v50 Steam/Premium information for editors
  • v50 information can now be added to pages in the main namespace. v0.47 information can still be found in the DF2014 namespace. See here for more details on the new versioning policy.
  • Use this page to report any issues related to the migration.
This notice may be cached—the current version can be found here.

DF2014 Talk:Stress

From Dwarf Fortress Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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)