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[Immortal-D]

Right then.  Here is a summary of major findings thus far.  Please let me know if you feel something needs changing or clarification.

Updated March 11 2021

General findings:
- Many reports that Stress is close to 34.xx, in so far as the majority of Dwarves reach the state of "doesn't care about anything".
- The frequency of personality changes (often drastic reversals of a core trait) is the same.
- Meal quality definitely helps now, independent of favorite ingredient.
- "Caught in the rain" remains a veritable roulette wheel of effects.  Sometimes it's a minor effect on total stress, sometimes it creates a feedback loop (miserable after rain, then miserable again after remembering that event x10).
- Tantrums due to stress seem less frequent.
- Dorfs seem to be make friends more easily, which helps reduce stress.  As yet unclear how socializing works if the Dwarves have a constant never-ending work schedule.
- Possible that 'distraction / restless due to unmet needs' has a significantly smaller effect on overall stress.  Thus unclear what being distracted actually does, in gameplay terms.
- The justice system remains a double-edged sword (no pun intended).  Victims of crime are definitely happy when a verdict is delivered (conviction of farm animals not withstanding), while the accused are predictably miserable after a beating and/or incarceration.
- Dwarves who are emotionally fragile by default are almost guaranteed to snap, due the feedback loop of reliving a bad memory (often this means seeing a sentient corpse).
- No reports as yet of being able to significantly recover from stress.  That is, going from 'very high/haggard & drawn', to 'happy'.
- Possible that a temple is no longer as critical to the early game if other happiness boosters are present (tavern, beds, mugs, etc.).

Observed new thoughts:
- having an intellectual discussion with a friend/acquaintance
- feeling relieved discussing his problems with an acquaintance

OP:
Put on your big-Dwarf beards, because we have testing to do.  Will be updating this as we go.  Relevant patch notes:

Spoiler: Stress-related patch notes (click to show/hide)

- Made people get used to seeing dead bodies
- Made basic friendships easier to form for slow-to-love people
- Made people that work outside a lot get used to bad weather
- Made valuable food satisfy good meal thought in addition to preferences
- Added some additional dwarf chat types to meet some other needs and reduce stress
- Stopped many minor thoughts from forming memories
- Removed stress from migrants (e.g. ones from old forts)
- Vengefulness is no longer stressful (as it was mainly related to defending others from attacking animals)

Looks like a lot of issues can now be adapted over time, but excess stress might still break the more fragile Dorfs in the short term.  I'm especially curious about the changes to Minor Thoughts.  Can they have any kind of effect if they stack enough?  Other questions off the top of my head;

Time frame of adaptation for bad weather & sentient corpses.
How depressed can a Dorf get about weather and bodies before rebounding?
Is weather just normal rain, or does it include evil weather types?
Numerical value happiness increase of different quality meals
Does this work on valuable drinks as well?
Logging the new chat interactions (and if possible, relative to a given need like praying or crafting)
Solutions for meeting the needs of Military Dorfs
Can the memory of bad thoughts still create a chain reaction?
What is enough to cause a personality change now?
Will Dwarves automatically try to fulfill needs if not explicitly given free time?  (e.g. only free time is eat/drink/sleep).
How do the starting friendships of the 7 compare to 'normal' developments over the long term?

old thread for posterity

[Uthimienure]

In my first 47.05 fort, the seven dwarfs are 4 females and 3 males.
Within 2 weeks of embark, all of them are at least close friends and most are kindred spirits.
Also within 2 weeks, two dwarfs have fallen in love.
It seems like this is unusually friendly behavior compared to 47.04, although it's not on your list, but it might fall under "new ___ interactions"?

[Shonai_Dweller]

The first seven have always seemed to be able to form relationships better than everyone else.

[Toady One]

(The way that part has worked in general is that the starting 7 all have 30 chats in every possible configuration, so the ones that would become friends start as friends.  However, even some of them had nothing but "long-term acquaintance" (which is a person you've talked to at least 30 times but just never truly gotten along with.)  That's where the "slow-to-love" part comes in - some dwarves were just really really set against forming friendships with anybody, even if the other dwarf already considered them a friend.  Those dwarves now instead all become friends but have more trouble getting to close friend status, so they can get their needs met.  Friendship still depends on personality/value compatibility, but that's rarely been a factor, as you can see with the fixed starting dwarves.  Once in a while they don't start as friends - those dwarves will probably never be friends on account of personality issues, unless a memory changes one of them.  But we'll have to see if the fixed friendship carries on to larger forts - in our recent pre-fix five year test fort, we had some dwarves with three pages of acquaintances and no friends, and checking meeting counts and non-reciprocal friendships we found it was the issue that's now fixed, but other fort configurations etc. could still have problems.  So data is good!)

[Immortal-D]

Fascinating.  Thanks for the info dump Toady!  I also found in my old Forts that the original 7 were noticeably better off than everyone else, though still miserable in the grand scheme of things.  Looks like the collective changes might now cause the Founders to swing the other way.  Will be interesting to see how they fare compared to the first migrant wave after a few years now.

[orius]

Honestly it makes some sense that the initial seven would end up being good friends since they were the first to set out and establish the fortress.  It's a shared experience that should create a sense of camaraderie among them or something unless one of them is just a real hardcore curmudgeon.

[scriver]

So I don't want to be a bummer but I'm at 7 Slate first year in the first fort generated with the new patch and just got my first "Cheesemaking Cancelled: Experiencing Emotional Shock" message.

Why?

Because the dwarf remembered being attacked when he gelded an animal.

I hope this is not a sign of what is to come.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So I don't want to be a bummer but I'm at 7 Slate first year in the first fort generated with the new patch and just got my first "Cheesemaking Cancelled: Experiencing Emotional Shock" message.

Why?

Because the dwarf remembered being attacked when he gelded an animal.

I hope this is not a sign of what is to come.

What's the problem? Did his stress ratings rocket straight into haggard? Remembering traumatic events (being kicked in the head by a horse) is meant to happen. It's when they make stress impossible to fix that there's something wrong.

[gchristopher]

Because the dwarf remembered being attacked when he gelded an animal.

There are so many ways this event could turn traumatic. Was there a combat report? Was the animal in the process of mating when he tried to geld it? Was the dwarf attacked using the body part in question?

Sometimes this game just begs you to fill in the details.

[wlerin]

The thread title is likely to send me into a tantrum.

... does that count?

edit: Oh I see the old one had the same spelling. Perhaps it is an historic matter I was unaware of.

[FantasticDorf]

So I don't want to be a bummer but I'm at 7 Slate first year in the first fort generated with the new patch and just got my first "Cheesemaking Cancelled: Experiencing Emotional Shock" message.

I hope this is not a sign of what is to come.

I've had this before on 47.xx ish, a farmer became shellshocked after seeing someone die infront of them and were intermittently traumatized for the 5 year span of the rest of their life (i forget the exact circumstance, but they were savaged by the captain of the guard who exploded their foot or tore out their throat, one or the other, that guard didn't care about mortal wounds). It shouldn't really coalese, but i guess the extremes might work both ways for tears of joy and the like.

I suggest you expel them at soonest notice and see if they migrate back to the site with stress reset or least offload the problem indefinitely.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So I don't want to be a bummer but I'm at 7 Slate first year in the first fort generated with the new patch and just got my first "Cheesemaking Cancelled: Experiencing Emotional Shock" message.

I hope this is not a sign of what is to come.

I've had this before on 47.xx ish, a farmer became shellshocked after seeing someone die infront of them and were intermittently traumatized for the 5 year span of the rest of their life (i forget the exact circumstance, but they were savaged by the captain of the guard who exploded their foot or tore out their throat, one or the other, that guard didn't care about mortal wounds). It shouldn't really coalese, but i guess the extremes might work both ways for tears of joy and the like.

I suggest you expel them at soonest notice and see if they migrate back to the site with stress reset or least offload the problem indefinitely.

That's not what was said. We've yet to see a report on whether permanent shock at recurring memories has been fixed or not.

[recon1o6]

I think the best thing about these sorts of tests is being able to perform dwarven !!SCIENCE!! and not have to worry about one of the control group going insane
because the idea is to test if it is possible to inure dwarves to slaughter again without them going insane

If the entire control group fails to go insane, all that means is stress adaptaion is working

and now I've typed all that and reread it for spelling errors, all I can hear is cave johnson


edit: another thing to note-what constitutes a minor thought?

[Immortal-D]

The thread title is likely to send me into a tantrum.

... does that count?

edit: Oh I see the old one had the same spelling. Perhaps it is an historic matter I was unaware of.

Lol?  I'm genuinely curious about this.

So I don't want to be a bummer but I'm at 7 Slate first year in the first fort generated with the new patch and just got my first "Cheesemaking Cancelled: Experiencing Emotional Shock" message.

I hope this is not a sign of what is to come.

I've had this before on 47.xx ish, a farmer became shellshocked after seeing someone die infront of them and were intermittently traumatized for the 5 year span of the rest of their life (i forget the exact circumstance, but they were savaged by the captain of the guard who exploded their foot or tore out their throat, one or the other, that guard didn't care about mortal wounds). It shouldn't really coalese, but i guess the extremes might work both ways for tears of joy and the like.

I suggest you expel them at soonest notice and see if they migrate back to the site with stress reset or least offload the problem indefinitely.

That's not what was said. We've yet to see a report on whether permanent shock at recurring memories has been fixed or not.

Yeah, the whole 'dwelling upon / remembering x_event' chain reaction is something to be tested anew.

[scriver]

The same dwarf has had one more Job Cancelled: Emotional Shock because of remembering gelding the animal.

Because of her physical stats I made her Militia Commander, so far the only combat experience she has had was chasing after a kobold a healthier while unarmed and unarmoured, thenggetting sliced open after she collapsed from exhaustion (thankfully no permanent damage). She has yet to suffer any emotional breaks from this event, but it's still only summer.