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[Rainbows]

In my fortress I have some problem dwarves.

In the image you see Tulon rurathel sebshos omtal. Her only bad thoughts are horrified from seeing the trader die, loathing from being beaten (from starting a fight), regretful from a fight and grouchy from rain. She did however get happiness from sparring.

As you can see she just castrated a dude then killed him. For ages this dwarf has been drawn and haggard. I put her in the military so she wouldn't start fistfights in the dining room which largely worked casue the other soldiers block her shots but occasionally you get this.
Over a year I just checked and she has killed 5 dwarfs in fistfights.

Another of my dwarfs have nothing but good times in recent history from the legendary dining room. However ages ago they went to the refuse pile and saw a load of corpses. Now they are depressed. Looking at it all my sad dwarfs went to the refuse pile and had a bad time (x33) from corpses.

How do I stop this asshole from starting fistfights and killing people? How do I stop the other idiots getting all mopey over dead crundle x50? I can hardly leave them to rot where they die

[cochramd]

How do I stop this asshole from starting fistfights and killing people? How do I stop the other idiots getting all mopey over dead crundle x50? I can hardly leave them to rot where they die

Your first question has an entire wikipage dedicated to answers to it:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unfortunate_accident
As to the second question, crundle corpses don't actually inspire a bad thought, so I'm just going to assume that you meant some other kind of corpse. You can't fix that dwarf other than by bombarding them with positive thought stimulators, so you should probably be more concerned with preventing another dwarf from suffering the same fate. The simplest fix is to have the corpses of creatures that inspire bad thoughts restricted to one stockpile in a place that your dwarfs usually don't walk by or to just dump them in a pit no one can access.

[Iamblichos]

Yes, as noted it has to be a thinking being corpse to produce a bad thought.  Unfortunately, such corpses can be extremely fragmentary... even a goblin tooth can produce horror from "seeing a dead goblin".  How they know that one tooth is a goblin tooth is a mystery only Toady can explain.  This is why battle-flung bits in trees can produce bad feelings for years and years unless you track them all down.  Which is a chafe.

[gchristopher]

What does dwarf therapist say about the problem dwarf? I don't have it handy, but look for outlying values in their mental traits regarding stress.

Since the stress system is new to 40.X, it still really doesn't feel well tuned in 40.24. Getting a bad thought for each and every goblin tooth in the refuse pile is insane. (Especially since they should be HAPPY, since that's a pile of bad guys that were prevented from killing dwarves.)

In the end, for every 40.X fort I played, I gave up trying to pile on enough happy thoughts to overcome the horror of taking out the trash. A few dwarves will always go insane, and it's easier to just dfhack either their mental stats to stabilize them, or else just set their stress to insanely low once in a while.

The game works poorly enough in that area (for now) that cheating is a pretty reasonable option until there's better ways to deal with it in-game. Thankfully it's usually just a few dwarves that are broken.

Let me know if you'd like the relevant commands to fix a dwarf with dfhack.

[Sutremaine]

Didn't barring those problem dwarves from trash hauling stop them getting stressed?

[Daris]

Easily stressed dwarves can be identified by their personality traits saying they crack easily under pressure, or become completely helpless in stressful situations.  After the fact, they can be ID'd as the ones who start flashing a red down arrow after the first goblin siege.

Preventative measures include taking them off refuse duty and giving them occupations that keep them busy in a location far away from anything that might bother their delicate sensibilities.  Productive work produces good thoughts and churning out masterworks is a bottomless well of happiness.

If you aren't attached to the dwarf and they're actively tantruming, off them somewhere nobody else can see them die, and then inscribe a slab and call it a day.

[Zealord]

What does dwarf therapist say about the problem dwarf? I don't have it handy, but look for outlying values in their mental traits regarding stress.

Since the stress system is new to 40.X, it still really doesn't feel well tuned in 40.24. Getting a bad thought for each and every goblin tooth in the refuse pile is insane. (Especially since they should be HAPPY, since that's a pile of bad guys that were prevented from killing dwarves.)

In the end, for every 40.X fort I played, I gave up trying to pile on enough happy thoughts to overcome the horror of taking out the trash. A few dwarves will always go insane, and it's easier to just dfhack either their mental stats to stabilize them, or else just set their stress to insanely low once in a while.

The game works poorly enough in that area (for now) that cheating is a pretty reasonable option until there's better ways to deal with it in-game. Thankfully it's usually just a few dwarves that are broken.

Let me know if you'd like the relevant commands to fix a dwarf with dfhack.

I feel the same way and please do share the commands! 

[PatrikLundell]

Well, dorfs don't get unhappy thoughts from every goblin tooth, but rather from every goblin they encounter a piece of, so it doesn't matter if a goblin is in one piece or 100 pieces in the refuse pile: 1 goblin -> one bad thought.
So far I don't think I've had any dorf go over the edge into insanity, although getting big goblin sieges regularly (1-2 times a year) does push the stress up a bit.
- Caging invaders rather than slaughtering them means one less body (or multiple body pieces) to haul, and also avoids having caravans freaking out.
- I've yet to find a way to completely manage without having to kill some enemies manually, but a reduced number means reduced stress.
- Sapient bodies should be done away with where dorfs normally won't see them. I've had them dumped into magma in the past but am leaning towards a separate refuse pile down a hole due to the twisted satisfaction of making elf and goblin bone crossbows and armor.
- Checking stress level regularly allows you to identify dorfs stressed out to take them off refuse hauling and send them to work therapy for regular stress reducing dwarfgasms (engraver seems to be a very good job for this, but you fairly quickly run out of rock to engrave). I've found the DFHack enabled extended unit ('u'-'l') screen to be quite useful for stress overview at a glance.
- Ensuring you haul off the invader bits before you start to reclaim their gear should reduce the number of dorfs exposed to the bits, especially those taken off of refuse hauling due to sensitivity.
- Eliminating invaders completely using magma should be an effective way to avoid stress. However, it also removes the hotly desired underwear they bring. I also don't know if non magma safe goblinite is eliminated by magma, and I'm dependent on goblinite for weapons and armor.
- I guess you can replace magma with water where you let the bodies and gear just pile up on top of a drain grate well out of sight of the dorfs.

[Sutremaine]

I also don't know if non magma safe goblinite is eliminated by magma,

It is. Conversely, magma-safe goblinite is not eliminated by magma.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks, Sutremaine, Then I definitely won't use magma (at least not without having the victims in water first).

[omega_dwarf]

Is it still a thing that iron/copper/etc. will get melted by the magma into ingots? (iirc)

[Abaddon]

Is it still a thing that iron/copper/etc. will get melted by the magma into ingots? (iirc)

They should get melted into pools of liquid X.

[gchristopher]

In the end, for every 40.X fort I played, I gave up trying to pile on enough happy thoughts to overcome the horror of taking out the trash. A few dwarves will always go insane, and it's easier to just dfhack either their mental stats to stabilize them, or else just set their stress to insanely low once in a while.

I feel the same way and please do share the commands! 

Okay! Here goes. You'll need dfhack. Dfhack is amazing.

Start by highlighting the unit. Then in the dfhack window, type:

Code: [Select]

lua
unit = dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit()
unit.status.current_soul.personality.stress_level = -500000
quit

That dwarf will be happy for a while.

When you have the dwarf open in the lua session, you might consider messing with their personality traits as well.

Try:

Code: [Select]

lua
unit = dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit()
printall(unit.status.current_soul.personality.traits)

And maybe see if tweaking their personality might make them less of a chronic problem dwarf.

Maybe try?

Code: [Select]

unit.status.current_soul.personality.traits.STRESS_VULNERABILITY = 25

Be sure to quit the lua session before quitting DF.

I don't recommend doing too much dfhacking of a game in progress. It risks instability, eats up hours that could be spent playing, and can ruin the Fun of the game. Still, it's worth it in this case!

Maybe my other favorite time to tweak dwarf brains is to make my nobles have a preference for stone coffins, leading to lots of mandates for coffin production. Can't have too many coffins.

[Snaake]

Is it still a thing that iron/copper/etc. will get melted by the magma into ingots? (iirc)

They should get melted into pools of liquid X.

Except that iron is a magma-safe material, together with nickel, platinum, pig iron and of course steel and adamantium. That should be bronze/copper/etc.

So really, you could also consider the melting a feature: getting rid of all the scary goblin corpses, smelly socks (a mature fortress should be able to buy any theoretical needs from caravans using purely used masterwork pig tail cloth clothes anyway), and less valuable goblinite just by dumping the wooden goblin cages into magma, and periodically drain said disposal site and collect the valuable iron goblinite.


I once built a garbage incinerator aboveground: the refuse pile fed to a minecart, which would get pushed when reasonably full. The track was a short loop that led behind a short section of wall (on the other side of the refuse dump/track wall was my surface perimeter wall) to avoid magma mist accidents causing !!fun!!, where a no-friction track stop dumped the contents into the magma, and then the cart returned to be refilled. I like to watch the smoke from the 1 tile of magma wafting away from my fort, signaling the presence of the fortress, daring the goblins to invade... riding giant toads, which would swim under my river-straddling wall right into my courtyard, if my dwarves didn't jump in to fight them underwater before that.

That exact design would require some form of extra LoS-blocking now, due to the bad thoughts from seeing the corpses lying in the refuse pile while waiting to be loaded into the trash cart. Just building walls around the refuse pile with a door on the less traveled side should be good enough?

[PatrikLundell]

Since I embark in metal free areas, I rely on goblinite, so the less valuable kinds have a high value to me, since I'd rather use a copper chainmail than leather armor while the iron slowly accumulates into a sufficient amount to equip another militia member with an item (passing though the stage to convert the iron into steel). Also, I like to give my dorfs underwear when possible, and the only source of that in any measurable volumes is neighbor donations (elven caravans seem to bring about 0-3).

A problem with cage dumping is that you need a lot of cages, and it's hard to avoid getting masterworks ones, which generate bad thoughts when destroyed. If prisoner recaging doesn't have any risk of escape, then you can cram all the prisoners into a single low quality cage, though.

I use a dual refuse pile system, with one for regular refuse and one for sapient refuse. The regular one accepts everything except dwarves, goblins, elves, humans, kobolds, trolls, troglodytes, gorlaks, ogres, and blind cave ogres for the corpse, body part, and tooth categories, while the sapient one accepts only those, plus the top level corpses category (since the refuse/*/dwarf ones don't work). As other (dead) sapients are encountered they are removed/added to the piles as I go. I just use quantum stockpiles for the refuse, although the sapient one dumps into a fairly deep hole to keep the old bodies out of sight. The sapient refuse disposal is indoors in a room with doors to keep the waiting bodies out of sight and the miasma locked in (although the room is large enough that miasma shouldn't reach out of the room anyway). I used to use magma, but the twisted satisfaction from goblin and elf bone armor and crossbows took over.