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[Zil]

Hello again bay12.

Does anyone know a decent way to melt ice for drinkable water on a glacier? Usually the wiki has recommended designs for things like this, but I don't see anything.

My idea at the moment is to surround an area on the lowest layer of ice (the layer that's resting on stone) with constructed walls and remove all the ice above so it doesn't collapse or melt or something. (I'm not really sure how heat transfers in this game, or if the heated water can melt more ice on it's own. Maybe I should remove the ice outside the walls as well?) Then dig a room under the now enclosed ice, cover every tile with open floodgates, and flood the room with magma. This, as I understand it, should melt the ice above. I've thought about the logistics of then pumping the water around but I have no idea how quickly it refreezes after leaving the heated floor so I think I'll just have the dwarves move it with buckets. If the water starts running low I'll close the floodgates, deleting all the magma from the room and allowing the water to refreeze. Then when the magma is brought back the ice melts into full 7/7 water tiles again.

Are there any problems with this idea? The main unknowns for me now are:
- Will the water get so hot it evaporates if I leave it and the magma alone for too long?
- Will the magma melt a 3x3 area of ice above it, or just the single tile? Or maybe it even melts a 5x5, with the magma heating a 3x3 of floor tiles and the floor tiles each melting a 3x3 of ice.

Anyway, the reason I need to do this is the cavern has no water in it. I've also got no sand for glass, no nethercap trees, and no magma safe metal ore, so building pumps that can handle magma is going to take some great patience.

[thvaz]

AFAIK if you get to enclose ice tiles underground they will melt, but they won't be useful as they will melt into a "water" item that you can't turn into a flow. Yous best bet is to bring water from the caves.

I am not sure because it has been years since I tried a glacier embark, maybe something changed.

[☼Another☼]

If you, through collapsing, put ice in a stone layer, it will melt into 7/7 water.

[PatrikLundell]

Sand can often be imported from caravans, as can metal.

As mentioned, cave-in of ice into rock that hasn't been/isn't exposed to the sky (e.g. as a result of the cave-in) will cause the ice to melt into water, as mentioned. As usual, the water will flow, so you need to catch it and stop if from just spreading and evaporating.

Flowing magma is said to melt ice in adjacent tiles, while static magma ceases to heat the tiles sufficiently (resulting in refreezing that can be exploited into a water generation engine, as less than 7/7 water freezes into a full ice tile). Magma under ice will melt the ice, which will then form obsidian as it flows into the magma, so you need a floor in between. I say "said to" as I haven't actually tried it myself.

As mentioned, ice "boulders" are useless as sources of water, as they just result in water contaminant puddles of no water depth, so you can't collect them into a usable volume of water.

[Stormfeather]

One other option is to try to break through to the caverns quickly, build a well some place above the water in said caverns, and use that, blocking off the rest of the access to the caverns afterward if you're not ready for it. Although you then have the problem of letting fliers in possibly through the channel for the well. Unless you want to try to use pumps that early to pump the water up higher and into a cistern, blocking things off with a grate someplace along the way. That seems a bit much for early embark though.

Edit: Nevermind, just noticed where you said the caverns are dry. What about lower levels? It would seem very unlucky for all three of them to be dry.

[Skorpion]

Dig deeper, down to the magma sea. Pump magma up to just under the ice, and that will melt it.

[Zil]

I'm not doing cave-ins because I want an infinite supply. I guess I neglected to mention it.

Edit: Nevermind, just noticed where you said the caverns are dry. What about lower levels? It would seem very unlucky for all three of them to be dry.

I play with only one cavern to preserve precious FPS. It's also why I pick treeless biomes.

Flowing magma is said to melt ice in adjacent tiles, while static magma ceases to heat the tiles sufficiently

That's extremely bizarre. I guess I'll be finding out if it's true in the near future.