Cavebear, that labyrinth is incredible.
Are you playing some sort of special challenge?
Most of us just tell the damn fishmongers "congrats you're a shitty armorsmith" and start spamming iron helms/leggings/etc. Just enable the various labors on them and they start learning the trade.
If I can count being new as a challenge run, yeah.
I did try giving a couple of dwarves smithing labours (and disabling everything else) but they don't do anything, they just sit around with no job. Same with diagnosis, smoothing, or anything else that nobody's skilled in. I guess it made me wrongly assume that dwarves actually need the skill to do those labours.
Not the first weird assumption I've made, got to feel bad for my dwarves.
Thanks so much for the advice, if I can put those fishmongers to use then I'll keep trying. Just have to figure out why nobody will do any smithing jobs even with the labour enabled.
EDIT: Turns out enabling armorsmithing in dwarf therapist doesn't work for my fortress. Have to do it ingame. I'm assuming diagnosis works the same way.
Also, I recall a mention that previous (I guess .34?) testing had additional quality and armor user both give like 12% more defence together total.
Doubt it is exactly true now, but eh. Superior material is super-important, more than any kind of quality.
...How did you get an axelord, training axes?
Huh, well that's some useful info. I'll keep a note of that.
He was my woodcutter. As you can probably imagine, he had plenty of idle time for training on a glacier. Was good enough to get rid of troglodytes at least but I guess that duckling was too much for him.
Besides I'm not totally without metal items, I just couldn't forge any myself. Most of my weapons were looted from unfortunate caravans.
There's no malpractice, so you can just enable all medical labours on everyone (at slower healthcare) - at least till you find ones who rise above the pack. Though I recall stories of ducks killing demons, so it may have been inevitable. Though for infections what you need is wound washing and dressing too.
No metalsmithing moods via dabbling artisans?
Yeah, that's what I'll do now I know it works.
I've had a suturer running around with diagnosis enabled but he never does anything, so I'll try telling the horde of fishermen to help. After all, a fish has some of the same parts as a dwarf.
I think the duckling deserves a gem-encrusted statue. I'm still mad at him but he's earned it- he actually survived the encounter.
Well, some genius kid made an artifact toy boat. In ten years he'll be free of dwarven child labour laws and ready to work.
You could like, assign people to be smiths.
Or doctors for that matter.
Well now I know. Now I have to live with the fact that a seasoned warrior in his prime died to a duckling because of my ignorance.