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)