Editing Need

{{Quality|Superior|01:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)}}

'''Needs''' affect a creature's focus - needs that are unmet for long enough will cause [[stress]], become bad [[thought]]s, and increasingly damage the creature's '''focus''', while sufficiently well-satisfied needs will improve it.

Focus affects a dwarf's ability to perform. A dwarf with high focus will work faster and produce better results, while a distracted dwarf will take longer to do everything poorly. Focus is separate and independent of overall mood; a dwarf can be happy even with largely-unmet needs, or unhappy yet focused. However, prolonged insufficiency in meeting needs is a cause for both low focus and bad thoughts. Thus, Focus can, with prudence, be used to predict future mood developments.

A highly-focused dwarf can receive an effective-skill bonus of up to 50%; a badly distracted dwarf can receive an effective skill penalty of up to 50%.

 

An individual creature's set of needs and their weights (levels) are affected by [[personality trait]]s. For instance, a dwarf that values romance will be unfocused "after being unable to make romance", while a dwarf that personally values nature will be unfettered "after seeing animals". Unreligious dwarves will have no need to pray or meditate; dubious and casual worshippers will have low or medium level needs to pray; committed believers will have high level need; and dwarves following multiple deities will have a separate prayer need with a separate level for each of their deities. Proposed weights per need level are 1, 2, 5, and 10.

As expected, high-level needs hold a much larger sway in a dwarf's overall focus than low-level needs. Curiously, the large majority of dwarves currently seem to only have low-level needs for [[alcohol]] and function quite well without it as long as they are otherwise satisfied. A small percentage have no need for alcohol at all, in effect being immune to alcohol withdrawal.

When a need is satisfied, its value is refreshed to maximum (400), regardless of previous value. There is no minimum to how {{DFtext|Badly distracted|4:1}} a need can get. A deeper negative value won't further reduce total Focus, which is based on a ratio of all needs' Focus rating.

|ARTWORK

|(Socialize with close family members?)

|(Recite any poem?)

|Eating a preferred food (or a preferred alcohol [[cook]]ed into a meal) {{bug|10262}}

|Complete a Fish, Return kill (hunt) or Gather plants job

|Bring water or food to patient/prisoner/animal*; bring wounded units to rest; leading demonstration.

|drink alcohol

|ARTWORK

|Implemented, but inaccessible without modding. If your character has close family members this need will be filled by spending time with them (seems to only apply to blood relations). However there is currently no way to actually do this outside of mods.

|Use any Skill

|Unknown

|Uncertain, possibly encounter LARGE_ROAMING?

|Unknown, possibly eating a preferred food {{bug|10262}}

|Wear any item with a quality modifier

|Move to/from any site or region tile / completed fish, hunt(return kill) and gather plants in fort mode

Satisfying any need will result in a good thought and a decrease in stress.

Upon creating your adventurer you may want to avoid having any of the non-fulfillable needs: romance, family, friends. Otherwise, you will suffer never-ending [[focus]] disadvantages. Immoderation too is only technically fulfillable for the itinerant adventurer, without a fortress' industry to reliably produce her preferred food.

Some precaution is necessary in sacrifice/altruism -> helping capability is not available as long as you're quite weak (fighting; companions), and maybe in martial prowess if you're not constantly fighting and so increasing your stats. To fulfill your booze needs, you'll have to visit human towns' taverns or dwarven fortresses quite often (and fill your extra water storage containers with ale from the barrels for on the road).