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[arcturusthelesser]

This, combined with the need to produce a lot of armor, makes armorers far and away the most desired dwarves for strange moods, and various schemes exist for influencing such an event.

How would one go about this? While of course, I know to forbid materials except for what I want the item made from or whatever will give it high value, but I'm not aware of any way to influence who gets moods, and once a mood is gotten, to incline them towards making something that isn't totally useless and/or dumb. The only definite way (I think) to inflluence moods is just to have an absurd number of whatever worker you want, and to make sure they have preferences you like, and the first way isn't going to be ending well for your fort.
Observe the suck of my artifacts:
Geshudistik, "Fortressshriveled", a wooden dice.
This is a wooden dice. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of wood. This object is adorned with hanging rings of wood and menaces with spikes of yak bone.
Value: 4800
Kerlig Gasisatol, "Shelledpractice the Satiny Truth", a jet grate.
This is a jet grate. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with rectangular jet cabochons and decorated with silk. On the item is an image of Borik Colorfultattooed the Bone Velvet of Freezing the dwarf in jet.
Value:6000
Nuralshebshos, "The Blind Mire", a wooden journal.
This is a wooden journal. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with cushion cut citrines, decorated with silk, and encircled with bands of wood and silver. This object is adorned with hanging rings of wood and menaces with spikes of wood and citrine.
Value:21600
Zafelnothis, "The Airy Grief", a badger bone buckler.
This is a badger bone buckler. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. This object menaces with spikes of badger bone. On the item is an image of a spiral coil in badger bone.
Value: 4080
This the one I really tried to make cool:
Idrathbidok Kithdan, "Treasureact the Scarce Couple", a raw mithril floodgate
This is a raw mithril floodgate. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is decorated with leather and encircled with bands of square cut clear diamonds. This object menaces with spikes of clear diamond, green glass, wool and orichalcum. On the item is an image of Erone Drainedtrammel the hungry head and Ezum Crateredmatch the legionnaire dwarf in raw mithril. Ezum Crateredmatch is striking down Erone Drainedtrammel. The artwork relates to the killing of the hungry head Erone Drainedtrammel by the legionnaire dwarf Ezum Crateredmatch in The Fancy Murk in 88. On the item is an image of moving gears in green glass. On the item is an image of balls of string in clear diamond.
Value: 237600

Does anyone know how to get out of this, or at least sympathize with how annoying useless artifacts are?

[ImagoDeo]

The only way to manipulate what the final product happens to be is to save and quit while the dwarf is working, then wait for him to finish and savescum if he didn't give you what you wanted.

[twwolfe]

I know in Headshoots they made sure each dwarf had at least a little knowledge of all the metal working skills, thus making sure that they were more likely to get a mood that involved one of those areas.

[Urist McRas]

You can't affect who gets a mood, but you can affect type of mood and professions of your dwarfs. Suppose you want a legendary armorsmith. To do this you want your next moody dwarf to have armorsmith skill higher then any other moodable skills. Select a group of dwarfs without any other moodable skills and let them make any armor until they achive novice level. The easiest way to do this is to have a dabbling-only forge. The bigger part of your population is trained that way the higher odds for next moody dwarf to be one of them. Then keep them happy to maximise chances of fey and secretive moods. The training, of course, requires a lot of metal bars, fuel and time.

About your "useless" artifacts. I don't know what's dice or journal, but artifact furniture is quite useful. You can put it in a room to boost it's value. Or you can have them as part of your defence design. Artifacts are undestructible but still attract building destroers.

[arcturusthelesser]

I know in Headshoots they made sure each dwarf had at least a little knowledge of all the metal working skills, thus making sure that they were more likely to get a mood that involved one of those areas.

Ah, never read Headshoots, too long and not-magma-y-enough compared to Boatmurdered. I thought a dwarf can only get moods in their highest moodable skill, though. Is that wrong?

The only way to manipulate what the final product happens to be is to save and quit while the dwarf is working, then wait for him to finish and savescum if he didn't give you what you wanted.

Kinda cheap, and besides, by the time the mood is initiated, you can only get something from that particular shop. Granted, if I hadn't been so absorbed in making sure the dude didn't grab something stupid like copper, I absolutely would have done it. It now occurs to me that, ridiculously cool thrones of butt-kicking and metal aside, mason (and especially craftsdwarf) moods suck in general.

Then keep them happy to maximise chances of fey and secretive moods.

I thought that happiness affects strange mood type only in that fell and macabre moods happened only to unhappy anger or depression-prone dwarves. I believe that the best you can get is a tossup between fey, secretive, and possessed.

About your "useless" artifacts. I don't know what's dice or journal, but artifact furniture is quite useful. You can put it in a room to boost it's value. Or you can have them as part of your defence design. Artifacts are undestructible but still attract building destroers.

I'm not the sort of player that lets room quality values impede my sense of feng shui. It isn't getting built unless it feels right. My aqueduct doesn't need any more floodgates or grates, and besides, indestructible constructions are of limited value if you only have one of them, unless of course you're using it as bait for a cave-in trap or something, where I concede they would be useful. But, still, especially given the rarity of the buildmats for that floodgate, it's totally not worth it.

[Urist McRas]

Then keep them happy to maximise chances of fey and secretive moods.

I thought that happiness affects strange mood type only in that fell and macabre moods happened only to unhappy anger or depression-prone dwarves. I believe that the best you can get is a tossup between fey, secretive, and possessed.

Yep, that's what i meant: don't let them have fell and macabre moods by keeping them happy.

[Sutremaine]

Ah, never read Headshoots, too long and not-magma-y-enough compared to Boatmurdered. I thought a dwarf can only get moods in their highest moodable skill, though. Is that wrong?

Dwarves only get a mood in their highest skill*. The dwarves might have had knowledge of all metalworking skills between them, but giving more than one moodable skill to a dwarf who's otherwise a farmer, fisher, woodcutter, peasant, etc. is probably useless.

Dwarves with preferences for useful stuff can be left for last when taking them out of the 'Bone/Stone/Wood' mood category. A bone axe is not a very good artifact, but it's better than a random craft made by a dwarf with no such preference.

*Or not. I have a save with a moody dwarf who's just gone into an Engraving mood, and has 260XP in Masonry, 10XP in Engraving, and 330XP in Weaponsmithing. I suspect that either the game doesn't handle the XP of Dabbling skills in the same way that it handles the XP of higher skills, or there's a mood hierarchy when skill levels are equal.

[arcturusthelesser]

Then keep them happy to maximise chances of fey and secretive moods.

I thought that happiness affects strange mood type only in that fell and macabre moods happened only to unhappy anger or depression-prone dwarves. I believe that the best you can get is a tossup between fey, secretive, and possessed.

Yep, that's what i meant: don't let them have fell and macabre moods by keeping them happy.

Besides the fact that the resulting artifact is always made out of bone of some sort, there's no downside to macabre moods compared to the other kinds. I mean, it's better than being sad and NOT making valuable items, right?

[Urist McRas]

*Or not. I have a save with a moody dwarf who's just gone into an Engraving mood, and has 260XP in Masonry, 10XP in Engraving, and 330XP in Weaponsmithing. I suspect that either the game doesn't handle the XP of Dabbling skills in the same way that it handles the XP of higher skills, or there's a mood hierarchy when skill levels are equal.

I believe it is skill level, not XP, that affects moods. In your case dwarf was dabbling in those three skills, so it was a tie. Hence that was a random choice. Wiki explains it in detail.

[Larix]

The largest influence you can have on mood results is by adjusting the skills the moods go to. And that mainly means to provide experience in promising skills to dwarfs with _no_ moodable jobs - farmers, haulers, hunters, fisherdwarfs (and potters and furnace operators).

You don't need to train them to 'novice' or anything, making a single brass block gives a dwarf enough experience in blacksmithing to go into a blacksmith mood.
It could be worth your while to check your farmers' preferences before lining up their mood-experience jobs: preferences for a particularly useless metal or item can make weapon-/armoursmithing unattractive.

For many mood types, there's also the consideration of the usefulness of the skill itself: an engraving mood creates a crummy stone craft, but has about 2/3 chance of creating a legendary engraver as well, an extremely valuable dwarf when you want to pretty up your stone layers.

And finally, you'll have fewer "terrible" artefacts when you make better use of those you get. In vanilla, only the crafts are truly useless (and only terrible if the resultant skill boost is in an unused skill or fails thanks to possession).

[TeleDwarf]

You need to make sure that as many dwarves as you can have the needed highest moodable skill. you can check wiki to see which skills are moodable and use dwarf therapist to find what are the skills, with a single xp precision.

[Sutremaine]

It could be worth your while to check your farmers' preferences before lining up their mood-experience jobs: preferences for a particularly useless metal or item can make weapon-/armoursmithing unattractive.

Oh yes, forgot to mention -- dwarves with material preferences only demand that particular material if you've smelted it yourself. If your moody weaponsmith likes axes and rose gold, you're safe from a rose gold axe if you've never made any of your own rose gold. You're also safe from a crazy dwarf, if the mood strikes at a time when you have no rose gold and no way of making or importing more in the next season or so.

[BoredVirulence]

*Or not. I have a save with a moody dwarf who's just gone into an Engraving mood, and has 260XP in Masonry, 10XP in Engraving, and 330XP in Weaponsmithing. I suspect that either the game doesn't handle the XP of Dabbling skills in the same way that it handles the XP of higher skills, or there's a mood hierarchy when skill levels are equal.

I believe it is skill level, not XP, that affects moods. In your case dwarf was dabbling in those three skills, so it was a tie. Hence that was a random choice. Wiki explains it in detail.

I would have guessed that it wasn't random, but that it chose the choice alphabetically. If those were his only dabbling skills, then engraving certainly would be the choice.

[Quietust]

When I get a chance, I'll look through a disassembly to figure out exactly what it checks. I'll probably check version 0.23.130.23a, since my disassembly of it is far more detailed and the skill selection logic is not likely to have changed much over the years, though I'll see if I can check 0.34.11 as well.

[edit]

Just checked the logic in 23a, and it only checks the skill level, which is to say that a dwarf with multiple "dabbling" moodable skills would randomly select one of them with equal probability without regard to the amount of actual experience (or randomly select stone crafting, wood crafting, or bone carving if there aren't any moodable skills). Version 0.34.11 appears to be mostly the same, but with extra logic to only pick stone/wood/bone crafting if they're permitted in the entity raws (and forcibly choose stone crafting if none of those 3 are allowed).

[SixOfSpades]

Oh yes, forgot to mention -- dwarves with material preferences only demand that particular material if you've smelted it yourself.

Seconded and expanded on: Always check your dwarves' preferences before assigning them to metalworking professions. If you're going to be making steel (which is pretty much a given), if you have a smith who likes pig iron, you will be getting a pig iron somethingorother, no doubt about it*. If the prospective smith likes something you'll never have a reason to smelt on-site, like zinc or pewter, you can use forbidding to force the dwarf to use whatever metal you want. If the dwarf already likes steel or candy, make damn sure he's an Armorer, as (IIRC), dwarves working with their chosen materials get higher % chances of making masterworks, and you're going to need a lot more armor than you will weapons.

* Dwarves can sometimes be fooled into using a different material, if their artifact requires a second item of the same type as the base material. If a dwarf requires "bars, shining . . . tree, life . . . bars, shining . . . bones, yes . . . rough, color," then you can let them take their chosen metal (nickel silver) to the forge, followed by some wood, by which point you will have {forbidden} all of your metal bars except steel. He brings the steel to the forge, at which point you forbid the nickel silver and the log. This puts the steel bars in the #1 spot for the artifact's construction, and as it's valid for the forge reaction, the artifact's construction will continue--once the dwarf grabs another metal bar & wooden log, to replace those that inexplicably vanished.