Bay 12 Games Forum

Yes, I have at least one stockpile of (almost) every useful type, plus a custom stockpile type I made to try and shove in as much as possible. It has to be a bug. Hurray - for once a problem thats /not/ my fault - as every other one will be!

Another 'newbie' question however.

Does anyone have any food-getting advice? I'm following these tutorials and almost always starve to death. Creating a plot of plump helmets, for example - a 5x5, starting out, seems to result in about 1.5 layers being planted - usually. Sometimes they'll plant them all and then let half of them rot.

I tried planting an outdoor strawberry plot, but they never /actually/ planted anything - I have a feeling on outdoor plots, it will let me select things to plant I don't actually have.

Fishing is out; while my fishermen /can/ fish without Animal Traps, they seem to do it unreliably - and it would take half of my 7 starting people to do reliably (one to clean and process, another to cook them, another to fish) - and gathering plants (which is what I'm doing right now, alas) - takes basically all of my dwarves just to stay even.

And I'm in a heavily forested area!

Ah, well as long as I know for sure its a bug, I feel better.

While we are on the subject of bugs - has anyone noticed that, even with an accessible trade depot, sometimes a caravan doesn't come? I'm in the summer /after/ the first summer at a site, and I'm /almost/ damned sure I should have seen one by now. It is a glacier, but its a flat glacier - and I know I've seen them at glaciers before.

Before I actually state my question, I'll spend a few sentences apologizing for the double post - the topic of my post/thread from yesterday morning is more suited to a specific question (specifically, glacial caves), the issue of which has been mined out, and so it was either add to that thread (which has sortof finished itself, since the question's been solved) - or uh, start a new thread about another question. Anyways...

I tend to abandon my fortresses, with the intent of reclaiming them later, if anything doesn't look to be going my way - I havn't gotten past 7 dwarves yet, so this isn't that big of a deal.

But I've noticed that not matter what I do, on none of them are anvils ever reclaimed. Even stating off the bat that I know you have to go around and claim/activate things, whenever I try to /build/ say - a magma vent forge, or whatever, it will completly ignore the anvil sitting <wherever>.

I've noticed this problem in other situations, but I'm not sure if its the same problem. A few fortresses ago I built two thrones, and after assigning one to a room, the other got put in a stockpile - and I couldn't assign the other. The game claimed I had no other ones built - but I could /see it/. The same happened with a statue on the same map.

Anyone know whats been going on?

An aquifier is a layer of subsurface water. In real geology, you'll find it in porous stone above nonporous stone.

In fantasy game terms, it means when you dig, you'll hit some underground layers of water, which keep you from getting to the good stuff beneath it. Usually, I just look for an area with solid stone and dig underneath the aquifier, but some people more experienced/intelligent then me have complex pumping schemes going on.

UPDATE!

YES THERE ARE!

So, I decided to go into adventure mode to map out caves. Several hours worth of dying to giants, cyclops, (a demon whom ruled over a goblin city. Wtf? I wish my fortress ruler was a demon), when....

I found a cave in a glacial area. Bordered by dense forests, so I checked it out - no quest, but hey, who cares.

Interestingly enough, I went up the slopes of the glacier and then decided to go to sleep - it was night, and I wanted to see. When I woke up, the slopes were gone - and murky water was covering the ground near where the slope had been. I couldn't get back down. So I wandered around a bit and night fell again - and wow, the slopes appeared - I still wasn't connecting this to temperature at this point, I thought I was lost.

So anyways, I keep looking for this cave, but on the way get ambushed by a Yeti (whose blood flows away the next morning, turning an entire watery section of my screen red) - and eventually find the cave...on /top/ of the ice glacier. The z-screen indicates that its next level (the same level with one ramp all caves have) is also made of ice, but...both are filled with water, so alas, I cannot enter. By this point, I'm thirsty, used up all my water, and of course can't use the /masses of liquid water around me/ to drink from.

So I leave the screen and re-enter (using the search function claimed my thirst would get reset that way - it didn't) - and re-look for it, but all I find where the cave entrance was this time is ice; though its possible I got lost. Before I could make sure, I died of thirst, which seems to be more dangerous then those damned spiders.

Sorry if thats a story more then a question, but it was very wierd.

Sadly, since dying, I don't seem to be able to find the area again.

[ May 18, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

Hmm, another question.

I have a glacial map, as I mentioned - but there was supposed to be (according to this reveal utility) an underground river to the right of this chasm. But I've been digging and digging and can't seem to find it, and I'm worried about my dwarves not having water. Any tips? I can't seem to get the glacier ice to melt into water either, so I really need to find this river.

Ok, thanks guys! That helped alot and cleared alot up - I especially had a misconception about the booze.

Another question though.

Uh...I'm in a glacial fortress right now. Or trying, at least. However, whenever I dig into the glacier, I end up with little blocks of...water. I'd understand if it was just digging inside of it, but digging along the edge gets me water too.

This isn't even the wierd part yet.

/I just built a masonry workshop out of water/

Another question though, since I don't want to start a whole new thread - I deleted my wagon, and of course, all the idle dwarves idling around it moved elsewhere. How do I designate a new spot for them to idle in?