DF2014 Talk:Stress

I'm new and trying to figure out the game. It sounds like 'stress' and 'happiness' are different ends of the same scale. That is, happiness is simply negative stress. Is that accurate? Happy to add to this page it make it more explicit if so.– unsigned comment by Shortscientist

Evidence: "A dwarf's level of stress will affect [...] make keeping your dwarves happy a priority." DF2014:Thought

Prior to the thought rewrite, happiness was the scale used, with "happy" and "unhappy" thoughts. The rewrite replaced that system with a stress-level system, where "circumstances" trigger "emotions" (including happiness) that add or subtract stress. So currently happiness always lowers stress, but it is only one of 100+ emotions, and really only plays a small part in stress calculations. This does mean references to "happiness" from the old system are slightly misleading--for example, keeping your dwarves happy would technically be more appropriate as keeping your dwarves unstressed, but that would break compatibility with the old versions.--Loci (talk) 19:11, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Actual incidence of stress in practice

As of late, I've been...essentially stress-testing the stress mechanic itself, and so far I've had ample evidence to suggest that your average dwarf, or at least the starting seven, are immune to stressors to an extent that would drive dwarves insane in older versions.

To sum it up: No booze. No well. No beds. No dining furniture. No family. No tavern. No temple. Nothing interesting to do. NO CLOTHES. One of them has has an unfortunate accident and is busy rotting away on the floor in the meeting area.

And not once have they dipped into stressed, let alone started throwing tantrums or going insane. --Valos (talk) 17:12, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

It takes time to accumulate enough stress to drive a dwarf mad. So don't be suprised that nothing happens early in the game. So, unless you've filled the entirety of your fortress with sapient creature corpses, it should take at least a few years of stressful life to cause insanity. TheCrazyHamsteR 12:57, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

What's more notable is that, at present, they haven't even dipped to the point of displaying the stressed/unhappy icon, let alone tantruming or insanity. A save is provided on the page for Bug 9074 for DFHack testing. Annoyingly, the bug cited actually pre-dates the stress system entirely. ._. --Valos (talk) 20:47, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Third negative stress status

There is a third negative stress descriptor beyond "Haggard" -- if a Dwarf reaches the point where they would go insane, but they can't because they have created an artifact, their status on the wound screen changes to "Harrowed" (in the same pink used for deaths), and the first part of their thought screen is "Urist has been utterly harrowed by the tragic nightmare that is his/her life" (again in pink).

They still work, although they are prone to frequent bouts of depression or obliviousness (in my particular case; dwarves that were throwing stress-related tantrums before this point would probably still do so). I've only seen this once, so I have not yet managed to recover a dwarf from this state, but that doesn't mean it is impossible.

68.151.149.168 14:06, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

SalfordSal and 0.47.05

Recently, this page was greatly expanded using an essentially copy-pasted section of a write up by SalfordSal, posted here on the forum: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177577.msg8216071#msg8216071. Here's a reminder it was written with 0.47.04 in mind, so the stress changes in 0.47.05 are not accounted for. For anyone looking to remedy this, !science! on the 0.47.05 changes may be found in this thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177991.0 --Voliol (talk) 10:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm honestly not sure how to start with this edit (and a few others also contributed by the same IP editor at around the same time)—there are a number of issues beyond bringing it into line with DF:CP and DF:CP#S/DF:MOS.

Extensive data-gathering and conclusion-forming er, !!science!! projects like this (especially done by a single editor) used to be separated from purely informational content; see, for example, “Material science” and (IIRC) some other pages related to combat, equipment, etc. And I have doubts about the currency of a lot of the information on some of those pages—especially things that weren't verified at the time which remain unverified today.

The point being: did it help to keep those contributions within the main namespace yet in separate articles? Would it have been better to keep it in a separate namespace (so that it doesn't end up in the namespace of the current version, demanding updates for future versions (and potentially an eventual mark as historical, if its discussion becomes obsolete))? Would it have been better to keep it in the same article, but in a separate section clearly reserved for user-generated research !!science!! (thus easily removed wholesale when its validity is immediately called into question either by game updates or additional experiments))?

It seems clear to me that piecemeal integration for anything that can't be verified is not the solution, since eventually no one will be able to say where it came from without seriously checking the diffs. (Unless DF Wiki has something like the Wiki blame tool on Wikipedia, it seems possible it would never get done.)

As you mentioned, this editor's experiment took place with 47.04 in mind, without considering the stress changes for 47.05 (which is the version the article is supposed to represent, after all).

—οɼѕаk 18:21, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I moved this section below the others in an attempt to address the concern you brought up on my talk page about this burying other useful content. I don't know enough to comment on its accuracy, though. For heavily research-based sections like this, I think some options include marking the section clearly (I'm not sure if there's a good template that would fit), moving it to a subpage, or moving it to a dedicated "science" page. —Lethosor (talk) 05:25, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Stress management notes

Putting it here so I don't misplace my notes. And also because I default to this page instead of the actual article about keeping dwarves unstressed.

- Just putting a dwarf in a squad and disabling all their labors seems to work to decrease stress. Won't be quick, but saves you the bother of scheduling training and/or figuring out which work is meaningful for several dozen individual dwarves. Seems like just being in a squad is enough to make them rush to the tavern when they don't have anything to do.

- Booze and lavish meals. Use the [z] menu to make sure you always have a good supply.

- Have a mayor/expedition leader, and a psychiatrist if the position is available, and give them (each) an office. A chair with a 1 x 1 room size will do, but give them a table too because they'll favor eating on it. Put it in your dining hall so they'll have happy thoughts eating in a nice dining room.

- Set a dining room, doesn't need to be fancy. A bunch of tables and chairs lined up in a corridor will work, even. Pick a table somewhere in the middle of the hall and set the room size as far as it will go. Even if it's an empty corridor, raw floor area contributes to value and your dwarves will like it better. Make sure that each chair is only beside exactly ONE table, and vice versa, to avoid dwarves sitting on multiple chairs connected to the same table, or vice versa, and complaining there's not enough of them.

- Set a tavern, and a temple with no specific deity. Even an empty room without any workers assigned will work. As a bonus, also set them as animal training areas to get all the strays some training.

- Make bedrooms, one for each dwarf or couple. You can just make the bedrooms (as in set the beds as bedrooms from the bed's [q] menu) and leave the dwarves to choose for themselves which one to take. A bed in an empty room will work if you don't feel like doing too much, adding in all the nice things will work better. Engraved floors and walls raise value and don't need much effort on your part. Set the area of the bedroom to include the walls and the door, but note that letting zones overlap (like if two bedrooms share a wall) lowers the value of a room.

- Tell your dwarves to put something on. Some dwarves have trouble keeping themselves clothed, so you'll need to put them in a squad and set a uniform from the military screen. An easy(-ish) way to do this is create a custom uniform (from military [m], and uniform [n]) using the topmost option for each gear category. This will make them grab whatever's available, including all that armor you have lying around that they otherwise will never notice. Then set the custom uniform from the Equip menu (from military [m], equip [e], and assign uniform, [U]). Shift + Enter sets the uniform for the entire slected squad, saving you the trouble of assigning it individually. Note that dwarves with Mining/Woodcutting/Hunting labors enabled have their own secret uniform, so you will need to disable those labors on dwarves you want this to work on. On the other hand, any dwarf with those labors enabled will keep themselves equipped with that secret uniform as long as clothes are available. It unfortunately does not include armor, so if you're suffering from a shortage of clothes and all you have left to wear is a crapton of shell and bone armor, you'll want to assign a uniform.

Emotion names don't match

Some 'Emotion' names listed on this page do not match those on Emotion page, often but not always using verb form. For example 'Dejection' vs 'Dejected'. --Jan (talk) 16:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)