Bay 12 Games Forum

There's a few things I tend to stick to.

Stockpiles are 10x10, 20x20, 30x30 as needed.

Workshops are planned ahead to be dug out with enough room for them to be placed in, with 1 tile wide entrance. Got a crazy I can't satisfy? Fine, he can rot in there.

Workshops also tend to get grouped into areas. This is all my rock crafting area, this is my food processing zone, the butcher's WAAAAAAY over there, bedrooms look like apartments, etc.

Farms always 10x10, with undug dirt on 3 sides, and a single tile walkway in front of them. Usually have a 9x9 grid of 10x10 farms, with the center 10x10 being the stairs up/down to the kitchen and food stockpiles. Around the stairs are small seed stockpiles, so should always have some handy immediately for replanting. If not, there's a secondary seed pile 20x20 above/below on the way to the kitchens Z level for excess seeds.

I plan big... and it always falls through when I need to divert to make something or add something.

My current map I've got a volcano on it, so I'm being careful to build the side of it, planning my big bullet points: 1) Farming area, 2) Dining area, 3) Rooms, 4) Stockpiles with Trade Depot quick access, and 5) Workshops.

So, I'm trying to get back into DF. Never got far previously, but always enjoyed digging holes.

Anyways, I decided after a few maps of refamiliarizing myself with the hotkeys and dying horribly, to embark slightly more seriously onto something with a volcano. Naturally, despite an 8x8 embark area, my dwarves decide to haul their wagon all the way up 39 z levels from ground level to set up camp on the side of a volcano, just 3 z levels below it's lip. Which leads me to a couple of questions for my volcano:

1) Will it ever erupt?
2) If I build a tunnel straight down starting on one of the upper Z levels (like right where my dwarves start, for instance), then breach it at the top, will the lava fill the entire system I lay out for whatever magma workshops I create down below?
3) Will the lava at the top of the volcano ever run out? Is it infinite?

This sounds absolutely awesome... unfortunately, when I play I have no sound. It's turned on, and set to 255 volume. No sound, no music, nothing.

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/8501/ramp002.png

That's underneath. The plan, I think, is to have the long, 3x corridor to be a death trap basically in the long haul. The 2x corridor on the inside of it will be for marksdwarfs, though I've no clue how to make it possible to safely shoot into the larger hallway from it underground yet. I'll also have the inside of the 2x corridor as a barracks/training room and hospital. But for now, it'll be a temporary meeting hall/bedroom. I'll probably put my trade depot near the barracks, on the outside of the 3x hallway. I'll go down one more floor I think to make a crafting/stockpile area. Go down one more to create a hallway towards the river and figure a way to drain the river down Z levels to make wells near to the 3x3 stairway I'm planning on making so every dwarf doesn't have to go far to get drinking water at least.

For that, would I just dig down however levels I want the wells in a safe spot, then break into the river to fill it up?

So many thoughts going through my head that I just don't know how to properly execute! lol

Edit: I just thought of something! How will I keep this ramp down tunnel entrance from flooding from simple rain?

I can't seem to create anything but an Upward Ramp. And, as it'd have to be undreground to be made upward, they can't get to it to build it.

Okay. I think I've got it to be reclaimed:
http://imageshack.us/f/513/claimed004.png/

Still, the fey dwarf isn't going out to get the body parts!

I do have several gems:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/791/claimed005.png

Three rough morions, two rough picture jaspers, one plume agate. That's just in the stockpile. I've found a couple dozen more so far underneath in a spot where I plan on moving my crafting industry for the most part eventually. Unless these don't count as gems? Wiki says they do, and that when they demand rough gems that's for them uncut.

Does that mean she requires a SPECIFIC rough gem? Which I just won't have yet/ever?

Lokum is screaming:

I must have body parts!
I must have rough gems!

There we go! Thank you, Moddan!

I'm sure I'll run into some more trouble later on that I need some help with.

I'm glad the community is so helpful of the newb players!