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[dorsilfin]

I would consider myself an Average to above average DF player.  I've had many successful forts and gone through my fair share of tragic deaths with flooding/lava/DOH moments.

however I've got a solid fort going now, around 160 dwarfs.  I have my 2 squads of 10 geared out in full iron, and my 1 squad of 1 (captain of the guard) decked in fully "Candy".  With those squads ive been able to handle any invasion 100+ goblins, goblins riding dragons etc etc. 

However,  I was doing some house cleaning and I do have a volcano on the map which I use as a nice garbage disposal.  I selected a few thousand body parts and misc stuff to get toss to burn up and clean things up.  In doing so something strange happened next to the volcano, a lava burst or something kicked up and 3 of the dwarfs standing/dumping there were melted/burned to death. 20-30 other haulers witnessed this and a huge chunk of the population went from estacic down to miserable.

 I have a huge dining room with a huge statue garden next to it with silver/gold status tables/chairs, everyone has a nice 2x2 room with a nice cabinet and chest, I have over 10k meals/drinks and everything inside the fort is smoothed with certain areas engraved like the statue room and dining room to make things nicer.

Even with all the nice things they have access to, the rampage in the dining room broke out, the military came and put down a few people going berserk thus leading to more people seeing death and a loved one dieing.  I've had no success stopping the outcome.

The only thing really i was missing was a waterfall/mist generator type thing near the living quarters.

For 8 year old fort with everyone being buddy's and friends would having that mist/water fill thing have helped or is it pretty much impossible to stop the spiral down once something triggers it like my events?

2nd question,  the few dwarfs that seem unaffected had the "dont care about anything anymore"  is there a way to train that into every dorf so when something bad happens it doesnt mean the end? maybe just unhappy for a while?



** Adding link to saved game.  V34.11***

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6901

[Hammerstar]

Well, I consider myself to be an average player, but as I understand spirals, once it has started, about the only way to stop it is to overpower the negative thoughts with good ones. Lavish meals, legendary dining room filled with masterwork statues, royal bedrooms, etc. The mist thing would help, but I don't think it would be enough by itself.

As for the "don't care about anything anymore" attitude, that can certainly be trained into dwarves. When a dwarf has been exposed to enough loss/hardship without being driven insane, they should get it. It is easier in dwarves who care more about themselves than others (a trait dwarves have about how social they are), because highly social dwarves lose it when friends die more easily, IIRC.

I think one idea I remember reading was using a danger room setup and occasionally throwing a puppy in with the squad being trained. If you don't go too fast, and let the dwarves recover after witnessing a puppy skewered on the training spears, and repeat the process, you'd eventually have a whole squad a dwarves that were emotionally numb. Not sure of the actual effectiveness, since I have yet to try something similar myself.

[Graknorke]

Alternatively, flood the fortress with water. The majority of the tantrummers will die, and anyone left alive will be ecstatic about all of the mist. It's a win-win!

Unless death thoughts stack. Then it isn't.

[Adequate Swimmer]

Make a meeting area far away from the tantruming dwarfs. Make sure they have access to water and just wait until the madness dies out, no pun intended. If you do it right you'll save the fort.

Needless to say, shoot anything that tries to approach your safehouse.

[Ancalagon]

1. Pause the game

2. Damage control
 a. Decide who can not be saved
 b. from A, make B or "Those who might be saved"
 c. Station all from C or "Those who eat puppies and strangle kittens in an attempt to kindle emotion" in a secure part of the fortress.

3. Seal off the fortress and, if possible, wall off/make inaccessible all sensitive levers. You don't want rampaging goblins stabbing Urist McMelancholy in the gut half a dozen times. (Or do you?)

4. From group B, attempt to locate said group in a secure separate location from C.

5. Ensure both B and C are fed/watered. They merely need to survive.

6. Watch group A. The joy of pure rage, despair, and fear embodied are now before you in little tileset/ASCII dwarfs. If during the mass melee of bloodtearssweetteethfistrandommeleeweapon some become numb to everything, try to sequester them in a hole somewhere safe. Numb dwarves have their own value in post fort reconstruction, as some of B may lose it during the burial/cleanup.

Good luck! The above is my standard for spirals when I don't want them to destroy my fort.

[mastahcheese]

What I usually  do is remove my meeting hall, so dwarves automatically go and waste time it their rooms, and who are very unhappy or miserable, I lock the doors. If nobody finds the body or smells the miasma, nobody get angry again. Then, when you're doing better, open them up one at a time, clean them out and reuse the rooms in a safe, controlled manner.

If you have any dwarves who are numb to tragedy, you could have them roam the halls with a hammer to put down offenders.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Waterfalls would give a pretty huge morale boost (note the inevitable ecstatic moods when athe main staircase of avertical fort floods from above.)

Main thing is weather it: the strong, few traumatized will survive and will become memorable to you, they are the true protagonists of your fort and they've proven it with blood.

Go for a fell mood!

[Tirion]

Preventative traumatizing of your dwarves, seeking the "Doesn't really care about anything anymore" attribute: look at this: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:List_of_Dwarven_Thoughts

A million stray puppies or goblins or wild animals being slaughtered won't cause any hardening in your dwarves- well, at least psychological. The soldiers who kill the 600 naked goblin prisoners will certainly end up being (insert weapon name here) masters and quite strong, agile etc. But 2 things are available in all biomes that do cause hardening: [TRAINABLE] animals (such as dogs) and children. Of these, dogs are safer, as they never come back as ghosts, and only cause sadness in their owner. The trick is that pet death and rotting thoughts are just as strong and traumatizing as friend/child ones- and assigned war dogs count as pets. Assign one to an ecstatic dwarf, then pasture it in a danger room (with spikes, not wooden training spears), skewer it, leave the corpse to rot into a skeleton. As soon as the dwarf becomes ecstatic again, repeat. Can be done with cats too.

[i2amroy]

While not useful in stopping tantrum spirals that are occurring right now, the simple addition of a Mist Generator above your dining room or other high traffic area can stop the majority of tantrum spirals before they even happen (with only a small FPS penalty). Two other things you can do are to give each dwarf their own separate bedroom (which has a side effect of reducing friendships, thus helping prevent tantrum spirals) and by having a large dining room/meeting hall (which also reduces friendships).

"But wait", you say, "wouldn't having a meeting hall increase friendships?" This would normally be true, but dwarves only socialize with other dwarves on the same tile as them. As such having a very large meeting hall (I use either 21x21 or 31x31) can actually reduce the chance of your dwarves standing on the same tile as others, therefore reducing friendships. Also if you double this meeting hall as your dining room, a room of that size almost instantly becomes lavish on sheer size alone, meaning all of your dwarves will be happy they ate in a legendary dining room as well.

Personally almost all of my forts use all 3 of the methods above, and I have never suffered from a tantrum spiral. I have even had forts that have lost over 50% of their population at once and the remaining 50% hardly even dropped to the "unhappy" range, with many landing in "content". Also as a side effect this will stop any babies that become children from taking a happiness hit due to not having clothing yet, since mist thoughts will stack up while they are babies.

[misko27]

Alternatively, flood the fortress with water. The majority of the tantrummers will die, and anyone left alive will be ecstatic about all of the mist. It's a win-win!

I unintenionally tried this a while ago. It worked pretty damn well, thogh clean up was a nightmare.

[Drazinononda]

(...) dwarves only socialize with other dwarves on the same tile as them.

(citation needed)

[Hyndis]

What I usually  do is remove my meeting hall, so dwarves automatically go and waste time it their rooms, and who are very unhappy or miserable, I lock the doors. If nobody finds the body or smells the miasma, nobody get angry again. Then, when you're doing better, open them up one at a time, clean them out and reuse the rooms in a safe, controlled manner.

I do this as well. No meeting hall, and all dwarves have a semi-communal bedroom. 6 dwarves live in the same physical room, which has multiple overlapping bedrooms. This also limits tantrum spirals. Since dwarves are only friends with relatives and with the dwarves who live in the same room as they do, it prevents the problem of the entire fortress going insane due to a single unfortunate accident.

Also a semi-communal bedroom allows for romance. As there are 6 random dwarves who live in the same room together, odds are there will be at least one compatible pair per room.

[aoxoa]

I just let it sort itself out. Put some gold statues around, hopefully have enough coffins in place... preferably before it happens

But had a siege yesterday, totally forgot to brew alcohol. Tantrums ensured, I had about 85 dwarves, 70 once they had ended their tantrums.

But usually they get over it. But yeah meeting halls can be a dangerous place for social dwarves

Get those coffins ready.

You can do the bed thing so people go to their own rooms etc instead of the meeting hall, but usually I dont bother since its alot of work.

[Adequate Swimmer]

For sieges its good to have an internal water tank and well, esp for stalemate situations in which neither side is making a move.

[mastahcheese]

(...) dwarves only socialize with other dwarves on the same tile as them.

(citation needed)

I'm pretty sure that it is actually the same tile + adjacent tiles, at least thats what the wiki says if I remember right.