Bay 12 Games Forum

What the others said, but if you had just embarked, this can be a serious issue. Maybe you could build a wall around the water source and then a roof? I have absolutely no idea - would that work, DF vets?

Unfortunately, no. Any tile that has been exposed to the sky and therefore hast the "Light" and "Above Ground" tags is affected by climate change, and any water in that tile will freeze if it is cold enough, roof or no.

You don't necessarily need water if you maintain a steady stockpile of booze and keep your dwarves from injury. Magma run just beneath the ice layer can melt the ice walls but not the surface ice. Beware of this tactic if you have a seasonal freeze, though; I tried this with a river that froze half the year, and when winter came the surface would freeze very slowly, and oftentimes unsupported ice tiles would pop up and immediately fall through the river, magma line, and my dining room to pour magma on the diners. My self-destructing fort, it was.

You don't really need a specific world for that. Just look for a few things:

Surface Water (Rivers, lakes, streams, brooks. Avoid oceans; salt water can't be used as is. A stream or brook is probably the best to start.)
Plant Life (Woodland and Dense Shrubs will give you much more to work with.)
No Aquifer (They're signaled with dark blue squiggles on the right, next to the stone layers; get an embark without them. Aquifers are layers of infinite groundwater, which can lead to little stone a lots of FUN.)
Low Savagery (Look for an embark with the Surroundings reading either Calm or Serene.)

Beyond that, it's up to you.

BEHOLD THE DWARVEN MAGMA-TORUS.

Very nice. Love the symmetry.

My fish cleaner (whose only moodable skill was Bowyer) just made my third artifact for this fort.

Ilromstelid Rimad AMud, "Peakwashed the Tactic of Thunder". a willow BOW.

I kinda want to give this elf imposter to the river gods... but then again, the artifact just jumped my created wealth 40%. And a legendary bowyer would be helpful to creating my marksdwarf swarms.

So, I abandoned a fortress after a massive tantrum spiral claimed most of my dwarves. Upon reclaim, ghosts started rising from the corpses of the previous inhabitants. I went to make memorials for them...

but their names do not show up on the list of eligible engravings.

This is becoming a problem, as the one violent ghost has already thrown one mechanic into the canyon to his death, and smacked my chief medical dwarf something fierce.

Leave them there. Dodging should increase over time, as well as Armor Use. The weapon skills shot up due to constant spear parrying.

So I've managed to get the passage dug and smoothed, mostly. All's left is two tiles wide worth of wet stone. 270 sandstone grates and 236 sandstone floors will make it up when done. The river claimed 38 dwarves during the building; a goblin invasion a few moments ago killed 15 dwarves before being sent off, mostly thanks to the 64 war dogs that were milling about, only 7 of which survived.

I recommend liberal application of wall/floor grates to prevent dwarves from being washed away. 

Also once you've cut into the cliff, there'll be constant water flowing from any aquifer tiles above the passage.  Smoothing walls will prevent water flowing from the sides, but not the top.  Decius' idea is good, but you'll need grates over the side canals to prevent accidental drownings and the central floor probably shouldn't be more than two tiles wide.

That won't work. I once tried a project similar to yours and after damming the river that was falling in I couldn't do anything with aquifer. I had to abandon.

So I've learned this the hard way, after having three miners washed away into the river. Savescumming because I refuse to be beaten; I will have this bridge done! It will be slow and grating, pun intended. BUT IT WILL BE DONE. FOR ARMOK!!

It will be four wide at least, maybe six, with grates to prevent any deaths... of dwarves. Goblin siege? OPEN THE GRATES!