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Author Topic: Is it intentional that worldgen sometimes makes a cavern layer devoid of life?  (Read 609 times)

TheBeardyMan

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Is it intentional that worldgen sometimes makes a cavern layer devoid of life?
« on: December 09, 2019, 07:33:50 am »
This is something that I've noticed on several occasions. A cavern layer with no life - no trees, no shrubs, just bare mud.

Most of the times I've seen this, it's been the middle cavern layer - only once have I seen it in the upper cavern layer, and never in the lower cavern layer.

Is this intentional? Or is it a bug?
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Bumber

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Re: Is it intentional that worldgen sometimes makes a cavern layer devoid of life?
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2019, 10:01:39 am »
I think it happens when a cavern level generates with no water. You can avoid it by bumping up the minimum cavern water amount in advanced world generation, IIRC.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Is it intentional that worldgen sometimes makes a cavern layer devoid of life?
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2019, 12:23:59 pm »
It's caused by DF generating a subsurface biome of CHASM (typically called "muddy cavern"). A CHASM never has any bodies of water, and the only "plant" life (fungii aren't plants, biologically) that may grow in them is blood thorn trees (which can appear only in the lowest cavern). I've seen cave moss under the mud in such caverns, but only after I've breached "normal" ones.

The "normal" cavern biome doesn't have to contain any sources of water either, but if there are any, the biome has to be the normal one.

Also note that it's possible to have a biome split such that a part of a cavern is muddy and the rest is not.

When it comes to fauna in muddy caverns, the critters that require water are missing (such as e.g. cave crocs), while others are present. I'd expect you'd never find elk birds either, as they're grazers. This means the available critters in such caverns is much more limited than in the normal one (there are only two cavern biomes in the current DF version).
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