one coffin which happens to be an artifact, I wanted to save that for my first dead legendary marksdwarf after years of faithfull service.
Build it in the sculpture garden, dining hall, or other meeting area, but don't make it available for burial. You can assign it to your marksdwarf to make him extra happy
"Urist McNugent admired own kickass burial receptacle lately. He contemplated his own mortality lately."
You guys are forgetting that all of these ideas involve having a dwarf stable long enough to carry out a duty ... I don't know...maybe my spirals were just really bad, but none were recoverable beyond abandoning or waiting and hoping somebody survived...
The suggestions we're making are improving the chances of someone surviving. They're by no means guaranteed, but they're better than nothing. If you haven't given dwarves anything nice ever and they're all right on the bitter edge of freakout when things start to go badly, yeah, the odds are against you, but I have averted tantrum spirals without losing the whole fort.
Also, the making-nice-things tricks are good for preventing tantrum spirals from starting in the first place, so it's good to get in practice. I've only had one tantrum spiral recently (i.e. since I started routinely placing happy-thought furniture) and that was from an accident involving a caged titan.