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[Staalo]

Can you investigate whether actual witnessing death is handled the same as "witnessing death" from seeing corpses in stress levels?

I suspect they are handled differently; most soldiers are "doesn't really care about anything anymore" after two sieges but civilians haven't had any progress despite handling corpses and body parts constantly.

[Staalo]

Interesting! And while too late, it might have been useful to use a control volunteer in an identical room without the stressor?

Have any other skills or personality traits changed?

I thought about a control group but it wouldn't have given any useful information. It looks like the negative and positive experiences simply add or subtract a set amount from stress level value, possibly affected by personality type. Therefore, stress effects are measurable with a single test subject.

As far as I can tell there aren't any other changes or gains from simply witnessing the horror. I'm monitoring the subject with Dwarf Therapist as well.

[Staalo]

Five months into the tragedy repeater experiment, while school construction continues.

The test subject got a "Stressed" status when his stress level climbed over 100 000 from looking at the goblin skeletons over and over again. Apart from that there were no stat changes. It's time to let the poor volunteer to get some rest and recuperation for his PTSD.

Conclusion: showing dead bodies will not bring any gains in hardening like it did in the earlier school, instead it will stress the students until they'll slowly go insane. The stress from horrification events will be very hard to counter with luxury furniture and fine rooms.

Next I'll try to find out if seeing the actual death of a creature will harden the next volunteer. I'll also have to stop using the word "harden" in this context.

[smeeprocket]

Five months into the tragedy repeater experiment, while school construction continues.

The test subject got a "Stressed" status when his stress level climbed over 100 000 from looking at the goblin skeletons over and over again. Apart from that there were no stat changes. It's time to let the poor volunteer to get some rest and recuperation for his PTSD.

Conclusion: showing dead bodies will not bring any gains in hardening like it did in the earlier school, instead it will stress the students until they'll slowly go insane. Countering the stress from horrification events will be very hard to counter with luxury furniture and fine rooms.

Next I'll try to find out if seeing the actual death of a creature will harden the next volunteer. I'll also have to stop using the word "harden" in this context.

that's just wrong...

[Reelya]

People should really desensitize to seeing the same skeleton over and over. I mean a skeleton might stress you out at first, but eventually it would just be background to you if you saw it over and over, especially in childhood. Kids grow up on farms and see animals slaughtered and don't freak out.

[taptap]

People should really desensitize to seeing the same skeleton over and over. I mean a skeleton might stress you out at first, but eventually it would just be background to you if you saw it over and over, especially in childhood. Kids grow up on farms and see animals slaughtered and don't freak out.

They do. I am still on 40.14 but even there they do. (This appears to me to be independent of classical "hardening": used to tragedy -> hardened individual -> doesn't care anymore. Or at least before any changes are visible in the description.) Neither normal animal nor the forgotten beast remnants produce any feelings anymore - but many of them used to do. However, this effect is not fast enough to cope with rapid traumatization.

[Staalo]

I'm using .40.16 and only sentient remains cause any sort of stress reaction to anyone... and will continue doing so despite any amount of desensitizing. This of course presents some challenges to the schooling project.

I'll update to newer version once DFHack and Dwarf Therapist catch up, to see if things will change.

[Staalo]

While the school construction still continues I've had some slowdowns in research due to breaches in goblin containment and inefficient killing methods. Since this map doesn't have enough z-levels to construct an effective drop chute I've been testing various ways to make goblins go FOOM with magma mist. It's a regrettably cruel method but has its benefits as it leaves no corpses.

Asmel Grottodiamonds volunteered for the next phase of experiments by murdering his fellow dwarf and turning him into a bone helmet. So, for the last few weeks he's been spending his time in a nice private room watching goblins die behind a fortification. Observations after few incinerated goblins:

- Witnessing sentient death does indeed desensitize as in earlier versions. Three deaths was enough to advance desensitization with one level, although I have no way of knowing the original state.
- Unfortunately, witnessing a hostile creature, seeing it die and choking on the smoke it produces also a huge spike on the stress meter. This seems to be impossible to counter with any amount of pampering and luxury and Asmel is now stumbling obliviously with stress level of nearly 280 000.
- Being in the "oblivious to reality" state grants a dwarf an immunity to further horrification but curiously he's can still be annoyed by smoke.

All in all, it looks like tragedy training will be very hard with the new thought system. If I try any of the methods from the earlier boarding school all students will be shambling haggard wrecks before their third birthday.

[Magistrum]

If it helps you, it seems that only combat brings the discipline and the mental hardening the civilians lack, I have made a few experiments myself, and six children have grown used to fighting animals in enclosed areas (I leave it up to your imagination to know why they ended up like that), one has got two levels at discipline(Pretty impressive, she fought almost every month for some years) and the other five got one level. They killed some dogs in the process, which I'm sure wasn't supposed to happen, since this wouldn't trigger lethal combat. I think the dogs bleed out after the fight ended... All of the kids got "doesn't really care about anything anymore...". I think we must set up a reliable way of putting them to fight.

[Staalo]

Yes, I'm definitely going to do some combat testing; if nothing else I'll release some captured goblins into the classroom. Luckily this fort has no shortage of invaders.

With enough captives it could even be possible to do a lot of the training with real combat instead of training spears. A decade of non-stop brawling with goblins should do wonders to combat skills.

[Staalo]

Finally the Questmountain New Dwarven Boarding School is up and running! One downside of this design is that it is very time and resource consuming to build the initial school facility. This one was a bit scaled down from the one in Searingmines but still it took two years, 580 training spears and 239 mechanisms to build it.

All sixteen of the fort's children are now attending classes. Luckily this time I didn't have hundred children by the end of third year so I don't have to rush things.

First students have reached Adequate skill levels. I'll wait a bit more before I'll start introducing goblin guest lecturers into curriculum.

[taptap]

All sixteen of the fort's children are now attending classes.

These are migrants or children of already married couples? Or have you had any success with fortress marriages + birth?

[Staalo]

These are migrants or children of already married couples? Or have you had any success with fortress marriages + birth?

That's a very good question. Most of the children are fortress-born but I have a suspicion that all four couples who have children were already married when they migrated. I haven't paid attention to see if there have been any marriage announcements.

Questmountain has very few familial relationships, due to all migrants being randomly rolled during migration. I'll try to keep an eye on any possible developing romances.

EDIT: Yes, most likely all four families were already married, based on migration wave info. So no in-game marriages yet.

[Staalo]

Congratulations to Sodel Cityknighted for being the first student in Questmountain New Dwarven Boarding School to reach Legendary! Now I'll have to think what else to do with her... being only two years old she still has nearly a decade of valuable study time left.

Yes, training is proceeding at surprising speed; I'm now using a load of five training spears per trap and it seems to be very effective with no accidents so far.

Curiously there is almost no socialization happening between students. I know that Toady toned that down somewhat but now it looks they are never going to make any friends. Luckily all children from the four families are now all attending so siblings will comfort each other during times of need. The same lack of social interaction applies to whole fortress; very few friendships have formed during the six years since founding and some have no social contacts other than their gods. Unfortunately this means that my school won't probably have many new students except from those mentioned four families.

[rmblr]

Congrats Sodel Cityknighted!

Staalo, could you post a screenshot tour of your school?