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[MrFake]

Whack!  Countess is crushed by a drawbridge.  (Un?)Luckily one of her children was caught under the bridge, too.  Hooray!!  Ding dong the witch is dead!  And her little child too.

Okay, okay.  So four dwarfs are throwing hissy fits.  No big deal.  4 in 275, with most dwarfs not even giving a shit, is not that major.  I just have to wait before killing misplacing anyone else.

Oops, that peasant just toppled a building.  But he's only being imprisoned.  Good, the time off could do him well, and keep him away from the other nutcases.  Except the other nutcases are now melancholy or insane... At least no one's berserk ... yet.  They'll die long after everyone's forgotten about the queen bitch's timely death.  It's okay.

It's not okay.  Two of the crazy dwarfs just fell into a pond.  Shit, too much backlog of dead bodies to get coffins ready.  Shit shit.  Now three more dwarfs are throwing tantrums.

Now the dwarf in prison and a fifth dwarf are insane.

Another crazy dwarf has died of thirst.

And now a couple more dwarfs are miserable.


Y'see, a regular ol' tantrum spiral I can enjoy, because they're just so intense.  This stupid domino effect of one or two dwarfs per month is, while great population control, just too unpredictable.  Will the fortress be okay?  Will it cross the tipping point?  I mean, there's work needs doing.  I don't have time for this crap.  I just hope the next few years of construction won't need to be save-scummed away.

Seriously.  Nobles suck.

[Crowbar]

Seriously.  Nobles suck.

That's a pretty big understatement there.

[warhammer651]

Seriously.  Nobles are an abomination against nature that must be purged at the first opportunity. With magma. And reanimated squirrels. That breathe fire.

fix'd

[Astramancer]

Having a Legendary Dining Hall, an awesome chef, and a well stocked wine cellar means that most dwarves are pretty ecstatic all the time, just because of meal times.

A few other things can really brighten their days - drag those artifacts out of storage (at least the buildable ones), start the engravers on the residential districts, and make that legendary brickmaker try his hand at statues, and make a legendary statue garden - the parties will be talked about for ages! (and last that long, too!)

But seriously, when I get on the verge of a tantrum spiral like that, I find all the sad dwarves I can, turn off their jobs (unless they like working), and give them neat stuff, like personal statue gardens and the like.  Soon they'll be partying and drinking and forget all about the fact that they pulled the lever which both drowned then immolated their wife and child.  Also, forcing them to pull a lever that requires them to walk past 30 masterpiece statues and chairs and stuff can't hurt.

[Lord Dakoth]

I tend to have the exact opposite problem. Namely, dwarves partying when they're supposed to be doing other things, such as DRIVING OFF THE INVADERS. The parties only truly end when the host's remains are scattered to all corners of the dining hall.

[silhouette]

I tend to have the exact opposite problem. Namely, dwarves partying when they're supposed to be doing other things, such as DRIVING OFF THE INVADERS. The parties only truly end when the host's remains are scattered to all corners of the dining hall.

heres a tip!
stop partys prematurely by freeing the room where the party is taking place!

[Foxbyte]

I tend to have the exact opposite problem. Namely, dwarves partying when they're supposed to be doing other things, such as DRIVING OFF THE INVADERS. The parties only truly end when the host's remains are scattered to all corners of the dining hall.

heres a tip!
stop partys prematurely by freeing the room where the party is taking place!

Would a sudden flash-flood cause the party to end I wonder? Not magma THIS TIME, but just a whole lot of water suddenly filling the room then emptying...

[A-chana]

My fortress just barely survived something like that, although on a bigger scale (six dead adults and two dead babies, immediate tantruming and miserableness that swiftly became insanity). I let it run its course for a couple of seasons, then had to step in forcefully because one founder went berserk and two more were on the verge of joining the ranks of the miserable. By then things were starting to improve, but it was still threatening to take down all sorts of favorite dwarves.

I pretty much just grabbed everyone that wasn't miserable and turned off their hauling labors so they would party and socialize near some pretty statues. The ones that already hit rock bottom were allowed to continue dragging the lost clothes of the dead to stockpiles or their rooms, and I built up a fortress guard to throw them in jail to help keep them out of trouble (which didn't really help when the mayor broke out of jail by himself and no one bothered to feed another prisoner until it was too late, but hey). If they cheered up on their own or were thrown and jail and then released, they were allowed to join the socializers. In the end, I went from a fort of near 140 to somewhere around 80 (immigrants decided to join the fray, which threw off my numbers), most lost to insanity (maybe about ten murders and executions/severe beatings/failures of prisoner care combined). A shame it was such a slow trickle of crazy, or else I would have let the fort die. Maybe I just need to pick a location with magma next time so things will get really interesting.

On the plus side, this whole debacle killed off the count, his consort, and the tax collector, and it gave the hammerer injuries that left her bedridden for two seasons and gave her a minor spine injury. I think we can all agree this is a wonderful thing, especially because the countess went berserk and became a pincushion.