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[P-Luke]

I recently started a new fortress in a glacier, to see how that would go.
Keeping lifestock is easy enough for getting food, but when it comes to water it's a problem.

I can build a well over a salt water ocean tile, and the dwarves will come to drink from the well.
However, they only get more thirsty as they drink from it.
Is this supposed to happen, to simulate salt water actually dehydrating the body?

As soon as they get "thirsty" they go to the well, and drink from it until they're dehydrated (and die, one after the other).

[Hortun]

Why would you build a well over a body of salt-water?

[P-Luke]

Because the DF wiki says that a well can be built over salt water to desalinate it.
If it doesn't desalinate it, when why do the dwarfs still drink from it?

[Quietust]

There seems to be some odd behavior regarding wells over salt water - in one test, I built a well over a saltwater murky pool (verified salty by trying to place an activity zone) and my dwarves were able to satisfy their thirst by drinking from it. I also seem to recall doing the same with a well built directly over the ocean and having similar results, but I might be thinking of something else.

[Andor]

I got the same problem recently. The reason the dwarves don't drink (though they seem to be doing the the Drink job) is that the water in the well's bucket turned into ice. It can be checked via i[t]ems in rooms on the Well, selecting the bucket and [enter]. Detailed info should show 10 pieces of ice in the bucket.

The same thing happens when dwarfs get a Give water job from any good water source (i.e. from melted water above magma) and Fill pond. It just does not work.

It seems that it is just not possible to use buckets for any task in a glacier map unless you turn off the temperature in the ini (haven't tried yet, still trying to get this working somehow).
The only idea I have is to check if the ice in the bucket melts when on a tile above magma (like a regular ice wall). In this case it would be possible to use buckets normally, provided you have a "floor heating system" in every other floor of your fortress:)

[Derakon]

You should be able to use glacial water so long as the level the dwarves are standing on is not a freezing level. There are several ways to do that; generally, if you're underground then you should be good to go.

Doesn't mean this isn't a bug though.

[Andor]

I don't think only the freezing level matters. I have a glacier biome next to an ocean and even about 200 tiles away from the coast in the middle of the ocean, the wells (built on a platform) just freeze, although the pumps, gears etc. do not. But I'll try to pump the water to an underground pond and try bucketing from there. Good tip.

I tried to upgrade the floor with underlying magma heating, but with no result, frozen buckets don't melt:)

Also I've found another problem regarding the freezing maps that make water drinking difficult(though it might not be just a problem of freezing maps but rainy maps in general).
The snow storms on my map seem to be causing open goodwater tanks to become salty. Combined with the freezing wells, i suppose the only way to create above-ground water source on a freezing glacier-ocean map, is by attaching grates on top of your constructed tanks (above ocean or non-glacier biome). Can someone confirm that rain can be salty? And can it disable the wells as well?

Also I have a feeling that when a tile gets a salty water tile on it, it can never contain good water anymore (after you dry the tank completely and refill) until you reconstruct it all. Is it possible, or am I missing some crucial salt-water feature?