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Original amounts (chickens 4-15, crocodiles 20-60)

Something in between.

Modest Mod's current amounts (chickens 2-4, crocodiles 4-8)

Fewer than that.

[Igfig]

MODEST MOD 2.2
An essential mod for DF 0.34.11

This mod is no longer being updated by Igfig. You can find Button's up-to-date version here.

Download
Download (Phoebus-compatible)
Download (Ironhand-compatible)

The Modest Mod is a collection of vital bugfixes and tweaks that everyone should be able to use comfortably and without reservation. This mod doesn't add anything new. It doesn't do anything controversial. It's just like vanilla DF, but a little better. French vanilla.

This is a mod for people who don't use mods. Don't think of it as a mod at all; it's really more of a patch. That said, it's also a good starting point for if you're making a new mod.

Included with this mod are a number of optional Modest Modules that you can use to further customize your game. These modules involve changes that, while popular, are a little too ambitious for the core mod.

Since I'm sure to have missed some things, and there are sure to be disagreements on what counts as 'vital', please don't hesitate to make your opinion known.  In particular, I have a list of things (see "Under Consideration" below) that I'm not quite sure are vital, but might include or kill entirely if people are adamant one way or the other.

Finally, there now exist two alternate versions of the Modest Mod intended specifically for use with the Ironhand and Phoebus tilesets. Be sure to install Modest Mod AFTER installing the graphics packs!

NEW: Ari Lazarus has written a plugin for Modest Mod! Check out the awesome Modest Bodies here!

Spoiler: List of Changes (click to show/hide)

Balance
Reduced clutch size for egg-laying animals
Changed GRAZER values according to an arcane formula to keep grazers happy on smaller pastures
Multipled panda and red panda's GRAZER by 10 on top of that, so they can survive on relatively little bamboo
Doubled dwarves' skill gain rates for learning and leadership skills, so training demonstrations stop being useless
Weakened serrated disks a little so they don't cut as deeply
Weakened whips and scourges a lot; they still tear skin to bits, but have real trouble with armour
rebalanced ranged weapons (Broken Arrow mod, courtesy of Joben)
HEALING_RATE added to cartilage

Bugfix
hooves, nails, claws, and talons heal (slowly) now, so broken nails won't be lethal.
hooves are also settable and splintable
reduced frequency of animal people
Dwarves and goblins build fortresses in worldgen, and elves send out patrols
Goblins wear less clothing, causing less clutter after sieges
Creatures made out of inorganic materials (except hard-coded ones) can now be butchered
Removed MOUNT_EXOTIC from flying and amphibious animals because it was causing pathfinding errors
Added missing CHILD tags to many creatures
Not everybody has "extremely long" hair
Fiddled with temperature values of organic materials; undead should die in lava now
Giant Tortoise and Desert Tortoise now appear in game
Fixed reversed giant armadillo caste names
FISH_CAVE and LOBSTER_CAVE pops increased to 2500:5000 so they'll actually show up
Changed MAGGOT_PURRING to appear in first cavern layer, so dwarven civs can actually make dwarven milk/cheese
Added a binary patched .exe (by Quietust and Elvang), fixing many bugs:
- Long patrol duty thoughts accumulate from all squad orders, including training
- Dwarven caravan brought silver crossbow, ITEMS_WEAPON_RANGED ignored in world gen
- Vermin can only escape from artifact animal traps
- Fish in aquariums interfere with vermin behavior checks
- Military dwarves turn off all of their labors when becoming heroes
- Diplomats don't bring bodyguards
- Deconstructing walls teleport material to location

Content
Mussels and oysters now give pearls when you clean them
Gave feathers PEARL and ITEMS_SOFT, so you can use them as if they were pearls
Gave chitin SHELL and ITEMS_SCALED so you can use it as if it were a shell
Made scale tannable like leather (tanned scale is still called "scale", though)
Gave elves and humans diplomats
Gave humans guild reps, so you can make trade requests
Added a few basic adventurer reactions for making crafts
Added reactions to specify which type of plant to mill
Increased shear values of obsidian to match glass
Adjusted many material_template densities for accuracy
Added "empty water bucket" reaction
Added venom conversion to GIANT_BARK_SCORPION
Added LARGE_PREDATOR to appropriate GIANT vars
Removed FLIER from MANTIS because most mantises don't actually fly

Miscellaneous
Added some generic, empty reactions for if you need a new reaction mid-game
Stopped pause and recenter on citizen birth and warm/damp walls
Added pause and recenter on death of citizen
Made outdoor plants more visually distinguishable (by colour)
Dragons and cave dragons grow up faster (dwarf size within a year, ten times that within two)
added "Overseer" noble position for succession games
wooden blocks are called "planks"
Wagons are made of real wood, not 'wagon wood'

Optional Modules
Rubbless: evaporates worthless layer stone
Cat Damper: stops cats from adopting owners
Eternal Fashion: clothing doesn't wear out
Pedestals: adds a pedestal building
Skill Tweaks: dwarves learn swimming, crutch-walking, and military skills faster
Seasonal Crops: slower, more realistic farming (courtesy of RavingManiac)

Spoiler: Changelog (click to show/hide)

v2.2 (10/26/2014)
Incorporated enormous amounts of changes made by CryptoCactus, including:
A number of binary patches by Ag
FISH_CAVE and LOBSTER_CAVE pops increased to 2500:5000
Adjusted many material_template densities for accuracy
Fixed reversed giant armadillo caste names
Giant Tortoise and Desert Tortoise now appear in game
Added "empty water bucket" reaction
HEALING_RATE added to cartilage
Removed MOUNT_EXOTIC from more amphibious/flier creatures (causes pathfinding bugs)
Raw tweaks for vermin creature variations
Added CHILD and PET_EXOTIC tags to OCTOPUS
Added venom conversion to GIANT_BARK_SCORPION
Added LARGE_PREDATOR to appropriate GIANT vars
Removed FLIER from MANTIS because most mantises don't actually fly
Changed MAGGOT_PURRING to appear in first cavern layer, so dwarven civs can actually make dwarven milk/cheese
Tweaked ranged weapons a bit more

v2.1 (11/10/2012)
Not everybody has "extremely long" hair
Wagons are made of real wood, not 'wagon wood'
Fiddled with temperature values of organic materials; undead should die in lava now
Increased shear values of obsidian to match glass
Fixed a bug in the Pedestals module
Added a few more adventurer reactions
Eternal Fashion module leaves vests, loincloths, and socks as regular clothing
Added a binary patched .exe (by Quietust and Elvang), fixing many bugs:
- Long patrol duty thoughts accumulate from all squad orders, including training
- Dwarven caravan brought silver crossbow, ITEMS_WEAPON_RANGED ignored in world gen
- Vermin can only escape from artifact animal traps
- Fish in aquariums interfere with vermin behavior checks
- Military dwarves turn off all of their labors when becoming heroes
- Diplomats don't bring bodyguards
- Deconstructing walls teleport material to location

v2.0 (29/08/2012)
Phoebus and Ironhand compatibility!
rebalanced ranged weapons (Broken Arrow mod by Joben)
added missing CHILD tags to many creatures
wooden blocks are now called "planks"

v1.6 (07/07/2012)
fixed some bugs with milling reactions
made scale work like leather instead of shells

v1.5 (05/07/2012)
fixed a duplicate reaction (MILL_FLOUR)
tweaks to Eternal Fashion module
added optional Seasonal Crops module

v1.4 (04/06/2012)
Elves have LOCAL_BANDITRY
Changed cave dragons' growth rate to match regular dragons
Added optional Rubbless, Cat Damper, Eternal Fashion, Pedestals, and Skill Tweaks modules

v1.3 (14/05/2012)
Updated to DF v0.34.08 through 11
Added reactions to specify which type of plant to mill
hooves, nails, claws, and talons heal slowly now, so broken nails won't be lethal.
hooves are also settable and splintable
reduced frequency of animal people
added "Overseer" noble position for succession games

v1.2 (09/04/2012)
Removed skill rate increases for combat skills
Removed NO_EAT and NO_DRINK from kobolds--apparently they don't need it after all

v1.1 (31/03/2012)
Updated to DF v0.34.07
Restored pause and recenter on migrant arrival

v1.0 (27/03/2012)
Reduced clutch size for egg-laying animals
Changed GRAZER values according to an arcane formula to keep grazers happy on smaller pastures
Multipled panda and red panda's GRAZER by 10 on top of that, so they can survive on relatively little bamboo
Removed MOUNT_EXOTIC from flying and amphibious animals because it was causing pathfinding errors
Mussels and oysters now give pearls when you clean them
Dragons grow up faster (dwarf size within a year, ten times that within two)
Doubled dwarves' skill gain rates for all combat and leadership skills (except wrestling) - no more danger rooms!
Kobolds don't eat, so they no longer die out in worldgen
Dwarves and goblins build fortresses in worldgen, so you can actually find them
Goblins wear less clothing, causing less clutter after sieges
Gave elves and humans diplomats
Gave humans guild reps, so you can make trade requests
Weakened serrated disks a little so they don't cut as deeply
Weakened whips and scourges a lot; they still tear skin to bits, but have real trouble with armour
Creatures made out of inorganic materials (except hard-coded ones) can now be butchered
Gave feathers PEARL and ITEMS_SOFT, so you can use them as if they were pearls
Gave scale and chitin SHELL and ITEMS_SCALED so you can use them as if they were shells
Added a few basic adventurer reactions for making crafts
Made outdoor plants more visually distinguishable (by colour)
Added some generic, empty reactions for if you need a new reaction mid-game
Stopped pause and recenter on migrant arrival, citizen birth, and warm/damp walls
Added pause and recenter on death of citizen

Spoiler: Under Consideration (click to show/hide)

Improve the sort order of stocks menu
More adventurer reactions?

[Courtesy Arloban]

Posting to watch, because I couldn't find this topic when I was searching for it earlier.  I used words like bug and bugfix which isn't in the title.

[plaidman]

This looks really cool. Like Masterwork but without the extra masterworky stuff, which can't be turned on/off on a mac. Speaking of which, any plans on making a mac version? Pretty please?? Or maybe releasing source to have someone with a mac try to build it?

[Igfig]

Updated to DF v0.34.07.

Yeah, Meph and I took a lot of our inspiration from the same place. Masterwork was a pretty good checklist for me while I was developing the Modest Mod, although the actual changes differ (he has some things I don't consider vital, and I've got some new tricks of my own).

The Modest Mod should work just as well on Macs as on PCs. Just unzip it into your DF folder.

[dree12]

I understand most of these changes, but not this:

Stopped pause and recenter on migrant arrival

What is the point of this? It's generally important to reassign labors to migrants unless you have an extremely diverse industry.

[Igfig]

Good question.  In my own experience, when your fort is small it's pretty hard to miss a new migration wave. When it's large, most things work pretty well on their own, to the point that you can afford to go off and do something else for a bit while you play, and an unexpected pause loses you more time than not bothering to micromanage your new dwarves.

...Which, now that I think about it, is a pretty bad reason. Removing that part.

[Tapeworm]

I'm not sure of the need to raise the growth rates of non-leadership combat skills. Leadership skills are pretty hard to raise, so I can understand emphasizing their importance; combat skills, however, are already easy to train up by bringing one or two decently skilled dwarfs on embark or having your recruits beat up wild animals. Doubling the growth rates may make it too fast and easy to replace veteran dwarves if you train smartly.

Pause + recenter on civvie deaths might make it pretty simple to find vampires, too (unless it only recenters when the body is discovered).

Other than that, I love all of your changes; they're things which should go into the base game, in fact.

[Igfig]

I think if combat skills trained at the correct rates right now, danger rooms wouldn't be such a common sight.  It is possible that double speed could turn out to be too fast, though; the only way to know for sure is for you folks to test it.  It's been working well in my home game so far, but I'm only in year 2 at the moment.

Pause and recenter on civilian deaths only happens when the death in question is observed. If a dwarf just goes missing, you'll get a message after a week as usual, with no pause or zoom.

And yup,

things which should go into the base game

are really the whole point of this mod.

[Ferrus]

I'm surprise nobody had the idea earlier. Very nice mod, I'm trying it out right now.

[Meph]

I had this idea, but it happened to grow a bit.

Just downloaded it and will have a look at your solutions. Will be interesting to see different ways to fix the same issues. Like the feather/pearl thing

[ydaraishy]

I like the idea of adjusting skill rates for balance.  I just tried out the military skill rates in my mod and it improves sparring quite a bit.  I do think that marksdwarves tend to level up a bit too quickly if they're also hunters, since hunting tends to level it up fairly quickly on its own.  I might leave the CROSSBOW skill alone for that reason.

Also, some civilian skillrates might be good for rebalancing too.  Mining especially, which I think goes up too fast in vanilla.

Also also, I've noticed that with the skill rates up, military migrants tend to come with at least Proficient skill in their weapon. 

[Meph]

I would say mining, stone engraving and farming are the biggest culprits. With just 1 good farmer you can create tons of food, since the stack size of the finished plants depend on the skill.

[ydaraishy]

I would say mining, stone engraving and farming are the biggest culprits. With just 1 good farmer you can create tons of food, since the stack size of the finished plants depend on the skill.

Also, anything involving carving stone tends to go up very fast, just by the fact that stone is limitless, so I like to reduce those too.  This includes gem-cutting, since you can cut any stone as a cabochon now.

[Igfig]

That's a good point about the civilian skill rates. My thoughts:

Mining, engraving, and growing could definitely afford to slow way the hell down. Halving the rate should do it, I think.

Gem-cutting is annoying, since it would be perfectly fine if it only affected gems. Ideally, most stones just wouldn't be cuttable, but that's never going to happen outside of mods. I don't think you can even specify some rocks as cuttable and others as not.  As it is, it's about as bad as stonecrafting, which I guess could also afford to be slowed down some. Maybe 75% speed for those two?

Also, if we're going to slow down some civilian skills maybe there are some others in need of speeding up? Swimming and crutch-walking can get really annoying in Adventure Mode.

I'm not sure that the crossbow and archer should go back to 100%, since it's pretty easy to hunt your local creature populations into extinction with more than a couple rangers. Maybe 150%?

Finally, what do people think about applying some of these same skill changes to other races? Not the combat skills, but the civilian skills. I just think it'd be weird for, say, humans to learn mining faster than dwarves.

[Meph]

Skill learn rates for other races dont matter, since you never see them or play them.

I would add a minor natural skill or simming_innate to dwarves, to avoid stupid drowning accidents. Although this is not a big problem since the ramps.

Rest of the proposed changes sound good

You can also make males and females a bit more distinctive, with males being a bit more combat toned, and females having a better rate at farming/medical rates. A bit sexistic, but adds game depth