So I started playing Dwarf Fortress the other day and I created my fort (called the "Crown of Hope" for reasons of irony) after my first loss due to starvation.
I set out to reclaim my fort with more food (didn't change the name, I liked it), there was less complications, I understood the military system a bit better and generally understood how to do things better, plus I had all of workstations set up and everything so there was less hassle. So I tried making a well, using a three level system. on my second level I dug two separate holes that were connected via a straight passage on another level, one of the two wholes would have eventually led to a channel at the river. Here's where it went wrong. I don't have images as I'm trying to make another fort on the same world (further up the stream) so i'm going to try to describe it to you, because of the fact that I used the up/down stairs I managed to flood a good portion of one of my mining levels (contained some Limonite and some low level gems) before I managed to build a wall to cut off the flood, no dwarves died. Then, because I'm a fucking idiot, I decided that, before trying to clog the flow of water from the river, I would make a well over the flooded level (the level used was my dormitories and dining room level) and left it be. I did a bunch of mining on lower levels found a metric fuckton of native gold ore and then found a cavern, after arranging for my military to guard the cavern, I dug deeper hoping to ind a level that I could use to begin the process of mining out the cavern, after digging a few more levels down, I found a magma sea (I believe that is the term used) and decided to dig to it and establish a place where I can make smelters and thus avoid having to waste more charcoal (one of the few things I was running low on, aside from meat, military equipment and sanity) then I found a bunch of raw adaminite in the magma (what I recognize as the entrance to hell) and I swear to Amok, my eyes widened more than they should have.
Then the announcements started, firstly a dwarf, a cook, died due to drowning and I thought "Wouldn't put it past the AI to jump down the well. Carry on", then another dwarf drowned, I thought "A bit odd that, didn't another dwarf just die?" I then looked and I found that the second drowned dwarf was a member of my military. I was then concerned, so I looked and found that the well had overflowed and was flooding the dormitory level, due to the fact that I was understandably more interested in the cavern and the mining and all that, I was unable to set up walls in time to save the dormitories (which had dwarves in them, and skilled ones) so I made the rational decision to sacrifice the dormitories, hoping that the dwarves vital to the running of my fort were not sleeping at the time, but due to how late I was, the dining room (which was closer to the stairs) was lost close to being lost, then I decided to sacrifice the entire level and build a wall at the stairs, I was too late and my fort basically drowned (and I, knowing when I'm beat) decided to abandon the fort.
The reason I post this is because I want to ask a question. How exactly would I go about saving this fort, or more accurately could I use pumps to remove the water from the fort, and if so, then how?
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Topic: Just a story about loosing a fort and asking for advise. (Read 825 times)