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[timmeh]

I recently had a dwarf aquire a strange mood, then go berserk, all within a few days, without claiming a workshop or requesting materials.  I don't think it was the lack of the right workshop, as he was a craftsdwarf, and I have a crafting workshop.  It's not too big of a deal, as he only managed to kill my jewel something-or-other, and neither him nor the jeweler were particularly useful, but I'd still like to know if/what I did wrong.

[Christes]

Was the dwarf attacked or something like that early on?  From the wiki:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anything that would cause the dwarf to cancel the strange mood job (like being attacked or having the workshop destroyed, or unpowered after claiming) will cause insanity

That's all I can think of.

[Skanky]

Random thoughts: Maybe he didn't have access to the craftdwarf workshop? Maybe he had a fell mood and didn't have a butchery? Actually, I've not had a fell mood before, so I'm not sure where they do their thing.

[Danaru]

Random thoughts: Maybe he didn't have access to the craftdwarf workshop? Maybe he had a fell mood and didn't have a butchery? Actually, I've not had a fell mood before, so I'm not sure where they do their thing.

that happened to me once. he killed my butcher, ironically, but I didn't have a butcher shop up, so he went melancholy and nose-dived into the magma pipe.

it was cool

[jester]

If he didnt have acess to a craft workshop he should have just wandered to the meeting hall and staggered about until he did. If it was a strange mood he should have only done this if he had acess and then it was denied for some reason.  ive had this happen a few times with blacksmiths going fey while the tubes feeding my magma smelter are still filling and the red light on the forge is flashing on and off.  they usually go from normal to fey to emo/bezerk in about 2 seconds.

[Bryan Derksen]

That's why I always take care to dismantle a magma forge while powering up or powering down the magma channel that feeds it. Forbidding it will probably work too, but I really really like legendary metalworkers so I don't want to risk losing one to insanity.

Don't dismantle the magma smelter you use to melt down scrap metal, though; smelters store up partial bars of metal so you might lose some of it. Strange moods never use smelters so it's safe to have them flicker.

[timmeh]

My head warrior went insane shortly after (lack of decent booze, I think.  Stupid elves didn't sell any...), and killed half my fortress...

I build a drowning chamber and put it to immediate use.  Unfortunately, I was still left without a source of food in mid-summer, out of booze, and the majority of my workshop dwarves were dead..... I was betting on the human caravan, but all they brought was ropes and some seeds, which don't do me a lot of good with my only farmer sitting the in bottom of the fortress with an axe in his head...

[RyanW]

Emergency measures time.  Slaughter all the animals, then everybody farms.

[Danaru]

I once had a bunch of elf traders who I was ignoring, since they had no animals.

a while before that, my food stores were getting RIDICULOUSLY full, and they weren't using barrels for the booze, so I told the farm to shut up, and I set the food stockpile to 0 barrels so I could jumpstart the booze industry.

I know, I know, I never said it was a GOOD idea.

so when the traders came, they just sort of sat around the depot until I got the message "urist mchealthcare cancels give food: no food", so I suddenly realized "OH FUCK EMERGENCY MEASURES"

I keep my depot above a 20 Z-level pit, and since it's the only entrance to my fortress (my front gate is floodgated shut), my first emergency measure in any situation is to pull the "OH FUCK" lever that drops the depot into oblivion so that my fortress is sealed.

I had genuinely forgotten the elves were there until all of my dwarves suddenly dove into the pit to grab some eats.

second time in my life the elves have been useful (the first was when they brought me a caged bear)

[Hamster Man]

Ahahahahaha!

Elf 1: "So.... you think they're ignoring us?"
Elf 2: "Yeah... oh hey did you see that one about -"
Unknown Dwarf: "OH FUCK!"
Elf 2: "..."
Elf 1: "..."
Elf 1: "Did you just hear a clicking noise?"

[BurnedToast]

Ahahahahaha!

Elf 1: "So.... you think they're ignoring us?"
Elf 2: "Yeah... oh hey did you see that one about -"
Unknown Dwarf: "OH FUCK!"
Elf 2: "..."
Elf 1: "..."
Elf 1: "Did you just hear a clicking noise?"

Hilarious, I literally laughed out loud.

I always stuff a ton of animals in an emergency cage right next to the butcher shop, just in case something like this happens. I haven't had to use it in a very, very long time but old habits die hard.

Fun fact: animals who die in cages leave a corpse which will never rot, and won't be butchered until you deconstruct the cage.

[Bryan Derksen]

When I set forts in intensely cold regions I find that the traders bring a nice little bonus of extremely cheap meat and leather in the form of dead animals in cages. Just buy the cages that are significantly heavier than the other cages made of the same material - those are the ones that have animal corpses in them. Frees up weight in the caravan to take some of my old unwanted furniture away too.