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[guitarxe]

I have giant sponges in my river. They are constantly interrupting my dwarves and not letting them go about their business.
How do I get rid of them? I know the Wiki says they can't be killed in combat... so then how?

[Hokan]

There are two universal solutions to all problems.
1. Magma
2. Atom smashing

[caddybear]

Redirect the river, they'll drown.

[Muffindog]

Which temperature does your embark have? If it gets cold enough for the water to freeze, waiting for winter will be enough.

[guitarxe]

Yeah I've thought of the most obvious ways... but here's the problem:

1). It never freezes in this biome.
2). Redirecting the river will scar the landscape and interfere with my "grande plans".

Getting magma all the way up to the surface just to kill a slime seems way too much effort.

And how would I atom smash something that's in the water?

[DTF]

You do not need to scar your map to empty a river.
You can install pumps that pump the water from the river back into itself.
I've seen a picture of it, but cannot find it right now. Maybe the wiki would be enough to show you:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/40d:Dam#Moses_Method

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Downstream
+777+
##### Walls all around to keep from overflow
#777#
#XXX# Pumps that pump South to North
+XXX* Gear connected to lever
+777|
+77X|
+77X* Waterwheel + gear (stable foundation as gear)
+77X+
Upstream

I've actually found a fairly good way to dam a river using pumps. Unsure how to best edit it to show up, so, going to describe it and let someone else do the honors. Materials: a fair amount of building materials, 5 mechanisms, a few logs, and enough mats to make a pump for each tile the river is wide.
Be sure to construct floors underneath the pumps as well for them to count as stable foundations, as we will be using a lever on the gear next to them, would not want them to deconstruct.

--Jayseesee 10:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Although I haven't tried it with newer versions, I don't think there have been major changes that render this method useless.

[Garath]

if you make it far away enough not to scare dwarfs, then high enough, you could drop a floor (controlled cave-in) on it

[dexxy]

make thousands of bolts and use it for archery practice?

build a wall around it so it doesn't scare dwarfs?

[Panando]

Yeah I've thought of the most obvious ways... but here's the problem:

2). Redirecting the river will scar the landscape and interfere with my "grande plans".

It doesn't have to. There are two main ways of redirecting rivers, the first is to pump it back on itself - this is completely clean if the output of the pumps are boxed in, forcing the water to go back into the river rather than spread out (this works because of the magic of DF fluid dynamics, the pumped water is forced upstream and teleports off the map)
The second way is to drain the river underground, this requires digging under the river and installing a drain into an aquifer, cavern or the map edge. Draining the river from below requires digging out a 1-wide row of up/down stairs on the z-level below, the river, a row of upstairs on the next z-level down (connected to the ultimate watersink, probably the map edge), due to teh magic of DF fluid dynamics these drains only need to be 1 tile wide. Once the drain is prepared, dig downstairs into the riverbed to allow the water to flow into the staircase drains, the dwarves will be able to dig these from below.

The thing with both of these techniques, is they can be done very close to the map edge (where the river enters into the map). You can dig stairs one tile away from the map edge. So you can drain the river right at the map edge, and just down until you hit rock, at which point you carve a fortification into the map edge. And that's the entire extent of the "scarring", it's more like precision surgery.
Of course you should install a floodgate or hatch in the drain channel linked to a lever, so you can drain the river or let it refill at your will.