Bay 12 Games Forum

Yup.  That's my diagnosis as well.  That's why the double-slit method has different steps for the final aquifer layer, vs. all the previous aquifer layers.  That's also why you MUST correctly determine, one layer at a time, whether you are dealing with the bottom-most aquifer layer, or Yet Another Intermediate Layer.  (There's a procedure on the wiki page for doing this; it entails designating an up/down staircase and then single-stepping it with the period key once the miner gets there.)

Ah yes that's right, if you look at the state of the tile while the up/down stairs is still completely dry, before it's had a chance to fill with even 1z of water then you can see whether it's a wet or dry tile on the layer below.
Otoh, I find my heuristic is 100% reliable and doesn't require onestepping which I never use, it just requires memorizing what layers can bear aquifers. Admittedly it does get a bit confusing around the clays, sands, loams and other soils - but as a rule of thumb if the layer name is at least 'half clay' (clay, sandy clay, clay loam) it isn't aquifer bearing, and if it's only one third clay ('sandy clay loam') or doesn't have clay in it's name it is aquifer bearing.

There are ways to automate the delivery of sentient corpses to magma/atomsmashers or containment. Now I admit it's easier with DFhack search function, but only a little.

Create your refuse stockpile.
Create a minecart route with a stop linked to that stockpile and a dump stop which dumps the contents someplace purifying. Initially the stop should be set to receive only garbage (things you don't want to process) and not bodies/body parts.

Now update the kind of refuse the minecart receives to selectively include sentient corpses. You'll probably only ever see half a dozen kinds of sentient beings, perhaps a dozen at most. You can predict goblins, otherwise whenever a new type arrives in numbers worth caring about just go to the minecart and update the types it receives to include that type. This is a bunch faster with DFhack search, but even without it hunting down say, 'goblin' and 'elf' in the list, is not arduous.

The previous posters have it, coal is found ONLY in sedimentary rock. You will primarily find sedimentary rocks in swamps, low-lands with high drainage, near an ocean, or potentially near a river. You will rarely if EVER find coal on a mountain, it just wont happen.

That said, embarking on a mountain means you should probably just dig straight to magma anyway.

Strange what people say/believe...

I nearly always embark on flat areas, swamps are my favourite, and almost never hit coal, and I believe that you're more sure to find coal by embarking on a mountain! Certainly you do find it on mountains sometimes, often the veins are immediately exposed on the surface.

I have very occasionally found coal on my swamp embarks - but it is rare - usually it is contained in aquifer layers (i.e. sandstone) which make it a bit of a stupid dwarf trick to mine out.

I have run a number of fortress games, using squad of 2 sparring as zealously as ever (for me) and embarking with proficient weapon users. Typically, but not absolutely always, dwarves wrestling and striking skills will before too long surpass their weapon skill. Shield User and especially dodger seem to be training [relatively] faster than they used to. Fighter trains just as fast as always. Attribute gain rate does not seem to be affected.

This new weakness in weapons does mean it takes a lot longer for dwarves to become truly effective, parrying is absolutely essential to 'filling in the gaps' left by shield blocking, and lower weapon user means less frequent parrying. They also use their weapon less effectively, and perhaps even more damaging is just the fact that they use their weapon less often. The fact that weapon skill is training much slower indicates they really are using it much less often, not just slipping in 'extra' attacks of opportunity or whatever you might call them.

I would estimate it takes perhaps 3-4x as long for dwarves to reach the same combat-effectiveness as in .34.

I am not sure if large squad training rate is increased over .34, it might be, they certainly seem to gain some skills quite quickly, like dodger, but all in all this requires more examination. I can't say because I've been using the DFhack fix which increases large squad training rate.

Glass can be a great option if you embark with the sand and plan to either get magma forges going, or have bit. coal/lignite. Embark sand is very cheap. Of course you can't win with glass if you're burning wood to make charcoal - you'd be better off with wood pots.

But I do like the glass industry, if it's a long way to the forges you can use minecarts as 'megabins' (that is, at the sand collection you put a stop, and at the forges you put a stop on a track stop set to dump, and just have the dwarves haul the minecart - because sand bags are surprisingly light you can save a lot of dwarf time that way).

One reason I like sand is I tend to be pretty minimalistic in my digging, I like compact fortresses. Those stones are all needed for blocks and mechanisms. Glass and wood can be used for basically everything else.

If you're luck enough to have fireclay you can make stoneware pots that don't require glazing to hold booze. Otherwise, the glazing requirements make stoneware a no-win for booze. But you can use unglazed low-grade clay stoneware to store food - you just have to be careful with the furniture stockpiles and put a stockpile only allowing quality material pots/barrels near the still, and a stockpile only allowing crap material pots near the food stockpiles. I've only done this once, but it did work well.

Sand requires a bag, clay doesn't but clay is extremely heavy meaning a dwarf effectively needs a wheelbarrow to move clay... basically sand is better in this regard if you embark with sand so get heaps of free bags, but clay works with smart wheelbarrow or minecart use, or if you bring magma to the clay, or clay to the magma.

When I tried cutting a tree at z+1, first it took a bit of work with scaffolding to get access without deleting the tree (as happens when you build a constructed floor in branches/twigs), but when I succeed and they did try and cut it down, the tree simply disappeared. Basically it seems trees disappear with any kind of destructive interaction other than cutting the trunk at z0.

In other news I dug out an empty space underground and left it for about 18 months. No trees seem to grow. The saplings just die.

Also um, dwarf fists are even more dangerous now. Instead of bruising or breaking bones, tantrums result in in half a screen of almost every punch making dwarf limbs/heads "explode in a shower of gore". Hilarious, but alarming.

But this is at least partly embellishment. I've had dwarves who have sustained absolutely horrific-sounding injuries like having their leg mangled into an unrecognisable mess, go to the hospital and get fixed up by a simple splint.

So I'm thinking "A shower of gore" actually refers to something like a punch to the face which causes a few flecks of blood to fly.