Bay 12 Games Forum

Great article, imho.  Well written and reasonably accurate considering the source and audience. 

From what I've seen, in 34.11...
The only time you're going to get a canyon-river is where two rivers meet.  And it's going to be symmetrical, so you're going to have to excavate one side to get what you're looking for.  If you want more than 4 z-levels of cliff, that may mean excavating down to rock.  It all depends on how wide you want the cliff-side.  How wide do you want the cliff? (as in, how long should the river run along it.. the whole width/breadth of the embark?)

A few commands in dfhack would get you want you want, including creating a river of any path, with a little planning.  Is this for a mega project?  If you need a vertical working area, you can do it entirely underground, with much less effort.

Anyone have an embark in a good biome with sand, and lots of flux and iron ore?  Source of freshwater prefered, but no aquifer over the whole map.  I would prefer to not have an evil biome in the embark region, but I am okay with very large embark regions.

Thanks!

Here you go, Zanthra.

Highlights:
3x2 embark size
Joyous Wilds
Tropical Coniferous Forest
Clay
Sand
Brook
Magnetite/Hematite/Limonite (5k+)
Dolomite (32k+)
Coal/Lignite (3k+)

... Wait—

Are you saying that if a clay or sand tile has cave moss or floor fungus growing on it, and then I build a grate on top of it, then the tile (which now simultaneously has cave moss/floor fungus and a floor grate), will yield the clay or sand?

If so then that's awesome.

Yep.  I can't verify 100% for clay, but definitely yes for sand.

If you build floor grates on top of the moss, you can collect sand through them.  It doesn't prevent moss growth, it just shows the grate, visibly, instead.  Just tested/verified in vanilla 34.11.

I removed her from the squad, but all she is doing is standing in the statue room, getting even angrier about being naked.

Ensure there are available clothes (not forbidden) she can put on.  If there are none available, you'll have to make some.

It's possible the clothing was very damage (XX worn) and as a result, she might not pick them up?  That's a guess, I've never run into it, but they complain about worn old clothing, so maybe they won't pick up very worn old clothing?

A couple of things to keep in mind...

There are magma crabs and fire imps on almost every embark.  They will, 100% guaranteed, ruin your day if you let them.  The important thing is to not give them a path into your fort, ever.  As a result, if you're going to build forges or smelters right on top of the magma sea, ensure you only channel out the exact squares you need to build the forge/smelter.

In particular
If you have your floor smoothed above the magma thusly:

+++++
+++++
+++++
+++++
+++++

for a forge, channel it out like so:

+++++
+++++
+≈+≈+
+++++
+++++

and for a smelter, channel it out like so:

+++++
++≈++
+++++
+++++
+++++

That's all you need to have exposed prior to building your workshops.  But build them quick, because the moment those channels are dug, fire imps and/or magma crabs are pathing to those holes to try to get in.  If you need to pump magma up, immediately cover the channeled hole with a magma-proof grate.

Also, the magma sea is not always one level.  You may channel out an area that is lower than another point, and magma will splash up immediately after you channel a hole.  Of course, this will vaporize any "normal" tissue, including any dwarves, animals, or other bags-of-mostly-water that might be standing idly by. 

So i walled up the edge of the entire embark, built ramps down underground from the only ingress area, then built wooden spiked ball traps in that path.  All visitors MUST take the only path available.

So far, I've killed over 700 animals and giant creatures in the first year.

I didn't expect it would work so well....  my minions spend most of their time hauling corpses and cleaning traps.