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[Hungry Elephant]

I'm having a recurrent problem: my dorves cannot breach a Volcano properly. Every time I do it, I ended up with the miner dying in the cruellest ways.

Ho can I breach the volcano without losing my miner every time? I tried to channel the tile where the breach should be, to give him the time to run a way while the !!magma!! fill the pit, but for some reasons it doesn't work (and it's the method I always used in the precedent versions). Any idea?

[Garath]

have you tried all methods from the wiki?
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Magma

the old ways don't work very well anymore since mama flows faster nowadays

[Hungry Elephant]

I must say I did not consider the digging from above option. Well I suppose I can build a sort of larger magma pit and then channel, so magma will need to fill the chamber one zlevel below before filling the main magma conduct. It should work (sure will work in the standard dorf way and if something can go wrong will surely do).

[Larix]

"Digging from above" means you channel from one level above where you want the magma. The ramp created underneath by channelling is completely magma-passable. To avoid unwelcome visitors, you can channel a tile in a niche which you then wall off. That's how i always get my magma, and i have yet to lose a dwarf doing it. As an alternative, you could pump the magma into a channel/shaft which leads to your designated magmaworks. You'll have to build the pumps one level above the top lava level and need magmaproof machinery. A shaft down is also a bit fiddly to dig safely.

Breaching a magma tube some way below the surface is fairly risky, even if you channel from above - magma will still quickly spill to the level you dug from, with a good chance of incinerating your miner and potentially flooding a fair bit more area than you wanted. Having a nice big reservoir below to be flooded helps, but only a bit.

[Triaxx2]

I'm partial to pumping over the top. Use glass, pump it into the air, and then into a Constructed tube to where you need it. I've had forges hanging over the sides of volcanoes before.

[Deepblade]

tapping into it at a diagonal may help. It takes slightly longer for fluids to go diagonally.

[Mishrak]

I usually breach a volcano the same way I breach an underground cavern of water.  Smooth wall, carve fortifications.  About 80% of the time he lives.  Sometimes he dies instantly and then comes back a year later and haunts the area.    Either way, if it's a totally unskilled and unmarried dwarf, it's not a big deal.

[Baccar Wozat]

mama flows faster nowadays

That's what you get when you tampon with the forces of nature!

[Broken]

Use the bridge method, 100% safe.

 "Here's the basic premise: Miners are able to mine out tiles diagonally above them even if there is a bridge over their heads. First you dig out your magma tunnel to feed magma to wherever in your fort you need it and dig it right up against the volcano pipe. Then you channel a trench against the pipe that can be the width of the tunnel if you wish. Build a magma-safe bridge over the trench, making sure to cover it completely, and then seal off access to the magma tunnel. Dig a new separate path to access the now bridged-over trench. Finally, designate the volcano pipe wall on the Z level of the magma tunnel for mining. Your dwarves will stand in the trench beneath the bridge but will somehow still mine out the squares diagonally above them, causing the magma to flow safely onto the bridge leaving your dwarves unscathed."

[i2amroy]

Personally I've been using the old methods and still haven't had a single problem with them. There is simply one step that must be done in the old methods or you are basically guaranteed to lose a miner. That step is that whenever you dig into the side of a magma tube you need to have another of the same task for the dwarf to leave to do immediately after. If this is a miner then you must have another digging designation somewhere for the miner to go to. If you decide to use the engrave/carve fortification job then you must have an engraving/smoothing/carving task somewhere for the dwarf to do. If you do this then the dwarf will breach the magma tube, and immediately head over to do the new task, getting them out of the magma tunnel (the stairs probably still should be too far away though). If you don't have another task for the miner/engraver to pick up immediately, they will hesitate for the briefest of instants instead of moving, which almost certainly will cause a barbecued dwarf.

[Crashmaster]

Just don't send valuable dwarves, a peasant with a pick will leave to a new mining/ engraving job just as soon as a skilled miner. You must have some disposable dwarves or at least be expecting them soon?

Also; you can figure out the number of frames difference (80-100 on average) it will take individual dwarves to cave a fortifications by watching frame-by-frame, and then delay the designations by approximately that amount so 2,3 or more could simultaneously complete their adjoining fortifications. Trick is in getting the dwarves to stay in one spot for half a moment. Can take significant save-scumming but is quick in game-time.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Collage of three separate tappings that spent nearly an entire migrant wave.

The bridge method is certainly better but getting rid of worthless migrant mouths to feed in the early-game volcano breaching days is usually an added bonus in my forts. For multiple reasons.

[Newbunkle]

Don't waste a pick. Smooth the wall next to the magma and have someone carve a fortification into it.

[vanatteveldt]

@crashmaster

Why would you need 3 3-wide magma channels?

[Crashmaster]

Why would you need 3 3-wide magma channels?

I use a lot of magma. Can't wait on re-filling of the defense systems as I'm playing the Fortress Defense mod with multiple sieges each season and the volcano will start spawning more magma sooner the sooner I get it's level to lower.
I use the three 10x10x10 reservoirs supplied by the breaches for pumping magma back into the volcano to maintain the magma level at near-full during operation of the Magma Hammer. It uses up a lot of magma to cause repeated cave-ins in the volcano and it's effectiveness drops with lower magma levels.

Also from my sig-linked mega-project; More Magma!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

3 x 4 embark, magma column collapse at 50% of 40 z-levels

Oh and then I used that thing to pave the entire embark surface with a layer of obsidian so no more trees could ever grow. Now it's been upgraded too.

[Ashery]

If you're going to be moving magma over a reasonable distance, you're probably better off using a pump at the source rather than relying on gravity. Well, back in 40d at least, heh.