Bay 12 Games Forum

When I saw your staircase into hell and the merchant notification on the bottom of the screenshot I thought briefly that you had managed to get merchants to path into the map through hell.

Yes, that's right! The tildes are their intestines, being dragged over the rocky ground as they wander around farming!! 

I bet that's a Dwarven health code violation right there.

"Sir, we can't have you dragging your intestines all over the crops."

Aren't we all in the business of killing elves?

On topic, before Dwarf Therapist, I'd prefer small waves, but any size wave is much easier to tackle with DT.

Your only hope for water is the caverns if there isn't any on the surface or an aquifer.

Wallpacked has been abandoned.  I had one labor intensive method to dig through the triple-layer aquifer, and I ended up designing it so small that it couldn't handle layers 2 and 3.  Then I got desperate, started to try to cave in past it, and ended up with a lot of icky disasters, including a miner caving in the sky on top of his head, instantly entombing him in Ice Cavern Wall and devouring his pick, one of our only two on a map where the only easily accessible layers are entirely soil.  Even if I could salvage it, the very first gobbo incident would destroy us all.

I have moved on to greener pastures.  Namely the slope of a volcano with a stream and not saltwater so all my dwarves don't accidently die of thirst by the end of year 2.

Strike the Earth, Shotringed!

EDIT: Spelling errors

Practically speaking I think entire walking fortresses would be an FPS nightmare...

20 SPF was the last fort I abandoned, but that was kinda cheating cause it was a bugged world.

In 40d I had one of the original 7 die off from old age, which is definitely the longest any of them have gone.