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[Lielac]

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

They can definitely tantrum; one of mine killed another while doing so. Not even the miserable ones have cracked yet, though, and I have a lot of miserable ones. 32, in fact, and I know most of them have been miserable for a while, so you'd think one of them would crack after a while if they were going to crack. Luckily, they're not~

I'm tempted to lock all the non-immune dwarves in the kidlet zone and wall them off. They should die eventually, there isn't enough food to support 83 dwarves for any significant length of time. And then my insanity-proof dwarves would be all the stronger for it! Ehehehehehehehehe...

[Loci]

Don't underestimate the value of clothing. No, the actual value. Expensive owned items boost a dwarf's base happiness; and, with their current compulsion to hoard worn clothes in their rooms, any dwarf with a sizable pile of princely rags is near permanently ecstatic. So dump the goblin trash, break out the GCS cloth and dimple dye, and deck your dwarves in the latest fashion.

This can also make it counter-productive to reassign rooms during a tantrum spiral--the happy thoughts gained from nicer surroundings may not compensate for all the owned items that are lost if you free their old rooms. Also, if your fortress is borderline unhappy, avoid using the "cleanowned" command.

[Lielac]

Also, if your fortress is borderline unhappy, avoid using the "cleanowned" command.

And definitely avoid indiscriminate dumping of xclothingx via the stocks view when cleanowned doesn't do anything about long-scattered clothes that aren't owned anymore. That's how my spiral got started.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

thanks for the amazing advice
next time i ask a question i will try to be more specific and give more information, sorry for the mishap

[doublestrafe]

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.

If this is really that big a problem, there's an easy answer. If a dwarf is in a strange mood and wants something you can't get, build a wall around the workshop and never open it again. The dwarf will die, but since no other dwarf ever finds the body, he just goes on the missing list and nobody gets unhappy. Ignorance is bliss.

[Skuggen]

"Huh, I wonder what ever happened to my good friend Urist. Last I saw him he was storming into that recently walled-off workshop, muttering to himself."
It's a good thing dwarves are dumb.

Remember to engrave a slab to the obviously sealed-in mysteriously vanished dwarf so he doesn't rise as a ghost.

[WanderingKid]

Cryxis, one other thing to think about.  While giving them valuable furniture is helpful, they prefer a masterwork chair made of rock over a crappily built gold throne.  Specialize your furniture folks.

In general, as long as you don't do something nasty to the dwarves like have them dance with the undead, the following will keep your dorfs in a very happy to just below ecstatic state:
Decent bedrooms.
Legendary Dining room (easy with masterwork tables/chairs)
A variety of goods in your meals.
A variety of booze.
Make sure you're using a current copy of DFHack to avoid the military happiness bug about patrols.
Make sure you stay up on your clothing creation, and specialize a few clothesmakers so they're producing high end goods.

That's it.  Other than massive deaths of the military you shouldn't have significant issues. 

Now, if you REALLY want to boost things up...
Train up a metalworker and have him eventually able to create masterwork statues, create a statue garden.
Use masterwork doors along the well traveled routes, can really spruce them up.
Create a waterfall.  They're relatively easy, if a bit time consuming, if you have any form of water source on your map.  Mist + clean dwarves.  Stick it in front of the dining hall, with the bedrooms on the other side.
Specialize a few dwarves in engravings.  Go for the ones that 'admire tradition' so you can avoid 4000 engravings of cheese... or roaches.  First have 'em smooth everything, then have 'em engrave everything.
Create a 'zoo'.  Be careful with this.  What one dwarf loves, another can hate... sticking the 'zoo' in their personal bedroom is helpful.

Once the spiral starts, though, it's tough to stop the momentum.  You need to isolate the causes and get them (if possible) out of sight.  And leave them there.  Entomb them in rooms so no one finds the body, engrave a slab.  Send entire families out to pick berries on the surface... and seal the front door.  Find dwarves who are either new, or 'don't care about anything anymore', and burrow them in a safety zone, away from the soon to be psychopaths.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Thanks to all your guys advice i stopped a possibly horrible (yet fun!) tantrum spiral.
I have an overloaded variety of booze
New clothes
Gem encrusted furniture
Attempting to start a zoo
giving most my militia a break
and engraving all the rooms

[DiacetylMorphine]

Does having a statue garden set in the middle of the meeting hall help ? Usualy i just create a big room with statue garden and meeting hall overlaping, give my dwarf decent 3x5 rooms and that's it. Their always exctasic, exept the smith usualy cryng cause of his new masterwork coper giant axe getting melt (he is just content).


For a while i build mist generator ready to work in the meeting hall in case, but i never used them so i removed them. Could it be the statue garden (with gold statue ofc) that make them so happy ?

ps: they do have booze and meal, but i don't manage that at all, they cook and brew what they can, usualy plump helmet and dogs meat.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Waterfalls fix everything. I think they literally give the highest happiness value in the game. And what could be easier than arranging a bunch of falling water?

Either flood your main staircase with everyone around it (you lose a few bottom levels and stragglers, but save the fort)

or

invest in a proper waterfall device. I personally like arranging pumps in a circle in a z-level above a major dining room and sending a single tile of water moving in a perpetual loop. Here's a little screen from my fort (first image is the z-level above the second image), the mists gets in the way but you get the idea:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The single tile of water is held in the tank with the statue and refilled with buckets when evaporation depletes it. The six pumps move it in a loop. Each pumps drops the water (making mist) but the water never hits the ground because the next pump has already caught it and is the process of dumping it into the receiving zone of the next pump (and making mist), and so on and so forth.

The apparatus is powered by a small perpetual motion reactor (water wheel based) built into the ceiling of the room (which happens to be the royal throne room)