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[alphawolf29]

I'm doing a hermit fort in an evil biome where the surface is absolutely infested with migrants-turned-zombies and I need to puncture this volcano either

A. From the side, underground

B. with some ingenious method to accessing the surface without actually leaving my hermit and his domicile open to zombie infestation.

I'm not super well acquainted with magma mechanics, though I have heard magma does not pressurize. Does this mean if I dig an underground channel, it will never flow up and out of a lower, only down? Thanks! FUN ideas totally acceptable.

edit: Meant to say NOT super well acquainted

[shadenight123]

puncture from the side of the -level you can that gives directly above, before place a lever+pillar so you can then send the upper level downwards with a controlled cave-in, so the 'underground' because a magma lake that gives on the upper level. try and find a way to weaponize it against the zombie hordes.

[alphawolf29]

Wooo i did it with diagonal channeling! Now, how do i flood the (outside) world with Magma, without actually ~going~ outside? Situational I know, but I'd like to hear ideas.

[slothen]

flooding the surface-world with magma is situational only in the sense that it is a good idea in nearly every situation.  To do so though you need a way to get magma to go above the surface level.  If you have a mountain that extends above the surface you can use a pump stack to pressurize it to that level, then dig a hole connecting to the surface at a lower point and magma will bubble up through that hole.

[alphawolf29]

I have a volcano and I think I can get it to drop 3 levels, to where the main plane is (level zero) but I'm sure it will evaporate before it causes any serious harm. Ideas on how to rectify this? I only have one guy who can't go outside, remember!

[MattStriker]

There's no way to avoid going outside at all, since at one point you'll need a connection between your magma source and the outside world. There'll be a critical phase between the breach and getting your lock installed (more on that below) but if you pay attention to what's going on around the site it should be survivable.

What you want to do for a proper flooding (while also preventing things from crawling into your fort) is build a lock-and-reservoir system.

Dig out a reservoir near the outside world, as large as you think you can make it, the full 3z deep. Make sure you can seal off the flow when needed (I prefer to use bridges, as floodgates can be wedged open). Do the same for your opening, at the bottom of the reservoir. Make sure that one of the bridges is always raised...that way the furthest any invader could get is your magma reservoir. This method also ensures that you have a lot of magma available for a flash flood as opposed to a steady trickle that'll likely dry up quickly...it just needs a while to reload between uses.

[shadenight123]

wait wait wait!
That's not needed at all

imagine, if you'd please...something like this:
_=Magma!
--Damn earth keeping magma away!
XX=empty space to be dug!
I= mystical pillar that holds the upper level aloft!
O=point of entry.
M= magma safe gate
Now the timing is a bit tricky, but if you dig well enough, then prepare the pillar so that a lever can bring it down and enact a cave-in and at the same time, you can have the 'entry point' and the magma gate linked to open/close.

_______--------
_______MXXXIX-
_______--XXIX---
_______--XXIXXXO
--------------------

It's all a matter of timing and getting the dwarf back down to 'safety' when all hell comes crashing down. You could theoretically link the 'crash down mechanism' to a pressure plate that the dwarf activates when he comes back to 'safety' (albeit gearing that one up would be hell, and prone to danger if the dwarf goes back before his 'due'
But worse to worse, you just destroyed a side of the volcano.

[gchristopher]

Breaching a volcano from the side is 100% safe if using the bridge method. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Bridge#Ocean_drains

A magma-safe bridge lets you control the flow from the volcano. A NON-magma-safe bridge will just slowly melt in place, and you won't even have to build a lever to let the magma in after your miner is safely away from the magma tunnel.

[gchristopher]

I'm doing a hermit fort in an evil biome where the surface is absolutely infested with migrants-turned-zombies

Off-topic, how is the ghost situation? In my hermit game, he had a hard time keeping up with all the slabs required.

[alphawolf29]

Hi guys! I have rectified a lot of the issues here and am making a sort of reservoir system, though it takes forever to fill up and I'm not sure how big of a reservoir I'm going to need to flood the world. It would take at laest two years to fill my reservoir back up again. The hole to the outside was dug using the up-stair+channel method and there is a flood gate on the outgoing side of the reservoir and the incoming side of the reservoir, meaning I can stop flow into the reservoir or potential backflow into my fortress. The pump is in a location about as safe as can be. I don't know how big my reservoir has to be though, and I'm not even sure how fast he is going to pump it. Currently it's all done I'm just searching for iron ore to be able to make a magma-safe pump.

Off-topic, how is the ghost situation? In my hermit game, he had a hard time keeping up with all the slabs required.

Yea, there are about 90 zombie dwarves outside the fortress (Zombie Apocalypse, kind of cool) and I get probably 8 or 9 ghosts a year. I take the cheaters way out and save pretty often simply because there is no way I can defend against murderous ghosts if they pop up. It's a bit dumb that he is being haunted by dwarves he has never even met before, and who in their life had never even known the location of my hermitage. I might spend an entire year slabbing all the dead dwarves since they seem to come back eventually anyway.

Also, there is a perpetually burning zombie pig in my magma lines that my hermit does NOT like going near.

[laularukyrumo]

Yeah, that happens. The materials templates for default materials don't actually have melting or boiling points, just heatdam points. Which doesn't cause actual HP-damage to zombies, so they can be perpetually on fire and give no fucks. Once you deanimate them, though, they SHOULD die.

Alternatively there's a way to fix it so that you can burn them, detailed at this lovely post.

[alphawolf29]

Yeah, that happens. The materials templates for default materials don't actually have melting or boiling points, just heatdam points. Which doesn't cause actual HP-damage to zombies, so they can be perpetually on fire and give no fucks. Once you deanimate them, though, they SHOULD die.

Alternatively there's a way to fix it so that you can burn them, detailed at this lovely post.

Tried this, my burning undead pig is still in my magma lines

[Urist Da Vinci]

Yeah, that happens. The materials templates for default materials don't actually have melting or boiling points, just heatdam points. Which doesn't cause actual HP-damage to zombies, so they can be perpetually on fire and give no fucks. Once you deanimate them, though, they SHOULD die.

Alternatively there's a way to fix it so that you can burn them, detailed at this lovely post.

Tried this, my burning undead pig is still in my magma lines

That's because the poster in the other thread made a mistake. You need a melting point, DF materials don't sublimate.