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[Barontobasco]

Hello, i'm a relatively new dwarf fortress player, and I'm having some trouble locating caverns. I'm using the most up to date version, and when I tunnel downward I just never find a caverns. WHen I scroll through all of the layers, I don't end up seeing this magma layer I hear everyone talking about. Are they just not visible until you actually reach them? From the tutorials i've seen, they are visible even if you don't have dwarves working on that level.

I'm also curious as to if there is a way to tunnel through multiple Z levels? Thanks in advance

[slothen]

Unless you're building your entire fortress within 5 levels of the surface I cannot imagine how you are not finding caverns.  First of all, keep tunneling down.. TO THE BOTTOM.  you WILL find warm stone or semi-molten rock from the magma sea (unless magma sea is turned off in worldgen).  As for caverns, sometimes your downward staircase is in a place that doesn't break into any caverns.  Send out horizontal exploratory tunnels every 5 levels.  This is pretty standard practice for exploratory mining once you're into the metal industry.

[Gnauga]

Caverns and magma sea are not visible until you have actually dug into them. Any part of the cavern that has been revealed will always be visible, even without dwarves in them. Until they have been seen, however, they are entirely invisible. To dig many z-levels, you'll probably want to carve up/down staircases. You can also channel through if you don't mind never seeing that miner again.

[Vercingetorix]

If you're having trouble finding them, there's a trick (or more of an exploit) that uses the stocks of cave spider silk thread and/or other items in the caverns that you can use to find a spot where there is a cavern; I don't recall the particulars but I think you basically view it in the stocks screen and zoom to it.  You won't be able to see anything, but you'll know where to dig to and to what z-level.

That being said, you'd be surprised how difficult it can be to find caverns on some maps, especially if they've got low passage density or openness...on one map I actually hit the magma sea before I hit any of the caverns. 

[Laurin]

I usually dig long horizontal tunnels on nearly every level while going down. It is useful to locate the caverns but foremost to get ores and gems and coal or whatever I am in need of.

[KojaK]

See I think the issue here is that you aren't digging DOWN.

To dig multiple z-levels, order your miners to dig a down staircase, and then hit shift + >. That takes your screen down one level. Then on that level, dig either an up staircase, or an up/down staircase in the same space as the down staircase. An up staircase will let your dwarfs go up one level, and an up/down staircase does just what you think, it gives them access to the tile above AND below.

That's how you mine up/down. Now, just repeat the 'dig up/down staircase' roughly 50 times, and you're sure to hit caverns. Repeat another ~100 times to get to the magma sea.

Worlds in .31 are HUGE.

[Proteus]

It is very well possible to miuss a cavern layer,
if your shaft doesn´t break in to free air at the respective layer...
but the chance to miss all 3 layers while digging down is indeed very small...
usually you should expect to get to a cavern layer during diging your first 20 z-levels
(often even before level 10, unless you altered the number of z-levels between layers in world generation)