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[Callista]

I have it as a personality trait on a dwarf child. She's nine years old. She's had nothing unusual happen in her life, other than the tantrum spiral when she was three, during which she was locked into a room with a berserk dwarf, miraculously survived until the berserk dwarf died of dehydration, spent the next two years recovering in a hospital, was treated by amateur doctors, and miraculously survived that too. Her personality is pretty standard--she hasn't got unusually low or high compassion or empathy or anything like that. She doesn't have any pets and her only skill is in harvesting. She hasn't had a strange mood yet. She's an orphan, but the other orphan I have in the fortress doesn't have this trait.

Why does she have "doesn't care about anything anymore" as a trait, and does it have any effect? Will she randomly go nuts and jump down my well or something?

[NecroRebel]

She's witnessed death more than most dwarves do, so she's now emotionally stunted. The tantrum spiral probably caused this, either just having people she knew die or by having people die in the hospital near her. This is a good thing, as it means that the intensity of all thoughts is dampened, so she won't be affected as badly by unhappy thoughts, making her significantly less likely to go insane.

People intentionally cultivate this trait sometimes, usually by capturing goblins and dropping them a fatal distance into the main dining hall. Don't worry about it.

[Callista]

Wait... you can drop goblins into the main dining hall? SOOO cool.

*starts making blueprints* Lemme guess, you have to make sure they don't kill anybody by falling on them...

Nice to know she's actually less likely to go nuts. I guess she's a battle-hardened veteran now. At age nine. Somehow.

On the other hand, she's a dwarf. This should be expected. They probably mine their way out of their mothers' wombs, or something.

[Wayward Device]

She's witnessed death more than most dwarves do, so she's now emotionally stunted. The tantrum spiral probably caused this, either just having people she knew die or by having people die in the hospital near her. This is a good thing, as it means that the intensity of all thoughts is dampened, so she won't be affected as badly by unhappy thoughts, making her significantly less likely to go insane.

People intentionally cultivate this trait sometimes, usually by capturing goblins and dropping them a fatal distance into the main dining hall. Don't worry about it.

There is a method for this which is, to my mind, even better than dumping goblins. Build a tall pillar in your dining hall. 1x1x10 is good. Make sure there is empty space all around it so stuff can fall. Pit as many cats as possible onto the single walkable tile at the top of the pillar. Since the 31.25 update, you may have noticed that animals fight when in enclosed spaces (you may have to designate the tile as a pasture). The cats will breed and every now and then a scuffle will result in a kitten falling off the pillar and onto your dining room floor.

Wait... you can drop goblins into the main dining hall? SOOO cool.

To pit stuff (drop it through a hole) designate your chosen hole (poor choice of words, I know) as a zone and make it a pit with p. Then hit P to get a list of all the creatures you can order thrown in the pit. This should be all your animals and any hostiles caught in cages. IMPORTANT NOTE: When pitting gobbos, ordinary soldiers are fine but thieves will escape when a dwarf comes to take them from a cage to the pit and cause havoc! Sorry, I meant ‼FUN‼.

[Callista]

It has to be a ten-story drop to kill a cat? Hmm... IRL, a three-story drop will do it. (No, I don't know that because I hate cats; I know that because I'm a shelter volunteer and we've had a couple cats come in with obvious injuries from falls... their jaws are almost invariably broken and it's not pretty. Makes me want to kick the owners for not putting proper screens in their windows, and even more so for abandoning the cats that now need expensive vet care. On the bright side, all three of the cats survived the recovery and two have been adopted.)

Is there some kind of formula to figure out how much of a drop is needed to kill something? Is it constant, or do smaller animals survive longer falls like they do in the real world? DF does have animal sizes; it comes into play when you build pressure plates. Does it count for fall damage too?

[Sphalerite]

A ten-story drop will kill just about everything.  A nine-story drop will leave the occasional badly injured survivor.  Creature size does not seem to factor into this.

If a falling creature lands on another creature, both creatures are stunned but otherwise uninjured.  This means that if anyone is at the bottom of the pit, you've just placed a live, uninjured goblin in your dining hall.

Also, I'm pretty sure that hostile deaths don't count for getting the "doesn't care about anything anymore" trait.  I suspect it has to be friendly creatures.  Possibly only dwarves that belong to your fortress, although I haven't tested that.

[Callista]

Well, that sucks; my dining area is only six z-levels underground.

Maybe a meeting hall a bit further down...

Anybody know if kittens work? I'm not going to sacrifice dwarves to this kind of thing--I have few enough already as it is.

What about the butcher shop idea? If I were to have my butcher's shop in the dining hall... I have a population of ducks and geese happily churning out eggs and goslings/ducklings, so there's a lot of butchering going on.

[mrbaggins]

Well, that sucks; my dining area is only six z-levels underground.

Diving.

Platform.

[Callista]

So fill up a pool with water and drop them into it?

What about miasma? If there's dead stuff floating in the water, won't the dwarves get annoyed about it?

[NecroRebel]

So fill up a pool with water and drop them into it?

What about miasma? If there's dead stuff floating in the water, won't the dwarves get annoyed about it?

No no no, you dig out the roof of your dining hall, construct a platform several levels above the surface, and throw unfortunates off the platform, through the hole in the dining hall's roof, and onto the solid ground below. Since the roof is cut out, there's no miasma from this (unless splattered bits fly to underground portions of the chamber). Water has nothing to do with it.

It's like a diving platform over an empty pool used as an execution method.

[Callista]

Ooohh, I get it now!

Sorry, I'm pretty new to DF.

Now if only that siege would stop and let my workers get to... well, work.

[knutor]

Bunnies work.  They breed fast, too.  Ya just won't get any meat out of the dropped ones.  Cats have the drawback of becoming pets and creating bad thoughts, I believe.  Bunnies don't have that drawback.

Thanks for the tip, gonna try it out.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[chris_strain]

If you have sand and a glass industry then you can simply dig out the pit immediately next to your dining room and build a row of glass windows to separate the two. This will allow line of sight to the carnage, and keep everyone safe from the occasional survivor or miasma clouds. I use dodgeme traps along my entrance walkway to 'encourage' fun loving invaders to provide a nice dinner show for everyone.

[forsaken1111]

If you have sand and a glass industry then you can simply dig out the pit immediately next to your dining room and build a row of glass windows to separate the two. This will allow line of sight to the carnage, and keep everyone safe from the occasional survivor or miasma clouds. I use dodgeme traps along my entrance walkway to 'encourage' fun loving invaders to provide a nice dinner show for everyone.

Does glass actually allow line of sight through though?

[Wayward Device]

If you have sand and a glass industry then you can simply dig out the pit immediately next to your dining room and build a row of glass windows to separate the two. This will allow line of sight to the carnage, and keep everyone safe from the occasional survivor or miasma clouds. I use dodgeme traps along my entrance walkway to 'encourage' fun loving invaders to provide a nice dinner show for everyone.

Does glass actually allow line of sight through though?

Only in window form.