Caverns can be quite safe if you prepare well for it. My current fort I am working on caverns, and to my luck, this segment of the cavern is an island, so I don't have any hostile spawns, aside from anything that might come from the water itself (Which I am in the process of walling off). Still need to build a few wells eventually.
Beware flying cavern creatures, if you're just relying on walkable (and now amphibious) isolation.
I had a Pterodactyl-based FB in one of my caverns (discovered through a stairwell into the top, as is usual with my explorations, which was promptly sealed off) and the subsequent well-shaft digging was equipped with various lever-operated hatches. Terry the Terrible Tearaway Pterodactyl (or whatever it was called) still flew some way up the well-shaft (approx 50Z levels, so easy to react to, when I happened to notice it).
Hmmm, makes me wonder. Near the bottom of the shaft (probably in the escape-level, just next to where the caverns get breached through by the final channelling after the well-digger has made sure he can wander away from that square) if I make it a fortification, instead of a wall, put a non-grazing watch-beast the other side of it on a 1x1 pasture defined over a pressure plate attached to one or more of the series of hatches, with room for it to retreat if it saw anything nasty, could anything that scared it push it off of the plate, into the (sealed off) rear of its guard-burrow, and cause the hatches to close automatically? Would that cause issues if the well's bucket was currently lowered to the bottom and in danger of being severed by the closing hatches, or would it just stop the rope/chain and prevent movement until the hatch(es) opened again?
Must try that, sometime.
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Topic: Hungry Heads... wait a minute. (Read 1443 times)