How to make Dwarves happy in one easy step

[JaxterSmith]

Pour water down your central stairwell (where it falls, not so it flows) and watch as dwarves forget to be angry about living standards worse than livestock and are ecstatic about everything.

Mileage may vary.

For real though, using the aquifer above my fortress as a cheap waterfall engine has made my Dwarves excited too go a full year withought drink, and 6 beds split among the lot of 20, I heard the stories of how busted mist generators are for mood, but this is my first time witnessing it firsthand

[Erei]

It's called a mist generator and it's indeed relatively effective. You need ways to stop water to create mists (falling water don't do much), and I would suggets a way to prevent dwarves to fall in the "waterfall". Mist go through fortifications, and water is briefly stopped by horizontal metal bar/floor grate, but not stopped long enough to spill. You can make such a "stop" at every z level if you wish to have mist everywhere.
They'll still find their way in the shaft once in a while, so a way to stop water to free them is strongly advised.
Also, if water freeze in your biome, temperature is simple in DF for water. It will freeze "above ground" but not "below ground". Everything that was exposed to the sun even once will become "above ground".
Wiki have other kind of design, for those interested.


But to be fair, keeping dwarves happy isn't so difficult. Make booze, meal, provide them with a decent room ( bed + cabinet, then statue, chest, engraving, what have you), and they'll be happy as is. My fortress have everyone above orange except for about 10 guys, only one is orange, nobody is red. I do have a mist generator though.
You'll always have a Karen McGrumpy who is never happy, but that can't be helped.

[Charlie.Brown]

Would you please elaborate a bit more on what you call "mist generator", how to produce it and how to put it on work to raise dwarves' happiness?

[DoubleG]

Mist is generated when water falls Zed levels. Dwarfs love mist, and will feel much better about all their friends dying and the horrible hellscape they are in if they get a few splashes of water on them.

Simple mist generator is to dig your main stairwell as a 3x3 square, then channel out the central tile on all levels. Put floor grates in the centre to prevent dwarfs falling. Finally add a water source at the top. Make sure you have a way to ♥♥♥♥ it off if needed, it can cause FPS drop. Depending on what sort of water source you're using you should alter the top feed. Pretty much it...

Another good idea is to use pumps in your main meeting area. Place them in a ring with statues under the outputs and a few buckets of water can make a mist generator in your main meeting hall.

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by Charlie.Brown:

Would you please elaborate a bit more on what you call "mist generator", how to produce it and how to put it on work to raise dwarves' happiness?

You can build mist generators a few different ways.

The easiest is by simply digging a ramp downwards through a light aquifer and let the slowly leaking running water cascade down. You can do this to make drinking cisterns for wells as well as underground fishing ponds. Overflow can be drained off the side of the map edge if it is stone, smoothed, and fortified. This way you will not be in danger of flooding your fortress.
edit: importan note i forgot to mention: Manage the water flow down the ramp.
A water depth between 1 and 2 is your goal. Water depths of 3+ flowing downwards can and will interrupt hauling orders, these dropped items will be picked up again since the depth will drain below 3 eventually. Widen hallways and block off water to limit the flow.

Or you could build a mist generator using generated power from water wheels or windmills and pump operators. This is more complicated, but easy enough once you understand the basics. Here's a link to BLIND s tutorial video from youTube. You can find lots of other player made tutorials for this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdrkZ2Zb5uc

good luck have fun

[harlequin_corps]

Originally posted by Charlie.Brown:

Would you please elaborate a bit more on what you call "mist generator", how to produce it and how to put it on work to raise dwarves' happiness?

Pour water down the stairwell. That's it in a nutshell.
When the water hits things, like a stairwell, it becomes a Waterfall and creates Mist, which carries just like the Miasma and Smoke. Dorfs like seeing Mist and they like seeing Waterfalls. The additional benefit you get from a Waterfall in a stairwell is it washes off all the gunk collected on them (Blood/Ichor/Vomit/Venom) so they don't need to bathe as often. Then at the bottom make a Well/Well Sump with water outflow to the edge of the map, that's the easiest method. That gives you a water source inside the fortress for thirsty and wounded dorfs in the hospital as well as a bathing spot. Make some soap, watch them take a bath in the Waterfall/Wells.
A mist generator that isn't flow oriented, i/e water from aquifer/river, is a watermill/pump arrangement where the watermill creates flow/pressure to pump the water running the water back up to the water mill.
You put water into a Water Sump with buckets and a Pond zone, run a pump or two from it into a corridor, then above the corridor hang a watermill that powers the pumps, then somewhere in there create a waterfall effect where the water hits something, like the floor, then flows back to the sump. Pumps take 10 power, watermills generate 100 power, with the axles/gears at 1/5 power respectively you generally have enough there to run the arrangement infinitely.
The benefit to this arrangement is you don't need to put added effort into securing the water intake or run water to outflow.
One of the benefits of working with aquifer is it's a solid wall still, just a leaky one so it's still secure. Running flow from a river means taking steps to secure the in flow from teh baddies, especially baddies that don't drown and can destroy grates/bars/flood gates. The downside to working with aquifers is you lose.. 8 .. 10 levels of usable Z layers because the process of digging it all out is painful. Said levels which are the heaviest in Flux Stone, btw, and even when you DO dig it out you still have to go back and undo all the stuff you did or your game becomes Drown Fortress.
However, the aquifer/stairwell/outflow to map edge fortification is by far the EASIEST and FASTEST method of getting all the positive effects of water management in place and running smoothly.

[Erei]

How my most used (and possibly OP) mist generator works :
Main stairwell like this :

*zzz*
z+++z
z+0+z
z+++z
*zzz*

* is empty space
z is stairs
+is fortification
0 is either an horizontal bar or grate, with no roof/floor for the purpose of water flow

The screenshot a further below have a picture of how it look like :)

This goes on up until you reach the main water input, either a river, ocean, aquifer, whatever.
It goes down all the way to the output. It's best if you put that one below where you dwarves live and works, to get fully benefit. The output is a tunnel all the way to the edge of the map. Since you can't mine at the edge, you need to smooth->carve fortification there. Water will flow "outside" the map that way. I make a bigger tunnel than the input (usually 3 tiles wide), which is 1 tile wide, to make sure there are no overflow.

Remember the basic safety :
-if it freeze in winter, make sure your mist generator, ionput and output tunnel are NEVER exposed to the surface, even once. It will be forever considered "outside" and freeze if that happen. Otherwise, it will stay "inside" and never freeze.
-have a way to block the input tunnel. Sometimes someone or an animal will "phase" through the fortification and you may want to save them. Or you may want to do some work, whatever.

Fortification prevent people from going inside the thing, and to some extent, prevent water to spill. It spill inside the fortification instead of the floor. It doesn't block the mist.
The grate/bar cause mist to happen when water hit, but doesn't block the water flow otherwise.


You get the basic mist generator, but allow me to introduce a more complex one. That one I use for military squad. Military are always miserable because the food is bad, they see death all the time, can't pray/whatever, and so on and so forth.
This one need several Z level to make, and some power. But it's self sufficient and wo'nt require any input of water once it's start to run.

Barracks level (but it can be used for anything, I used one for tavern in the past, when mood was a real concern).

s**s
****
****
s**s
That's inside the barracks. Essentially, an empty 4*4 squares (*), with statue (s). The statues are not mandatory, but prevent muddy ground and people to get in that tile and (briefly) get in 7/7 water and start "drowning"). Although I guess it can be used to teach swimming ?
Water will flow in those 4 statues and create the mist. Do not put any output, or bar. Regular floor.

For the Z above it's a bit more complex :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937882065

You can see 4 pumps. Directions doesn't matter, but what matters is the fact they form a "circle", if you will. For example, water start on the upper right corner, it's pumped to the upper right, drop (mist) then it's pumped to the down right and drop (mist).... In DF, water is pumped as soon as it hits the floor but before it splatter, essentially you keep a cube of water moving around.

On the picture You can also see the previous generators :) Also, the effect of the generators and an otherwise nice fort for people in the mood. The "orange" guy is one of the original 7, and in perpetual state of grumpiness. The guy seek conflict, then he is sad because he get.... into conflicts. Too realistic I guess.

On the Z level above you get the mechanism for the pumps, eventually leading to your source of power.
And also, aboce one of the 4empty tiles (above one of the statue), you have a retractable bridge encased in a 1tile hole. Above it, you dump water (manually is safest). When the water in that 1*1tile with the bridge reach 6/7 or 7/7 (it seems the UI say 6/7 for some reason), open the bridge, which drops the water and start the cycle.

If that's too cheese for you, you can always make one like the one above, either one tile of mist generator, or several, you don't even need fortifications there.

I do hope it was helpful, it's tricky to explain and all. If that was a bit too complex, I can provide screenshots of the assembly.