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[Girlinhat]

The results weren't what I expected. Discipline was trained very slowly but no noticeable tragedy training happened. I'm now unsure what caused the students to max out their combat hardness so fast.

Combat itself will raise hardness.  I've observed danger rooms to make a dwarf 'not really care' within 4 months if done right.

[Staalo]

Combat itself will raise hardness.  I've observed danger rooms to make a dwarf 'not really care' within 4 months if done right.

That might have changed or I have something screwy in my setup. It seems my students need to watch things die to gain something in that department. Danger room alone doesn't harden them at all.

The combination of danger room AND seeing dead people... that seems to be working. I sprinkled the other training room with dwarven teeth (thanks for Ùshrir Paddlelistened for her contribution to science!) and it looks like there are some immediate gains in the new test subjects.

Of course hardening is difficult to measure exactly without a suitable tool. Dwarf Therapist doesn't seem to show the hardening stat; are there any others?

[Pirate Bob]

The results weren't what I expected. Discipline was trained very slowly but no noticeable tragedy training happened. I'm now unsure what caused the students to max out their combat hardness so fast.

Combat itself will raise hardness.  I've observed danger rooms to make a dwarf 'not really care' within 4 months if done right.

Can you expand on what "done right" means?  Could this require the trainees have a weapon/shield to parry/block attacks (obviously not possible for children), or did you have your trainees wearing incomplete armor so that they would sometimes sustain mild injuries?  I think I've heard that being injured can raise hardness, but I have no evidence to support this.

Regardless, Staalo's method of sprinkling some teeth around the danger room sounds fantastic and fairly easy.  While training dodging and whatever other combat skills is very nice, I would argue that combat hardness is far more important.  It's all fine and good to have super-soldiers, but super-soldiers that don't go berserk and slaughter everyone for next-to-nothing are infinitely more useful.  I think I will have to task some of my recruits with harvesting teeth from the elven "volunteers"...

Have you tried putting bones, skulls, horns, or any other items produced from butchering in your training rooms?  It's certainly not hard to get teeth, but skulls and horns from butchering are more-or-less useless, so any use for them would be nice.

[Staalo]

I think any part from a sentient creature will do: elf skulls, goblin bones, whatever you happen to have lying around. I had plenty of teeth so I used those. Ordinary butcher shop waste from non-sentient animals probably will not work.

It would be nice if someone else could verify this method. I have too many variables affecting the outcome so I can't be completely sure if the method actually works like I think it does.

[Staalo]

BTW, my earlier atrocities have come back to haunt me. I forgot that I still had the sentient dogs modded in and... well, just look what the caravan just brought in:

Spoiler: What have I done... (click to show/hide)

[Hotaru]

BTW, my earlier atrocities have come back to haunt me. I forgot that I still had the sentient dogs modded in and... well, just look what the caravan just brought in:

Spoiler: What have I done... (click to show/hide)

It was inevitable. Will they do actual work if you buy them? Seems very useful indeed.

[Staalo]

It was inevitable. Will they do actual work if you buy them? Seems very useful indeed.

No, they're still pets and can't be assigned any jobs (I bought them and tried, of course!) They do have skills like ordinary migrants which makes them somehow even creepier.

Well, it's off to tragedy training with them... I'll have to remember to remove the mod before the next caravan brings me another load of canine craftsmen.

[Pirate Bob]

It would be nice if someone else could verify this method. I have too many variables affecting the outcome so I can't be completely sure if the method actually works like I think it does.

I will definitely test this with my fort whenever I get time to play again, but I'm not sure when that will be.  I have quite a few children in need of training, and so far I've just been letting them run free, so none of them should have any combat related skills yet.  I can set up two training rooms and put teeth in one to make sure they really do have an impact.  But again, this may not happen for a few weeks, so probably someone else will do it first...

[Staalo]

While waiting for the main group of students to mature I thought I'd put the existing graduates to a light cross training program. They all are already Legendary in weapon and other combat skills so now I'm pushing them to Legendary in as many skills as I'm able. The graduates started with Pump Operating and now they're going through Mining. I'm going to pick the most useful and attribute building skills.

It will still be a game-year before the first fortress born children will graduate. Most of the children were born during a very short time span, due to "the Dwarven Sixties" of version 40.07. They also have very convoluted family relationships: the duke alone has four children with four different women and these children have any number of half sisters and half brothers. Practically everyone is related to each other.

It will be like some huge half-mad hillbilly clan of superdwarves in few years.

[Staalo]

I migrated the save to 40.12 and the students stopped expressing their horror of teeth in the combat logs. This might mean that the tragedy training is not working anymore... is there any way to get numeric values for combat hardness?

[squidraider]

I've followed this research since the first thread about it for years ago but I've never jumped in. I think it's time to change that.

[Pirate Bob]

I migrated the save to 40.12 and the students stopped expressing their horror of teeth in the combat logs. This might mean that the tragedy training is not working anymore... is there any way to get numeric values for combat hardness?

I guess that means you just have to start wars with the elves and/or humans to ensure a constant stream of rotting corpses for them to be horrified with?

Hopefully Toady just got rid of the logging of horror (which was kind of annoying anyway).  I will try to start testing myself this weekend, but it may take a while.

[Staalo]

It certainly looks like the traumatization has stopped. Ah well, it was sort of exploity way of training it anyway.


All students are now Legendary in some skill. The last of them, five year old little Sigun Citylenses just hit Legendary in both  Dodger and Fighter. He's still got seven years of school left so I have high hopes for him. The most advanced non-graduated students are long past Legendary +5 in main skills; few of them have raw skill levels nearing 60.

[Girlinhat]

How are their attributes?

[Staalo]

How are their attributes?

Err, which ones do you mean? There are 89 students still at school, along with four graduates.

Overall, the attribute gain has been surprisingly mild. Even the most advanced raw level 59 guy isn't exactly a monster in the physical stats department:

Spoiler: Eshtân Tangledcobalt (click to show/hide)

Although he might have been a bit on the scrawny side to start with... I can't be sure. I didn't even think of logging the stat changes for all nearly hundred starting students.