Stress

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

v50.14 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

Stress is a condition that is similar to unhappiness in earlier versions. It will cause the dwarf to flash with a downward red arrow, and Over the long term, Urist McStressed has been under a great deal of stress. will show on their thoughts and preferences tab.

Dwarves under stress for long periods of time will develop worse symptoms of stress level: Urist McStressed has become haggard and drawn due to the tremendous stresses placed on him.. In the short-term, excessive levels of stress will lead to temporary emotional breakdowns - throwing tantrums, slipping into depression, or stumbling around obliviously. In the long-term, excessive levels of stress may lead to insanity.

Under even greater stress for prolonged periods of time, dwarves will become Harrowed, their thoughts and preferences tab reading: Urist McStressed has been utterly harrowed by the nightmare that is his tragic life.

Animals can also be stressed, which seems to happen when an animal has been constrained for a long time.

Internally, stress level is tracked with one number, where a negative number is good and a positive number is bad. It is not possible to view this number without third-party utilities.

Stress ranges from -1000000 to +1000000, and the negative effects start appearing at +10000, +25000, and +50000.

Stress itself gradually increases or decreases based on the emotions visible on the dwarf's Thoughts and Preferences screen - it basically adds up all of the positive emotions (to reduce stress) and the negative emotions (to increase stress) with appropriate weights on each one (since some emotions are much stronger than others), caps the two sums at 500, adjusts the stress boost based on the dwarf's Stress Vulnerability personality trait, then takes the difference and adds it to the dwarf's current stress level.

Managing Stress

Here is a general guide on keeping your dwarves unstressed.

In v0.44.12 stress is bugged and very difficult to manage; dealing with it in-game typically involves a lot of micromanaging, which is decidedly un-fun. The problems include dwarves not socializing properly, requiring very specific food because it's their favorite, being away from family without any way for them to visit, and obsessively mulling over negative thoughts from rain, snow and seeing corpses, all of which lead to stress. Often those negative thoughts compound and heavily outweigh any positive thoughts they also have, leading to a fort where nobody works at anything but trying to kill each other, but there are many workarounds; here are some helpful tips for dealing with stress in v0.44.12.

Altering the raws

• The easiest method is to alter the raw files that control stress vulnerability. The dwarven file is found at /raw/objects/creature_standard.txt. Inside that file under [CREATURE:DWARF], you will find [PERSONALITY:STRESS_VULNERABILITY:0:45:100]. These numbers are dwarves' minimum (0), average (45), and maximum (100) capacity for stress. Changing these values will cap stress vulnerability on all dwarves - for instance, 0:30:70 would limit the maximum stress possible to the range of "High", meaning that you can still get stress problems, but to a more manageable degree. Making the values 0:0:0 would make all dwarves immune to stress entirely. You do not need to generate a new world for this to work (if you want this fix to apply to an existing save, edit the raw file in data/save/(your world)/raw/objects instead).
• Another large source of stress is seeing corpses, cleaning up after a battle can stack stress from the horrified emotion. A way to prevent this is to edit the Dwarf raw files by adding the tag [NATURAL_SKILL:DISCIPLINE:#], where # is a value 1-15. [NATURAL_SKILL:DISCIPLINE:5] would make all dwarves Proficient in Discipline, making them able to see and handle corpses without major effects. Making the value [NATURAL_SKILL:DISCIPLINE:15] would make them all Legendary in Discipline, making them effectively immune to stress from corpses as well as preventing panic in battle.
• Weather is a huge cause of negative thoughts because dwarves hate nature and don't like to be rained on. Weather can be disabled by changing [WEATHER:YES] to [WEATHER:NO] in d_init.txt. The Lazy Newb Pack also offers a control to toggle weather.

DFHack Solutions

If you are using DFHack there are several helpful terminal commands you can run to improve your situation.

• The command remove-stress -all will reset all units in your fort to -1,000,000 stress.
• The command fillneeds -all will fill the unmet needs of all units in your fort. Running this along with remove-stress -all will prevent almost any stress problems in a fort for at least a few months. It is recommended to run these two commands whenever stress is starting to get out of control.
• The command brainwash will permanently alter a single selected unit's personality. There are several options, including ideal, baseline, and stepford. brainwash ideal will make a unit generally positive, brainwash baseline will make all traits average and brainwash stepford amplifies all good qualities to an excessive degree. Using ideal and stepford are probably the best options for stress management.

Vanilla Options

For those who don't want to use DFHack or edit the raws, you can try to exile all dwarves with stress problems. To expel a dwarf, view their professions, and choose expel.

Problems with exiling

• Nobles can't be exiled
• Some dwarves can't be exiled because of a "Child is not present" bug.
• Exiled (and stressed) dwarves from one player fortress will often show up in a new fortress in the same world, making it very hard to have multiple fortresses without having major stress problems.
• Some exiled dwarves have been reported to return to a fort, it's unclear if by migration wave or as visitors. This is rare and hasn't been verified but it is a possible bug that needs research.^[Verify]

Stress factors

Stress is affected by the emotions a dwarf experiences upon encountering certain circumstances; these encounters are temporarily shown as thoughts in the dwarf's profile, though the resulting stress can linger long after the thoughts are gone. The strength of the emotions (and the resulting stress values) vary based on the dwarf's personality. Controlled testing has shown that these sources of stress build up less in dwarves with high [BRAVERY] and low [STRESS_VULNERABILITY]. [ANXIETY_PROPENSITY] affects the rate at which dwarves dissipate stress. For example, being out in the sun seems to affect dwarves quite strongly in terms of stress.

Emotions and the level of stress or stress relief they cause are detailed in the table of emotions. Note that one event may cause different emotions for different dwarves (and, occasionally, for the same dwarf). The exact mechanisms of how it's decided what emotions are to follow are as of yet unclear, but there's a general consensus that it depends on both severity of factors and the personality of the dwarf in question.

Here is a partial table of emotions and what they can be caused by:

Emotion	Cause
adoration	Giving birth to a baby, becoming a parent
admiration	Being next to completely sublime furniture, watching a performancev0.42.01
affection	Interacting with a pet, adopting a new pet, forming a bond with the trained animal, talking with a friend, making a new friend
aroused	Talking with the spouse, watching a performancev0.42.01
caring	Giving somebody food
empathy	Being yelled at/cried on by an unhappy citizen
enraptured	Communing with deityv0.42.01
fondness	Making a new friend, talking with a friend or a sibling, interacting with a pet
gratitude	Being rescued, receiving water or food, being granted residencyv0.42.01, being elected as mayor, sparring
lustful	Talking with the spouse
love	Talking with a parent, spouse, or child, gaining a sibling
passionate	Talking with the spouse
pleasure	Being next to fine/very fine/splendid/completely sublime furniture, acquiring well-crafted items, putting on a well-crafted/exceptional item, performingv0.42.01, viewing something on displayv0.44.01
proud	Owning a high quality furniture, being elected as a mayor, bringing somebody to rest in bed
repentant	Being confined
sympathy	Giving somebody water or food, bringing somebody to rest in bed
tenderness	Talking with the spouse, bringing somebody to rest in bed
amused	Watching a performancev0.42.01
blissful	Dining in a legendary dining room, sleeping in a good bedroom/great bedroom/bedroom like a personal palace, having a bath, becoming a parent, performingv0.42.01
content	Being able to rest and recuperate, eating a fine/pretty decent meal, having a fine/pretty decent drink, putting on a well-crafted/finely-crafted/superior item, sleeping in a bedroom like a personal palace, having a bath, being near to a waterfall, discussing or pondering a topicv0.42.01
delighted	Eating a truly decent/legendary meal, putting on an exceptional item, being near to a waterfall, watching a performancev0.42.01
elated	Having punishment delayed, being elected
enjoyment	Being near to favourite animal in a cage, performingv0.42.01, watching a performancev0.42.01, playing with toysv0.42.01, playing make believev0.42.01
euphoric	Drinkingv0.42.01
expectant	Discussing or pondering {topic}v0.42.01
free	Being released from confinement
gaiety	Performingv0.42.01
happy	Adopting a new pet, being granted residencyv0.42.01
hope	Being released from confinement
jovial	Having a mandate deadline met
joy	Performingv0.42.01
relieved	Being rescued, bringing somebody to rest in bed, eating vermin to survive, having punishment delayed, being near to a waterfall, being released from confinement, yelling at/crying on somebody in charge
satisfied	Receiving water or food, being successful at work, mastering a skill, teaching a skill, producing a masterwork, creating an artifact, improving a skillv0.42.01, reading a bookv0.42.01, learning a bookv0.42.01, felling a treev0.42.01, slaughtering an animalv0.42.01, getting into an argumentv0.42.01, caging a creaturev0.42.01, being granted residencyv0.42.01, realizing the value of leisure timev0.42.01, realizing the value of naturev0.42.01, realizing nuances of independencev0.42.01, realizing nuances of fairnessv0.42.01, realizing nuances of loyaltyv0.42.01, realizing nuances of lawv0.42.01, realizing nuances of leisure timev0.42.01, realizing nuances of friendshipv0.42.01, realizing the value of knowledgev0.42.01, realizing the worthlessness of eloquencev0.42.01, realizing the worthlessness of powerv0.42.01
triumph	Killing somebody, being elected/re-elected
optimistic	Being able to rest and recuperate, having a mandate deadline met
astonished	Having punishment reduced, having punishment delayed, being elected
awe	Being next to completely sublime furniture
excited	Performingv0.42.01
eager	Being elected/re-elected
exhilarated	Being attacked, getting into an argument, a sparring session, performingv0.42.01
interested	Being next to fine/very fine/splendid/completely sublime furniture, learning the secrets of life and death, watching a performancev0.42.01, being taught a skill, reading a bookv0.42.01, learning a bookv0.42.01, realizing the value of naturev0.42.01, realizing nuances of perseverancev0.42.01, realizing nuances of craftsmanshipv0.42.01, realizing the worthlessness of fairnessv0.42.01, viewing something on displayv0.44.01
wonder	Being taught a skill, learning a bookv0.42.01, communing with {deity}v0.42.01, realizing the worthlessness of perseverancev0.42.01, realizing the value of familyv0.42.01, realizing the value of competitionv0.42.01, realizing the value of cooperationv0.42.01, realizing the value of loyaltyv0.42.01
accepting	Seeing somebody's dead body, having a mandate ignored, being caught in the rain, being forced to drink vomit, being forced to endure the decay of a pet, retching on a miasma, having to conduct an official meeting in a bedroom (many negative memories may change to acceptance as a result of the personality-change systemv0.44.11)
ambivalent	Delayed punishment of a criminal, putting on a well-crafted/finely-crafted item
grim satisfaction	Seeing somebody's death
suspicious	Having a mandate ignored
aggravated	Being pestered by flies
agitated	Being utterly sleep-deprived
annoyed	Being caught in the rain, being caught in a snow storm, being out in the sun, eating without a table or chair, eating without a proper dining room, sleeping on dirt/rocks/cave floor/in the grass, drinking water without a well, suffering a minor injury, choking on cave-in dust, choking on smoke, being accosted by hated vermin, being pestered by flies, drinking without a goblet, cup or mugv0.42.01
anxious	Discussing/pondering (topic)v0.42.01
bitter	Wearing tattered clothes, getting into an argumentv0.42.01
bored	Watching a performancev0.42.01, being unoccupiedv0.42.01, being unable to practice a craftv0.42.01, being unable to practice a martial artv0.42.01, not learning anythingv0.42.01, being unable to use abstract thinkingv0.42.01, being unable to wanderv0.42.01, being unable to fightv0.42.01, being unable to hear eloquent speechv0.42.01, lack of trouble-makingv0.42.01, doing nothing creativev0.42.01, generally leading an unexciting lifev0.42.01
confused	Being knocked out during a cave-in
contemptuous	Getting into an argumentv0.42.01
dejected	Being caught in the rain, being caught in a snow storm, wearing tattered clothes, lack of decent mealsv0.42.01, being unable to pray to {deity}v0.42.01, being kept from alcoholv0.42.01, being unable to admire artv0.42.01, being unable to acquire somethingv0.42.01, being unable to be extravagantv0.42.01, lack of introspectionv0.42.01, generally being unable to take it easyv0.42.01
disappointed	Having a mandate deadline missed
disillusioned	An animal was convicted of a crime
dislike	Talking to somebody annoying
embarrassed	Sleeping without a proper room, sleeping on a dirt/rocks/cave floor/in the grass, wearing tattered clothes, having no shirt, having no shoes, being uncovered, watching a performancev0.42.01
exasperated	Being caught in the rain, being caught in a snow storm, getting into an argument
frustrated	Considering the scarcity of cages and chains, having a mandate ignored, nobody could be punished for a mandate failure, getting into an argumentv0.42.01, lack of decent mealsv0.42.01, being unable to practice a skillv0.42.01, being unable to practice a craftv0.42.01, being unable to practice a martial artv0.42.01, being unable to pray to {deity}v0.42.01, being kept from alcoholv0.42.01, being unable to acquire somethingv0.42.01, being unable to wanderv0.42.01, being unable to fightv0.42.01, being unable to admire artv0.42.01, lack of abstract thinkingv0.42.01, lack of trouble-makingv0.42.01, generally leading an unexciting lifev0.42.01
gloomy	Being out in the sun
glum	Getting into an argumentv0.42.01
grouchy	Being caught in the rain, being caught in a snow storm, being out in the sun, eating the same old food, drinking the same old booze
guilty	Being confined, being able to rest and recuperate, being rescued
indignant	Being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) friend, delayed punishment of a criminal
insulted	Being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) friend, getting into an argument
irritated	Being out in the sun, being hungry/thirsty/drowsy, eating at crowded table, wearing old/tattered clothes, sleeping uneasily due to noise
isolated	Being unable to find somebody in charge to yell at
lonely	Being away from familyv0.42.01, being away from friendsv0.42.01, being away from peoplev0.42.01, being unable to make merryv0.42.01, being unable to make romancev0.42.01
regretful	Toppling something over, starting a fist fight, throwing something, becoming a parent
resentful	Giving somebody water, experiencing trauma, getting into an argumentv0.42.01
restless	Being able to rest and recuperate, being unable to practice a craftv0.42.01, being unable to practice a martial artv0.42.01, being unable to learnv0.42.01, being unable to use abstract thinkingv0.42.01, being unable to arguev0.42.01, lack of trouble-makingv0.42.01, doing nothing creativev0.42.01, generally leading an unexciting lifev0.42.01
self-pity	Being away from familyv0.42.01, being away from friendsv0.42.01, being unable to arguev0.42.01, being unable to fightv0.42.01, being unable to make merryv0.42.01, being unable to practice a craftv0.42.01, being unable to practice a martial artv0.42.01, being unable to wanderv0.42.01, lack of abstract thinkingv0.42.01, being unoccupiedv0.42.01, doing nothing creativev0.42.01, not learning anythingv0.42.01, generally leading an unexciting lifev0.42.01
uneasy	Being near to hated vermin in a cage, being caught in freakish weather, seeing somebody's dead body, being uncovered, retching on a miasma, being attacked, being attacked by the dead, giving birth to a baby, being unable to pray to {deity}v0.42.01, lack of decent mealsv0.42.01, being kept from alcoholv0.42.01, being unable to be extravagantv0.42.01, being unable to help anybodyv0.42.01, being unable to admire artv0.42.01, being unable to acquire somethingv0.42.01, generally being unable to take it easyv0.42.01
worried	Lack of decent mealsv0.42.01, being kept from alcoholv0.42.01, being unable to pray to {deity}v0.42.01, being unable to be extravagantv0.42.01
anguish	Experiencing a miscarriage
ashamed	Eating without a chair
despair	Being caught in freakish weather
disgusted	Retching on a miasma, being nauseated by the sun, drinking water from murky pool, being caught in freakish weather, being forced to eat vermin, being forced to drink vomit, being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) pet, being accosted by hated vermin
distressed	Being pestered by flies
empty	Having a masterwork destroyed
existential crisis	Being unable to advance the study of topicv0.42.01
frightened	Being haunted by the dead
grieved	Unexpected death of somebody
hopeless	Suffering a major injury, being nauseated by the sun
humiliated	Eating without a table or chair, wearing tattered clothes, being uncovered, not having any rooms, having a mandate ignored
mortified	Being forced to eat vermin
panicked	Being attacked, being starving/dehydrated
sad	Being separated from a loved one/loved ones, retching on a miasma
shaken	Suffering a major injury, being knocked out during cave-in, being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) friend
shocked	Being attacked, unexpected death of somebody, having a masterwork destroyed or stolen
alarmed	Seeing somebody's dead body
afraid	Experiencing trauma
angry	Getting into an argument, being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) friend
ferocity	Being attacked
horrified	Seeing somebody die, seeing somebody's dead body, being caught in a freakish weather, being haunted by the dead, being attacked by the dead
loathing	Being out in the sun, being beaten up in the course of dwarven justice or otherwise
outraged	Being forced to endure the decay of a (dead) child/spouse
terrified	Being in conflict
vengeful	Joining an existing conflict

Bug

• Dwarves can quickly become stressed by exposure to corpses and body parts. ^Bug:7435