or have excessive mood swings, unless they’re drinking one of your dwarves of course :). They are essentially identical to any of your other dwarves, they appear the same, they have professions, skills and they also have relationships. I’ve had a good few months of playing with them now and have some tactics for detecting and isolating them. In the newest versions of Dwarf Fortress, vampires have been added to fortress mode.

Dwarf fortress barracks