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[Detharon]

My fortress has a decent defense against the invaders - I can kill siegers and megabests with ease, making sure that only the most fearless dwarves clean the mess and put the corpses to the atom smasher, so that the others won't see the bloodshed. To be honest I don't know why would they care about seeing some dead giant lizard abomination, but maybe they're just sensitive... anyway, it seemed to impact stress a lot, so I made sure that they no longer receive negative feelings.

But even though dwarves no longer see the bodies, they are getting more and more stressed. One example.




Last time some Buzzards stressed him, causing the stress level to increase from 119k to 122k. Other dwarf gained 10k stress from that encounter. They didn't even get hurt or something, just interrupted. At this pace it will take few months to decrease the stress to previous level, before the encounter with Buzzard.

they have access to nice personal bedrooms, legendary dining hall, masterwork food and drinks, statue garden with several statues worth 10k each, but it doesn't seem to help at all. Most dwarves are at 10-40k stress level all the time.

What's your trick to manage stress in your fortress? Because I seem to be doing something wrong, I never had such issues with happiness in .34 unless something really bad was happening, but my current fortress is not experiencing anything of that sort. Surprisingly, a death of a fellow dwarf now seem to be less stressful than few little birds flying around.

EDIT:

Same dwarf, few minutes later, literally nothing bad happened to him and he's even more stressed now.

[Urist McOrrk]

hi, if i remember correct positive is good, negative means he is stressed, this is why the number went up when nothing bad happened, tho i may be wrong. Let us hope to armok's sake i am not or my embark will be very short

[TheFlame52]

Legendary dining hall.

Seriously, Bastiongate's Great Hall is one of the most useful things I've ever built. I haven't seen anyone above 10k stress in 15 years and many of my fort-born are taking lovers.

On another note, at what amount of stress do dwarves go nuts at? Wiki says nothing.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

What version? there was a bug with this a while back.

[AceSV]

Note the line in his description, "Doesn't handle stress well." I suspect what it's trying to say is that he's got a highly unfavorable Stress Propensity, which means he's just going to feel stressed. 

Also I think working makes dwarves happy, especially when they make something high quality.  I've seen Miners become wildly ecstatic after large digging jobs.  If he's a Potash Maker or something and doing too much hauling instead of working, that might be hurting him too. 

If it was me, I'd lock him into a tantrum bunker and have him split coin stacks. 

[Niddhoger]

Note the line in his description, "Doesn't handle stress well." I suspect what it's trying to say is that he's got a highly unfavorable Stress Propensity, which means he's just going to feel stressed. 

This.  Some dorfs are just neurotic messes.  It also says that "in this season, he experience death (x8)."  He also "felt vengeful after being dragged into an existing conflict (x6)." 

I thought you said that only the hardiest of dorfs were doing corpse disposal duty? Did he witness goblins being struct down/see the bodies being transported? You might want to make hte corpse disposal go along a private (closed off) corridor with restricted access.  I'm not too sure about the "existing conflict."  Is this related to grudges and dorfs fighting each other? It did mention he felt good about yelling at the mayor... so if he keeps going to the mayor you'll need to quarantine him.  Dorfs usually go to the mayor 3-4 times before their first tantrum and 3-4 more times after that before breaking mentally. 

Does he have any useful military skills? If so, you can freely add him to a squad and have him work on his discipline skill.  A higher discipline should help abate negative thoughts about death/seeing bodies.  However... if he would incur the stress penatly of being drafted, I'd just add several more blinged out statues in the living quarter.  Having 20 blissful thoughts about well-made statues tends to be a great buffer against tantrums. 

[Detharon]

hi, if i remember correct positive is good, negative means he is stressed, this is why the number went up when nothing bad happened, tho i may be wrong. Let us hope to armok's sake i am not or my embark will be very short

It's the other way around. Stressed dwarves (having more than 100k stress) are marked in-game with a red flashing exclamation mark, and they start visiting mayor to complain.

What version? there was a bug with this a while back.

The newest one, 0.40.24.

I thought you said that only the hardiest of dorfs were doing corpse disposal duty?

Currently, yes. In the past I didn't care about that as they all were quite content, that's why the message is still there. The thing is, his stress level did not seem to diminish over time... but I must admit I didn't notice the line saying about not handling stress very well.

It seems that STRESS_VULNERABILITY trait is a game changer. My dwarf that has "cracks easily under pressure" is at 158k, while other one, that has "is confident under pressure", is at -48k, and he's one of those getting care of bodies

The "existing conflict" thoughts are caused by birds interrupting dwarves walking outside.

Also I think working makes dwarves happy, especially when they make something high quality.  I've seen Miners become wildly ecstatic after large digging jobs.  If he's a Potash Maker or something and doing too much hauling instead of working, that might be hurting him too. 

If it was me, I'd lock him into a tantrum bunker and have him split coin stacks. 

He's a legendary +5 gem cutter, so he can't produce any masterwork, but I'll let him cut 100 schist to see if it helps.

[AceSV]

Also I think working makes dwarves happy, especially when they make something high quality.  I've seen Miners become wildly ecstatic after large digging jobs.  If he's a Potash Maker or something and doing too much hauling instead of working, that might be hurting him too. 

If it was me, I'd lock him into a tantrum bunker and have him split coin stacks. 

He's a legendary +5 gem cutter, so he can't produce any masterwork, but I'll let him cut 100 schist to see if it helps.

Can't they?  I think cut gems have quality modifiers and gem cutters occasional produce gem crafts instead of cut gems (or at least, this happens with glass).  I don't know if rock or clay can do that, since you're meant to make rock/clay crafts elsewhere. 

Also, I don't think it has to be the job he has now, just something he's good at.  For example, Gem Cutting depends on Agility and Analytical Ability, other jobs that use those skills would probably work fine ( http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Attribute ), assuming that Gem Cutting is something he is good at in the first place. 

[Eldin00]

I do not believe that cut gems which can be used for decorating have a quality modifier. Large gems and gem crafts, which I'm pretty sure can only be created when cutting gemstones or glass, not other rocks, do have quality modifiers, so it's quite possible for a gem cutter to rack up a significant count of masterwork items.

[Beast Tamer]

I plan on throwing dwarves that are chronically stressed into the caverns and having them try to make what will become an outpost for my pacification of the caverns. That way I won't have to worry about them killing or injuring someone or something. I was about to do it with one dwarf, but my captain of the guard got to them before I could seal them in. Now they're stuck on a chain for 100 days.

[bigcalm]

My solutions so far:

Furniture:
* Put doors and statues everywhere around the workshops.  Dwarves will see them whilst working and get happy thoughts.  Smoothing / engraving around workshops doesn't appear to do anything.  Try and keep a varied selection of furniture around and place any artifacts either in your dining room(s) or your statue rooms or highly trafficked areas.  If you're lucky enough to get an artifact that can be used in a workshop do so (e.g. artifact mechanism for screw press ; artifact barrel for dyers, etc).
* If a particular dwarf is unhappy, give them something they like (e.g. if they like green glass, put a green glass statue in their room).

Conflict
* Try to predict roughly where battles will take place and put an atom smasher nearby - on my map goblin sieges always appear in the middle of the top part of the map, so I've got an atom smasher near to where the bodies will end up.
  -- On conclusion of the battle, z->stocks->body parts -> unforbid -> dump ; z->stocks->corpses->unforbid->dump ; go to the refuse piles containing bones, shells, hair, skulls, teeth and remove the dump (I have separate stockpiles for pretty much everything).  Do not "claim" any armour/weapons of fallen enemies yet - wait until the dumping has finished.  This should ensure that the bodies lying on the battlefield get cleared away as quickly as possible.
  -- I've yet to decide exactly what to do with caged things that can't be tamed.  Right now my strategy of building the cages in a honeypot trap and letting a forgotten beast massacre them at a later date is unsatisfactory at best.

The Unhappy Bunnies
* Have a military squad (or several) to place unhappy dwarves in.  After a battle or if there are corpses needing hauling those dwarves should be activated, sent to their barracks and not allowed to see bodies and body parts.
* I also have an area where I can isolate dwarves in their military squad - this is an area with 5 rooms which are as nice as I can make them (smoothed/engraved/artifacts) - a dining room, a statue room, a room with 2 separate stockpiles for food and booze that take from the main food/booze stockpile, a dormitory and a barracks.  These rooms can be sealed with a door and a bridge.
 -- When these dwarves are really depressed, remove these rooms from the burrow, set military alert on and set the military squad of depressed dwarves to station in that area.  It can be tricky getting all of them there at the same time but persist (small squads can help)!  Once they're there, forbid the door, and pull the bridge to seal them in.  You can then take them off station, add the rooms back into the burrow and leave them be.  Set them to train if you want, doesn't really matter a great deal - some training in discipline may help more testing needed.  They will complain they have no shoulder to cry on but this doesn't seem to stop their stress decreasing.  (To make this trickier you should really have some way of preventing them getting cave-adapted but this can be fiddly).
 -- A very stressed dwarf (200k stress) will take over 3 years to decrease back down to below 100k - but they can be allowed to wander around the fort as long as there is no body hauling going on.  Definitely remove refuse hauling from any of the really stressed regardless.
 -- Ideally equip the military squad with metal armour, as then they won't get any negative clothing thoughts.
 -- You may find you need more than one military squad and set up like this (it can help to rotate people in and out of squads as they become less unhappy).  Currently I have "The Unhappy Bunnies", "The Hares of Despair" and "The Long-Faced Leverets".  I'm also running out of synonyms for rabbits but that's a separate issue.
 -- You won't be able to completely isolate your mayor or your duchess like this.

[Youbo]

I have this problem too and would really appreciate if someone could find the answer to why they keep getting more stressed.

Also, according to these posts by Toady himslef, stress-vulnerable dwarves only get more stress points on stressing events,not gain stress over time.
Furthermore, stressed dwarf are supposed to LOSE stress over time if nothing bad happens(and gain some if they have negative stress and nothing good happens).
Source: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=8539 (see the last 2 posts)

So unless I am misinterpreting him, something wrong is going on with our stressed dwarves.

[Detharon]

I can confirm that my stressed dwarves do not gain stress on their own, rather they accumulate it over time from getting negative thoughts. I've managed to isolate the most stressed dwarves and eventually they recovered, although it took some time.

In my case Buzzards caused it, by interrupting dwarves that were going outside to chill out in a statue garden, and apparently it caused negative thoughts not just for a particular dwarf that decided to punch the unlucky Buzzard, but also the bystanders, perhaps because at one point they all are joining the fight for an instant, and game doesn't take into account the fact that this "fight" is in fact just a mere nuisance. The thing is, sometimes the cause is not clearly visible. I've noticed that "vengeful joining an existing conflict..." bad thought disappears after one week from the log, but the stress penalty remains.


I'm now running another fortress, without any annoying birds, and stress problems are basically nonexistent. My most stressed dwarf has 14k stress. Few dwarves cannot handle stress well, yet they don't go nuts if they see a forgotten beast slaughtering their friends, goblins being massacred by legendary axe lords, or similar atrocities. Over time they simply feel "nothing after witnessing death". But few small birdies flying above their heads can drive them to insanity.

[Sirbug]

As far I understand, now simply large engraved rooms are not enough, quality furniture is also needed. Is this correct?

Should I stop using rock tables and thrones and go for something like valuable metals?

[aiseant]

I have royal bedroom for everybody with masterwork furnitures everywhere and gold block floor ... I don't have this problem anymore. Though, I use to throw unhappy dwarves in magma before they became useless or stark raving mad