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[Warlord255]

So I was reading about fell moods in the wiki. I have now decided that my next fortress - perhaps even an Army Arc fortress - must have one, if not more.

That said, however, I'm not sure what the best way to cultivate a stable level of unhappiness is. Miasma is out because it clouds the play view and this is more irritation than it's worth. Any pointers?

[JoRo]

Well, the most obvious thing would be to not have a dining room.

[Duke 2.0]

 Novices making the food?

 Barracks-only sleeping?

 Workshops near the beds?

 No cats as to increase the vermin encounter rate?

[Untelligent]

To hell with the barracks, make them sleep on the ground.

[Aqizzar]

Don't make a refuse stockpile and put a butchery right where everyone walks by, so you get lots of miasma (though that can be a gameplay problem with the clouding).

And pray that you get some dwarves with pissy personalities who complain and form grudges.  I'm doing all the things listed above in my Eskimoe fortress, and still the only dwarf who occasionally goes unhappy is a mason with a grudge on the smith.  Ironically, looking at their personalities the mason should be the easygoing one but the smith never turns unhappy.  To break that mess up all I had to do was give them individual rooms.

If can get grudges, make sure they sleep in a barracks, and preferably make a 3x3 (or even 1x1) meeting area right in the center of the room, so dwarves will be spammed with "force to talk to someone annoying lately" which seems to be where the brunt of the unhappiness comes from.

As an added bonus, the ones who don't hate each other will all be friends, your dwarves will all be over-leveled from conversation-stats, and if one gets pushed too far and flips out he'll be right in the middle of half the population.  This might short-circuit your chances of getting an artifact, but it'll be fun to watch and make everyone unhappy.

[Warlord255]

Good ideas, particularly the crammed meeting room. Keep in mind, though, it needs to be controlled enough that my dwarves don't ALL kill each other.

Maybe I should do this as an aboveground-humie fort. CABIN FEVER!

[Duke 2.0]

 Make them all friends.

 Butcher the guy who everybody likes.

[eerr]

kill off the mayor, he's usually the man liked by everybody

then kill off the next mayor....


and give people lots of pets incase they die

[i2amroy]

As an added bonus, the ones who don't hate each other will all be friends, your dwarves will all be over-leveled from conversation-stats, and if one gets pushed too far and flips out he'll be right in the middle of half the population.  This might short-circuit your chances of getting an artifact, but it'll be fun to watch and make everyone unhappy.

This is useful if they die. But this will also mean that almost no dwarves will be unhappy as they will all have thousands of "spoke with a friend lately" boosting them into the ecstatic range.

[Derakon]

No beds. No decorations (smoothing/engraving). Crappy furniture -- in fact, for anything where you get quality levels, enable that labor for everyone who doesn't have something more important to do (e.g. mining, farming). Certainly no booze. Try to keep dwarves outside as much as possible; sleeping on dirt is worse than sleeping on indoor stone. Only feed them raw plump helmets. Lock up the food, and only unlock it when dwarves are starving. Ditto with the water supply if you can manage.

Repeatedly draft and undraft dwarves. I don't know if the complaint about the draft stacks, but it does decay with time, so make certain it's always fresh in their minds.

Set up dust bombs (supports with walls on them) and collapse the supports -- you'll knock your dwarves out for a bit but won't otherwise harm them.

Bring along a bunch of dogs, train them as war/hunting dogs, assign them to dwarves, and then kill them (pet-killing deathtraps are fairly straightforward to make, thanks to doors). This is easier to control than killing dwarves' friends and less likely to spiral out of control; it also of course doesn't kill the dwarves in question. Moreover, you avoid the problem of dwarves being too happy because of their friendships, which is an issue if you create meeting areas.

[LumenPlacidum]

Once you get nobles, you can give them 1x1 rooms with unfinished dirt walls, and give a peasant a 20x20 fully engraved room with diamond windows.  The nobles will tear out their hair seeing his luxurious appointments.

[Warlord255]

Once you get nobles, you can give them 1x1 rooms with unfinished dirt walls, and give a peasant a 20x20 fully engraved room with diamond windows.  The nobles will tear out their hair seeing his luxurious appointments.

Oh, I've no intention of letting them live long enough to get real nobles.

That said, I'm considering taking the "mad butcher" approach and locking a dwarf in a room with a well, a butcher shop, a craftsdwarf shop and a chute to drop his finished goods down. Possibly give him alcohol via a locked door every once in a blue moon.

Unfortunately, this approach banks on a very narrow probability, so I'd either need a lot of abused crafters or, as above, permeating unhappiness.

[Vaftrudner]

How about reclaiming a fortress? You get more than 20 dwarves immediately, so you don't have to wait a year for moods, and if you can make sure that a few of them die, everyone will walk around in misery.

[Warlord255]

The fortress has been started!

Wood cabins next to an open volcano in a thick Terrifying forest.

Brewing only Rat Weed ,the lowest-quality booze, for productivity; bonus unhappiness from drinking it ad infinitum should piss my dwarves off nicely.

[Spoggerific]

The fortress has been started!

Wood cabins next to an open volcano in a thick Terrifying forest.

Brewing only Rat Weed ,the lowest-quality booze, for productivity; bonus unhappiness from drinking it ad infinitum should piss my dwarves off nicely.

You could preserve your supplies and lock it up, only opening the door when dwarves get too slow, then lock it up again once they've been boozed up once. This would also hit them with the booze deprivation thought.