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[SixOfSpades]

I design modifications for Baldur's Gate, and am something of an idea machine for that game, but am by far a relative newbie to Dwarf Fortress . . . so whatever I think of, I'm sure somebody else has thought of first. So I'll just post my ideas here, and allow others to transfer them to the main Suggestion board if they're both interesting and original enough.

All suggestions are for Fortress Mode only.

* Inside Dark Underground: How the hell is my Gem Cutter going to find the proper spot to cleave this Rough Claro Opal if he can't even SEE the damn thing, it's pitch dark in here! There needs to be a system of measuring ambient light, and at least one source of underground illumination: Wood Furnace = Fireplace. Logs + Fat (and maybe Cloth) = Torches. Metalcrafting + Glassmaking + Rendered Fat = Oil Lanterns. Beehives + Chandler skill = Candles. Cut gems + vague magical labor = Gem Lanterns, which degrade and consume the jewels that fuel them, but create a ton of happy thoughts in those who view them.

* Goats and Pigs should willingly eat organic refuse Dumped in their pens. Dead dwaves (elves/humans/goblins?) disposed of in this way should cause the dwaves who feed on those animals more likely to go insane.

* All Wooden items should be able to be burned for fuel.

* Redesigned Embark: Instead of 7 dwarves, you should get a large pool of candidates, with the number depending on the size of your parent civilization and the distance (and hazards) between it and your embark site. Each dwarf already has his pre-chosen set of skills, plus a certain amount of fluidity in the number of additional skill ranks he can pick up (probably a maximum of 3) before you leave, and a certain amount of goods and capital (see below) he can donate to the expedition. Choose however many dwarves you want--take the Miners and Woodcutters, leave the Clothiers home--and go.
     About wealthy dwarves: Picking up a Legendary Animal Caretaker might be worth it if he's rich enough to buy tons of equipment, although his wealth will increase his Ego attribute, meaning he'll be more inclined to have unhappy thoughts from not being appointed a noble, or if he finds his work too exhausting or too menial, or if he finds his room and possessions to be less than what he's entitled to. Such a dwarf just "happening" to die soon after donating all his money might just bring a few angry relatives down on the site.

* Mail-Order Migrants: Just as you can negotiate with the Liason for certain goods you want imported, you should be able to place High/Low priority on the various professions you would like new migrants to have. It doesn't take effect immediately (distance back to the parent civilization is always a factor) or flawlessly (you might still get a High Master Glazer when you specifically requested Marksdwarves), and the results of your order will last for one full year whether you like it or not. This does not trump family bonds: The Metalcrafter you wanted might bring along the Fish Dissector husband you didn't, as well as their offspring. Dwarves with high skill in professions you placed in high demand are also likely to have inflated Ego attributes.

* Technology Tree: Related to the previous 2 suggestions, dwarves emigrating to your settlement should have a fairly good idea what kind of a place they're going to, and how long it's been around. Workshop-intensive trades like Weaponsmith, Glassmaker, Leatherworker, Soap Maker, Clothier and the like probably wouldn't want to show up uninvited at an outpost that can't yet support their trade. In short, the time elapsed between embark and the arrival of a migrant with a certain principal labor should be directly proportional to that labor's "distance" from the raw material (such as wood, stone, or live animals).

* New fluid resource: Oil. Distill it (a Still once used for Oil can never again brew booze) into various fuels for heat, light, and industry, but burning it underground can cause bad thoughts, as well as health problems and even death among dwarves with low toughness.

* Tougher War Animals: Please. C'mon, it's just sad that a single Goblin Thief can take on an entire barbican of 10 War Dogs simultaneously and suffer only "Her left hand is cut open." More to the point, have the "level" of the Hunting/War Animal reflect the skill of the Animal Trainer who taught them.

* Party Animals: Dwarves who attend Parties will gain ranks in the Kegstander skill.

* Idle Time: Give dwarves something fun to do while On Break. Apart from the obvious Drinking, Wrestling, and Lying contests, dwarves enjoy bowling, chess, darts, dodgeball, and card games (gambling strongly encouraged). Additionally, "Make wooden blocks" should apply specifically to the wooden toy blocks given to dwarven babies/children to increase their likelihood of future skill in Carpentry, Masonry, and/or Architecture.

* More Realistic Crops: This world is made of limestone, diorite, shale, clay loam, granite, native gold, etc., all of which are real and can be looked up. This world is full of badgers, racoons, elephants, alligators, trout, squirrels, fireflies, with similarly known properties. Same with maple, ash, alder, pine, oak, and bamboo. So where do all these plump helmets, quarry bushes, rope reeds, kobold bulbs, and pig tails come from? Why not real plants such as grapefruit, potatoes, flax, and cotton? Obviously, these could not be realistically be farmed underground, but that never was one of Dwarf Fortress's more stellar points anyway.

* Churches: Rooms can be defined as Temples, from either Statues or Slabs that have been carved/engraved in the likenesses of deities. A sufficient number of faithful (to that particular deity) will auto-promote a Clergy noble from within their ranks, helping to promote behavior favorable to that particular god. The Temple designation will strongly reduce the likelihood that walls/pillars within the room will be engraved into representations of any other deity.

* And Oh Yeah, The Friggin' Obvious: My first fortress died of thirst. While there was a foot of snow on the ground outside. After we'd left our empty barrels sitting out in the rain for an entire autumn. C'mon.

* Moods: Strange Moods should be prompted by a definite (and perhaps traceable) event and result in the production of a related and logical item--not pure random chance on both counts. Instead of Urist McMiner happening to see a badger and suddenly being overcome with an urge to create the most EPIC silk sock EVER, it should be something like Urist McArmorer sees a friend lose a leg, and focuses his talents on making a really good pair of greaves to prevent a repeat occurrence. The stimulus for prompting a Mood might be as simple as visiting the Trade Depot while foreign merchants are present, and being inspired by the cultural exposure, just as long as there IS a stimulus.
     Moods automatically kicking a dwarf up to Legendary is way too much. Creating artifacts should grant 2x (although different moods could have different modifiers) as much experience as a regular item of that type, multiplied by the number of components used, multiplied by the number of processes each component had to go through before it was ready for the moody dwarf to use.

* Mining Byproducts: The Standing Orders screen should offer, at the very least, a toggle between "Miners Save Dirt" and "Miners Destroy Dirt." Loose Loam created in this way can be carried (via barrel, wheelbarrow, or multiple Bucket loads) to a tile that's been Channeled from non-arable material, and dumped in. The resulting soil works just like normal dirt, except that it will immediately collapse if the Z-level directly below it is tunneled out.
     At best, the Standing Orders screen will offer a sub-menu that lists which types of stone/ore are to be destroyed at will, and which are to be carefully saved (possibly giving each material its own rating for the skill level of Miner permitted to attempt to harvest it).

* Salt! The only food additive that's actually essential to your very survival. Lack of salt over an extended period of time will first cause unhappy thoughts, then cause dwarves to move more slowly (especially in combat). Unless the dwarf's diet is corrected, nervous-tissue damage and eventual death will result.
     Sources: Mined as Rock Salt, boiled from seawater in a Still, or imported--either directly or in naturally-salty foods such as marine life. Underground lakes could also have varying levels of salinity.
     Also possible: Make salt necessary for the long-term preservation of meats. My basement experiments prove that shoving some Cow meat in a Barrel and taking the barrel underground does not prevent the meat from spoiling, even after I loudly instructed the floor that "You are now a Food stockpile!"

[Catastrophic lolcats]

All of your ideas are planned for the future, it will just take some time for them to be added.
See: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

Toady stated he doesn't like the idea of Tech Trees and they come off across a bit too "gamey" he's been exploring different ways a fortress could advance and the different technologies that could develope.

Offtopic: You say you make mods for Baldur's Gate, I would love to see what you've made. I'm a rather big fan of the series and anything of the Infinity Engine.

[SixOfSpades]

ALL of them, huh? Well, I guess that's both good and bad . . . I added a couple of new ones at the bottom, though I expect they're both reruns as well. Yeah, I've been skimming the Suggestions lists, and frankly I'd like to Suggest a great big separation between Adventure Mode suggestions and Fortress Mode suggestions. Oh well, at least now I know not to list "Dwarves with both Harvest Plants and Farming (Fields) labors enabled can attempt to transplant seedlings" in my above post.

Well, whether Toady likes Tech Trees or not, he's got one (try building an Ashery before a Mason's or Carpenter's sometime), and frankly I'd like to see it maintained (or improved), as they make perfect sense.

My implemented Baldur's Gate stuff is currently just a simple Kitpack (more character paths, like the Shieldbearer or Huntsman of Silvanus), and I've got a decent Tweakpack nearly ready to go . . . I'll get back to modding BG after I successfully thwart my first real Goblin siege.

[DrazharLn]

They might all have been mentioned in the suggestion threads (I sure don't know whether they have or not), but they're not all on the dev page of planned stuff.

I don't think all the implementations you're suggesting for these ideas are the best solutions but I think most of the general ideas are good. I'm not a great fan of your togglable mining waste or more realistic crops, though. The tailings (mining waste) should eventually be handled once we get mine carts (carting it elsewhere and dumping it or processing it somehow), until then we can just abuse dump to move rock. Saving soil would be nice, though. As for the realistic crops, there are already plenty of above-ground crops (though more would hardly hurt), I think there's a place for underground crops, for one thing: dwarves don't make any sense without them.

[SixOfSpades]

Yeah, the underground crops thing is rather central to the whole dwarf idea, so I can easily see how that trumps realism. But I can still hope for a better name than "cave wheat," and petition for surface crops to be more real-worldy.

I've never been a fan of "quantum stockpiles" to reduce stone-stockpile sprawl (okay, I was a fan for about 15 minutes), as it's clearly engine abuse. It makes far more sense to be able to tell your dwarves, "Okay, we've got enough diorite now, I said WE'VE GOT ENOUGH FRICKIN' DIORITE!!!" If a dwarf can fail to dig out a usable stone because he's not a good enough Miner, then obviously he can also choose not to produce such a stone because he knows it won't be wanted.

[Bohandas]

* Goats and Pigs should willingly eat organic refuse Dumped in their pens. Dead dwaves (elves/humans/goblins?) disposed of in this way should cause the dwaves who feed on those animals more likely to go insane.

I'm not sure if I agree with the insanity thing. However, it should make it more likely for the deceased to come back as ghosts.

(Most of the other suggestions I support, BTW)

[Telgin]

Agreed on the going insane from eating pigs who ate dwarves.  Is this supposed to be related to the supposed method of transferring Mad Cow disease?  I'm not sure that works with humans, but I'd be happy to be proven otherwise.  For that matter, are we even sure this is how it works with cows?

Along that vein, imagine the damage that Mad Dwarf disease could cause.

And yes, being eaten should really annoy the spirit of the dwarf that was eaten.

[DrazharLn]

>If a dwarf can fail to dig out a usable stone because he's not a good enough Miner, then obviously he can also choose not to produce such a stone because he knows it won't be wanted.

This doesn't make sense either, how are they vanishing a block's worth of stone? Perhaps miners should instead produce stone of varying quality or mass. A legendary miner can produce almost a whole block's worth in one piece, most others produce smaller chunks. Possibly too involved, maybe just stone or waste should be produced?

It really depends on whether removing all the tailings turns out to be a worthwhile system to engineer. Maybe it just turns out to be annoying.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I design modifications for Baldur's Gate, and am something of an idea machine for that game, but am by far a relative newbie to Dwarf Fortress . . . so whatever I think of, I'm sure somebody else has thought of first. So I'll just post my ideas here, and allow others to transfer them to the main Suggestion board if they're both interesting and original enough.

And I'll state my thoughts.

All suggestions are for Fortress Mode only.

Stuff that affects one mode (should) affect the other.

* Inside Dark Underground: How the hell is my Gem Cutter going to find the proper spot to cleave this Rough Claro Opal if he can't even SEE the damn thing, it's pitch dark in here! There needs to be a system of measuring ambient light, and at least one source of underground illumination: Wood Furnace = Fireplace. Logs + Fat (and maybe Cloth) = Torches. Metalcrafting + Glassmaking + Rendered Fat = Oil Lanterns. Beehives + Chandler skill = Candles. Cut gems + vague magical labor = Gem Lanterns, which degrade and consume the jewels that fuel them, but create a ton of happy thoughts in those who view them.

Not a bad idea, but A. planned and B. if dwarves can't do ANYTHING without light, that kinda requires you to make most of your fortress aboveground for the first ~year, or else to immediately start a new required industry.

* Goats and Pigs should willingly eat organic refuse Dumped in their pens. Dead dwaves (elves/humans/goblins?) disposed of in this way should cause the dwaves who feed on those animals more likely to go insane.

Eating dwarves' bodies should also make living dwarves, especially Urist McGoatChow's friends, unhappy.

* All Wooden items should be able to be burned for fuel.

Maybe not "all"...an earring shouldn't be able to power a forge.

* Redesigned Embark: Instead of 7 dwarves, you should get a large pool of candidates, with the number depending on the size of your parent civilization and the distance (and hazards) between it and your embark site. Each dwarf already has his pre-chosen set of skills, plus a certain amount of fluidity in the number of additional skill ranks he can pick up (probably a maximum of 3) before you leave, and a certain amount of goods and capital (see below) he can donate to the expedition. Choose however many dwarves you want--take the Miners and Woodcutters, leave the Clothiers home--and go.

Not a terrible idea, I guess...I just don't see a "why."

     About wealthy dwarves: Picking up a Legendary Animal Caretaker might be worth it if he's rich enough to buy tons of equipment, although his wealth will increase his Ego attribute, meaning he'll be more inclined to have unhappy thoughts from not being appointed a noble, or if he finds his work too exhausting or too menial, or if he finds his room and possessions to be less than what he's entitled to. Such a dwarf just "happening" to die soon after donating all his money might just bring a few angry relatives down on the site.

Heh. Excellent.

* Mail-Order Migrants: Just as you can negotiate with the Liason for certain goods you want imported, you should be able to place High/Low priority on the various professions you would like new migrants to have. It doesn't take effect immediately (distance back to the parent civilization is always a factor) or flawlessly (you might still get a High Master Glazer when you specifically requested Marksdwarves), and the results of your order will last for one full year whether you like it or not. This does not trump family bonds: The Metalcrafter you wanted might bring along the Fish Dissector husband you didn't, as well as their offspring. Dwarves with high skill in professions you placed in high demand are also likely to have inflated Ego attributes.

Aside from the name, good idea. Also commonly suggested, but meh.

* Technology Tree: Related to the previous 2 suggestions, dwarves emigrating to your settlement should have a fairly good idea what kind of a place they're going to, and how long it's been around. Workshop-intensive trades like Weaponsmith, Glassmaker, Leatherworker, Soap Maker, Clothier and the like probably wouldn't want to show up uninvited at an outpost that can't yet support their trade. In short, the time elapsed between embark and the arrival of a migrant with a certain principal labor should be directly proportional to that labor's "distance" from the raw material (such as wood, stone, or live animals).

Are you familiar with what a technology tree usually is? A discredited idea for DF, that's what! Other than the naming nitpick, this makes sense but would impair metalsmithing industries.

* New fluid resource: Oil. Distill it (a Still once used for Oil can never again brew booze) into various fuels for heat, light, and industry, but burning it underground can cause bad thoughts, as well as health problems and even death among dwarves with low toughness.

Animal-fat oil or petroleum oil? The former is fine, the latter violates the 1400s tech limit. For use, that is; the idea of dwarves breaching an underground reservoir of oil seems humorous to me.

* Tougher War Animals: Please. C'mon, it's just sad that a single Goblin Thief can take on an entire barbican of 10 War Dogs simultaneously and suffer only "Her left hand is cut open." More to the point, have the "level" of the Hunting/War Animal reflect the skill of the Animal Trainer who taught them.

What we need is either A. a way to armor war dogs, B. a way to add metal thingies to help the bite (like plastic vampire fangs, except nor plastic, made for dogs, and made for combat), or ideally C. both.

* Party Animals: Dwarves who attend Parties will gain ranks in the Kegstander skill.

What would that do? Give other dwarves happy thoughts when he's partying?
...Actually, that makes sense.

* Idle Time: Give dwarves something fun to do while On Break. Apart from the obvious Drinking, Wrestling, and Lying contests, dwarves enjoy bowling, chess, darts, dodgeball, and card games (gambling strongly encouraged). Additionally, "Make wooden blocks" should apply specifically to the wooden toy blocks given to dwarven babies/children to increase their likelihood of future skill in Carpentry, Masonry, and/or Architecture.

Seconded.

* More Realistic Crops: This world is made of limestone, diorite, shale, clay loam, granite, native gold, etc., all of which are real and can be looked up. This world is full of badgers, racoons, elephants, alligators, trout, squirrels, fireflies, with similarly known properties. Same with maple, ash, alder, pine, oak, and bamboo. So where do all these plump helmets, quarry bushes, rope reeds, kobold bulbs, and pig tails come from? Why not real plants such as grapefruit, potatoes, flax, and cotton? Obviously, these could not be realistically be farmed underground, but that never was one of Dwarf Fortress's more stellar points anyway.

"Where do all these plump helmets, quarry bushes, rope reeds, kobold bulbs, and pig tails come from?" The same place as the giant spiders, dragons, voracious cave crawlers, giants, unicorns, demons, giant badgers, goblins, trolls, beak dogs, hungry heads, fluffy wamblers, jabberers, bronze colossi, rutherers, werewolves, rocs, giant eagles, moosemen, hydras, cave dragons, elves, cave swallowmen, cave crocodiles, giant caves, and DWARVES come from. It's in the name! "Dwarf Fortress!" If we've got midgets who live underground, we can have crops that grow underground!

* Churches: Rooms can be defined as Temples, from either Statues or Slabs that have been carved/engraved in the likenesses of deities. A sufficient number of faithful (to that particular deity) will auto-promote a Clergy noble from within their ranks, helping to promote behavior favorable to that particular god. The Temple designation will strongly reduce the likelihood that walls/pillars within the room will be engraved into representations of any other deity.

I like the idea of temples.

* And Oh Yeah, The Friggin' Obvious: My first fortress died of thirst. While there was a foot of snow on the ground outside. After we'd left our empty barrels sitting out in the rain for an entire autumn. C'mon.

Do YOU want to drink rainwater or snow? Especially if you're an alcoholic dwarf? Granted, it's better than dehydration, but let's tackle the stupider sources of dwarven death first, like NOT NOTICING THAT THEY ARE ON FIRE.

* Moods: Strange Moods should be prompted by a definite (and perhaps traceable) event and result in the production of a related and logical item--not pure random chance on both counts. Instead of Urist McMiner happening to see a badger and suddenly being overcome with an urge to create the most EPIC silk sock EVER, it should be something like Urist McArmorer sees a friend lose a leg, and focuses his talents on making a really good pair of greaves to prevent a repeat occurrence. The stimulus for prompting a Mood might be as simple as visiting the Trade Depot while foreign merchants are present, and being inspired by the cultural exposure, just as long as there IS a stimulus.

Not a bad idea, but fails to account for possible stimuli that aren't represented in-game. I think that alsmost ANYTHING could be a stimulus for an artifact to the right dwarf (remember, they make images of masterful images of masterful images of cheese). I'm not sure how to get this to work, except maybe if they were inspired by some other artifact.

     Moods automatically kicking a dwarf up to Legendary is way too much. Creating artifacts should grant 2x (although different moods could have different modifiers) as much experience as a regular item of that type, multiplied by the number of components used, multiplied by the number of processes each component had to go through before it was ready for the moody dwarf to use.

NO!! The POINT of an artifact is that it's a PERFECT item! They're LEGENDARY artifacts for a reason! An dwarf who creates an artifact and remembers it deserves the title "Legendary!"

* Mining Byproducts: The Standing Orders screen should offer, at the very least, a toggle between "Miners Save Dirt" and "Miners Destroy Dirt." Loose Loam created in this way can be carried (via barrel, wheelbarrow, or multiple Bucket loads) to a tile that's been Channeled from non-arable material, and dumped in. The resulting soil works just like normal dirt, except that it will immediately collapse if the Z-level directly below it is tunneled out.

Not a horrible idea...

     At best, the Standing Orders screen will offer a sub-menu that lists which types of stone/ore are to be destroyed at will, and which are to be carefully saved (possibly giving each material its own rating for the skill level of Miner permitted to attempt to harvest it).

Not sure if this is needed.

[Putnam]

Also, this page is good:

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

[SixOfSpades]

I'll add new suggestions to the bottom of the original list (in fact I've already done so) as I think of them.

I'm not sure if I agree with the insanity thing. However, it should make it more likely for the deceased to come back as ghosts.

Yeah, ghosts were actually my first thought, but I didn't want to mention them because I hate spoilers. Insanity (a byproduct of the unhappy thoughts of the near-cannibalism) was a good runner-up.

Agreed on the going insane from eating pigs who ate dwarves.  Is this supposed to be related to the supposed method of transferring Mad Cow disease?

Yes. Wikipedia "prion." Technically, I believe prions can enter the body through any direct contact with cut skin, mucus membranes, or similar tissue, but ingestion has been the primary vector for Mad Cow because of the very large amount of material entering the body. Now back to the good part.

>If a dwarf can fail to dig out a usable stone because he's not a good enough Miner, then obviously he can also choose not to produce such a stone because he knows it won't be wanted.
This doesn't make sense either, how are they vanishing a block's worth of stone? Perhaps miners should instead produce stone of varying quality or mass. A legendary miner can produce almost a whole block's worth in one piece, most others produce smaller chunks.

I pictured the Miner simply reducing the stone to rubble/gravel, after which nobody cares about it. Hey, it makes more sense than having stone Drawbridges.
     But yes, the ideal system would make every "tile" of rock and treat it as 100% RockUnit; the skill of the Miner determines what percentage is left as the size of the largest resulting chunk. If there's not enough left to make a Table, there's probably still enough for a Mug. Ideally, the game would be able to keep track of multiple chunks dug from the same tile, as well of multiple minerals: An unmined tile could be 6% Native Gold, 81% Phyllite and 13% Satinspar . . . and though you probably broke the Phyllite into pretty small chunks to get at the Gold, you'd still have some left.
     Tailings could be used to fill the insides of thicker stone Walls (which might become a factor once Sieges start using actual Siege Weapons, capable of bringing down Walls), and to fill unwanted Murky Pools.

All suggestions are for Fortress Mode only.

Stuff that affects one mode (should) affect the other.

As far as game-physics and other mechanics, yes. But when I'm only interested in Fortress mode, I quickly got tired of seeing page after page of Adventurer plans with only the odd Fortress-applicable one sprinkled in here & there.

Inside Dark Underground, etc.

Not a bad idea, but A. planned and B. if dwarves can't do ANYTHING without light, that kinda requires you to make most of your fortress aboveground for the first ~year, or else to immediately start a new required industry.

Not necessarily; all fire-related workshops obviously generate their own light, and could therefore be used to light ones nearby. For all we know, the underground crops might be phosphescent, making Farms self-illuminated as well. You also don't need vision at all to operate a Quern, Pump, or Loom. Of course, Toady might be operating on the assumption rule, that we're to assume the (plentiful) existence of candles/torches/Infravision, just as we're to assume that building a Kitchen or Carpenter's Shop also creates metal pots/knives/saws, even in a settlement that doesn't have any access to metal yet.

* All Wooden items should be able to be burned for fuel.

Maybe not "all"...an earring shouldn't be able to power a forge.

It should if it were combined with enough [/i]other[/i] small wood items to total at least 100% WoodUnit.

* Redesigned Embark: Instead of 7 dwarves, you should get a large pool of candidates . . .

Not a terrible idea, I guess...I just don't see a "why."

Far more realistic. If you're leading an expedition somewhere and you put out advertisements saying that you're looking for able pioneers, you don't just limit yourself to the first 7 people who respond. You collect a pool of applicants and pick out the ones that seem best able to carry their weight and form a cohesive whole with the rest of the team.

* New fluid resource: Oil.

Animal-fat oil or petroleum oil? The former is fine, the latter violates the 1400s tech limit.

I was thinking both; Lamp Oil generated from tallow, followed by Kerosene and the like later on. I wasn't aware of any tech limit; the idea of a stone mechanism that can instantly and completely enclose an enemy in a Lead Cage may have misled me.

What we need is either A. a way to armor war dogs, B. a way to add metal thingies to help the bite (like plastic vampire fangs, except nor plastic, made for dogs, and made for combat), or ideally C. both.

I'd support that only for War Elephants, AFAIK the only real-world beasts to be so armed and armored . . . and of course, even they only got those goodies after their highly skilled Animal Trainer had raised them up a few levels.

* Party Animals: Dwarves who attend Parties will gain ranks in the Kegstander skill.

What would that do? Give other dwarves happy thoughts when he's partying?
...Actually, that makes sense.

Optional skill title: Table-Dancer. May cause unhappy thoughts in dwarves who dislike immodesty.

"Where do all these plump helmets, quarry bushes, rope reeds, kobold bulbs, and pig tails come from?" The same place as the giant spiders, dragons . . . giant caves, and DWARVES come from. It's in the name! "Dwarf Fortress!"

Hey! You forgot olms, drunians, and pond grabbers!

* And Oh Yeah, The Friggin' Obvious

. . . let's tackle the stupider sources of dwarven death first, like NOT NOTICING THAT THEY ARE ON FIRE.

. . . okay, you win.

Moods automatically kicking a dwarf up to Legendary is way too much.

NO!! The POINT of an artifact is that it's a PERFECT item! They're LEGENDARY artifacts for a reason! An dwarf who creates an artifact and remembers it deserves the title "Legendary!"

If they're so perfect, why are some of them so much less perfect than others? It makes no sense that a Dabbling Miner could make something that far exceeds the quality of anything a highly experienced Grand Master Mason could produce. I'm sure I'm not the first to promte the idea that the Moods should be turned way the hell down.
     Different types of Moods should have quite different effects--most importantly, being Possessed should give the highest chance to make an artifact well beyond the craftsdwarf's normal level of skill, but at the same time, it would confer only a small fraction of the potential EXP gain (because it wasn't actually the dwarf that made the item). Secretive dwarves should have the lowest chance of making an absurdly-good item (because they can't get help/advice from anyone else), but stand to gain the most EXP for it (because they did it entirely on their own).

At best, the Standing Orders screen will offer a sub-menu that lists which types of stone/ore are to be destroyed at will, and which are to be carefully saved (possibly giving each material its own rating for the skill level of Miner permitted to attempt to harvest it).

Not sure if this is needed.

True, it's hardly very important, but I find it preferable to watching an ongoing dig and un-designating any gold or gems that crop up until my better Miners return from their nap. The game isn't called Dwarf Babysitting.