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Author Topic: Missing aquifer  (Read 1038 times)

tfaal

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Missing aquifer
« on: June 04, 2009, 02:56:46 pm »

Hi. I've been playing Dwarf Fortress off-and-on for a few months now, and today I decided that I wanted to start a flashier fort than the ones I had made previously, with a well, some more traps, fancy wind powered screw-pumps, and perhaps a waterfall. I picked a site with two biomes, one a mountain, one a red sand desert with an aquifer. After I embarked, I started digging my well immediately, like so:
Code: [Select]
####X_####
####X_####
####X_####
####X_####
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#=ground, X=stairs, _=channel
I hit the bottom of the desert biome without striking water. Figuring I had simply misread the biome screen, I tried to dig my well in the mountain biome; no dice. I'm in a bit of a bind now, as the aquifer was my only source of water, and while dwarves can subsist on alcohol alone, one cannot make a waterfall with booze. Any idea what I'm doing wrong here?
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I still think that the whole fortress should be flooded with magma the moment you try dividing by zero.
This could be a handy way of teaching preschool children mathematics.

Samus1111111

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2009, 03:29:05 pm »

an aquifer is not an entire level of water, but a level that is riddled with "rivers". The only way I know of finding it is to just dig a bunch of up/down stairs until they get flooded. (just don't flood your fortress :P)
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Hyndis

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2009, 03:42:00 pm »

Yup, known issue. Sometimes aquifers will simply not show up, particularly in deserts of if you've only got a single tile of that biome in your embark area.

Its annoying, but there is really no way around it without cheating to generate a water source using some utility.

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Village_Idiot

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2009, 04:35:45 pm »

I got something simelar, just randomly dig some up/down stair al the wa down to the bottom through your entire map to find it. Most of the times it's just sheer luck, I was searching for mine for ages, than accidentily found it while digging out a room for the bar stockpile.
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Scarpa

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2009, 04:38:54 pm »

On my first attempt at an aquifier map I was able to dig down to the stone level in three different spots before finally finding water. Except I thought that stone couldn't hold water, so I had dug out a bunch of rooms in the stone that happened to occur in the same layer as the aquifier. A little while later I got a 'damp stone' warning and ignored it thinking I was safe in stone.

That was my last attempt also, it was just too much Fun to handle. ;)
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Derakon

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #5 on: June 04, 2009, 05:41:01 pm »

Aquifers often will not show up in desert biomes (possibly other biomes as well). They should cover the entire layer, though, unlike what Samus1 said. The only exception is that they won't be in any veins or clusters -- so for example, if you have a chalk layer with an aquifer, and you find a cluster of magnetite, that magnetite will be dry, and you can go through it. It's exceedingly unlikely for you to find anything but sand in a sand layer, though.
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Samus1111111

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2009, 06:15:07 pm »

whoops, sorry I gave wrong info, it's just that on my one and only attempt at a map with an aquifer I dug my staircase down three levels, then on the first underground level I was digging out some rooms when all of a sudden they flooded and my fortress with them.

I then experimented and found that some places were water free, while other places on the same level were filled with water.
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Derakon

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2009, 07:25:22 pm »

Probably what happened is that you initially dug into a different biome that didn't have an aquifer. You can have lots of biomes in one embark site (I've seen as many as four and I'm sure more are possible if you're lucky), and each biome has its own layers and possibility of aquifers.
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Samus1111111

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2009, 07:29:57 pm »

ahhhh....

that would explain it, thanks :)
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yuhhaur

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2009, 09:32:05 pm »

Probably what happened is that you initially dug into a different biome that didn't have an aquifer. You can have lots of biomes in one embark site (I've seen as many as four and I'm sure more are possible if you're lucky), and each biome has its own layers and possibility of aquifers.

I tried with 5.

As for aquifer, I had the same experience once like Thread Starter, but the aquifer section is just 10 tiles away from the dig. If you really wants the aquifer for your desert, try digging in 12 tiles interval.
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Jim Groovester

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Re: Missing aquifer
« Reply #10 on: June 04, 2009, 09:56:23 pm »

The reason aquifers don't show up in deserts is because there's only one layer of soil. As far as I've observed, aquifers need at least two soil layers for them to show up.
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I understood nothing, contributed nothing, but still got to win, so good game everybody else.