Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm not sure the wiki is right, I've never seen clouds go up walls.  Here's what I've seen in my current fort with evil clouds:

They spawn as a cluster of small clouds, that expand until they look like one big cloud.
These small clouds only seem to spawn on ground level, outside tiles.  They can spread to inside tiles if there is no wall in the way.
They don't spread up.   My map is flat, and I haven't done any surface digging, so I don't know if they'll spread downwards.
If there's a spot they can't spawn at, they'll start again once they passed it.  They won't stop completely until they go off the map.


I'm not sure what happened with your shacks though.  Have you seen the cloud on top of them?  Maybe the miner got hit on the way to or from building.

Another Forest Titan has come to my fort.  This one is Senama Imerefima, a winged worm that breathes fire.  After appearing on the map, it went straight for my forts entrance, running though a cloud of vile dust in its way.  As such, it has gained the distinction of being the only thing to survive the cloud's effects.  For now at least, every part of it is rotten, and swollen with ichor. 

   Still, the Titan made it to the entrance.  It even managed to wash itself off after going though a murky pool.  Almost everyone got inside, but one refused the safety of the fort.   Having no shells for artifact, a dwarf had fallen to melancholy, and stayed outside to meet his fate.   He was quickly crushed to death, but not before a breath of fire ignited the surrounding forest.  Looks like we won't be making any peach cider or apricot wine this year.

My current embark is a an evil mountain next to neutral plains.   Main fort is in the mountain, and I'm using the plains for my animals and butchers workshop.   No evil rains or clouds, but there are a few undead critters roaming around.

First face palm was when I ordered bones, skulls, etc to be dumped inside the fort.  I accidentally brought in some yak hair with it, which promptly reanimated and started attacking.   Luckily there were no serious injuries.

Second face palm is that I'm currently trying to build a shelter over the pastures.  I enabled masonry on my military and started building.  I figured if anything came by, they'd be able to kill it.   Instead I have an owl hovering above it, close enough to cause cancellations, too far away to be hit.  My marksdwarves are shooting all their bolts into the sky, they've gone though a couple stacks of ammo and the combat log only has 1 hit.

(I verified they were wearing their full kit in the military equipment screen before letting them into the danger room).

Check their inventory to make sure they actually wearing it, the military screen will only show if they have a piece of armor reserved for them.  I've had problems where I forgot to set it to replace clothing, sometimes an immigrant would have a bone crown and wouldn't wear a helm.

How do they request a specific metal? I've never had that happen to me.

The dwarf needs to have a preference for that type of metal.  And I think you need to have had a bar of it in your fort.

It has one down ramp, and then a magma-filled down ramp and up ramp.    When I had a single magma tile, a V shaped ramp, it wasn't picking anything up.    And I don't know if the first down ramp is needed, I just wanted to be sure it had enough speed to make it.

From prior versions (since caverns were added), my experience has been that each cavern takes up about 10 Z levels, with 6 above the top and 1-3 between each cavern (using a setting of "1").  1-2 extra layers, above the magma sea, and up to 10 levels of magma.  Then there's another 2-3 levels, and 5 levels of hell, with 1-2 levels of nothing below hell.

Which should total up to 57-65 Z levels below the surface.

As far as I know that's correct.   My theory is that the map generator calculates that at the lowest spot in the world and goes from there.   If your embark area is 100 z=levels above the lowest spot in the world, then you'll have an extra 100 levels to dig.   The lowest spot is usually the deepest part of the ocean, which explains why regions aren't as bad as islands.  Narrowing the min and max elevation range should help too.  But this is only a theory and I haven't had time to test it out.  This is what a side view of the world should look like if I'm right:



           ______Fort_________
          /
         /
Ocean   /          Stone
_______/
______________________________
___________________Caverns____