Bay 12 Games Forum

I've noticed that simply having a number showing the exact numeric stress value of each dwarf like in dfhack makes dwarven stress management far less of a headache. It's impossible to tell if your current stress strategy is working for some particular dwarf when the only information you get on their condition is these huge bins of "Stressed", "Haggard", or "Harrowed". By the time you learn that a stressed dwarf's condition is getting worse, they've already hit haggard and it's too late to prevent tantrums. Being able to see a dwarf's stress level slowly increase or decrease lets me know if my strategy is working or if I need to get that dwarf doing something else.

I immediately start attacking stress when it's positive, at all, for any reason.  And if my efforts do not actually start lowering stress, bye bye dwarf.  It makes me feel like a real jerk, though.

Seriously, though, give most dwarves a smoothed, engraved bedroom with a weapon rack of a substance they love, their own personal shrine to their god, etc. etc. and they're really really super happy with negative stress in the tens of thousands.

The option's under standing [o]rders.

You should turn this on if you need things killed outdoors dragged to refuse stockpiles attached to a butcher's so they're butchered.  At least if they don't already do this.  It seems oddly site specific whether or not this happens automatically without intervention, maybe it just depends on how far away from a butcher's your kills tend to happen.

I’m surprised a weasel would attack a yak, no wonder the merchants were wary of a very confident, brave weasel

Don't underestimate weasels.

I haven't read all of that tome, which I'll get to, but the one idea I liked was the idea of a sanctuary, but I think it might be more milieu-appropriate if instead of a sanitarium, since it is in the temple family, an actual monastery.  Some dwarves can't cope with the outside world, but suppose they could retreat into a monastery.  This would have stress relieving capabilities enough to cure almost any dwarf, but the stress relief would only exist if the dwarf remained within the monastery.  So you could have a population of partly hermit monks, the previously unsalvageable.  I'd suggest something like a burrow if they weren't so horribly bugged as to be nearly useless.

However, the monastery would be a separate fort with its own workshops, stills, kitchens, etc.  Perhaps there could be a special secret, holy beverage brewed in stills in the monastery much as the real world has such beverages, maybe randomly generated for each religious group like instruments are. 

Also, in terms of helping the fort at large, people could seek out the non-hermit monks and complain to them and get advice and get some smaller amount of stress relief.  The beverage from the monastery could also be of particularly high quality and give a good thought, as well as books and other appropriate products.  Worship services in the temple of such a monastery could be particularly potent.

That said, I really don't think there are that many dwarves in 0.47.04 who are completely unsalvageable, unlike the mess that was 0.44.12.  I think it is actually approaching being a non-broken mechanic.

All FBs are immune to the magma temperature, including those made of snow. FBs do not have magma vision, though, although that hasn't stopped some of them from navigating via the magma sea in the past.

Do they come up the tube to the top and come out the top, though?

So do preferences stack?  I.e. if I have a dwarf with preferences for nickel silver and rubicelle and tables, and give them a nickel silver table studded with rubicelles, are they super happy?

Has it been demonstrated that the water accumulation in an empty tile is proportional to the number of orthogonally adjacent aquifer tiles? Meaning, does a checkerboard pattern definitely produce the most water?

I'm not sure how you'd measure flow but it would seem the test would be simply to start by digging a checkerboard, draining off into whatever reservoir/water wheel/whatever you're using to measure, then measure the flow, then dig out more and more of it until/if the flow changes.  If it decreases, the answer is probably yes.

It seems intuitive, but I've never tested it.  Also, so long as it isn't actually worse than other patterns, it seems a lot easier/faster to do.

I personally don't think volcanoes are worth the risk of fire imps and magma crabs, but it's a matter of weighing your pros against your cons, of course.

I've had this be a problem with only one volcano embark, other than the occasional issue where I'd carelessly left open a channel while building magma workshops.  It seems in most of them the crabs never climb out the top even though they should be able to, or at least don't climb out until they're easily dealt with.  In the one where it was an issue, they killed me nearly immediately upon embark.