Bay 12 Games Forum

I want to be able to dig a pit without stranding my miner at the bottom of it, or having to wall off an exit out of the very bottom level of the pit that leads to stairs going back up. I can't seem to find any way to do this. I am stuck with one of these two solutions, or is there some other way that I'm missing?

I was using channeling to remove the outside ground layer one level up from the entrance to my fort. I made the mistake (I think) of channeling a square that contained a boulder. This caused a cave-in (if that wasn't it, then at worst, a single square was cut off and collapsed).

This single square/boulder cave-in caused a dust cloud that was 6 levels tall, and probably about that in radius at the ground level.

From what I understand, anyone in the cloud has a chance of taking damage (and indeed, the miner was caught and badly wounded).

If this is the way things work, then the size of the cloud should probably be a little dependent on the amount of material involved in the cave-in. After all, a radius of 6 seems excessive for such a small collapse.