Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Eneverforgets]

I started a new fort this evening and a bit after my first migrants showed up, someone tantrumed.  This caused two others to go crazy.  After they finally bit the dust and their baby starved, I figured I was on the road to recovery.  Unfortunately, the same thing happened again.  I'm not even to autumn yet and I've had four dwarves go nuts on me.  I've got food, I've got booze, I've got separate bedrooms.  I've got a decent dining area.  The only out of the ordinary thing I did was that I just noticed that I didn't have a refuse pile outside, but I didn't see miasma either.  Any ideas?

[Solon64]

Check the dfwiki page for the list of known things that give happy/unhappy thoughts, and see if any of them are on the list.

Alternatively, check the tantrumming dwarves' thoughts screen.  That'll tell ya right out what is making them mad.

I'd have guessed lack of clothes but if it's only after your first migrant wave, that's probably not it. /shrug.

[Seraphim342]

Did you check the thoughts and preferences on them  Dwarves can be skittish creatures.  I had one tantrum once because he saw a vermin animal he hated which started a spiral. 

[Blue_Dwarf]

Check the happiness of dwarves in Dwarf Therapist. The red ones are the problem, check their thoughts in-game.

Make sure they start working on something asap, that will give them a happy thought (making crafts is probably the best bet). Designate a few tables as Meeting Halls, that will allow them to organize a few parties. It's possible to recover from a tantrum spiral, it's just their happiness won't rise very fast.

Once a group of goblins entered my fort and killed about ten dwarves, which caused a chain of tantrums. 30 coffins later, the dwarves were happy again.

[Telgin]

If this is modded in any way, it's possible they aren't migrating with clothes for some reason.  That could cause this sort of behavior easily.

[Drazinononda]

You say it's a new fort: is it possible that these are dwarves coming in from an old fort, where they'd be unhappy from whatever caused that fort to end?

Also your best lead is to check their thoughts. Only the ones listed on that page have any effect on their current happiness, so you should be able to track down everything that's wrong.

[Lee72]

I had one tantrum once because he saw a vermin animal he hated which started a spiral.

[Eneverforgets]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll have to check out their thoughts. I remember off the top of my head that one of them enjoyed flipping over a table and starting a fistfight recently.  And he was upset over a crowded dining area and the decay of a child.  Also, both times it appeared that Urist A has a tantrum, and Urist B and C get melancholy or run around babbling.  Urist A (which was two different dwarves I think) lived both times, and the crazy ones died (obv).  Is it possible that Urist A is having a fit about something like a crappy dining area and killing a child?  I just thought it odd that both times, two dwarves went crazy after someone else had a tantrum.

[Vinsombra]

I'll bet it was the decay of a child that set it off.  That's kind of a big one.

[MasterShizzle]

Depending on the preferences of my dwarves, sometimes I won't even start an embark. If I get more than one dwarf with "absolutely detests flies", for example, then it can be impossible to keep them happy, especially if they're a cook or brewer and are near the food stocks all the time where flies tend to gather. The fort that made me start checking these things was with a cook/brewer who hated flies, and he ended up tantruming before the end of the first year (unique blend of circumstances, including lack of trees and therefore no beds, but still).

[Sutremaine]

Bad thought about dining room furniture can be solved by making sure each chair has only one table next to it (and vice versa). I've also noticed that dwarves are willing to sit in someone's office and then complain about the lack of tables, so even though you don't need a table in an office you should put one there anyway and boost the value enough to make it a nice place to eat.