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[omniclasm]

Almost every fort I have nowadays ends up succumbing to a tantrum spiral. Occasionally I'll stick it through, bury the dead, then continue, other times I get tired of having to tell my military to kill berserk dwarves over and over and just abandon.

Is there better ways to avoid tantrums than a legendary dining room and decent bedrooms for all (most) dwarves? I've considered splitting up the civilian population into quadrants with their own dining rooms, meeting areas, etc...but I'm not sure if it would be worth the amount of burrow work required.

[vertinox]

I build legendary dining halls and have dwarf cooks make masterworks of prepared easy meals. That is usually enough to keep most dwarfs happy.

[hiroshi42]

Splitting up the population might work to prevent friendships, but IIRC family/friend deaths are communicated instantly to all involved.  You could also try not having any meeting halls to prevent friendships, coupled with individual rooms this should keep the drunken idiots from being to upset from friend deaths.

As for happiness, try good booze, food and a mist generator.

[weenog]

There's no one true answer.  Generally speaking, examine the thoughts of a cross section of the community (both those throwing tantrums and those that are stable for now), look for patterns in what's pissing them off, and then try to reduce or eliminate those common sources of unhappiness.  "Lost a pet to tragedy lately" coming up a lot?  Keep your cat population in check, and stop assigning war and/or hunting animals to specific dwarves.  "Was very embarassed to be uncovered lately" is a common thread?  Get your clothing industry in gear now, weapons and other un-boring stuff can wait.  Many dwarves were "forced to endure the decay of a friend"?  Produce and build more coffins, and make sure set them to be usable for burial after they're built.  Also seriously consider improving your security to reduce deaths.

This kind of thing alone won't solve a miserable fortress, but doing this and having some good reliable happiness generators like an awesome dining room can help bring a fortress back from the brink, and keep it from veering off into insane asylum territory again.

[wuphonsreach]

I build legendary dining halls and have dwarf cooks make masterworks of prepared easy meals. That is usually enough to keep most dwarfs happy.

One and only one cook, which means they skill up quickly and give you higher quality food.

One and only one brewer, which gives you higher quality drinks.

Legendary dining rooms are rather easy.  Just stick a dozen tables and chairs into a big room (40-80 tiles in size, maybe 120-150) and smooth the floors and walls.

Have enough beds so nobody sleeps on the floor and keep them at least 8 tiles away from noise sources.  Digging / wood cutting / construction are about 8 tiles.  Engraving / fortification carving is only 4 tiles.  That goes across Z-levels, so put your beds well below the surface.

Your legendary dwarves should be coddled, assigned bedroom with masterwork or exceptional furniture and possibly burrowed away from the main populace.

[Guylock]

If a dwarf begins to tantrum spiral; I lock them in a room before they enter it, then when they do, they will be raging in the room, keep them in there till they calm down... That sometimes works.
That's how I did it on 40D. I still need to experiment with it on the newest one. :O
Might still work.

[Klitri]

Lock your civilization up in a vault the requires two levers to open to keep out migrant wav- wait, you dont have goblins hideing outside your fortress do you? :/
Build rooms for all your dwarfs and put statues (legendary mason ). Then you have to make food (Err...Whatever the best is called!). Then engrave the entire fortress. Voila. ( But really, if you have to much people right now just lock yourself inside and take care of what you have and not what is new.)

[weenog]

But really, if you have to much people right now just lock yourself inside and take care of what you have and not what is new.

Quoted is the advice of somebody who has never actually done this for a significant length of time, disregard it.  A few waves of dead migrants pile up unburied and you will have ghosts, including some that are able to kill dwarves.  Ghosts aren't impressed with your walls, they'll come right through.  If you already have more infrastructure-building work needed than you have resources to do it, you're not going to be able to spare enough labor or materials to slab them all.

[XXSockXX]

I get the impression that it is better to encourage friendships. Talked with / made a friend thoughts stack up with the positive thoughts from rooms/food/booze. I haven't had a tantrum spiral since I use just one meeting area and all dwarves are friends. I even had a hunter dwarf who lost a friend, her baby and her right hand to some cave crocodiles and was still "ecstatic".

[Xvareon]

I get the impression that it is better to encourage friendships. Talked with / made a friend thoughts stack up with the positive thoughts from rooms/food/booze. I haven't had a tantrum spiral since I use just one meeting area and all dwarves are friends. I even had a hunter dwarf who lost a friend, her baby and her right hand to some cave crocodiles and was still "ecstatic".

.........................

Wow... this sounds like... the perfect way to keep Vampires happy    xD no, but seriously. It's disproving every scrap of advice over the years about keeping dwarves from making friends because of the large happiness hit an unfortunate death would cause. I guess the moral of the story is, let your dwarves make friends but let them BE friends too. Stacking happiness bonuses keep everyone from going insane rather handily. ^.^

[Urist_McArathos]

Isolating dwarves is harder, in that they get fewer happy thoughts and it's difficult to set up a fortress that allows it to work.  The bonus is that deaths are much less likely to cause spirals.

I prefer the other method: insane amounts of happiness-generating features work wonders at softening the blow of even the greatest tragedy.  Even when someone does snap or die, it's less likely to continue to spread.

I go with legendary dining rooms (much easier than you'd think; just carve a bigass room and plop down some tables and chairs, no need to decorate if it's big enough); I have 2x3 hallways leading inside with floor grates, and have waterfalls going through the hall to generate mist on every dwarf that passes through.  Any mist generation works, I just use my indoor waterfalls since I consider mist generators too exploity for my tastes.  I try to build a public baths as well inside (statue garden around a pool, designated as a water source, with a soap stockpile nearby).  Dwarves like soapy baths, and admiring statuary.  If you get enough animals from trade or traps, a zoo is another great idea.  Private bedrooms (even just 1x3) and cooking lavish meals only also help a lot (food production is so ridiculously easy right now that any decent fortress will have PLENTY of plants, meat, and/or fish to provide lavish meals on top of booze).

All these meeting places also result in more parties, which means more friends and more happy thoughts.  Dwarves really have a hard time getting suicidal when they are clean, misty, with a great zoo and luxurious accomodations, plenty of great food and drink, and parties everywhere with beloved friends all around, and a room to call their own at night.

Plus, let's face it, your fortress looks a lot more like a grand and opulent mountain home with all those luxuries sprawled across the place.

Do try to avoid assigning pets, though: pet losses hurt a lot.  I try not to give more than 2 war/hunting dog escorts to any single dwarf.  More than that, and they can snap if their beloved pets are slaughtered in an ambush or in battle.

[powell]

Why would you want to prevent tantrum spirals?

Killing off a large part of the mostly useless cheesemaker population is always a good thing.  Even if some good dwarfs die, there will always be tons of migrants in the future.

[misko27]

Why would you want to prevent tantrum spirals?

Killing off a large part of the mostly useless cheesemaker population is always a good thing.  Even if some good dwarfs die, there will always be tons of migrants in the future.

Because the tantrumers don't do work, and ya know that the bossman gets angry, and they like destroying all the pretty things...

[Urist_McArathos]

Why would you want to prevent tantrum spirals?

Killing off a large part of the mostly useless cheesemaker population is always a good thing.  Even if some good dwarfs die, there will always be tons of migrants in the future.

I've never understood this attitude; my army could always use more grunts, and a strong hauling staff means that my artisans can work undisturbed while the High Master Cheesemakers bring them everything they need and haul away their trash.

Sure, you can manage a fully operational and successful fortress on a much smaller cap than 200, but I don't see the problem with using everyone in the cap you set, along with the spillover from births and migration.

[weenog]

A 120-strong army looks a lot less attractive when you're on a desert or glacier and the most useful ore available is galena.  I don't care if you do go straight for magma, you are not equipping that many dwarves for military service in any reasonable amount of time with sparse/no surface wood, no metal you can do anything but weapons withn (and still worthless for non-blunt weapons), and restricted (though certainly not eliminated) in-house leather and bone production.

One could always try going deeper, but that comes with its own problems, which are only worsened by having poorly equipped or no military.