Unhappy Dwarves?

[ImCaligula]

Most of my Dwarves seem somewhat unhappy, When I check their unmet needs (which I assume is what is making them unhappy) I get:
- Not enough time to pray *whatever god*. I made them a temple, they are going there. Why not enough time? Do I have too many tasks assigned?
- Not enough time with family
- Not enough time socialising. There's a tavern, and plenty of food and drink but no innkeeper (and no instruments because they won't bring them there). Is that not enough? I don't see them going there often
- Cannot acquire a new object. What's this? I am making objects, what do they want from me? I can't see any way to make a shop or something they can get them from, are they missing specific objects (like clothes, which I am not making yet)? How do they *acquire* objects?

Besides not acquiring enough objects, all the other issues seem to stem from the Dwarves not having enough free time. But they don't have a schedule so why not? Can't they just pray longer if they want to? Or meet up? I have ♥♥♥♥ queued but they can get to it whenever they want, right? I feel like I'm missing something. Some veteran can provide some advice? Thanks.

[Evilmasteryoda]

The Aqure object, you need to have clothing stockpiles stocked with socks, shoes, mittens, gloves, togas, tunics, dresses... ect. Have finished goods stockpiles with Braclets, crowns, scepters, totems and earings. That will create lots of happy thoughts.

Pray to gods is never satisfied /shrug

Not enough time with family usually happens because not everybody is at your fort.

your best bet if you are having troubles and they are not nobels, is put them in a military squad, you can train then and they get happy thoughts from that, and if they are still not happy send the squad to go capture/seize a enemy settlement. They will "settle" that area away from your fort and no longer bother you, rinse and repeate until you get all happy dwarves, on year 105 of my second fort with only 11 less then neutral dwarves.

You can also expel dwarves which is easier if they are single and unahppy, but if they have kids, they will follow them out of the fort as well. Expel is the red arrow pointing right when you are viewing a dwarf.

The socializing piece you might need a meeting area, dinning room, and tavern separate, I like making a meeting area with a bunch of high quality statues and displays displaying our Relics.

[Empath demon]

Portable instruments and goblets will be placed in chests if you put chests in your tavern. (Do.) Non-portable instruments can be "built" in the tavern instead.

You could start making temples to specific gods in addition to the "no particular god" temple. They love their specialized temples.

To figure out what items they want, look at their clothes (what's wearing out? make more) and their specific material and object preferences for some hints.

[Other]

In addition to their needs, also check the thoughts tab for recent bad thoughts. While meeting their needs will give them a good thought, and a need unmet long enough gives a bad thought, the more common source of bad thoughts is bad things happening. So if you see "shaken because they were injured", "unhappy about walking through a miasma", "traumatized by seeing a dwarf die", and such, you might see if there is anything you can do to keep bad things from happening to them as well.