Bay 12 Games Forum

I use vdig to take out a large vein of stone, dig chambers along the edges.  Nice irregular, natural looking cavern to smooth and engrave where there are gems or mineral veins.

Granite quadraped with a dust attack that caused lung rot tore into my cavern dwelling fortress. Many died, some hid behind a forbidden, locked artifact door, safely inside.  Then a moody dwarf walked through it, into the cavern, and others pathed through it, and dropped glass bricks in the doorway, and it ate them all. the end.

Actually it is surprising they are partying around a goblin cage, since in my experience they get happy thoughts from quality cages and animals they like, whereas goblins cause a "something unpleasant in a cage" sad thought.

I use squads of 10 with 7 set to train (scale for approximate proportions), set to active/training. Small barracks around an armor stand in a key location containing weapon and armor stockpiles aside from the major armor/weapons stockpiles.  Usually 7+ years in of regular training and combat (no danger room, some prisoner disposal) I usually have 10 leet legendaries killing anything in their way.  So what broken training?  Just don't expect the dwarves to become ninjas in a year.

Use them for a crundle pit of torment--pit nude goblins or regular trolls in, pit a goblin general. Count on 2+ seasons of combat logs whereupon the crundles scratch the poor suckers to death through excruciating suffering.

Screw-ups can be fun too, I remember trying to use a tundra to build an octopus-shaped green glass tower that would drop water into a labyrinth freezing people.  Predictably the water froze upon hitting open air, never reaching the glass octopus.  I turned off temp and found myself with a lovely drowning trap.

In my experience trees don't just grow quicker on wet tiles, but tiles which are constantly getting wet, then dry, then wet again.  I first noted this when a forgotten beast made of fire kept emptying a lake in the caverns, and then before it refilled, sprouts would appear and eventually turn into trees.

What I use is I carve a large, semi-round area, in soil, near a water source (aquifier is best, lake will do) often with winding two tile passages to hold statues, then comes the crucial step: BACKWARDS PUMPS

A pump filling an already full reservoir but still pumping from a source that has water produces a continuous trickle backwards (which may cause flat out flooding,  buyer beware), and this trickle is mostly mist, incidentally making your future tree farm a great statue garden along the way.  All soil in the chamber (with some well placed doors), should constantly be either at 1/7 (at most 2/7) or just muddy, and with in two seasons you should start seeing your mushroom forest bloom.