Bay 12 Games Forum

The cave crocodiles, after spending about a decade sitting at the far end of the cave breeding but otherwise making no trouble for my fort, suddenly decided to swarm up the one corridor I had dug to the lower river level.  They filled the twenty consecutive cage traps I had filled that corridor with and made it up to the lower living level.  I hastily enlisted half my fort's population ... but for some reason, the crocodiles turned around and returned to the river peacefully after trashing the dungeon master's rooms.

Meanwhile, while the crocodiles were making trouble, a snakeman managed to get into the water-powered repeated which drives the main defense bridge ... in the middle of an orc siege.  I managed to raise the emergency bridge, never used since it was first installed, to stop the siegers from making it into the fortress.

The siege has since left.  The passage to the lower river level has been sealed.  I am currently digging a magma channel to purge the crocodile population with fire.  It's the only way to be sure.

I found something in the raws;

Quote

ore of mercury, powdered gives vermilion dye
[MATGLOSS_STONE:CINNABAR]
[NAME:cinnabar][COLOR:4:7:1][TILE:156]
[ENVIRONMENT:IGNEOUS_EXTRUSIVE:VEIN:100]
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:SHALE:VEIN:100]
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:QUARTZITE:VEIN:100]
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']

Is this from Dig Deeper or vanilla Dwarf Fortress?

Just checked my copy of vanilla DF (40d11).  That note's in there, so this is not a Dig Deeper modification.  Of course at the moment there's no way to powder ore to make dye in either vanilla DF or DD, so it's an irrelevant note.

Orcs ended my first Dig Deeper fortress.  I didn't realize Dig Deeper Orcs could open locked doors.  Urist McDwarf cancels live:  Interrupted by Orc

My current (second) Dig Deeper fortress has an elaborate, overcomplicated system of water-powered bridges, metal floodgates and pits.  It usually manages to destroy any invader before they can get inside.  Cheesy I know, but I'm building a megaproject and don't want to have to dedicate half my population to the military.  Even so nearly all of the deaths I've had in the fort have been due to orcs and my failure to appreciate how dangerous elite orc archers can be when taking target-or-opportunity potshots at dwarves atop the walls or deep in the invader trash collection pits.  I seriously underestimated how far they can shoot.

I've noticed weirdness with what the game considers flowing water.  I had a fortress with a similar line of a dozen or so waterwheels over a channeled waterway attached to a cave river and ending at edge-fortifications some distance away.  When I let water in DF didn't count the wheels as powered until the water reached the edge-fortifications, even though the water under the wheels was solidly 7/7 well before that.  I'm not sure what conditions need to be met before a water flow will count for powering waterwheels.

Magma pipes refill, but slowly.  If you set up a magma waterfall that pours into a chasm, you'll probably end up emptying the pipe a lot faster than it can refill.

Last question though. I have two wells inside my fortress that some of my dwarfs use but others are intent on running half way across the map to the river. Is there any way I can tell them to stop drinking fish water and just use the wells?

A dwarf will only use a well if it's not currently in use by another dwarf.  If both of your wells are in use and someone is thirsty, they won't wait till the wells are free.  They'll run to the river.  Your solution is to make more wells, or better yet brew more booze.

No.  Pressure plates count as traps for [trAPAVOID].

True.  Immigrants, animals, ambushes, diplomats, and whatever will only spawn on a tile that is clear of magma, trees, bridges, chasms, or other non-pathable contents.  So if you completely wall off the entire map border other than one spot, immigrants will always spawn in that spot.  So will ambushes and wild animals, which can make things entertaining.