Failing strange mood always cause death?

[Floyd Stash]

Sometimes i get requests that just can't be fullfilled,
Just had a strange mood that asked for adamantine cloth, when i havent even finished breaching the first cavern.

So obviously thats impossible but the only solution to this is walling in and letting the dwarf die. how come theres no alternative way to dealing with a failing mood.. i feel like the current situation just either makes you cheeze the game or accept death.

it seems so radical and final for no reason. especially since theres emotions and doctors. makes me wonder why we can't just assign a psychologist to the hospital that deals with failed strange moods and helps mentally recover the dwarves.. instead of always just walling em in and letting em die. :S

[rome of oxtrot]

Failing a strange mood is always ultimately fatal.

However, with proper fortress management you should never fail a strange mood. Strange moods will never demand anything that your fortress has never had, so if you make sure to keep reserves of items likely to be needed for strange moods, you'll always be able to provide whatever thing a moody dwarf requests.

[Floyd Stash]

Originally posted by rome of oxtrot:

Failing a strange mood is always ultimately fatal.

However, with proper fortress management you should never fail a strange mood. Strange moods will never demand anything that your fortress has never had, so if you make sure to keep reserves of items likely to be needed for strange moods, you'll always be able to provide whatever thing a moody dwarf requests.

well currently my noble is requesting a aluminium weapon rack, and i've never even come across aluminium yet.
and the strange mood was requesting metal cloth (adamantine), and ive never come across adamantine yet.

So i'm not sure where you get that logic because it's clearly requesting things that i'm very far from obtaining. i read on the web that adamantine spawns around lava cavern layer 3..
im only just entering my first cavern. and im like 10 dwarf years into the game.

[rome of oxtrot]

Your noble's demand for an aluminum weapon rack is a demand, not a strange mood. Failing a demand simply makes the noble who made it slightly unhappy. Demands are not mandates and neither are related in any way to strange moods. Noble demands are often effectively impossible to satisfy but can be ignored with only minor consequences.

Dwarfs will never have a strange mood requiring a material that is unknown to the fort. A moody dwarf will only demand metal cloth for the mood if the fortress has, or has in the past had, metal cloth. If you haven't had metal cloth in the fort, a moody clothier or weaver will demand whatever cloth type they have a preference for, or if none a random type of cloth.

[Ottfried]

Guess you had a bug with the metal cloth. It's sad, but yeah. The dwarf has to die for it.
That happened to me too, but with another material. Don't know what it was, but I also rarly care for a single dwarf ^^'

[RogueYun]

There is a chance the failed strange mood may lead to the dwarf becoming "Berserk" and he would then trigger traps. When in a position where you can't provide the dwarf with the needed resources for a strange mood if you block off the entrances to the workshop with cage traps you can sometimes (when berserked) capture the dwarf alive and just take care of him in a cage for the rest of his days. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Insanity

[Victor]

Originally posted by rome of oxtrot:

However, with proper fortress management you should never fail a strange mood. Strange moods will never demand anything that your fortress has never had

Oh I'm sorry I should have realized when cobbling together tiny pinches of early-game dwarf bucks to buy giant spider silk cloth, that I need to keep a hefty stockpile of the stuff just in the emergency case of strange moods and let my dwarves go mad because they're naked instead.
It is absolutely possible to lack some material early into a fort, when obtaining the units of materials can consist of amount increases countable on one hand.

I don't really have an issue with that mechanics wise, it is fun, but the notion a mood simply cannot be failed ever, unless due to complete incompetence is a bit haughty.
Sometimes dwarves ask for rare things you aren't in the position to just stockpile up in the thousands for that current moment, like it's year 100 of the fortress existence.

[Saver Sigonith]

Originally posted by Victor:

Oh I'm sorry

I don't think they meant to it be insulting ^^'
Even though I just had a dwarf ask for 145 bolts of wool, I still second the notion that it's generally possible to avoid failing strange moods. They only start happening after you have 20 dwarves and are only supposed ask for adamantite if it's currently available, and can only request specific metals and glass if your fort has ever had any - meaning that if you don't have rock crystals or lead ore on an embark that shouldn't be an issue.

It is indeed very rare for them to ask for 145 of something... Plus, your dwarves can't demand giant spider silk specifically - it's ok just to have regular silk cloth even if they have a preference for giant spider silk. Generally being prepared just means buying a few yarn+silk+wool from early traders and letting early fishermen bring you a couple pond turtles for shells.

I agree the mechanism can be frustrating though! Especially when my weaponsmiths all decide to be possessed and don't get any experience :(

[amade]

Originally posted by Saver Sigonith:

I agree the mechanism can be frustrating though! Especially when my weaponsmiths all decide to be possessed and don't get any experience :(

XP is easy, given enough time and proper use of guildhalls you can have multiple legendary smiths without even needing strange moods.

What's frustrating is when your smith in a strange mood insists on using a specific metal that ultimately gives you a useless artifact weapon/armor. frowns at tin hammer sitting on a pedestal

[Floyd Stash]

I find it very strange also that there's so many strange moods. I've crafted in 10 years about 20 artifacts. Compare this to the rest of my world where all the biggest 200+ population stuff have only 1 or 2 artifacts.
And i only have 60 dwarfs.

Artifacts kinda lose their value in that sense to me, they're being made so much i dont really care about what they are or how much they are worth anymore. Just a nuisance that pops up and might kill one of my dwarfs every now and then.

also i just had a second weaver get the exact same request in a row.. and is now also busy dying in a berserk rage walled in. Bit cheezy and boring, idk why they keep requesting something i can't get yet..

[rome of oxtrot]

Originally posted by Victor:

Even though I just had a dwarf ask for 145 bolts of wool, I still second the notion that it's generally possible to avoid failing strange moods.

Clothpacking on artifacts is definitely a bug and is not intended behavior. I personally suspect it's due to partial bolts of cloth (due to hospital use) but this remains to be determined with definiteness.

[rome of oxtrot]

Originally posted by Floyd Stash:

I find it very strange also that there's so many strange moods. I've crafted in 10 years about 20 artifacts.

You will normally average about one strange mood per season once your fort gets above a certain size (20, iirc), so if you've gotten 20 artifacts in 10 years, you're actually below the curve. It's possible to have a season with no strange mood if there is simply not any dwarf eligible to mood (dwarves who have already mooded, babies, and dwarfs currently on active duty in the military who are not recruits are ineligible to mood) and there are a couple other requirements as well. There's also a variable cap on how many artifacts a fort, and a fort that is over its cap will not experience a strange mood until the cap increases (either by creating more non-artifact items in the fort, or by mining out more underground tiles).

The wiki article on strange moods[dwarffortresswiki.org] sets out in excruciating detail the mechanics of strange moods. While I didn't write this article, and it has not been explicitly updated for v50 (it's based on reverse-engineering of older versions of DF), I can confirm that the operative code has not changed for v50 (with the exception that some change in how item fetching works has led to the "clothpacking" bug mentioned above, in which a moody dwarf inexplicably claims every last scrap of cloth in the fortress) and so the description in the wiki remains essentially correct with respect to the behavior in v50.

[Saver Sigonith]

Originally posted by amade:

What's frustrating is when your smith in a strange mood insists on using a specific metal that ultimately gives you a useless artifact weapon/armor. frowns at tin hammer sitting on a pedestal

Oh, this you actually can control a little! Moody dwarves will default to the closest item of each category unless they have a specific preference, so I usually make a stockpile for steel only right next to the forges and leave everything else a few tiles away. Same for whatever stone I want them making furniture out of today.

If your moody dwarf grabs the wrong item anyway (maybe there were some bars left in the smelter that hadn't been put away yet) you can safely forbid them without canceling the mood. Your dwarf will just go collect more to replace 'em. Just don't forbid the forge itself!


(I also tend to be a bit meticulous about which dwarves I arrange to have what moods - so if I notice a dwarf likes tin in the first place I'll usually train a different skill than weaponsmithing. Dwarf Therapist is a lifesaver for this.)

[amade]

Originally posted by Saver Sigonith:

Originally posted by amade:

What's frustrating is when your smith in a strange mood insists on using a specific metal that ultimately gives you a useless artifact weapon/armor. frowns at tin hammer sitting on a pedestal

Oh, this you actually can control a little! Moody dwarves will default to the closest item of each category unless they have a specific preference, so I usually make a stockpile for steel only right next to the forges and leave everything else a few tiles away. Same for whatever stone I want them making furniture out of today.

If your moody dwarf grabs the wrong item anyway (maybe there were some bars left in the smelter that hadn't been put away yet) you can safely forbid them without canceling the mood. Your dwarf will just go collect more to replace 'em. Just don't forbid the forge itself!

No, the dorf wants a specific metal. Not the closest one. It's not common, but once in a while you'll get a moody dorf who wants to use a metal that matches their personal preference. You can check with DFhack via showmood if they want something generic or something specific.

For generic mood demands my method of selecting materials is to put a temporary stockpile that accepts what I want the the dorf to use next to the claimed workshop and link it with the source stockpile.

[Saver Sigonith]

You'll notice I said

Originally posted by Saver Sigonith:

Moody dwarves will default to the closest item of each category unless they have a specific preference,

Sorry your dwarf was obsessed with tin though...

But anyway, all that said I do find that moods happen at kind of a breathless pace... the various caps rarely matter if you've say, ever found the caves or have a clothing industry, meaning it tends to only stop once every single dwarf in your fort has run through their mood and every single child wastes theirs on bonecarving.