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[soulsource]

Hi everyone!

My fortress is facing a serious issue: Butchers going insane.
As there are plenty of cavern-animals spawning on my embark area, it'd be a shame not to use this free supply of meat. Strategically placed weapon traps ensure, that nearly every crundle, rutherer or cave crocodile unlucky enough to enter my embark will get a free ride to the refuse stockpile. And that's where the problem starts. Butchers sent out to prepare this raw meat into cookable portions quite often get negative thoughts from "watching a Crundle die", although said animal is a long-dead corpse on the refuse stockpile. Of course it's not only animals, there are a few rotting would-be invaders there as well, but the majority of negative thoughts is indeed caused by non-sentient corpses.
Probably the non-butcherable remains on the stockpile contribute to the issue, so I'm currently considering dropping them into magma or to use an atom smasher. Nevertheless, the butcherable remains will then still be an issue.
Also, I'm trying to counteract the negative thoughts by decorating the butcher shops and the nearby corridors, but a few "was interested near a fine statue" thoughts can hardly compete with twenty "horrified" thoughts popping up simultaneously...
I guess that this problem is known to every DF player who managed to keep a fort alive for a few years, and I'm wondering how you are keeping your butchers in sanity.

Edit: It's actually not the crundles or other animals, I've checked again, and the bad thoughts are coming mostly from sentient cavern creatures, like gorlaks, trolls and troglodytes.

[Pirate Bob]

While your butchers might be getting some mildly negative thoughts from seeing dead crundles, etc, the real problem is them seeing dead sentient creatures (goblins, elves, etc).  Move your piles for dead invaders somewhere that none of your dwarves will ever see them (i.e. in a deep pit), or better yet destroy the invader corpses (smash them with a bridge, throw them in magma, etc).

Your butchers should quickly get used to seeing dead animals, and then will just spam a lot of "Urist felt nothing when seeing a crundle die".  Also, even if they are getting negative thoughts from dead animals, it should be relatively mild, as I said above.  The negative thoughts from seeing dead goblins seem to now be about as bad as seeing dead dwarves, which is quite severe.  I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but the bottom line is you need to get rid of those invader corpses.

Also, the "watching a X die" thought occurs any time a dwarf sees a dead body.  It doesn't matter how long the creature has been dead, and I believe they can get the thought from the same corpse multiple times, although I'm not sure about that part.

[Albedo]

Also, the "watching a X die" thought occurs any time a dwarf sees a dead body.  It doesn't matter how long the creature has been dead, and I believe they can get the thought from the same corpse multiple times, although I'm not sure about that part.

I have a hauler who has more of these thoughts than I have dead units listed under {u}nits, so I'm guessing it's true.

[Naryar]

why are you butchers having unhappy thoughts from crundles ? crundles aren't sentient and dwarves should not care about animal death.

[NW_Kohaku]

Check the personality of your butchers.  Some dwarves care more about the wellbeing of others more than other dwarves do, and if it's a problem, you might want to make sure your butchers are some of the more cold-hearted dwarves in your fort.  After a lot of kills, they should "not care about anything anymore," which means they aren't bothered by death.  (That said, you should probably have low stress/depression propensity and high cheer propensity in dwarves you purposefully make not care anymore, or they're prone to going insane for other reasons.)

Isolate your butcher shop (put it behind walls and a door) to keep other dwarves from being bothered, and set up multiple garbage disposals (pits to an atom smasher) near the entrance (but not directly connected to your fort) that prevents haulers from carrying gobbo corpses through the main stairwells or hallways. 

[Jigowah]

I'm having rampant stress and depression issues because of the dump.  I've been putting mangled corpses in there and mass designating dump jobs.  This has made virtually everyone in the fortress upset because they repeatedly see the sentient corpses of kobolds and such.

In my next fortress, I think the garbage dump will be a LONG DROP into some place that will never be seen again (magma?).  Alternatively, I might design a fortress so that the majority of workers do not dump stuff and thus never have to see this kind of carnage.

Is there a safe way to design a garbage dump that will prevent dwarves from falling into it?  Can I use a floodgate, pile garbage on top of it, and periodically open and close it or will this not work with garbage on top of it?

I'm against atom-smashers as they seem kinda exploity to me.

UPDATE: I have been using dump tiles wrong I think.  The wiki says to put the dump tile NEXT TO the open space.  I've been putting it over a 1z deep ramp, and found injured dwarves would get hit with falling trash.  I'll try a designating the dump NEXT TO an open pit and see if that helps.  I'm also curious if a hatch will prevent them from seeing the corpses or if I need to rely on a long fall.

[nimbus25]

Is there a safe way to design a garbage dump that will prevent dwarves from falling into it?  Can I use a floodgate, pile garbage on top of it, and periodically open and close it or will this not work with garbage on top of it?

If you put a hatch cover over a hole and designate a garbage dump on it, trash will accumulate on top until you open it with a lever and dump the trash down the hole into wherever. Or, if there's a dumb designated and the hatch is open, they'll stand next to the hole and just throw the trash in.

[soulsource]

Thanks a lot!

It seems that I misread indeed, and that the bad thoughts mostly (all?) come from the corpses of sentient creatures (troglodytes, trolls,...). Well, now I've ordered my dwarfs to toss everything that doesn't look edible into the magma. I hope that the fort lives long enough to show if this has any effect, as after a forgotten beast attack the military is severely weakened...

[NW_Kohaku]

You want an open channel and then to set a zone NEXT TO the channel, then declare it a garbage dump.  This is one of those confusing/annoying/inexplicable interface choices of Toady's because pits require you designate the channel dwarves dump things into, and dumps require you designate where the dwarves will stand when they dump things. 

Dwarven Garbage Compactor:
Make a 1-tile-wide channel at least 3-4 Zs deep as a straight pit, then put a 2x1 drawbridge at the bottom, with the "wall" tile not being the tile the channel leads down to so that you don't "flip" items up.  For best results do NOT tie it to a repeater, the drawbridge's raising/lowering lags the game, so only do it once a season or so by manual flipping.  Set your drawbridge to normally be "up", because some items get "flipped" when the bridge is raised, and you only smash everything when it comes down. 

Code: [Select]

Dump zone
░▲░ ░░
░░░ ░░
░░░ ░░
  +╞╡░
░▲░░░░Side view
░ = wall
+ = door
  = channel
╞╡ = 2-tile drawbridge, retracting to the right.
▲ = ramp

As things are dumped they are forbidden.  Lock the door unless you want to unforbid something so it doesn't get smashed.  The ramp pit is also a pond with 2/7 or 3/7 water to wash off dwarves going to either the dumping chute or the dump itself because otherwise, they WILL start tracking potentially syndrome-laded blood everywhere.

Needless to say, lock the door again before you pull the lever to smash everything. 

Genreally, I don't find this an exploit the way that atom-smashing goblins is, since it's handling an out-of-game problem (lag from too many objects) that doesn't affect the "difficulty" of the game at all, while an atom-smasher makes a mockery of sieges without sufficiently large creatures.  That said, you CAN accomplish the same effect (minus the ability to recover items) by digging a channel to the magma sea/SMR.  It's just more effort for no additional benefit. 

[NJW2000]

Someone's probably suggested this and I haven't seen, but while weapon traps are more fun, cage traps + taming = slaughter with no bad thoughts. You want to tame 'em well first, though.

[vjmdhzgr]

Someone's probably suggested this and I haven't seen, but while weapon traps are more fun, cage traps + taming = slaughter with no bad thoughts. You want to tame 'em well first, though.

The quality of the taming shouldn't matter much, unless you plan to tame fifty of theme or something then slowly have each one dragged halfway across the fortress to be butchered by a dabbling butcher. The standard training level is plenty long enough to. Butcher a few animals.

[soulsource]

It's quite a sight to observe a caravan of dwarfs carrying dead bodies through the fortress and tossing them down a bottomless (magma ^^) pit, one after the other....

Cage traps only helps for tamable creatures.
While non-tamable creatures can be put to good use for live target practice, a way to dispose their bodies is still required. (Or one can put them in a zoo, but live target practice is more fun...)

[Borge]

I really wish dump zones worked when placed over an empty space, so you could dump straight into a volcano. Mine carts work but still.

[SyrusLD]

I really wish dump zones worked when placed over an empty space, so you could dump straight into a volcano. Mine carts work but still.

Dwarves will dump things into an adjacent hole / down an adjacent cliff if you set the dumping zone at the edge of such.
Remember, some things are magma-safe.

I'd always suggest caution though...while you can dump into magma, there might be things coming out of that magma as well.

[Sanctume]

A pit that is 5-z levels seems to be the minimum to prevent the dwarf from the top to not see what's in the bottom of the pit. 

Miasma also does not rise up to 5-z levels.