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[Exasperation]

I generated a new world, and in a fit of madness decided to try a fortress on a volcanic island.  When I created my new fort, I discovered that my dwarves had stopped their wagon on the ceiling of a circular cave, with an entrance just to the southwest, and inside the cave was a wide ledge surrounding a magma vent running all the way down to the bottom of the area.

If you bring a couple of steel bars, you can set up a magma smelter and magma forge, indoors, without doing any digging at all!

Admittedly, the magma dwellers are giving me a bit of trouble, but hopefully I'll manage to deal with them.

If anyone wants to give it a try, the seed is 76707960, and the location is:

code:

 Local             Region            World
 0123456789ABCDEF  0123456789ABCDEF  0123456789ABCDEF
0                 0        |        0        |
1                 1        |        1        |
2                 2        |        2        |
3                 3        |        3        |
4                 4        |        4        |
5                 5        |        5        |
6                 6        |        6        |
7                 7        |        7        |
8                 8--------X        8        |
9                 9                 9--------X
A                 A                 A
B                 B                 B
CXXX              C                 C
DXXX              D                 D
EXXX              E                 E
F                 F                 F

[Torak]

Alt+Prt Scr is a very nice thing to use.

[Exasperation]

I did that, but then I couldn't remember my password for the hosting site, and it just seemed like less of a nuisance to do it as ascii.  Besides, I think the ascii-purist crowd will appreciate my doing it this way.    

[turboburrito]

Isn't that just an under ground magma vent?

[Sofaspud]

I'm not on a DF-capable machine right now (or for the next couple of days), can someone tell me if that site has sand and water?  If so... Spud's Glass Waterpark finally has a home!

(Trying to make it on a magma-less map is incredibly frustrating -- I've deforested the whole map and expect to be assaulted by elves any day now!)

[Exasperation]

It's an underground magma vent, yes, but what makes it neat is that it's inside a cave with an opening to the outside.  That means that even though the vent is entirely underground, it is accessible at the start.  Also, the ledge around the vent is wide enough for workshops, stockpiles, etc.

PS- Sofaspud, it is beachfront property, lots of sand and direct access to the ocean.

[Untelligent]

Sweet, all my 38a seeds have been slightly less valuable than elephant dung so far.

[Untelligent]

Better map.

[Pickerel]

Unfortunately, though I don't mean to be rude, and I hope I am not misinterpereting, this sort of magma chamber, with the cavernous mouth is relatively common... In fact I usually search for volcanoes for my start sites, and get one of these magma chambers with a cavern mouth half the time.  The half the time when I don't, I abandon that fort and try again ^.^  Though I am not actually at all knowledgeable about the code, I can conjecture from observing the pattern of these volcanic necks that the reason it often does this is because, once a level of the magma chamber during world generation encounters non-rock, it stops, because were it to keep generating levels with magma, the now unconfined magma would flow out immediately upon starting the map.  Since it stops there and produces no further z levels with magma, any remaining terrain above is left as is, thus if the terrain is even slightly uneven (with different z-levels) there is a chance that the magma chamber growth will terminate at a point where the surface changes z-levels (and your dwarves would have to climb up those small hills) leaving the z-level above untouched only because of a small detection of breach.  This would create a large open cavern with an often small entrance, as described.

My current fort is one with one of these cave-dwelling magma chambers in the middle of a sand desert (very convenient) next to a river (also convenient) burrowed into from the other side of the map on a mountain cliff where my dwarves started (so my original entrance, with my wagon and goods, can only be accessed by fliers so can;t be stolen or attacked efficiently), next to a sparsely forested area full of elephants for food... in other words, I was happy with it ^.^

My favorite method is to burrow into the cavern from below right at the start, block off my previous entrance, and make a magma channel to block off the cave entrance.  Only when we have steel to build a bridge across do we go out ^.^

[Exasperation]

Interesting.  Your random numbers must produce significantly different results from mine, because (even though I go after volcanoes too) I have never seen a situation like this before.  I see lots of vents that are completely open to the air, and lots that are buried and need to be dug out, but this is the first like this.