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Author Topic: So i just breached my first cavern.  (Read 742 times)

Barek Longboe

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So i just breached my first cavern.
« on: June 03, 2013, 01:23:38 pm »
Anything i need to know?
I know megabeast come from the depths and hope i haven't breached it way too fast.
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VerdantSF

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Re: So i just breached my first cavern.
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2013, 01:31:40 pm »
You can secure the cavern completely by walling every edge of the map from ground to ceiling.  Unlike the surface, you can build all the way to the map edge in the caverns.  While some forgotten beasts can be handled by your military, sooner or later, one with a hard to damage body and/or deadly syndromes will appear.  I had 2 forgotten beasts show up before I could wall off my cavern.  The first had deadly blood and required a cave-in.  The second caught me off-guard, but luckily only had webs.  Speaking of cave-ins, if you haven't already, now is a good time to familiarize yourself with cave-in trap design.  Check out the dwarf fortress wiki for more details.
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slothen

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Re: So i just breached my first cavern.
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2013, 02:17:31 pm »
caverns are very useful.  You can explore them easily and fairly safely by mining and re-walling.  Its even more useful if you secure a bit of real estate for yourself through walls, bridges, and ramp removal.
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While adding magma to anything will make it dwarfy, adding the word "magma" to your post does not necessarily make it funny.
Thoughts on water
MILITARY: squad, uniform, training
"DF doesn't mold players into its image - DF merely selects those who were always ready for DF." -NW_Kohaku

joeclark77

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Re: So i just breached my first cavern.
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2013, 04:53:09 pm »
Build an entrance to the cavern just like your entrance to the surface world: a long hallway with a closing drawbridge, lots of traps, sentry animals, archer turrets, etc.  Mostly you will encounter "wild animals" down there so it's a great source of meat, animals to train, etc.  Send your woodchoppers and plant gatherers to harvest the bounty.  Train your military on the crundles and gorlaks and stuff.  (Assuming this is the first, easiest cavern, the truth is 95% of the wildlife will be relatively easy to kill and good to eat.  You only need to freak out and slam the drawbridge if you see a Giant Cave Spider or a Forgotten Beast.)

Once you've figured out the basics, you might look into ways to trap or neutralize GCSs and FBs.  They are building destroyers so you can use built furniture (armor stand, bed, door, etc) to lure them into a prison cell and then seal it with a drawbridge.
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