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[Quicunque]

My fort is now in its 10th year, and I notice many of my dwarves are "badly distracted after being unable to practice a craft". Since, for example, my wood burner (who burns a lot of wood now), is so badly distracted, that means that by "practicing a craft", farming tasks don't count. I suspect only actual crafts (like leatherworking, glazing, etc) count.

So, do I need to enable some craft on those dwarves and que up some crafting jobs? It seems to be an excessive amount of micro-managing to do so, not to mention a waste of some resources just for this mood problem. Any thoughts? How have you dealt with this bad distraction?

[Bumber]

Just ignore it. Focus is calculated as an average of all needs.

[Quicunque]

While it is helpful to know how focus is calculated, still, by improving this one distraction, overall focus will be improved. Out of my 143 adult dwarves, about 100 have this bad distraction. On most of these, it is their worse or only red distraction. If there is a simple way to eliminate it, overall fortress mood will be helped.

As it is, I have given most of these dwarves permission to do stonecrafting, and have ordered a steady stream of stone pots. My hope is that they will take turns making these pots over time. By the end of a year, perhaps most will no longer have this bad distraction. I was just wondering what other players, more experienced than me, have done. I suppose "just ignore it" is one valid strategy. Are there others?

[Shonai_Dweller]

While it is helpful to know how focus is calculated, still, by improving this one distraction, overall focus will be improved. Out of my 143 adult dwarves, about 100 have this bad distraction. On most of these, it is their worse or only red distraction. If there is a simple way to eliminate it, overall fortress mood will be helped.

As it is, I have given most of these dwarves permission to do stonecrafting, and have ordered a steady stream of stone pots. My hope is that they will take turns making these pots over time. By the end of a year, perhaps most will no longer have this bad distraction. I was just wondering what other players, more experienced than me, have done. I suppose "just ignore it" is one valid strategy. Are there others?

Assign dwarves who like crafting to be your crafters.
And if you have nothing to craft, live with the distraction.

They're dwarves, some of them seriously want to craft things. Far more so than humans would consider normal. But it won't kill them not to. Want little robots to do exactly what you say disregarding their psychology? Ignore it.

[§k]

Merry making makes people happy. Dancing in tavern keeps them focused.

[Quicunque]

Well, so much for that experiment. I will have no results to post on how making all those distracted dwarves stonecutters. One of my miners opened HFS prematurely. Fortress death by Clowns. That's what I get for digging too greedily and too deep.

"Send in the Clowns. There ought to be Clowns. Don't bother; they're heeeere." [in little Drew Barrimore's best Poltergeist voice]

[§k]

At least the dwarfs aren't distracted anymore.

[Sutremaine]

For your next batch of distractable dwarves, I have an untested idea. Workshops can be assigned to a single dwarf, and job orders spread themselves across any workshops not specifically excluded (individual workshops can also have their number of general work orders set. Macro time!). So, you find a workshop that you otherwise wouldn't use, build and assign n of them, and then order a batch of n jobs.

There's some data in the Discussion page on the Needs page of the wiki.

(r) = reaction in raws

Satisfied by cooking, gem cutting, dyeing, constructing animal trap, weaving thread into cloth, assembling instrument from parts, making rock blocks, making wooden blocks, making clay bricks (r), making steel (r), milling seeds/nuts to paste.

Unsatisfied by plant collecting, sowing seeds, smoothing, engraving, web collection, smelting ores, the 'Mill plants' job.

Note -- smelting an ore does not satisfy, but making steel does. Any reaction in the raws seems to count, even if it's missing reagents, products, or an associated skill.

I think I wrote that.

[mikekchar]

Good rule of thumb (which may not fit every case, but almost every case) if it produces something with a quality, it's a craft.  If not, it's a skill.

[Leonidas]

You could have all your non-specialist dwarves make stone blocks. That way you're getting a useful product, and they're satisfying their craft need. And if your peasants all become novice masons, then you have better chances of getting artifact furniture (especially doors or hatches) rather than crafts.

[Quicunque]

Thank you, Leonidas! That is great advice.

[Sutremaine]

Good rule of thumb (which may not fit every case, but almost every case) if it produces something with a quality, it's a craft.  If not, it's a skill.

The first part is true. The second, not so much.

[Yami]

My response is very micromanagy, but I always make my dwarves crafta weapon or peice of armour.  Like, every dwarf whose not normally a crafts dwarf is made to make a thing, in case they mood they'll be dabbling weaponsmiths or armourers.

~Yami.

[archmagi1]

Burrow them somewhere and give them a wall to detail. Engraving seems to satisfy the craft desire for me.

[Grand Sage]

You could have all your non-specialist dwarves make stone blocks. That way you're getting a useful product, and they're satisfying their craft need. And if your peasants all become novice masons, then you have better chances of getting artifact furniture (especially doors or hatches) rather than crafts.

Wouldn't this also quadruple your item count, thereby decreasing FPS?