Dwarf Therapist Features You Should Know (Reports, Filters, Profiles)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Dwarf Therapist offers a set of features that extend well beyond basic labor toggling. Reports, filters, and profiles form the core of its advanced functionality, giving players precise control over how dwarf data is viewed, organized, and applied across an entire fortress population. Many players use Dwarf Therapist for years without fully exploring these tools.

Understanding what each feature does and when to use it transforms the application from a simple labor grid into a genuinely powerful fort management system.

Quick Facts about Dwarf Therapist Features

Reports in Dwarf Therapist provide population-wide summaries of skills, stress levels, and labor distribution across all active dwarves
Filters allow players to narrow the visible roster by skill tier, stress level, migration wave, profession, or custom criteria
Profiles and custom professions store complete labor configurations that can be saved, named, and applied to any number of dwarves instantly
The filter system is especially valuable in large forts where scrolling through 80 or more dwarves manually is inefficient
Skill reports help identify gaps in fortress coverage before those gaps cause operational problems
Applying a saved profile to a new migrant wave takes seconds compared to manual individual configuration
Sorting tools work alongside filters to arrange the visible roster by any displayed data column
Report data is drawn from live game memory and reflects the current state of the fort at the time of the last refresh
Dwarf Therapist does not store historical data and cannot generate trend reports across multiple sessions

What Reports in Dwarf Therapist Show and How to Use Them

Reports in Dwarf Therapist are structured summaries of data pulled from the current game session. They are designed to give players a fast, high-level view of workforce composition, skill distribution, and labor coverage without requiring manual inspection of individual dwarves.

The reporting functionality addresses one of the most persistent challenges in Dwarf Fortress management: maintaining awareness of what your population is capable of and where critical gaps exist before those gaps cause failures in production or defense.

Types of Data Visible in the Report View

The report view aggregates data across all dwarves currently loaded in the roster. Key information categories accessible through reporting tools include:

Skill coverage summaries showing how many dwarves have a usable skill level in each labor category
Labor assignment counts indicating how many dwarves currently have each labor enabled
Stress distribution data showing the spread of stress levels across the population
Attribute summaries identifying dwarves with notably high or low values in physical and mental attributes
Profession breakdowns listing how many dwarves are assigned to each custom or default profession
Unassigned dwarf flags highlighting population members with no active labors configured

Using report data effectively means acting on what it reveals. A report showing only one dwarf with a medical skill above a competent level is an actionable finding.

It tells the player that the fortress is one injury away from having no functional medical coverage, prompting immediate cross-training or labor reassignment.

Common Report-Related Problems and Solutions

Players frequently misread or underuse report data in ways that lead to avoidable fort management problems:

Report shows labors assigned but work is still not being completed: Labor assignment counts in reports reflect enabled labors, not active job execution. A dwarf may have a labor enabled but be occupied with another task, be stuck in a burrow, or have no path to the job site.
Stress data appears uniform across all dwarves: If all dwarves show identical or suspiciously similar stress values, a version mismatch or refresh failure may be causing the application to display stale or incorrect memory data.
Report shows zero dwarves with a critical skill despite having trained specialists: Confirm that the skill column being reviewed matches the correct labor category. Some skills in Dwarf Fortress have names that differ from their associated labor labels.
Newly arrived migrants not appearing in population counts: Trigger a manual refresh in Dwarf Therapist to force the application to re-read population data from game memory after a migration wave arrives.
Labor counts in reports do not match expected assignments: Custom profession application may have overwritten previous manual assignments. Review individual dwarf configurations to confirm current labor states.

Filters: Narrowing Your Roster for Precision Management

The filter system in Dwarf Therapist is one of its most practical features for players managing medium to large fortress populations. Filters reduce the visible roster to only the dwarves that meet specified criteria, allowing focused management without distraction from the full population.

Without filters, a fortress with 60 or more dwarves requires significant scrolling and manual scanning to locate specific individuals or groups. Filters eliminate that friction entirely by surfacing only the dwarves relevant to the current management task.

How Filters Work and What Criteria Are Available

Filters in Dwarf Therapist operate by applying one or more conditions to the roster display. Dwarves that do not meet the active filter criteria are hidden from view until the filter is cleared or modified. Available filter criteria typically include:

Skill tier filters that display only dwarves who meet a minimum skill level in a specified labor
Stress level thresholds that surface dwarves above a defined stress value for targeted intervention
Migration wave filters that isolate dwarves who arrived during a specific wave for group configuration
Profession filters that show only dwarves currently assigned to a named custom or default profession
Labor status filters that identify dwarves with no labors assigned or with specific labors enabled or disabled
Attribute range filters that narrow the roster to dwarves within a defined range for a given physical or mental attribute

Filter Type	Primary Use Case	Best Applied When
Skill tier	Finding qualified specialists	Assigning high-value workshop roles
Stress level	Identifying at-risk dwarves	Population is large and manual scanning is slow
Migration wave	Configuring new arrivals	Immediately after a migration event
Profession	Reviewing role distribution	Auditing labor balance across the fort
No labors assigned	Finding unassigned dwarves	After large migration waves or save loads
Attribute range	Matching dwarves to demanding roles	Optimizing specialist assignments

Combining Filters and Sorting for Advanced Roster Management

Filters become significantly more powerful when combined with the Dwarf Therapist’s sorting tools. Sorting arranges the filtered roster by a selected data column, while the filter determines which dwarves are visible. Using both together allows for highly specific roster views.

A practical example of combined filtering and sorting would be filtering the roster to show only dwarves with medical labor enabled, then sorting by the diagnosis skill column to identify which of those dwarves has the highest diagnostic ability.

This workflow takes seconds in Dwarf Therapist and would require multiple individual menu navigations within the base game to replicate.

Filters do not permanently remove dwarves from Dwarf Therapist. Clearing the active filter instantly restores the full roster view. Players can switch between filtered and unfiltered views at any point without affecting game data.

Profiles and Custom Professions: Saving and Reusing Labor Configurations

Profiles and custom professions are the features in Dwarf Therapist that deliver the greatest time savings for experienced players. A custom profession is a named labor configuration that can be created once and applied repeatedly to any dwarf in any fort session.

The distinction between a profile and a profession in Dwarf Therapist varies slightly by version and implementation, but both refer to a saved labor template.

For practical purposes, players create these templates to represent the roles their fortress uses regularly, such as miners, haulers, farmers, crafters, and medical staff.

Creating Effective Custom Profession Templates

Building useful custom profession templates requires thinking about role clarity before configuration.

Each profession should represent a clearly defined role with a coherent set of labors that do not conflict with the intended function of that role. Recommended practices for building custom professions include:

Define the role’s primary function first and enable only the labors directly relevant to that function
Disable hauling labors on skilled specialist professions to prevent specialists from abandoning workshop tasks
Create a dedicated general hauler profession with broad hauling and cleaning labors and minimal skilled assignments
Build a medical staff profession that includes all required sub-labors together, specifically diagnosis, surgery, bone setting, suturing, and wound dressing
Create a base migrant profession with minimal labors to apply immediately to new arrivals as a neutral starting configuration before more specific roles are assigned
Name professions clearly using consistent naming conventions so they remain easy to identify across multiple fort sessions
Avoid creating overlapping professions that enable the same critical labors, as this makes labor distribution harder to audit using report tools

Applying Profiles During Active Fort Management

Applying a saved custom profession to one or multiple dwarves in Dwarf Therapist is a rapid process. Select the target dwarves in the roster grid, access the profession list through the right-click context menu or the profession management panel, and apply the chosen template.

All labor states for the selected dwarves update immediately based on the saved configuration. The profile application is most impactful at three specific points in fort management.

The first is immediately after a migration wave, when new dwarves arrive with default or random labor configurations that rarely match the fortress’s actual needs. The second is during a workforce restructuring, when the player decides to shift population balance between skilled roles and general labor.

The third is when rebuilding after a fort crisis, such as a siege or disease outbreak, that significantly alters the composition of the available workforce. Applying a custom profession overwrites the current labor configuration of the selected dwarves entirely.

Players should confirm that the target dwarves do not have unique manual configurations worth preserving before applying a template. There is no undo function once a profession is applied and written to game memory.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a report and a filter in Dwarf Therapist?

A report provides a summary of population-wide data such as skill distribution and labor counts. A filter narrows the visible roster to show only dwarves matching specific criteria.
Reports inform decisions while filters enable targeted action on specific subsets of the population.

Can I save filter configurations for reuse in future sessions?

Filter configurations in Dwarf Therapist are generally session-based and do not persist between application restarts.
Custom professions and profession templates do persist and can be reused across sessions as they are saved to the application’s configuration files.

How many custom professions can I create in Dwarf Therapist?

There is no practical fixed limit on the number of custom professions that can be created. Players typically build between 5 and 15 profession templates covering the main roles used in their standard fort layouts, though more complex players may maintain larger libraries of role configurations.

Will applying a custom profession affect a dwarf’s active job mid-task?

Applying a custom profession changes the labor configuration immediately in memory. If a dwarf is currently performing a task associated with a labor that is disabled by the new profession, the dwarf will typically complete the current task before the labor change affects future job eligibility.

Can I use filters to identify dwarves who are stressed before a breakdown occurs?

Yes. Filtering the roster by stress level above a defined threshold reveals dwarves at elevated risk. This allows players to intervene by reassigning labors, reducing workload, or improving living conditions before a mental breakdown event occurs.

Do custom professions transfer between different Dwarf Fortress save files?

Custom professions are saved within Dwarf Therapist’s configuration files and are not tied to a specific save file. They remain available across different fort sessions as long as the same Dwarf Therapist installation is being used.

Why does the report show labor assignments that do not match what I see in the game?

This typically indicates a refresh issue or a version compatibility problem. Trigger a manual refresh in Dwarf Therapist and confirm that the application version matches your current Dwarf Fortress build.
If the mismatch persists, a version incompatibility may be causing incorrect memory reads.

Is there a way to export report data from Dwarf Therapist to an external file?

Dwarf Therapist does not natively support exporting report data to external formats such as spreadsheets or text files in most standard releases. The data displayed is intended for use within the application interface during active play sessions.

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