Gnomes Happy Guide
Сrеdit gоеs to Rat!
Socialization issues can mean that they’re too busy. They should get it naturally as they go about their normal schedule, but if they can’t then you may need to make arrangements (IIRC, check “Therapy Squads” in the DF wiki under military).
Prayer should be targeted when possible. But, if you don’t know the specific religion, a generic temple should be fine. Yes, make one when you get the other, more critical, things satisfied.
You don’t need a whole season if everything else is fine. (Would think that’d be just something some streamer would do for clicks, to be honest. It shouldn’t be needed like that.) IMO, better labor management and enough dorfs to do it should mean that dorfs might be able to get their socialization naturally.
IMO – Systems that DF uses in its citizens aren’t designed to be possible for every gameplay instant to balance them… They are supposed to be hard to perfect, else… why is there a player at the keyboard? You will have troublesome dorfs.
Note: Take care of your kids – Untoggle chores that involve moving corpses and try to keep them away from them. They can develop bad memories that are hard to counter with just toys, clothes, and a nice room. On that, too – Great meals help a lot of sullen dorfs.
A temple has no furniture requirements at all, you can make a temple anywhere for zero cost just by designating a square on the ground. you could have a “temple” that’s just a square on the grass on day 1 before you even unload the cart. I generally make a dormitory, a temple, and a tavern as my first 3 rooms in my temporary shelter before even starting on the real fort. a temple can go down immediately and is a big early source of happiness so I highly recommend designating one immediately on day 1 or week 1 at the latest.
As far as long term strategies for happiness the biggest contributors are: having a nice room, acquiring nice things (clothing is the best to satisfy this), having a library (they get a happy though/memory from each new book they read and you can amass huge amounts of books just from trading even if you don’t have your own scholars), and having enough free time to socialise and pray, and being able to craft something with a quality level occasionally.
I find the key to making sure your dwarfs have enough free time and get to craft things with quality levels is to not overspecialise all your dwarfs and just them do what they want. if you make a specific labour for every single individual job in your fort then some of those dwarfs will never have any free time. For example, there’s almost always cooking and brewing to be done 24/7, so if you make 5 specific cooks/brewers than those dwarves will never have any free time meanwhile the dwarves with a less frequent job like glassmaking will have nothing but free time because there’s rarely any glass making to do. In comparison, if you have no specific cooks and let any dwarf do it, then anyone who is free will go cook, resulting in all your dwarves getting more equal free time spread between them. Likewise if you have a dwarf who’s a specialised milker/cheesemaker then they’ll get sad because they never craft anything with a quality level, but if you have something like bonecarving available to all unspecialised dwarves then everyone will occasionally get the chance to craft something with a quality level and be happier.
A bit more advanced but dwarves LOVE waterfalls so if you make yourself a mist generator or waterfall that runs through your fort then you’ll pretty much never have to worry about happiness again. If you do this you can pretty much ignore all my other advice because mist is OP for happiness and will pretty much guarantee a max happiness fort.
Final point is that some dwarves are depression prone by design so you’re actually not supposed to be able to keep everyone happy. even if you do everything right expect a few unhappy dwarves because that’s part of the design philosophy of the game to keep things interesting. Much like real life, some people can have everything they ever want and continue to be unhappy with their lives.
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