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[Rakonas]

I understand not why engravers engrave what they do. In all of my fortresses, I tend to have about 300 exact copies of the founding of my fortress, along with another 300 exact copies of the ascension of my leader. Never, never, never, do my engravers decide to engrave something interesting. It never comes to their minds,  "Hey, maybe I should engrave the gigantic fight that went on with elephants murdering goblins left and right, instead of continuously engraving the same thing over and over again." It's quite irritating to picture my fortress with such boring engravings. Really, does this happen to anyone else or is it just me?

[Mohreb el Yasim]

To make engravings interesting, i choose often one engraver wich likes some nice thing, like Titans/Demons/Pixies or something else pleasent for me, making regions bigger migth help too 'cause your fortress dwelers like engraving things happened in the regions (so if regions are bigger they can engrave about more things)

[Vester]

I understand not why engravers engrave what they do. In all of my fortresses, I tend to have about 300 exact copies of the founding of my fortress, along with another 300 exact copies of the ascension of my leader. Never, never, never, do my engravers decide to engrave something interesting. It never comes to their minds,  "Hey, maybe I should engrave the gigantic fight that went on with elephants murdering goblins left and right, instead of continuously engraving the same thing over and over again." It's quite irritating to picture my fortress with such boring engravings. Really, does this happen to anyone else or is it just me?

It gets worse once your engraver is legendary. Then they start engraving themself engraving.

You know how artifacts can sometimes reference themselves or each other? It's like that only a thousand times over.

[Bricks]

This is why I generally just smooth.  Also, the turn off engraving images by default is a godsend.

[Vester]

Also, if you have a legendary engraver, he will eventually be the reason for the entire architectural wealth of your fort. Unless you build roads and walls out of, I dunno, gold bars.

[Rowanas]

You can make them engrave better things. Somewhere in the raws is the stuff for what they add to items when the items are set for beautification "hangs with rings of..., menaces with spikes of..." Find those, and you may find the engraving thing. I think it's in the cull symbol thingy, but I'm playing a modded race and I haven't engraved so I can't be sure.

[blah28722]

You can make them engrave better things. Somewhere in the raws is the stuff for what they add to items when the items are set for beautification "hangs with rings of..., menaces with spikes of..." Find those, and you may find the engraving thing. I think it's in the cull symbol thingy, but I'm playing a modded race and I haven't engraved so I can't be sure.

Hard coded.

You can turn off the option to show all history on an engraving, and just use your imagination.

In my opinion, "dwarf is surrounded by dwarves" is actually a better description than "ascension of urist mcleader", because of its vagueness.

[Rowanas]

So you can alter their preferences for the things you'll never look at, but not the things you have to look at every day?

[blah28722]

So you can alter their preferences for the things you'll never look at, but not the things you have to look at every day?

No, you can alter names not being Urist Raperaperape.

Although you can make it so that they put spikes on every item.

[Rowanas]

I think I'm going to go and delete those other crappy things. Everything will menace with spikes. Artifacts will be more like bundles of spikes than real artifacts.

[Rakonas]

I think I'm going to go and delete those other crappy things. Everything will menace with spikes. Artifacts will be more like bundles of spikes than real artifacts.

Sounds like a good idea, wish there was a way to limit how many times something was engraved, though. Normally have 3 legendary engravers engraving themselves/each other engraving, ascensions, and the foundation of the fortress. It's just sad.

[Rowanas]

If I see a g or an E anywhere in my fortress I'll go have a look at it, because it's probably one of the only decent engravings in my entire fort. The other thing is that all these ascensions and foundings make the hallways indistinguishable from the engravers who made them.

[Murphy]

If it depends on how much has happened in the subregion your fortress belongs to, then, I guess, when playing a small world with little worldgen history and/or no towns/caves/previous abandoned forts in your area - you're limited to things that happened in your current fort.

My 20-year-old fortress in a small world has almost all engravings like one of these:
dwarves laboring/travelling (i.e. foundation of the fortress);
expedition leader surrounded by dwarves;
random dwarf or dog striking down some goblin;
random dwarf is raising the <insert artifact or masterwork item name here>;
civ symbol (a backpack);
local group symbol (oddly, a giant; silly me, wondering why there are lots of giants engraved);
lots of large roaches/cave spiders/whatever vermin the engravers happen to hate;
lots of random nonhistorical things, like blazing suns or crescents, made when the engravers were less experienced.

I found one strange engraving though. It was something like "an image of Mistem McLeader and buckets. Mistem McLeader is surrounded by the buckets". I bet that's dwarven humour, 'cause on all other engravings he is surrounded by dwarves.

Oddly enough, there is not a single image of my liaison suddenly dropping dead in the middle of a meeting (she died of old age, as I've later found out in legends). Looks like that death from natural causes does not count as notable event.

I think I'm going to play some adventurers to enrich the world's history before attempting another long-term fort.

[smjjames]

In the catacombs for my fort, the engravings I have (I make one for each chamber at the time of that particular dwarfs death) contain alot from several major battles, the ones in 73 (elves vs goblins I think, although it seems like more humans than goblins are involved), 61, and 58 (those two were dwarves vs goblins) are pretty common, with the battle in 73 bieng particularily popular.

I haven't really seen any engravings involving the demise of the particular dwarf in that chamber, unless I have to assign it as a tomb in order for that to work.