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[Superdorf]

Has anyone seen a tantruming or insane dwarf in the current version of the game, outside failed moods and whatnot? My forts consistently get one or two dwarves that register as being in the lowest mood tier, but I haven't seen any misbehave or go crazy as of yet.

I'm tempted to run the worst fort I possibly can at some point, just to see if I can get anyone to snap

[Eric Blank]

I have yes. There's a tiny percentage of the population that will just degrade until they tantrum after a few years no matter what, and if you just generally run your fort shittily, like I do when I'm testing mods instead of taking care of them, then you can get even more of them to tantrum.

[amade]

Aye, had a few tantrumers who managed to crawl back to being fairly contented dorfs after intervention. But keeping stress low isn't particularly hard, it's just those few outliers that sometimes just can't be saved whatever you do.

If your fortress runs long enough, you'll even get visitor nobles who've accumulated so much stress over the years with very few opportunities to relieve it. They'll crack up eventually. Had one stumble obliviously into a magma channel for my magma forges.

[Salmeuk]

it takes quite a bit longer to achieve the tantrum state in premium DF but it does exist. I've noticed that children with dead parents or particularly traumatic lives will often degrade to the point they are constantly tantrumming. I recall one child destroyed the same bridge multiple times in their fits of rage.

so yeah, much more rare these days, but its there.

[Superdorf]

10-ish years into my current fortress now, I've had opportunity to see a couple stressed and haggard dwarves. Seems like the general "mood" levels that change on the flip of a dime are distinct from actual stress levels; I assume it takes a prolonged period at the lower end of the mood scale to produce tantrums and whatnot. I just hadn't had a fortress going long enough to see the behavior emerge

[breadman]

There do seem to be levels, certainly.

So, in the third year of my current fort, a large group of migrants arrived to find miasma, blood spatter, rotting corpses, ghosts, a distinct lack of bedrooms, and a single dwarf frantically making coffins.  The adults were immediately organized into military squads, and ordered to wear the best (mostly leather) equipment they could find.  They quickly got the corpses laid to rest and started getting everything else put back in order.

Less than a month later, that lone survivor turned into a large lizard and started attacking anything that moved, killing a couple of the new migrants and injuring others before being put down.  A month later, a couple of the injured turned into lizards, and so on.  Fortunately, the transformations stopped after a few months, and migrants kept coming "despite the danger."

Life went on, but eventually one child started wandering around obliviously.  I might've been more worried with a different fortress design, but the child was nowhere near any falling hazards, so I just watched her stumble around until she got thirsty.  Not long afterward, she cancelled a job because she was too depressed.  The tantrums started a month or two later, where she just started punching our egg-laying hens.  As it turns out, she had been dwelling on being haunted by the dead, being attacked by the werelizard mayor, and losing family.

Another child who had similarly been haunted by the dead also threw a few tantrums, including one where the two attacked the (new) mayor together while conducting a meeting.  The times they attack other citizens (or their pets?) seem to enter the Justice system (as "Disorderly conduct" cases), and some time in a deluxe dungeon seems to have mellowed them out somewhat.

One of the adults, though, has been getting worse over time.  To be fair, his lover had to be put down as a werelizard, I once tried to burrow him (as the only diagnostician in the fortress) to get the hospital to work, he needs to spend time with friends but can't make any, and he doesn't feel like his life is exciting enough because he keeps ending up in prison when something attacks.  His most severe sentence was for knocking down the still, and I am strongly considering exile and/or a mission to get him out of the fort, especially after he attacked the wrong person and ended up in the hospital.

[Panando]

I had a dwarf mother who was also a military dwarf carry her baby into multiple bloody battles. I was curious what the fate of this child would be after its early trauma, so I renamed it to "War Baby". A couple of years later it was tantruming and became haggard and eventually got put down (I can't remember exactly how), then later came back to haunt the fortress as a ghost. Such an outcome is by no means guaranteed, in fact I'd say only 10% of dwarves are unable to recover from trauma, with maybe 2% being unable to deal with even routine trauma like seeing a corpse, but more getting put on a downward spiral by things like severe injuries.

[amade]

I had a dwarf mother who was also a military dwarf carry her baby into multiple bloody battles. I was curious what the fate of this child would be after its early trauma, so I renamed it to "War Baby". A couple of years later it was tantruming and became haggard and eventually got put down (I can't remember exactly how), then later came back to haunt the fortress as a ghost. Such an outcome is by no means guaranteed, in fact I'd say only 10% of dwarves are unable to recover from trauma, with maybe 2% being unable to deal with even routine trauma like seeing a corpse, but more getting put on a downward spiral by things like severe injuries.

This frequently happens for babies or young children who are exposed to traumatic things early in fortress life. They don't have the buffer of good long-term memories yet that they can recollect to offset the bad ones. So the memories that produce strong, bad thoughts keep recurring disproportionately, and builds up a lot of stress. Much like in the real world, early childhood in DF is actually a pretty important phase in their development. But once they are a few years old and have acquired a lot of positive memories as a buffer, you can put them to work picking up corpses and body parts and maybe let them witness deaths of sentients without too much negative fallout. YMMV.