New player with a stable but kinda boring fortress - how do I shake things up?

[thegeneralsolution]

This is my first fortress as a new Dwarf Fortress player. Difficulty is Normal and I went with all the default map settings. My fortress exists mostly underground. After 6 game-years of play, I have 131 living dwarves, 14 dead. (Is that good? I have no idea).

What's going well:
-I seem to be doing well on essentials. Plenty of food, drink, places to sleep, etc.
-I make a lot of metal objects for trade. Can usually buy what I can't make.
-62 of my 131 dwarfs are happy as can be.

What's not going well:
-I generally have 2 to 4 miserable dwarves, and about 20 or so unhappy dwarves.
-Almost all of my unhappy dwarves are children, but reviewing their thoughts doesn't seem to indicate what they're unhappy about.
-Dwarves with very specialized skills often go mad with boredom and die of dehydration. But I don't always have use for their skill, or sometimes I don't have the essential items for them to practice their craft (i.e. I have no milkable animals in my fort, don't know how to get them, and several of my cheesemakers went mad). It is also not always easy to assign an alternate task to a specific individual to make sure they stay busy.
-Citizen count seems to have plateaued.

What could be better:
-A lot of my fortress covers the dirt basics - crude furniture and very basic comforts
-I think many of my dwarves are only half clothed.
-I have almost no military but I don't really encounter anyone except traders and elves that complain about me chopping trees. So I don't really see the point (famous last words probably, haha)


In summary, after 6 in-game years of play, I have a stable, if humble fortress. It is neither growing in population much, nor collapsing on itself. Honestly I was kind of hoping more would go wrong! If failure is fun, then I want more of it! :P

What should I do to grow my fortress, attract more migrants, and create more excitement?

[Zombie Teddy Bear]

Dig down or go to war with elves

[Regular jackoff]

i assume you haven't looked into clothing yet. they wear and eventually get destroyed. clothing marked as 'x item x' is 0.75% condition, 'X item X' is 50%, 'XX item XX' is 25%

i don't know how it affects their stats or the dwarfs mood but missing clothing entirely doesn't make them happy. if you want to fix this you'll need to mass produce clothing because every one of those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ needs 2 socks, 2 gloves, ... and they will replace worn clothing with better condition ones, leaving the worn ones all over the place so you need a way to deal with that as well. i tried to make a worn clothing only stockpile only but it didn't work (anyone know how?) so i've been assigning them to the atomizer manually but it kindof takes a lot of time and i'd rather do other things than clean up dwarf socks

[LastChime]

Socks and gloves are made in sets at least...but often wear independently for reasons....agitated ospreys being most common for me.

The way I know to make a worn clothes stockpile is via links, the worn one takes from everywhere (also maybe turn refuse on to make it burn up the stuff if you don't feel like trading the rags off, great "free" dwarfbucks tho usually), the new clothes pile only takes directly from your clothier/leatherworker

[+|+ Zork +|+]

Set up a military (melee squads and crossbow squads). Train them. Outfit them with armor and weapons (get your metal industry up and running). Explore the underdark with them.
Prepare for an invasion on the surface by building cage traps, crushing drawbridges, drowning chambers, all manners of weapon traps, killing pits, minecarts that launch sharp or heavy objects at enemies through fortifications.
There's thieves that will sneak into your fort undetected. Anticipate them.
I expect your fort to be visisted by werebeasts, cyclopses, giants, minotaurs and dragons. By the way, werebeast infections can quickly become terminal fun!
When your fort produces enough wealth, it WILL attract forgotten beasts from the deep too.
And if things get too calm for you, try to dig down through the magma sea...
Or the threat might come from within, if one of your migrant waves seem to have brought a vampire dwarf as well. Good luck finding it.
All the while managing the physical and mental health of your Dorf community of course. Nekkid or sober dwarves tend to lose it, hurting or killing innocent bystanders. Causing all kinds of depression with their friends and families. Triggering more bouts of violence. Which have more negativity as a result..
Death is not the end though. Some particularly troubled dwarves might come back from the dead to haunt your fort.

And that's just some of the ♥♥♥♥ that is certain to happen, of the top of my head.

P.S.: Oh, do your dwarves know how to swim? Teach them to swim.

[[+DG+] Sir_Castic]

The wiki (and the old help screens) used to say somewhere that "anyone can wall themselves into an impenetrable self-sufficient fortress and live forever... But that ♥♥♥♥ is boring as hell" or some ♥♥♥♥. "Losing is fun" is the motto.

If you wanna start having fun, you gotta start putting some actual skin in the game.

Suggestions to do so:

* Replace any impenetrable entrances to your fort (bridges, walls, etc) with destroyable doors.
* Meet invaders head on instead of turtling
* Train only on live, captured invaders
* Build a colleseum
* Dig too deep
* Dig as greedily as possible
* Attempt to gather absurd wealth
* Get a dwarf to knock over a statue in your temple during a tantrum and turn a portion of your society into werebeasts
* Start ♥♥♥♥ with the elves by stealing everything they come to trade
* Do this with the humans too, if you're feeling lucky
* Attempt to tame the cavern creatures
* Perform living sacrifices
* Murder your nobles
* Read boatmurded and try to copy it

Hope this helps. Dig deep and dig greedily

[thegeneralsolution]

These are some really great suggestions. Thank you all so much!

[briezee]

Regarding your citizen count plateauing: check to make sure other settlements of your civilization still exist on the world map. If so, make sure that export enough wealth to the dwarfs that the mountain homes are impressed and send more migrants.

[Norðtann]

just check the personality traits of ur dwarves and realize that the "excitement" already made some of them an emotional wreck.... 6 years is not a long time and stuff gets more fun when u accumulated some wealth. Have u set a lower pop limit?

[Goatseface Killah]

Setup a tavern that's open to the public and place your artifacts on pedestals inside it. Makes sure you have a Captain of the Guard and a dungeon area. Now wait for a dwarf to steal an artifact (you'll get a message if they're caught or if the artifact is found missing) and you should have an open case in your Justice menu. Have fun hunting down conspirators from in and out of your fort!