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[lastofthelight]

I've been browsing the "search" function heavily on the forum here to see what questions have been asked thus far, and I've encountered some contradictory information - and on the wiki, I've encounted information that just doesn't pan out. Specifically, about melting glacial water - apparently this has changed over the past few versions. So, to clear this up so I don't spend another 5 hours in foolish shinanigans, I hereby ask the following of you, Oh Wise And Very Nice Forum People Who Nicely Answer All My Incessent Questions.

I have noticed that:

1. Making ice fall does /not/ melt it; I spent the past 5 hours or so rigging up a massive, massive falling block of ice to have this fail (god, I can't believe I spent the past 5 hours doing this, I need a life) - to have it fail.

2. I have read something about roofs and underground status. What exactly is needed to preserve the 'higher temperature' areas of being inside? Under what conditions will water freeze? Ice apparently now /never/ melts on a glacial environment, but water can not freeze. What determaines what? I have a hard time imagining Toady making a situation where ice will /never/ melt when he so obviously has a temperature system built into the game, but it is still in alpha, so. How does the underground temperature thing work? For instance - if I channel an underground river so it will flow onto underground ice, will the water freeze? Is there any way to increase temperatures without judicious use of magma? And so on.

3. It appears as if lava is needed to effectively melt glacial ice and nothing else; so one needs to either have lava, or work around a 'no food growing' strategy. Is this true?

[ May 22, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

[ May 22, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

[BurnedToast]

it used to be that if you built a roof over an area, then dug into it it would stay labeled 'underground' even though it was exposed to the surface. This is what people would do to drop ice into cisterns. However, apparently it was a bug (even though it makes sense to me) and Toady fixed it a few version back so you can't do it anymore.

As far as I know, the only way to make water out of glacial ice now (without cheating) is to use magma. If you don't have any magma, then you are out of luck.

There is a cheat way of making soil to grown on, you need to build a dirt road or something, I don't know exactly how it works but you can try looking for the guide around here somewhere. If you don't want to cheat, just order food and drink from the caravans - you should be able to get PLENTY, I had a glacial fort survive on imported supplies until I got bored of it (and that was before the dwarves brought wagons, it's 10x easier now).