Bay 12 Games Forum

The magma trap is pretty efficient.

Have your main entrance be a gate that you keep closed. Have another gate lead down to the magma levels. When there are enemies, open it up. Basically, you have the gate open a path to stairs leading all the way down to where the magma level is (a hundred or so Z-levels down). At the last staircase at the magma level, dig a winding path to a staircase on the other end which leads to the rest of your fortress.

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You get the idea. Maximize enemy travel time on that Z level. On that level, you need 3 bridges controlled by levers. The first is on the dwarven fort side protecting your dwarves, the second is on the opposite side of the zigzag where the enemies enter that Z-level, and the third is somewhere in the middle leading to the magma sea.

What you do is you use burrows to keep your dwarves from ever venturing out into the zigzag or beyond. Since the way is open into your fortress and it is the only way (regardless of how long it is), enemies will pour into the zigzag. The longer the zigzag, the longer you can wait to fill it with enemies before needing to close the dwarf-side gate to avoid being overrun. Once they are close to the final protective gate, flip the three switches (to be kept far away from the gates, safe inside the fortress, near a meeting area). The enemies inside the zigzag will be trapped. Both the doors leading outside and into the fortress are closed, and the third door to the magma sea is open. The magma fills the zigzag, melts away the corpses, and leaves fresh metals (iron) for you to collect and use.

A fourth door that drains the magma off-map through a carved fortification is a good idea to get rid of the magma once the melting process is done. Then just open the dwarf-side gate and collect the loot. Repeat until all enemies are melted.

Quote from: Flare on April 09, 2011, 03:21:55 pm

The only fool proof way is to dig your own underground lake which you can isolate from the rest of the water source after you fill it. I've read that bridges when raised can't be destroyed, but if you want a fool proof way of sealing the tap source, just build a flood gate, and when the source is full, close it and wall it up.

Though a building destroyer will destroy the floodgate.  If you wall up the 'inside' to prevent the destroyer from getting in, that still means any new floodgate would have to be built on the 'inside' of the wall, so you'd lose 2 tiles of space every time you went to refill it (or have to do something more complicated allowing you to drain the refill tube first).

Why use a floodgate instead of a drawbridge, anyway? A floodgate is more difficult to make and it's impossible to easily choose the materials for it. In addition to the floodgate being destructible.

I downloaded a new copy and only changed population cap from 200 to 100. Now my game has no sound.

You could try memory hacking your available points on the starting item selection screen.

Iron armor is not a very good choice.

1. Don't use your military for early engagements. Use cage traps or magma pits.
2. Have your military train on caged goblins, released one by one.
3. Get steel or bronze armor. Or the spoiler armor/weapons, which is best.
4. One highly-trained and well-armored dwarf is much better than 3 poorly armed/trained dwarfs.

None. It just won't dig them. It's just ground there. When building, I think I get can't reach destination.

100 pop for all triggers. When embarking, hit tab until you see civilizations. Make sure it has goblins and that they are hostile.

Is there a way to find the curious structure on the embark screen? I really want to have one on my map.