Bay 12 Games Forum

I still like my magma easily accessible so my latest fort is right smack on top of a volcano in a tropical broadleaf (jungle) biome.

To my delight the pipe is not only open to the air but juts about 5 z-levels above the 'north' face of the hillside. The 'south' face of the hillside rises to 2z above the top level of the pipe, and since my 7 started ON the north (cliff) edge of the pipe, sans wagon of course, I just dug right into the south side to start.

Another salient point about the embark was that the pipe was only visible down about 60-70 z levels of a total of 130 or so. After that it went 'black' and I had no idea if that's where it ended or what.

Anyway, about a year after embark it was time to clean up my entrance and one of the first tasks was removal of a small 1z hill on the south slope, right above the top of the pipe. Out of laziness I just designated the entire thing as ramps and let my two miners go to work. As you have probably already predicted, "A portion of the cavern has collapsed!" and one poor miner was knocked back into the pipe.

I unpaused the game, and went on managing my fort. A minute or two later I get the next announcement "You have discovered a vast magma sea.", followed in short order by "You have discovered [REDACTED]! Praise the miners!"

So it appears that Urist's last communication with the hive mind was detailed geological information on the volcano. The strangest part was after the [REDACTED] announcement I realized I couldn't find the miner anywhere down in the depths. Also, he wasn't dead! I zoomed to him from the Unit list and he was still at least 20z above the top of the magma sea. I guess as soon as he passed the last z-level that was revealed on embark the game chose to show me the rest. I unpaused and a few merciful seconds later he hit bottom and promptly bled to death.

Normally, this early in the game I would just save scum since it was really just a boneheaded move on my part that caused his death. This time I decided to play on, recognizing the brave sacrifice made by Urist and his last actions of geological survey.

Unfortunately I then took WAYYY too long to get my farming up, forgot completely about harvesting plants, and everyone died of thirst about 3 seasons later. I guess that fort was just doomed.

I have an area 2x3 tiles in size that just says "Downward slope" on each tile. There are no upward slopes on the z-level below so I can't use designations to remove them. I just tried collapsing a floor onto them and that just maimed a metalcrafter. I'm annoyed because they are going to mar my wonderful new indoor lakeside recreation area.

I'm working on transforming an underground pool into a towercap forest/dining hall/statue garden recreation area, and my first attempt at a waterfall has gone poorly.

Since I'm not really in the mood to work today I thought I'd solicit advice.

Here's the setup. Top pic is Z+2 where the water comes in. Bottom pic is ground level of the dining hall where I attempted to have the water drain.

As you can see from my mspaint skillz the primary problem is the water fricken splashed all over the place, muddying up my polished floors.

The original plan was to have the dwarves walk through the waterfall to get to the dining hall, and I may still do that, but I want ideas on how to avoid the splashing. Hopefully the grates aren't the issue because one of them is an artifact Hematite grate that I'd like to incorporate into the design.

I tried to look through DFMA for designs but I didn't find any that were quite like I wanted. Lots of waterfalls *near* dining halls/stairs, etc but I didn't find a waterfall that dropped right into the hall.

I'm not tied to that particular entrance, either. I may open up holes in the wall on all 4 sides eventually as the whole cavern is the 'room', I mainly wanted the walls for aesthetic effect and to help define the dining hall room size.

Thanks!

So I have this nice underground pool situated in the perfect spot for a fancy dining room/zoo/recreation area. I've dug out a small opening (6 tiles) on the Z level directly above the water and placed about a dozen cage traps. I put a horse foal on a rope in the room just past the cage traps and stationed a guy with one eye who keeps passing out at the edge of the pool.

Well that was a year ago and now the horse foal is a horse, the one eyed dwarf happily stands for days at a time at the edge of the pool and nothing has even attempted to leave the pool.

There's a cave crocodile I badly want to trap and tame in there and a bunch of lizard and frogmen that would be nice to have in my zoo. Why won't they come out and play?!?

edit: Just remembered I have invaders turned off.. could that be causing it?

I have a setup like so:

(below the windmills)
%%*--*--*
%%   |  |
%%   |  |
%%*--*--*

Above this arrangement is six windmills, all stable, with the center tile of each above each of the gear assemblies.

The whole gear/axle/pump assembly says it needs 82 power. The six windmills are each producing 20 power units each, except only the left two windmills show any power draw, the four on the right say 0 power needed. What am I missing here? How do I get those four windmills to feed into the system?

I was inspired last night to build a (hopefully) epic megaproject. I'm pretty newbish though so to I'm looking for advice to increase my chances of completion vs magma flooding the fortress.

- The wiki says glass screw pumps are magma safe.. does 'glass screw pump' mean glass pipe/corkscrew/block?
- Can I fill a reservoir with magma from the bottom or do I need to pump all the way to the top first?