Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Keldor]

The biggest factor for how deep the caverns are seems to be the rate of change in elevation.  Embark somewhere mountainous, and caverns are pushed way down to prevent them from banging into the surface or each other.  By contrast, embark somewhere flat, and they'll be much closer to the surface.

[rex mortis]

One can also set the minimum layers above the first caverns.

[jei]

Or, at least, I don't like how shallow the are. I like building deep, multi-level forts, and I'm always running across stupid caverns, full of crap I don't care about until later on in the game. If they were much further down, it wouldn't be a problem. I'm curious, who here agrees, and who wants more?

On the contrary, I LOVE the new caverns. Though breaking into them should be done with utmost care and preparation. Although I do wish they would repopulate the fauna, especially giant cave spiders more. I play with very small area and lack both slade fortress and all the caves are empty ;_;. Also nothing to hunt ouside for ages.

[FleshForge]

Cavern depth is really, really random.  If it's a really important factor for you, embark in very high cliffy country (caverns will never be above the lowest z-level above ground on your map) or at worst just peek with a map reveal tool.  I've had caverns start 2 levels below the surface before, sand -> loam -> cavern.

[puke]

The biggest factor for how deep the caverns are seems to be the rate of change in elevation.  Embark somewhere mountainous, and caverns are pushed way down to prevent them from banging into the surface or each other.  By contrast, embark somewhere flat, and they'll be much closer to the surface.

this is exactly right.  embark on some steep mountains, and the caverns will be 20-30 levels beneath the lowest valley point.  which might be 100 or 200 levels beneath your plateau or mountain top.

[Hour Hero Yes]

Is there an easier way to find magma without digging down to the sea?  Whenever I want to do magma forges, that seems to be the only option available to me.  Then again, I'm not really spawning in areas near volcanoes.

[FleshForge]

Gen a world with # of volcanoes set to 200 and your odds are a lot better - the great majority are still unstartable because they're surrounded by mountains but you should get a bunch that are fine.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Also you could get lucky an dfind a magma pool in the caverns.

[Devonus]

do magma pipes still extend up past the caverns? or are they strictly built to top out at the caverns? bc i'm currently chasing obsidian through a couple of layer of my fort to see if i can find a pipe.

[Urist Imiknorris]

They top out at caverns.

[Leonon]

Gen a world with # of volcanoes set to 200 and your odds are a lot better - the great majority are still unstartable because they're surrounded by mountains but you should get a bunch that are fine.

I think you can do this and also set volcanism to max randomness to get volcanoes all over the place.

[Dorf3000]

do magma pipes still extend up past the caverns? or are they strictly built to top out at the caverns? bc i'm currently chasing obsidian through a couple of layer of my fort to see if i can find a pipe.

If you're digging more than one tile of obsidian and it's not marked as 'warm' then there's no magma on the other side   You can get layers of obsidian without having magma in them, but magma pipes are very thin.

To get lots of magma pipes without making lots of volcanoes, bump up the minimum volcanism to about 50, and take out the requirement for minimum number of low-volcanism squares.  Then you'll have lots of pipes without having mountains on top of them, the only problem then is finding one, because they aren't marked on embark.