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[blue emu]

Like it says on the tin.

[Bumber]

Looks like my current fort's got these custom labors:

• Bone carver
• Stone crafter
• Carpenter
• Stone carver (formerly mason)
• Blacksmith
• Weaponsmith
• Armorsmith
• Clothier
• Gem cutter
• Glassmaker
• Cook
• Brewer

Quality matters for all these except brewer. (Just want speed to keep up with a conditional work order without running dry.) There'd probably be one for wood carver, but I was doing a challenge of only importing wood (which resulted in a special elf diplomat message about "turning a new leaf".)

I start off with one or two dwarves in each labor, then just use legendaries once strange moods and guild halls pick up. Other labors included by default (planter, engraver, etc.) work the same way.

[Überzwerg]

Looks like my current fort's got these custom labors:
...

Same here. And I also have custom roles for every moodable skill like Weaver, Tanner, Bone Carver etc.

Assigning dwarfs to workshops is only good for when you like them to use specific materials, but not for workforce control (in a bigger fort). It is lacking a global overview who is assigned where. And it's of no use when you have more high skilled dwarfs than workshops.

(I hate it that there are only 8 different icons for custom work details. Shouldn't be that hard to add more roman numerals...)

I am absolut against the idea to let every dwarf do every job. I don't want that a novice armorsmith gains levels in another moodable skill when there are many other dwarfes that can take that jobs.
I think for weapons and armor everyone is using custom work details, for getting quality output and because a forge is used by so many different professions.
Jobs where quality doesn't matter and that aren't moodable are good for beeing open for everyone. Jobs where speed is important can also be done by everyone when the stockpiles are big.

All my custom workorders are only for one profession each, expect Butcher/Tanner, which I combined into one (for reasons I am not sure about anymore...)

[Überzwerg]

But perhaps I am doing it wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zg0spw/please_try_to_use_the_new_labor_system_the_way/

[Telgin]

I've embraced the new labor system and don't even use custom labors.  I use the woodcutter, mining, planting, and fishing labors to assign people as needed, but outside of that I just let the game go.  It's very liberating and I really don't see the need to micromanage to get higher skilled people doing jobs.

The two things I've considered making exceptions for are weapon and armor smithing since the quality is supposed to matter in combat, but since even ordinary quality iron weapons and armor trounce the average goblin, the payoff doesn't seem to be worth the trouble to me.

[anewaname]

My primary objectives are certain goods be high quality and all dwarfs should occasionally craft, and the secondary objective is getting more weapon and armor artifacts.

To get everyone to craft, there is a set of 8 craft workshops and a "16 bone crafts each month" order. There are four forges that behave the same but produce a few axes and a few shields each month. And a constant recycling operation... Another set of forges have dwarfs assigned and receive orders for armor and weapons for the soldiers. I've been thinking that I need to shift to more forges and fewer craft workshops, to create large forge rooms that look like the ones you find in abandoned forts.

So, I don't use the custom labor groups much...

[mikekchar]

I'm also +1 on Putnam's suggested way of using the labor system.  However, I have a kind of different take to it.

My own personal way of using it is that I start out with no custom labors.  Dwarfs do whatever dwarfs do.  When the fortress is well under way, I take a look at what individual dwarfs have been doing (you can tell by looking at their skill levels).  Then I assign individual workshops to specific dwarfs (or more usually build a whole new shop, along with a new "house/workplace" for that dwarf and move them there).  Occasionally I will create a custom labor to things that don't have a workshop and that I want to limit to a few dwarfs.  Probably the one I do most often is "Animal Care", which can be used to feed grazers that are on a restraint or in a cage.  The dwarf who does it gets a good thought, so it's kind of "animal therapy" for dwarfs that need it.

I generally don't have communal workshops.  A workshop is there for a purpose and it has a master.  I have *some* general purpose ones, but those are basically for "hobbies".  For example, I often set up a bone carving workshop with a work order to make one bone carving a month.  It just gives a dwarf an opportunity to practice a craft randomly.  If a dwarf is getting bad thoughts from not doing a craft, I assign them to one of those workshops.

This is problematic eventually, though, because unemployment is a big problem in large fortresses.  You can easily run entire fortresses on 30-40 dwarfs.  Again, setting up specific workshops is my way of dealing with it.  Maybe somebody's hobby is to make a specific meal, or brew a specific beer and they do it once a month.  I usually put private workshops *in* a dwarf's bedroom (yes, my bedrooms are big).  Occasionally, I make a few communal industries which require a custom labor, but almost never.  The result is that my fortresses are more like organic towns with lots of redundant and competing industries.  I think it's fun that way, though.

[Bumber]

But perhaps I am doing it wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zg0spw/please_try_to_use_the_new_labor_system_the_way/

4. The default work details are all 1:1 with labors that previously existed except for "stonecutters", which are just wall smothers; "haulers", which is self-explanatory; and "orderlies", which are people who do hospital work that isn't diagnosis. I'm actually not sure where the unclear part is, here, and would like to hear about it.

Weaponsmith and others are clearly missing from the defaults, despite being acknowledged as desired in #2. It's pretty unclear to say that's 1:1 with previous labors, in that it isn't true bidirectionally (which leaves some players to mistakenly assume the missing labors are grouped in somewhere with the defaults, in the way orderlies and hauling are.) If all those labors were present as default work details, people wouldn't be making assumptions about them. Tooltips would help for the ones (orderlies, hauling) that actually are groups.

Since we don't need a default soap maker, etc., there could be a "Misc" group which might be dynamically assigned to everything not covered by an existing detail. (You can theoretically do this with a custom work detail, though you'd have to manually check the labors. In practice, you just want all non-quality crafting labors here, which isn't something a new player likely knows.) It's a sort of counterpart to the "hauling" group, though I'm not sure how often one would want to toggle this (given these jobs tend to already be treated as low priority.)

Strange moods are also not acknowledged in the post. You don't want a novice weaponsmith to become a novice+ bone carver, which is a predictable result of letting anybody do bone carving. (Guild halls are a saving grace here. You can have public weaponsmith halls and private bone carving halls, which results in a bunch of high master weaponsmiths by the time moods come around.)

(I'd like to warn about an issue of having too many public guild halls established, while I'm on the subject. A lone dwarf can be stuck waiting for a skill demonstration, but all relevant dwarves are visiting other guild halls. It's as bad as the dwarf stuck praying to a single god issue.)

[BlueTrillium]

Honestly I almost never use custom labors and my dwarves get along just fine. My forts are stupid rich as soon as I get the kitchen up and running, so I don't care about who makes what kind of artifact -- and the system seems to do a pretty good job at keeping the most-skilled dwarves working in their highest-skilled professions anyway. Do I get some dwarves-of-all-trades? Sure. But I'm fine with that (really, can't avoid it, since like mikekchar said unemployment is a major issue past like 40 pop anyway).

I hear you about not getting the artifacts you want, but personally I guess I'm just not so min-max that I want to ensure *maximum value and/or utility* out of every single artifact. I let the dwarves make what they wanna make. It gives me a variety to display in my artifact vault. xD Heck, half the time my armorsmith's artifact is a single boot, or a weaponsmith's artifact is an aluminum hammer or something.

I *will* occasionally specifically assign a dwarf to a workshop if I especially want that dwarf to skill up, but that's about it. Usually I have a specially assigned cook, an armorer, and a weaponsmith yes, along with free/open workshops of the same types for when the assigned dwarves are busy.

The only exception I can think of offhand is sometimes I'll create a lever-pulling labor and assign a specific dwarf or dwarves to it, in order to get them to go to a particular location without having to put them in a squad and station them. I'll use this to get a couple dwarves I'm hoping will marry to interact more, for example.

I could get behind the suggestion of some sort of menu tooltip or indicator in-game about which specific skills are included in each labor (default *and* custom), though. That'd be a nice QOL thing, to not have to look it up in the wiki - or edit the custom labor - all the time.

[gchristopher]

But perhaps I am doing it wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zg0spw/please_try_to_use_the_new_labor_system_the_way/

I haven't tested in in 50.x yet, but at least 75% of Dwarf Therapist micromanagement is about strange mood management. Getting dwarves out of the awful craftsdwarf category as fast as possible and into skills for which you really want artifacts (especially stone carver to increase the chance of artifact door/hatch/floodgate), and then critically, keeping dwarves from gaining skill in anything that would change their moodable skill to something else.

I'm also very confused by the "Most jobs in the game don't actually have much difference between skilled and unskilled dwarves." statement. From furniture quality for rooms, to food and item quality for trading, restricting crafting to only the most skilled dwarves (and keeping them from being drawn into other work) has always been critical for room and trade value.

Maybe I'm just completely missing some change in 50.x to item value and moods.

[Telgin]

I think you're right since it does definitely affect quality levels of produced goods and by extension their value, but I think the point was that it doesn't matter much in practice.  That's especially true since I'm pretty sure the value modifier on quality was also nerfed at some point.  Material matters a lot more.

Weapon and armor quality supposedly affects combat rolls, as a counter example.

[gchristopher]

I think you're right since it does definitely affect quality levels of produced goods and by extension their value, but I think the point was that it doesn't matter much in practice.  That's especially true since I'm pretty sure the value modifier on quality was also nerfed at some point.  Material matters a lot more.

Weapon and armor quality supposedly affects combat rolls, as a counter example.

Excellent point, if the Item Value 50.11 wiki page is correct, then masterwork is only x2 value instead of x12. They also nerfed green glass trap components, which was a great close to that exploit.

I still consider strange mood management to be a primary (and very important to me) use of DF Therapist. The very first thing every migrant gets is slotted into training for a desirable moodable skill, especially if they have a preference for doors/portals/hatches/floodgates, which means that dwarf is almost guaranteed to produce one.

[Blue_Dwarf]

I create a separate custom labor for each labor, of course. Except mining, farming and woodcutting.

[ArrowheadArcher]

I create custom labors as I go on. I like having specialists that are basically master artisans that work to the grave making masterworks. Cooks seem to be left out of the question as to concerns over quality. A dwarf only gets a happy thought if they're eating a food they prefer. This isn't the case with master cooks; they'll get a thought regardless. There's also the matter of trade. Having massive quantities of useless crap that is of mediocre quality vs that a couple that can almost buy out the caravan, can be a big deal, especially when space is tight, and you don't want to deal with container bugs. I do like it that it does incentivize creating a labor aristocracy, with everybody else doing busy work. I want to make a fort like that, but I think that's a later thing.

[Grax]

I see no one said "with Dwarf Therapist" ;-))