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[ArKFallen]

You can also have more meeting areas in more distant places, so dwarves will likely only be familiar with certain people. This can go a long way with lessening Military related tantrums, especially if few people outside the military know them.

[Khym Chanur]

Look at the "thoughts and preferences" of your dwarfs, at the top it will tell you the recent things that have increased or decreased their happiness; that will tell you if things besides the death of a friend has lead to low happiness, and you can avoid those things in the future.  And some other things to increase happiness:

* Give each dwarf their own bedroom, rather than a communal bedroom.  They'll get happy thoughts from sleeping in their own bedroom, and happy thoughts from admiring the furniture they own.

* Stick a gold or platinum statue in a high traffic area so they can admire it.

* Stick a cage in a high traffic area and stuff it with as many different kinds of non-grazing animals as possible, so they'll get happy thoughts from looking at the type of animal they like.

* Embark with a proficient brewer, to increase the quality of the booze they drink.

[Dwarf_Fever]

My dwarves were mostly "ecstatic," though not 100%, so I do appreciate the tips on making them happier... but this seems a shortcoming on part of the game. There was no way to assume from checking up on mostly "ecstatic" dwarves that they were all on the unstable verge of genocide due to "liking each other too much." I'm pretty sure the friendship mechanics are not working as intended. Right now it appears to be a liability more than anything else.

[zwei]

Also, Make barracks for military dwarves and set em for permanent active/training duty - they will not make friends with civilians and so civs will not tantrum if your military dies.

Butchers shop in meeting hall is good idea - lots of death for civvies to see and get used to.

If you do everything in book, you can easily handle lots of deaths.

BUT:

Real problem is with Forgotten Beasts. Syndrome can and will spread widely and fast. If it is slow acting one which results in death, you will be overwhelmed no matter what because it will be many simultaneous deaths - friends, pets and miasma. It will not matter how great your "extatic buffer" is, dwarves will just go nuts because it will be zeroed nearly instantly, not giving them enough time to admire/enjoy anything.

Basically, normal situation is:

Friend died :-(
Nice roast :-)
Firend died :-(
Cool statue :-)
Friend died :-(
Slep well in my bedroom :-)

But sometimes you get:

Cool statue :-)
Nice roast :-)
Slep well in my bedroom :-D
Friend died :-)
Friend died :-(
Firend died
Friend died 
AAAARRGH!

[nil]

The size of the dining room isnt for legendary status alone.  A small but pimped dining room hits legendary sure, but when dwarves idle they are within speaking range.  A bigger dining room means that idling dwarves are less likely to be in speaking-range.  (It also obviously raises its worth)

This!

All the advice about increasing happiness is true, but the easiest and most important thing you can do to prevent tantrum spirals is to have lots of and/or very large idling areas--statue gardens, meeting zones, zoos, etc.  Dwarves who are densely packed when idling will talk a lot, and make a lot of friends; any one of those friends dying will cause a lot of unhappiness. 

[CognitiveDissonance]

Dwarf happiness is a continuum. Provide them with enough "happy" to buffer the possible negative impact of a death thought. Spread out meeting areas, so there is a little bit less of a "Everyone's friend" syndrome. Keep an eye on their personalities and recruit less sociable individuals into the military. Don't recruit married dwarves.

Be sure to provide lodging, good cooked food, drink, nice things, nice dining area for your dwarves. If you can, hook up a mist generator.

I have never, ever had a dwarf tantrum. (With the exception of a queen, back in the previous version, who showed up in the first year due to spoiler, and demanded royal rooms)

EDIT: Most peoples' dwarves tend to be miserable, covered in vomit, living off vermin. Such dwarves commiserate with friends, but are emotionally unstable so hearing of those friends' deaths tips them over the edge. Also, make sure you have a leader, and that they have an office. Many dwarves will vent their frustration on the leader dwarf, preventing tantrums. Also, consider justice - a locked up dwarf is a safe dwarf. Also, create tombs for both the dwarves and the pets. There's nothing more miserable to a dwarf than having a friend or a cat decay slowly.

[Khym Chanur]

* Embark with a proficient brewer, to increase the quality of the booze they drink.

Ooops, turns out that booze doesn't (yet) have any quality, so skilled brewers don't help any with happiness.

[Dutchling]

* Embark with a proficient brewer, to increase the quality of the booze they drink.

Ooops, turns out that booze doesn't (yet) have any quality, so skilled brewers don't help any with happiness.

IIRC they have a hidden quality level, so it does affect it.

[Khym Chanur]

* Embark with a proficient brewer, to increase the quality of the booze they drink.

Ooops, turns out that booze doesn't (yet) have any quality, so skilled brewers don't help any with happiness.

IIRC they have a hidden quality level, so it does affect it.

No, I just tested it.  Booze made by a dabbling brewer vs booze made by a Legendary+5 brewer have the same effect on happiness when drunk.

[zwei]

* Embark with a proficient brewer, to increase the quality of the booze they drink.

Ooops, turns out that booze doesn't (yet) have any quality, so skilled brewers don't help any with happiness.

IIRC they have a hidden quality level, so it does affect it.

No, I just tested it.  Booze made by a dabbling brewer vs booze made by a Legendary+5 brewer have the same effect on happiness when drunk.

What you want from booze is variety: As many types as possible to get rid of "same old booze" negative thought.

[slink]

There's nothing more miserable to a dwarf than having a friend or a cat decay slowly.

I'd be pretty miserable too if I had to live in a house with rotting family and pets.

[Bognor]

Here's something that's always worked for me:

Get a couple of high-value cages or restraints.  You can normally buy a couple from the first caravan; otherwise just encrust a whole lot of different gems onto one or two cages or restraints.  The trick is to build them in the statue garden.  That way the dwarves won't just get admired a (fine/very fine/splendid/wonderful/completely sublime) (building) lately, they'll get admired a (fine/very fine/splendid/wonderful/completely sublime) tastefully arranged (building) lately, which I assume is a more powerful happy thought.  Plus dwarves tend to congregate in the statue garden, improving their chances of appreciating the structure.  I presume this would work with other furniture, though I've only tried cages and restraints.

Designating your barracks around high-value armor or weapon racks might help, too, as dwarves seem to notice them a lot.

[Psieye]

Ok, let's talk hard numbers: consult this. Probably outdated but it gives an idea of what sort of numbers are involved in the happiness system. Note that most of the significant positive thoughts amount to +20-ish and a single death of a critically close one is -50. You can combo together many of the big positive thoughts (repeat thoughts do stack but thoughts decay in effect over a year) but if you've let everyone become friends with each other then a few deaths will knock them out fast, especially if you can't retrieve their corpses for burial in time.

Further notes:
- "Ecstatic" only takes a mere 150 happiness to achieve.
- Dwarves start out with 100 happiness ("quite content").
- Tantrums start happening from <25 happiness ("very unhappy").
- Your starting 7 dwarves have already had lots of socialisation time so are friends and long-term acquaintances.
- Dwarf Therapist lets you check on exactly how much happiness dwarves have - hover over the happiness box for each dwarf.

You'd think the amount of friendships should have a large impact on stability and preventing violent bouts of insanity.

There are two ways of dealing with this:
1) Minimise friendships as everyone has been saying while providing as much good stuff for them to get thoughts from. That means a really large meeting area (whether that's your dining room, statue garden or just a Zone) and keeping everyone busy. If you can't think of something for idlers to do, tell them to mass-dump stone. That'll always keep them busy so long as you keep providing them with dump tasks. As a bonus, your fort gets cleaned up too and your rock industry gets quantum stockpiles of material. In fact, telling everyone to do stonecrafting or masonry is an excellent waste of time while you wait for better industries to be prepared or for equipment to be made so everyone can be drafted. Afterall, being in the military is something to keep them busy. Oh and a prison gives +1000 happiness when a dwarf has finished serving his sentence.

2) GO OFF THE DEEP END. Have no meeting areas except for a single 1x1 zone designated as a meeting area and have EVERYONE IDLE for long bouts of time. Ask Lytha on these boards for exact details, but her dwarves (in a 20 dwarf fort) are running around with 1000~2000 happiness which far exceeds anything I've achieved on my dwarves (400~600 in highly industry & arts focussed forts). At that much happiness, it doesn't matter if several close ones die they'll still be ecstatic. Most likely dwarves can hold simultaneous parallel conversations with an unlimited number of partners - every conversation is +2 and there's lots of conversations. Of course, you need to keep having these quantum social parties (everyone being idle) frequently to keep up the mass happiness effect - i.e. this is the equivalent of making your dwarves take drugs.

[Saiko Kila]

I had dwarves with high happiness, in range of 1-2k but it wears restively quickly, without any severe negative thoughts. And I'm not sure what makes them that happy (apart from having a child or creating an artifact) - my favorite example is that dwarf mom:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

She is ecstatic with happiness at 1048, after losing a child and witnessing its dead. I suppose it is the birth of said child a few days earlier which makes her so happy. And losing a pet or a friend indeed decreases happiness by 50 in current version.

[Cespinarve]

Never had a tantru, spiral, and I drop dwarves off of bridges to create medical team experience. it isn't hard to keep dwarves from tantruming, just work on nice things for a bit Statues, statue parks, zoos, big dining rooms, 3x3 bedrooms, this things are easy to achieve. Hell, make your zoo or park outdoors so that you don't have to worry about cave adaption.