Bay 12 Games Forum

Or look up Dwarven Water Generator on the wiki if you're deep underground.

Or if you think that's exploity and bothersome, channel into some aquifers or a river, lead that water down near your pump stack through all those levels with a waterwheel on each level, and let the water flow out of the map in the bottom through caverns or fortifications carved at the map edge. It might also double as the water source of your obsidian farm.

Is that a good thing to explore an early horizontal layer? Is there something worth of finding in the first levels of a map?

Thanks!

Depends. If you have any sand, clay or soil, it's definitely worth it to dig out the whole level so once you breach the caves, underground plants and trees can grow where you can harvest safely. Same if you want a ceramics or glass industry, chances are the clay and sand will be near the surface.

That being said, I once started out with coal and metal veins visible on the surface...

As an alternative to a fenced off aboveground pasture, you can safely keep grazing animals in underground pastures.  Once you have breached the caverns, underground soil and muddied rock will start growing cave moss, which grazing animals can eat.

Oh, you will not be able to breed badgers without modding.  Badgers are [PET_EXOTIC] and not [PET], so they won't breed in the unmodified game.

Unless you manage to buy a breeding pair from elves. Also, a piece of advice I've learned the hard way: tame animals, while caged (either bought from a caravan or tamed in the Kennels by the Animal Trainer) require food and water hauled to them by dwarves, and don't even show if they are hungry/thirsty, they just die of thirst/starvation if left in an inaccessable place. I lost my tame female (modded) Minotaur that way...

Easiest way to do it is digging a room just for the eagles, building some nest boxes in it, pasturing the female(s) in the room, locking the door, and wait.

He died of infection...

I wish your war animals could not only be healed/tended, but would gain combat experience (or hunting experience depending)...

I have nothing for healing except maybe turning regeneration a few magnitudes up in the raws, but I've added [CAN_LEARN] to my dog/elephant/gorilla/etc raws, and penned them into my goblinite mine: stripped gobbo falls 5 z-levels into a pit full of snarling war animals and dies in a storm of claws and teeth. I have up to Competent fighters, biters, dodgers, strikers... and surprisingly, armor users.

They also get lots of social skill, in my last fortress a dog was elected Major. I couldn't assign it any rooms, but it didn't have any mandates either

A steel (or Funobtanium) equipped, danger room trained military might have better chances to kill the enemy... and much better chances not to kill your FPS, than the legions of war animals needed for the same task.

Zip. Zero. None. Even other dwarves need to converse extensively with one another before they can guess the gender of another dwarf.

Might have something to do with the beard

Gimli: "Here, here. It's the dwarves that go swimming with little hairy women."

The elves are able to bring slaves to the trade deport? 0.o
just, ive got a tiger man suturer now. didnt know it was possible.

whats the weirdest thing you lot have had brought in a cage?

Stray Elephant Hunter (Tame). Stray Dog Mason/Fish Dissector/Siege Operator (Tame). I guess adding [CAN_LEARN] to the dog's and elephant's raws turns out a bit buggy- sadly, I apparently can't war-train them in my kennells but I still can train war animals out of the guys I capture&tame and the home-bred ones.

Next project, build an arena with my 4 caged goblin thieves (stripped to loincloths...or I could leave the clothes on and take only the weapons so they live longer) and all my war animals to make them legendary

Also, my major is some guy's tame dog.