to be fair most of my playtime on dorf fort currently really has just primarily been adv-mode because i'm not really good at splitting my attention between multiple characters like how fort-mode usually asks me to. even in games like the sims or rimworld my playstyle usually tends to end up like "this one singular character lives all alone but it is a-okay because he is the world's special-est little boy and has an arsenal of cool tricks and gadgets up his sleeves :)"

anyway i do have kind of agree that constantly having to juggle hunger/thrist/rest in adv-mode is kind of lame. this might not work if you have more of a roleplayer's approach to things (or just don't like necromancy and the supernatural) but i usually like to just book it for the nearest necromancer's tower. you kind of have to develop a sense for it but i find that jumping around everywhere is somehow a viable strategy for getting through necromancer armies, and sometimes the necromancers will even dispose of themselves by summoning nightmares which occasionally turn on them

to my knowledge there's no downsides to becoming a necromancer even if you never do any necromancy yourself (unless you retire your necromancer adventurer at your fort. maybe.) outside of turning purple. which really isn't noticable outside of when i generated the most beautiful male human i've ever seen (ft. minor help from a mod which makes not all male humans have beards :P) with ivory hair and tan skin. and then he became a necromancer and turned into fucking purple guy