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[rtg593]

So, after searching the forums, I couldn't find a perfect method to tap magma that was 100% safe. The closest I found was the floodgate/door diagonal tap, which usually works...

Well, after my last fort falling to my sacrificial miner, who became a murderous ghost whose name never appeared on a slab, I decided to conduct some !!SCIENCE!! Here's what I came up with:

Embarked on a volcano with aquifer. Sadly, no surface water. HOT biome.

The classic understanding is: magma has no pressure.

I counter this with: magma DOES have pressure, but it's far thicker, and, therefore, doesn't behave like water.

I postulated this after watching a miner almost escape with the floodgate/door method, but burn before the door could close. I decided that it wasn't the door closing that gave the miner the chance, it was the diagonal acting as a pressure relief valve. But it wasn't enough.

So, to test this, I tapped the volcano from 2 diagonals, one from the tunnel to be filled, and then one further into the volcano. The result? 24 taps, no miner deaths. I was getting 1 in 5, at best, with the floodgate/door.

For the fun of it, I then breached an aquifer above the magma level, essentially flooring it off with cast obsidian. Several cave-ins, discovering the magma sea, and an adamantine pillar later, the volcano was half covered with floor, 2/7 deep in water... And lungfish came.

I'm currently breaching the aquifer further, as mentioned before, hot biome, it's summer and the water is evaporating after about 5 tiles of spread. But hey, soon I'll have a surface lake I can fish from

[Sphalerite]

Lungfish can exist in any biome.  I've seen desert embarks covered in lungfish.  Their presence doesn't mean you'll be able to catch any fish from the water.

[Loud Whispers]

This popped up before, miners just need a task to get to immediately after digging, magma is slow, but not that slow. And an easy way to test if it was naturally pressurized would to just make a U-bend and direct the magma through it, as it stands, it appears to still not be pressurized.

As for lungfish, they are the godfish.

[rtg593]

Lungfish can exist in any biome.  I've seen desert embarks covered in lungfish.  Their presence doesn't mean you'll be able to catch any fish from the water.

Killjoy

Still happy I don't have to worry about magma tapping deaths anymore.

[rtg593]

This popped up before, miners just need a task to get to immediately after digging, magma is slow, but not that slow. And an easy way to test if it was naturally pressurized would to just make a U-bend and direct the magma through it, as it stands, it appears to still not be pressurized.

As for lungfish, they are the godfish.

By a different kind of pressure, I just meant the miner can outrun it if you do diagonals, and can't otherwise. Really, just a different way of thinking about how it spreads, treating it differently.

In all instances, that tile was the only dig designation, so he turned and ran of his own accord without a job to run to. All other labors turned off on all 4 miners (wasn't the same one each time, they alternated a bit).

Playing around with it, and testing it this way, this was the first time I could designate the single tile, sit back, and the miners lives, every time. And it's a simple designation, no building anything anywhere, quick and easy. Hadn't seen a method that simple and reliable as just digging it a certain way, is why I posted it

As far as the fish, ya, I know lungfish are everywhere, including flying, but the ones appearing in the water were the first and only ones I've seen on this embark, so I was thinking the appearance of water brought them.

Edited for clarity and to correct phones autocorrecting :p