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[Saiko Kila]

Unable to pray to Kikrost. <- temples, just so important. Not at all optional, it's a big happy thought and they hate not getting it.

Probably he most annoying to me. The game loves duplicating names of gods, so I don't know which "Kikrost" the particular dwarf has on his mind, and the game loves making dozens of obscure gods, with one or two worshippers most of them. It seems so pointless. It's almost like parody of DnD.

Then just make an omni temple and be done with it. Currently the only "benefit" of dedicated temples seems to be their ability to attract rabble in the form of monks, peddlers, and pilgrims, none of which have any use in the fortress (and also take up visitor slots from kinds you DO want). Oh, and "real" visitors that come for a real reason plus to visit a dedicated temple, where they'll go on a prayer bender to catch up of a life's worth of missed praying before getting to their actual reason for visiting.

Oh, I do have it from the beginning. I started adding dedicated temples only when I realised that many dwarves don't pray in the universal temple, for some reason. But the dedicated temples take like ~5% of religious traffic, despite taking 93% of space. Now I have universal temple, temples for several "Kikrosts", and the dwarves still want to pray to god so named (and others).

Hm. Maybe the uni-temple is just overcrowded? Also the only way to the temple complex goes through the middle of the biggest tavern (to test resolve of the dwarves). Maybe the route is too convoluted for some of more feeble-minded dwarves.

[Radipon]

Total floor area makes a noticeable difference in temple usage. The same goes for inn/tavern areas that can overcrowd very quickly if you don't expand them with every migration wave. Stored goblets and instruments should also be adjusted with time, and a designated tavern keepers eventually have more pros than cons since they consolidate food and drink retrieval (in turn reducing crowding thoughts).

[Rafatio]

@Rafatio: Tradition needs can be fulfilled by a tavern (though some needs can only be fulfilled by actively reciting, etc.). I have resident bards who has the need persistently unfettered (caused by their civs valuing tradition). Though given one is not, I suspect this one needs active participation, not just listening in.

Thanks. I had a tavern of course, but a small 3xn one that only had a one tile strip as "dance floor", resulting in no dances. Not sure about music performances, storytelling worked. This dwarf was the only one who needed tradition and never fulfilled her need. And since the tiny tavern did nothing for the promised friend making anyway, my new fort has a big one again to accomodate all shows (but no tradition fans so far).

[Fleeting Frames]

You could theoretically overlay the dedicated temples on general temples if you're worried about traffic differences (dwarves will use the lowermost location).

Personally, I'm slightly leery of them in case of multiple religious preferences, since dwarves prefer to stick to same zone even after fulfilling the need rather than head to new one for Activity! - at least until they're forced to step out by other tasks.

@Radipon: I think you mean just drinks? Taverns don't have anything to do with food.

Haven't noticed much with floor area other than having dances, but I haven't tested for it before beyond ensuring they're big enough to not kill fps.

[FantasticDorf]

New custom zone name is pretty useful for sorting out relgious worship areas.

You can see a dwarf's dieties also in the relationship page as well as a description, a shrine (4x5 room) is more than enough since they dont talk to anybody in there anyway and just use it for a practical function.

[Rafatio]

A general temple over the jail is pretty useful to keep inmates a little happier. Has anyone noticed dwarves prefering temples with pretty furniture/high room value? The 5x5 jail temple saw a lot of use by free dwarves too, the big old 11x11 temple without anything in there was less frequented despite being more central. Both were for no particular god. They might simply have come for the food/drinks stored there and stayed to pray.

Edit: Just a little new thing, helping somebody is also satisfied by the annoying "joined an existing conflict". Saw a big tavern uhm disagreement that sent several dwarves fleeing in all directions, no injuries though, and everyone thought they had helped afterwards while also having mostly bad thoughts about the conflict joining.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So, just going to necro-bump this thread as, while it seems to be the most comprehensive collection of stress related information, some people here and at Reddit are adamant that the whole system is still broken. But that doesn't really come across in the OP. Are those people wrong, and just need more info on how to handle stress, or are there big issues that need to be addressed before the end of this arc?

From what I can gather, the major problems (one's which if addressed will make the game a bit more tolerable are):

- Dorfs don't make friends without serious manipulation
  (seems that Toady's aware of this one).
Fixing this would reduce lonely thoughts, increase happy friend-time thoughts and possibly lead to love, romance and super high-levels of happy.

- Dorfs don't take breaks to meet needs
Fixing this would allow periodic ultra-happy temple thoughts and add to the above spending time with friends happiness and stuff like library time and statue admiration for those who need it.
Or should this be a deliberate action taken by the player? Maybe we don't want dorfs taking breaks sometimes?

- Rain is harsh.
Difficult to fix if the intention is to push the player towards underground play. Tweaking seems to work though. I have a modded race of dorfs who are happy to work outside and don't get effected at all by this despite having much weaker stress tolerance than regular dwarves.

- Dorfs miss family.
  Fixed with above social fixes. but not for absent family members. Personally I say send terminally homesick dorfs home, so all that's needed is to fix the 'cannot exile, child not present' bug. There's not much that can be done for this in the current state of the game.

- Some dorfs just aren't cut out for fortress life.
WAD as far as I'm concerned. Some dorfs are vampires, some are spies, some will break the moment they see a goblin tooth. Treat with exile/magma.

- Corpse removal is still tough?
  Honestly not sure about this. I hide my enemy's corpses in a deep pit, and 'uneasy' seems to go away pretty quickly. Someone monitoring stats with dfhack/therapist notice anything wrong?

I'm sure I've missed some important issues, otherwise forums wouldn't be full of 'game is broken. fix now' posts. What's broken right now that should be fixed soon?

[Rafatio]

I'm sure I've missed some important issues, otherwise forums wouldn't be full of 'game is broken. fix now' posts. What's broken right now that should be fixed soon?

Looks completeish, I would add "Dorfs don't take breaks *from* meeting needs either", bug 10676. I think the combination of these two breaks/needs things adds a lot to the annoyance of having to hold their hands through everything.

Food preference is another very broken one, with family and friends that makes three every-dwarf needs that require a lot of special attention. The knock on effect makes fulfilling the other needs more important to keep the overall level up.

What feels most broken to me (but I don't consider the system broken in general) is the extremeness of personality changes after situations that boil down to wrong time, wrong place. A bit of miasma, some rain, old loincloth and a well adjusted fortress member turns into a nutcase, sometimes in a positive way but still. Changing these traits by a level or two instead of jumping to the most extreme would keep their personalities more varied and interesting.

[Sver]

I have a modded race of dorfs who are happy to work outside and don't get effected at all by this despite having much weaker stress tolerance than regular dwarves.

Which personality trait is this exactly? Or is it just the entity value of nature?

[PatrikLundell]

My issues are roughly the same Shonai_Dweller mentioned.
- Family & Friends (and sometimes "make romance") needed, but the have no drive to get either.
- Food badly broken due massive unavailability further compounded by extremely specialized requirements in many cases. Either the system would need to revamped so a sealed fortress can still get a reasonable match, possibly requiring some standard embark purchases, or the negative impacts should be reduced such that they'd basically get happy when they get their things, but won't be massively unhappy if they can't (unless the personality is extreme, of course).
- When given time off, they still won't satisfy badly distracting needs (often praying), but rather keep returning to satisfied ones, such as Socializing (with irrelevant people, of course), and I've seen the same with people who just won't go to the library where they're assigned a scholar position to fulfill badly distracting needs, but, again, keep Socializing or praying to gods they've already fulfilled their needs with. You could, of course, say that it reflects real humans, who keep doing things that they know are bad for them and avoid ones that are good, but this isn't The Sims where you need to babysit one critter...

[Shonai_Dweller]

I have a modded race of dorfs who are happy to work outside and don't get effected at all by this despite having much weaker stress tolerance than regular dwarves.

Which personality trait is this exactly? Or is it just the entity value of nature?

It's been a while since I made them, I'll check the raws and see what I did. Most of them get 'happy to work outside, only grumbles mildly at bad weather'. Possibly the nature value, yes.

[Adequate Swimmer]

Honestly the problem with all of the stressors mentioned is that they can easily go into an area where they give accelerating returns. A dwarf has a very long time to think about those flying body parts, and each stressful event no matter how small will make the dwarf slightly more vulnerable in the future.
The whole system works great on paper, but it's emergent in a bad way. There's a lot of grey areas where one or more things are off by an order of magnitude. Work, socializing, food and quality of life don't impact stress levels in a meaningful way. Also dwarves that are under the influence of insanity immediately stop eating and drinking, long enough to realistically die or get sick due to dehydration.
It also indirectly makes a lot of embarks harder or marginally (in)habitable. Whenever things are falling outside the normal morale constrains, like small or overworked populations, evil or savage embarks, lack of caravans or resources or simply war, you're going to get a run for your money.
Each momentary lapse of sanity will slowly but insidiously reduce the amount of resources and working hours available for improving the settlement or providing useful services. The task will instead have to be done by a peasant or, more likely, by no one.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of making a detailed sanity system and using it to simulate an entire village of 200+ individuals. I can't think of any other game that does this to this extent. It's just that stress is it is now turns DF 44.12 into a classic lovecraftian story where time and death will always get to laugh in your face.

[Fleeting Frames]

I could drive some more vulnerable dwarves to tantrum over long term by cutting out locations in 43.03 tests even without any combat that would become happier over time once (re)instating them, so they are meaningful.

...Over years, back then - they'll be dwarfed by something that induces insanity in a season. Since happy thoughts are relived, there might be bit faster effects, but a dwarf doesn't get a happy thought for every statue they walk by.


Here, there is also the question of how bad evil weather is intended to be to split the line between bug and feature. If it is meant to horrify, like the line says, well, it's doing that pretty well even if it is just blood.

Of course, weather could be displayed better.

[Immortal-D]

I have edited the OP to be more easily readable now, and begun to categorize stuff.

On topic: I have seen some discussion about the feasibility of having a small number of dedicated corpse/body part haulers who do that and nothing else.  I would think that the potential for a large number of body parts in any given fight makes this untenable, but I have not tested it, opting instead to build a short/direct route from major conflict areas to my rubbish stockpile.  Also in small population forts, a shortage of labor may be an issue as well.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Most Dwarves react to sentient corpses with 'feeling uneasy' (but some are straight up 'horrified').  The relative effect of this feeling is variable.  However, the effect does stack (see next point)

There seems to be a definite difference now between sapient corpses of enemies (now 'uneasy' at worst) and civ members / visitors.
I've had people feel uneasy about witnessing a visitor get beaten to death. But also horror at seeing another visitor drink themselves to death, so there's still a range of reactions there.
Toady mentioned that it was a split between 'stranger's bodies and others' which seems reasonable to assume is what's happening.

Also witnessing death by old age (either in real-time or the aftermath) doesn't seem to cause bad thoughts at all any more (I believe I saw someone mention that it used to). Just don't let them lie around for too long stinking the place up or people will freak out.