Keeping your dwarves unstressed

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

Some tips on how to keep your dwarves stress-free, thus reducing the chances of tantrums, depressions and obliviousness:

General Tips

• It is more important to keep your dwarves free from negative thoughts than it is to overwhelm them with positive thoughts. Showering Urist McFisherdwarf with ☼jaguar meat roast☼s does not mean a happy dwarf if Urist keeps dwelling over his grouchiness at being caught in the rain.
• If other dwarves are already under a great deal of stress (especially those with a high ANGER_PROPENSITY) may lash out and severely injure or kill others; a corpse in your dining room will lead to horrified thoughts from any dwarf taking a quick booze stop. Make sure to destress these dwarves first, or, if lacking the ability to do so, lock them in their own room or experiment with radical cures.

Specific Dwarves

• Using a tool such as Dwarf Therapist, you can sort dwarves by stress level. There you can hold the mouse over the stress square to see the reasons why the dwarves are stressed and address them. Look up their preferences and assign the dwarves jobs that match their preferences, and build stuff they like especially in their rooms.
• Dwarves that are highly prone to stress, i.e. a high STRESS_VULNERABILITY trait, are not suitable for the military or as nobles. You will have to remove them from these duties and in extreme cases isolate them with burrows to insulate them from stress-inducing stimuli. You might be able to get away with giving high-stress dwarves a "vacation" or demote them for example from a Captain to a mere soldier. Also don't give high-stress dwarves the Refuse Hauling labor, since they often handle dead bodies.
• Dwarves who have to go outside for extended periods of time (like fisherdwarves who work near the local lake or river) become stressed due to constant exposure to rain and long periods away from fun and their friends. You can give these workers their own little vacation by disabling their labors and letting them spend some time inside at the tavern until they regain their composure. Let an unstressed dwarf take care of the job for a while.

Food and Drink

• Make the community dining room your non-noble dwarves dine in high quality. You can increase its quality by making the room bigger, putting in more chairs and thrones, smoothing and engraving it, and putting in valuable furniture like gold statues.
• Embark with or train up a cook, so your dwarves can enjoy high quality meals.
• Make sure you never run out of booze, since a sober dwarf is a stressed dwarf.
  • Make sure to have at least two different kinds of booze on hand, since dwarves will get bored if there's no variety in their drinks.
  • Try to have all different varieties of booze on hand, since dwarves get a happy thought when they drink their preferred booze.

Living Quarters

• Give your dwarves individual bedrooms rather than making them live in a communal dormitory. Not only will they get a good thought from sleeping in their own bedroom, they'll get good thoughts from admiring the furniture they own. Even a minimalist bedroom - a 1x1 grid containing only a bed, within a communal dormitory - helps significantly.
• Give then a bedroom to sleep in anyway, as dwarves do not enjoy sleeping on the ground.
• Improve the bedrooms by making them of respectable size, smoothing/engraving the ground, and adding basic furniture such as coffers.
• If you still wish to use a communal bedroom to protect your dwarves from vampires, designate each bed as a room itself. This way dwarves can keep an eye on each other and still have their own rooms.
  • Overlapping the bedrooms will reduce the overall value of each "room" but a high enough overall room value can overcome this.
  • You can also make the shared suites large enough that the bedroom designations do not overlap.
  • Overlapping won't create an additional reduction in value after a certain point; it is quite easy to give everyone a royal-bedroom this way.
• Make the Noble’s rooms better than other rooms. They have the insane ability to tell if the peasantry has slept better than them and it makes them unhappy.

Fortress Improvements

• Place highly valuable furniture, if possible artifacts, in a high traffic area of your fort, since dwarves get a positive thought if they pass right next to or over expensive furniture.
• Dwarves who spend most of their time underground will become stressed when exposed to sunlight. If the dwarves who need to work outside aren't already regularly exposed to sunlight, put some combination of these high traffic areas on the surface:
  • Meeting area or Statue garden - Won't catch dwarves that never idle.
  • Dining room - Will need to ensure nobles that have private dining rooms have another means.
  • Booze stockpile - Requires a custom stockpile but otherwise very reliable.
  • Note that dwarves don't like to be out in rain or snow, regardless. Build a roof to protect them from it.
• Keep at least a few cats around to hunt down irritating vermin. Pasture some in with your food stockpiles. Note that this will create vermin remains, which need to be hauled to a refuse stockpile or dumped. Alternatively, use a trapper or two.
• Put a cage in a high traffic area (like the meeting area) and stuff it full of (non-grazing) tame animals so your dwarves can enjoy seeing their favorite type of animal.
  • The elven caravans bring random animals, and you can request specific domestic animals from the dwarven caravan.
  • You can use cage traps to capture wild animals, train them.
  • You can raid sites for tame animals. Elven, goblin, and kobold sites often have exotic creatures.
• Create a waterfall or mist generator in a location all dwarves frequent regularly.
• Keep your fortress clean and avoid miasma, or at least confine it to your refuse stockpile if it is underground.
• Keep your refuse stockpile somewhere infrequently traveled, enclosed by doors so that dwarves do not see dead bodies, especially those of sentient creatures.

Miscellaneous

• Keep your dwarves clothed. A naked dwarf is a stressed dwarf. Specifically, they will need something to cover the upper body, such as a shirt, something to cover the lower body, such as trousers, and something on each foot, such as a sock or shoe.
• If a dwarf dies, bury him or engrave a memorial in his name. This will prevent even more stress for his friends, and ghosts to haunt your dwarves or your FPS.
• Pasture all dwarf pets somewhere safe. Wandering pets are likely to die from goblins or construction accidents.
• Instead of vaporising old dwarven clothes, rather sell them to the caravan. Otherwise every destroyed masterpiece sock will stress its creator.
• Be careful with cooking masterpiece dishes. Dwarves tend to drop their ☼dog intestines roast☼ somewhere, and if it withers the cook becomes agitated.