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[Captain Willy]

I was just reading a post about bedroom designs and was thinking it is worth it. I just build like 20-40 rooms depending on my population but do not assign them. When a dwarf gets tired he rent a room for a night. I never have any happiness issues with the many other ways to generate happiness, is the thought of owning a room give a big happiness boost. What benefits does a room even provide.

As I'm writing this I realizing that people might do it because it looks cool, but I already wrote this, so I'm going to post this anyway.

Thoughts?

[My Name is Immaterial]

I used to make bedrooms for everyone, but I've switched to making huge dormitories and communal rooms.

[Loud Whispers]

My Dorfs don't eat fancy roasts nor do they get mist generators. Yet they're in perpetual bliss even while being attacked by the undead because of the wonderful legendary dining room + bedroom mix.

I'd say it's worth it.

Dwarves will eventually get upset for not having a proper room to sleep in.

[hiroshi42]

If you can make up the happiness somewhere else, like good food or entertainment rooms like zoos, then I believe that bedrooms are not worth the worn clothes factor.  Dwarves will store their used socks in their rooms and it takes an act of god (dfhack) to cause them to part.  This can cause a fps drop from the shear number of items per dwarf, instead of 1 set + a small surplus you now have 2 or 3 sets of clothing per drunk.  Dwarves can also bring food back to their rooms (especially if they are in the military), since food is not protected from rot in a room you end up with miasma in the dorms and dwarves complaining about miasma in the dorms.

In summary Individual bedrooms require a larger investment in resources, can lead to clutter, miasma, and missing bodies syndrome.  On the plus side is a happiness boost from owning furniture and sleeping in an owned bed and a fairly easy containment system for your dwarves if you lock the doors.

Personally, unless the theme of my fort demands rooms everyone can use the dorms.

[King Mir]

Dwarves can also bring food back to their rooms (especially if they are in the military), since food is not protected from rot in a room you end up with miasma in the dorms and dwarves complaining about miasma in the dorms.

The easy solution to this is just to disallow soldiers to carry rations.

[mobucks]

I deleted my large stockpiles and have about 100 beds in my forge since "the big dig" is going to take a couple years. No one is complaining. The only rooms I have are for my doctors and the nobles that require them. They arent dorms, each bed is a 1x1 "room" and gets claimed. Helped me catch the vampire as well.

The "dining room" is in the hallway to the forge. 10 tables/chairs for ~120 dwarves.

[i2amroy]

If you can make up the happiness somewhere else, like good food or entertainment rooms like zoos, then I believe that bedrooms are not worth the worn clothes factor.  Dwarves will store their used socks in their rooms and it takes an act of god (dfhack) to cause them to part.

In the current version dwarves will usually only hold onto their last set of clothes or so, and anything older then that will be released back into your stockpiles.

Personally I have been trying out a new "communal bedroom" style design to force more friendships while still providing the happiness bonuses (I'm going for a more generational style fort). The design includes 8 bed, 8 cabinets, 8 coffers, and a few statues to bring the room quality level back up to the point where it gives happy thoughts. So far it's seemed to work really well, and I'm getting plenty of new friendships formed between the members of each group.

[thegoatgod_pan]

If you just designate a room as a bedroom, dwarves will claim it on their own. I used to find it incredibly time consuming to designate bedrooms, until I figured this out.

[Uggh]

Separating dwarves, i.e giving them personal bedrooms and dining rooms prevents social contact and thereby reduces chances for tantrum spirals and parties. At least, my current fort where everybody has a personal apartment has been spared from both.

[Lielac]

I prefer a 'communal' bedroom kind of thing where there are 49 beds in a 21x21 room with no walls between them, but the beds are spaced out in such a way that a 3x3 bedroom can be designated from each without overlap. This is so that those loitering in their bedrooms can witness and report any vampire attacks, while still getting the benefit from "yay I have my own room" thoughts. And during the times when I can't be bothered to designate 49 frakking 3x3 bedrooms, I just set the central bed to be the whole 21x21 room and be a dormitory.

[goge]

My apartment complexes sit above my workshop complexes, between them is food and beer and a non designated dinning room.  I'm very vertically centric.  Without any meeting zones or dinning halls specified the few idle dwarves hang our in their rooms. From their room to work is a short distance so they are always near by and never stuck in a party.
Which as stated above less parties = less friendships = less tantrum spirals when the fort looses a third of it workers.

Keeping my work force near the work while keeping them from getting close to each other is very beneficial.

[Catsup]

Separating dwarves, i.e giving them personal bedrooms and dining rooms prevents social contact and thereby reduces chances for tantrum spirals and parties. At least, my current fort where everybody has a personal apartment has been spared from both.

My apartment complexes sit above my workshop complexes, between them is food and beer and a non designated dinning room.  I'm very vertically centric.  Without any meeting zones or dinning halls specified the few idle dwarves hang our in their rooms. From their room to work is a short distance so they are always near by and never stuck in a party.
Which as stated above less parties = less friendships = less tantrum spirals when the fort looses a third of it workers.

Keeping my work force near the work while keeping them from getting close to each other is very beneficial.

are you guys sure sharing dining rooms causes social interactions to increase? and how do you guys keep loose animals from wondering around dieing if you have no meeting area? (and dont say penning, thats not practical when you have several hundreds of animals later and have to scroll through a list including caged others and invaders)

EDIT: @ OP you should build good bedrooms for dwarves because you need all the happy thoughts you can get and its also a safety hazard fun to have sleeping dwarves laying around unconscious, the bedroom should be at the heart of your fortress where its safest, whether communal or individual rooms.

[goge]

When a dinning room is set on a table parties will be thrown.  Parties definitely increase social interaction, creating friendships and increasing social stats.

A meeting area in a legendary engraved dinning hall filled with hundreds of animals and dwarfs would be very bad as starving yaks begin crushing dwarf skulls killing family members causing dwarves to go berserk and attack more yaks..... spiral she goes.

Pen in a grass pasture. No meeting area means newborns stay beside mothers.  non-herbivorous can be kept in cages, newborns are born into the cage. Animals in cages won't get pregnant tho.

Works for me.

[Catsup]

When a dinning room is set on a table parties will be thrown.  Parties definitely increase social interaction, creating friendships and increasing social stats.

A meeting area in a legendary engraved dinning hall filled with hundreds of animals and dwarfs would be very bad as starving yaks begin crushing dwarf skulls killing family members causing dwarves to go berserk and attack more yaks..... spiral she goes.

Pen in a grass pasture. No meeting area means newborns stay beside mothers.  non-herbivorous can be kept in cages, newborns are born into the cage. Animals in cages won't get pregnant tho.

Works for me.

i mean a legendary dining hall that is NOT set as a meeting hall, would eating in that still increase relationships? (no parties)

and if you have enough meeting zones for animals (really, just a non-1x1 one, i've had 200-300 giant/large rats and mole dogs in a penned in a single 8x5 room and they didnt hurt each other), they arent a problem, my old fort didnt have any herbivores that were unpenned, just stray war rutherers and war jabberers that can decapitate a dwarf in 1 hit, but i never had any injuries from animals, ever.

[i2amroy]

Dwarves will socialize with other dwarves if they share a tile with them. Thus having a large meeting area can actually decrease the amount of socialization they do (since they are never on top of another dwarf). Since you are basically required to have a meeting area (due to the place where the wagon was functioning as a "pseudo" meeting area), I usually find the best thing to do if you want to prevent friendships is to simply ensure that the dwarves have a lot of area to hang out in; large dining rooms, statue gardens, and private bedrooms all help to reduce socialization.

(By contrast if you wish to promote friendships/marriage then a smaller yet still high value dining room is preferred, as it will increase the amount of time that dwarves spend sharing a tile with another dwarf).