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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I've have done all i can do to make them happy but i still cant stop the spirals. So, I am open to any and all suggestions on dealing with Dwarf depression   

[Fenrisson]

To give an accured answer to your question it would be nice to know what "tried everything" truly means! In general spirals can be averted in 3 different ways:

1. More bling:

Meaning ridiculous valuable (I'm talking gold /platinum, masterwork and encrusted) statues, doors, wells and dinning halls for the public. put those things where the dwarves wander rather often. Combined with luxurious meals and even good personal rooms.

If you do that most deaths of friends and relatives will go almost unnoted.

2. Isolation:

Don't let dwarves bond by not giving them public areas where they can meet. If they don't know the guy that just died they won't care.

3. Harden them:

There are nice threads about dwarven "child care" and puppy-chutes or prisoner goring in the meet areas to harden the minds of the dwarves. Once they reached the status "does not care about anything anymore" anything goes. The downside is iirc they wont get happy anymore either.

feel free to add on if I forgot something...

[nekoexmachina]

Drop kittens from 20z levels right onto meeting space (dining room, booze stockpile, whatever). That makes em "doesn't care anymore" fast, thus preventing unhappy thoughts from tragedy.


Also what do you do to keep em unhappy? Cause I had a tantrum spiral, like, once  through all my playtime; in majority of cases if they have a good reason to tantrum it means that someone has butchered already the military and is butchering em in realtime.
Heck, I've had a children-powered militia forces, who accepted only fort-born children, and 10 out of 15 militias (other being crossbowmen) died from first attemp to take back the surface, and their mothers still were ecstatic due to legendary food & other sorts of good stuff.

[Button]

OK, you didn't give a whole lot to work with, so I'm not sure this advice applies to you.

0. Booze. This is number zero because it's baseline. If you're not constantly brewing booze, it's just a matter of time before your dwarves get sober. And a sober dwarf is a tantrumming dwarf.
0. Miasma. Also zero because also baseline. Designate a refuse stockpile either on the surface, or in a big room with a door. Make sure that the rotting items aren't forbidden.
1. Beds. If you don't want to bother with individual bedrooms yet, even just building beds seems to do wonders.
2. Dining room. One chair per table, as only one dwarf can use a table at a time. Make sure to designate it as a dining room from at least one of the tables. Then have an engraver smooth the room.
3. Bedrooms. Once you have enough beds, you can designate each one as a bedroom and let the dwarves claim them. They love having their own property! Then smooth the bedrooms to give them additional value.
4. Clothing. Do any of your dwarves have unhappy thoughts about being naked/shirtless? Once a fortress has lasted ~2 in game years your dwarves' clothes will begin to wear, and the little buggers want them some new duds.

In case of tantrum spiral, here's what I do: I find all of my surviving Doesn't Care Anymore and artifact-makers* and I make a burrow to isolate them from the tantrummers so they don't get hurt. (Usually I end up using an underground pasture.) I give them the basic labors needed for survival, have them gather the basics (seeds, a pick, a little booze and food), and then keep my little colony-within-a-colony safe while the tantrum spiral runs its course.

* Under-appreciated fact: anyone who's successfully made an artifact in the past is immune to tantrum.

[HmH]

1. More bling:

Meaning ridiculous valuable (I'm talking gold /platinum, masterwork and encrusted) statues, doors, wells and dinning halls for the public. put those things where the dwarves wander rather often. Combined with luxurious meals and even good personal rooms.

If you do that most deaths of friends and relatives will go almost unnoted.

Cheap alternative to high-value furniture: trap components. They have an obscenely high base value(66 or 126 against a statue's 25), which makes even a no-descriptor copper trap component soothe a dwarf's eye as well as a masterwork stone statue.

Manufacture some high-value trap components(silver serrated disks or spiked balls will do the job). Install weapon traps with those components in your dining room, your barracks and the busiest traffic chokepoints in your fort. Your dwarves will get a pretty big boost to happiness from "admiring a sublime Trap" again and again. It should be enough to make the tantrum spirals manageable.

[Lielac]

* Under-appreciated fact: anyone who's successfully made an artifact in the past is immune to tantrum.

Wait, what, really? One of my forts is in the middle of a massive(ly hilarious) tantrum spiral and I've been obsessively cataloging deaths and causes of death but didn't bother to specify whether or not a dwarf on my spreadsheet had created an artifact...

[Button]

* Under-appreciated fact: anyone who's successfully made an artifact in the past is immune to tantrum.

Wait, what, really? One of my forts is in the middle of a massive(ly hilarious) tantrum spiral and I've been obsessively cataloging deaths and causes of death but didn't bother to specify whether or not a dwarf on my spreadsheet had created an artifact...

I was sure I found this on the wiki, but it's not in any of the obvious places and I have a meeting in 2 minutes. But, in my experience, this is true. Though, mind you, it doesn't make them immune to death from tantrum - just emotionally stable enough that they'll never tantrum. Unless maybe the artifact is destroyed? I'm always very careful with my artifacts so I'm not sure about that one.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

sorry for lack of information, this is my first day on bay12 and i have only been playing for a month.

For what i have tried is giving them more booze, unholy amounts of furniture made from platinum and gold, and engraved floors.

when i said that i tried everything i was over exaggerating.

Lastly the thing that usually causes the tantrum spirals for me is some crafts dwarf goes into a strange mood wanting something i cant get, goes insane, gets killed and then all his friends throw tantrums.

[nekoexmachina]

This means that his friends were not so happy before he died.
Did you bury the guy? (build coffin (b-n), allow burial)
Did you check his friends' thoughts? (find tantruming dorf, select him with v, press z, press enter)

[Lielac]

* Under-appreciated fact: anyone who's successfully made an artifact in the past is immune to tantrum.

Wait, what, really? One of my forts is in the middle of a massive(ly hilarious) tantrum spiral and I've been obsessively cataloging deaths and causes of death but didn't bother to specify whether or not a dwarf on my spreadsheet had created an artifact...

I was sure I found this on the wiki, but it's not in any of the obvious places and I have a meeting in 2 minutes. But, in my experience, this is true. Though, mind you, it doesn't make them immune to death from tantrum - just emotionally stable enough that they'll never tantrum. Unless maybe the artifact is destroyed? I'm always very careful with my artifacts so I'm not sure about that one.

I think the only way artifacts could be destroyed is via atomsmashing, and none of mine are anywhere near any bridges. Er, not near any that could atomsmash them, and the one that's near-but-not-in-danger isn't going to get hit by that bridge because I don't want a web-spinner to take out Laborfords before I'm quite ready.

Does this immunity to tantrums include insanity? None of the living, already-mooded dwarves I've checked have been insane yet, but I have one living berserker and 10 melancholic or raving beards to check.

...

None of them have visibly created artifacts that I can see without checking Dwarf Therapist. Their statement of being completely out of their mind is in the same place as the confirmed artifact-makers have their artifact's name, so... interesting. I can't tell at a glance who's tantrumming and who's not, I'd have to go through the entire fort, but I do have a lock on one person tantruming (statement of tantrum also takes up the same space as an artifact's name) and he definitely hasn't created an artifact; him I checked in DT.

...

And none of the melancholics or ravers have created artifacts, and Kol Abyssink II doesn't show up because she's berserk. And I can't remember if any of my artifactors have tantrummed at any point.

Edit: Searching my (not exhaustive) announcements log for the names of mooded dwarves... Melbil Gulfchannel tantrumed twice, Moonstone 16th and 17th, and hasn't since. It's now 12th Opal.

...

Asmel Utteredinks: 3 found, hasn't calmed down from third. Tantrum status replaces artifact name. Very unhappy.
Atis Bluefloors: None found. Happy.
Cerol Twinklingdiamond: 4 found, last calmed as of 12th Opal. Miserable.
Cog Holeportals: 3, calm on 12th Opal. Miserable.
Cog Utteredinks: 2, calmed on 9th Opal. Miserable.
Deduk Holeportals: None found. Content.
Deler Twinklingdiamond: None found. Miserable.
Endok Orbsblaze: None found. Very unhappy; artifact made *very* early on.
Fikod Canyongalley: None found. Content.
Goden Abyssink: None found. Happy.
Id Abyssink: 7(!) tantrums, calm 9th Opal. Miserable.
Ilral Holeportals: 2 tantrums, calm 27th Moonstone. Unhappy.
Ineth Abyssink: None found. Miserable.
Ingiz Abyssink: 4, calm 5th Opal. Miserable.
Inod Shakenchanneled: 2, calm 8th Opal. Miserable.
Kadol Holeportals I: 2, calm 25th Moonstone. Miserable.
Kadol Holeportals II: 1, still tantruming. Miserable.
Kivish Abyssink: None found. Miserable.
Kogan Utteredinks: None found. Miserable.
Libash Holeportals: 4, calm 10th Opal. Miserable, but it's not because of the constantly going on and off duty because siege.
Likot Abyssink: None found, miserable.
Limul Claspdrummed: None found, fine...

Lielac has complained of hunger lately.

[jcochran]

I'm rather surprised that no one has mentioned mist generators yet. They also create a lot of happy thoughts to prevent or stop tantrum spirals.

[Lielac]

I'm rather surprised that no one has mentioned mist generators yet. They also create a lot of happy thoughts to prevent or stop tantrum spirals.

They can also also flood your entire fort.

[Larix]

Which means there's no real downside to them, right?

Preventing tantrum spirals has been covered quite well here, but stopping one when it's already started is trickier, and it seems there's no surefire way to get out of one. Once people start dropping, the overall mood goes way down and whether or not an unhappy dwarf actually snaps seems to be pretty random.

The things that work somewhat for me are

- shut down unneeded jobs. Stop all hauling, stop all pointless rock-mug-making, keep idler count as high as possible so you have reserves to get urgent stuff done and so those still somewhat sane can socialise and admire the serrated disc traps in the meeting hall.

- keep what defences you have ready to rumble. Station the military in the meeting hall, pasture your war dogs there, keep the weapon traps clean. This reduces damage from berserkers and may help protecting against intruders.

- just because you're in lockdown mode doesn't mean you can't still work on prettying up the fort. Assigning new or better private rooms, installing new furniture, keeping your mayor available for meetings helps stabilising the mood.

- exorcise ghosts, but don't bother too much burying the dead. If a corpse is somewhere out of sight (e.g. an insane dwarf locked in their own room before they perished), friends and relatives won't get unhappy over the death or the rotting corpse. Engraving slabs for the fallen is very important to keep ghosts down, because hauntings kill the mood, too.

[WJLIII3]

I believe artifact creator can, in fact, tantrum, if for example, the artifact is destroyed. They cannot, however, go insane. At least that's my understanding.

[Button]

I believe artifact creator can, in fact, tantrum, if for example, the artifact is destroyed. They cannot, however, go insane. At least that's my understanding.

Ugh, the forum ate my post. I did find the bit on the wiki, and yes - they're immune to insanity, not to tantrumming. My mistake. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Strange_mood#Success