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[Jakzca]

I was lucky enough to come across this place:  http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/838/lovelyrivervolcano.jpg/

I think it's a brook and not really a river but, still water.. I'm a bit new and I don't know exactly how to efficiently 'use' this Magma. I've never messed around with the stuff before. Anyways, I found the list of Magma-safe stones/etc at the Magmawiki and I have quite a bit of Quartzite. How would I go about telling someone (preferably a Dwarf ) to use the Quartzite to build a Floodgate for example?  I couldn't find the 'specifics' in the Craftdwarfs Workshop, or the Masons Workshop.

Thanks!      Oh, and I'm using the very super awesome Phoebus Pack w/Lazy Newb Pack.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Go to Z -> Stone, and make everything red except quartzite. Then they'll use it to build everything rock-related.

[kardwill]

Several ways
- Make a quarzite-only stockpile around (or just under) your workshop. Easiest, but not 100% safe : The mason will still take stones from elsewhere, although after a time he'll take from the pile, so order several floodgates to be sure
- Forbid every non-quarzite stone with the z-menu. This way, only quartzite will be used for construction and workshops. Problem : it will forbid the workshops designed with a non-quartzite stone (but not blocks), and you'll have to unforbid everything afterward (or you'll have problems with unmovable stones where you want to build something)
- Use the economic stones z-list, and allow only quartzite to be used in workshops (green on the list). Problem : allowing the other stones afterward is a pain

[Azated]

I think it's a brook and not really a river but, still water.. I'm a bit new and I don't know exactly how to efficiently 'use' this Magma. I've never messed around with the stuff before.

The best way to learn about magma is to screw around with it. A few burnt trees here, a few charred dwarven remains there, it's all part of the course of learning.

[Jakzca]

Thanks guys (or gals)   

[i2amroy]

I think it's a brook and not really a river but, still water.. I'm a bit new and I don't know exactly how to efficiently 'use' this Magma. I've never messed around with the stuff before.

The best way to learn about magma is to screw around with it. A few burnt trees here, a few charred dwarven remains there, it's all part of the course of learning.

A few magma-floods that fill your entire fortress below the breach with red-hot magma, it's no big deal. (Personally though I suggest that if you are experimenting with magma you keep your experiments in the lower part of your fortress. It's a lot easier to fix a magma-flood when only half of your fortress is filled with it as opposed to the entire thing )

[Starver]

Several ways
- Make a quarzite-only stockpile around (or just under) your workshop. Easiest, but not 100% safe : The mason will still take stones from elsewhere, although after a time he'll take from the pile, so order several floodgates to be sure

You can reinforce this with Burrows.  In the past I've set up multiple masonic workshops, each surrounded by stockpiles of a different type of stone and then had multiple stone-named burrows enclosing just these areas (plus food/drink/sleep areas), and before burrows I used to do similar restriction with closed and locked doors (obviously with dedicated food/drink/sleeping areas within that sealed-off area, although for short periods it was never so important, as long as you didn't forget, and actually improved the initial speed of production as long as they didn't prefer to do nothing or sleep on the floor rather than keep working during the time that they were unable to deal with their initial need to feed/drink/sleep).

- Forbid every non-quarzite stone with the z-menu. This way, only quartzite will be used for construction and workshops. Problem : it will forbid the workshops designed with a non-quartzite stone (but not blocks), and you'll have to unforbid everything afterward (or you'll have problems with unmovable stones where you want to build something)

Done this too, and specifically unforbidden stones in structures either from the T-menu of the building or via recognising the "in use as a construction" colour from the Z-Stocks menu.  When I've been wanting certain numbers of beds of a certain specific woods, recently, I also waited until the last bed was being made of the old stock, marked the one under the T-Menu ({TSK}ed as To Dump so that when I went and unforbid the next set of logs (for the next half dozen beds) and forbid the just-finishing-with wood-type, I could ensure that the precise log that had been marked as Dump could just be unmarked Dump whereas its fellows in the list that are of that log-type were properly Forbidden to prevent over-expending in this task.  Micromanagement at its finickiest, I'll admit.

- Use the economic stones z-list, and allow only quartzite to be used in workshops (green on the list). Problem : allowing the other stones afterward is a pain

Of all the methods, this is the one I've used the least, surprisingly.  For some reason, it always seemed to be too much hard work. 

[nightwhips]

Another way is to manage a quantum dump zone in your workshop. Turn on the dump, select a lot of quartzite for dumping, let dorfs move the stone, and then turn dump zone OFF or delete it, and then turn the selected quartzite back on (k - d). Then it will be the closest stone in the shop and you'll have a lot of it. I'm doing this with obsidian (I have several layers of it) for gates right now.

This is similar to the quartzite stockpile idea, but you're using a dump zone, not a stockpile.

-nightwhips

[kardwill]

Another way is to manage a quantum dump zone in your workshop. Turn on the dump, select a lot of quartzite for dumping, let dorfs move the stone, and then turn dump zone OFF or delete it, and then turn the selected quartzite back on (k - d). Then it will be the closest stone in the shop and you'll have a lot of it. I'm doing this with obsidian (I have several layers of it) for gates right now.

This is similar to the quartzite stockpile idea, but you're using a dump zone, not a stockpile.

-nightwhips

Yup, I've done it in the past, and it works well. More efficient than the stockpile pethod, actually, but also more micromanagey. I stopped doing it because of the confusion in the dump zones (dumping goblin corpses in the forges or steel bars in the magma, this sort of things...)