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[Arshness]

Okay, I found a pool of Magma about 20 layers down. Sadly, it's on the opposite corner of the map from where my fortress is. I have never successfully gotten a dwarven machine running before, so I have no idea how to pump it anywhere.

What do I do? How should I proceed? Do I dig out a cistern for magma under my fortress then go channel to it and let it fill up? Using a magma-safe rock to floodgate it? Can I then pump it up to my workshops? I don't know how to set up a pump.

What would you do with this? Any tips/advice?

[Kneenibble]

You could do as you suggest, and have forges and smelters on the same level as the magma, channeled into a cistern closer to your stairs.  20 layers is not that far away -- each z-level only takes as long to traverse as a single tile.

20 layers, however, is also not a huge undertaking for magma relocation!  Machines are a lot of fun to set up.  I recommend you dig a cistern conveniently close to your fort, and figure out how to set up a pump stack powered by windmill.  Green glass is magma-safe for the pump parts, and surely magma-safe rock could easily be found for the mechanisms.

[PatrikLundell]

I'd consider a two pronged approach. First set up a magma driven workshop by the pool and start to produce 20 magma safe screws, pipes and blocks (blocks are easy: just make rock blocks out of a magma safe stone (check the wiki for those). Screws and pipes can be produced from green glass (any glass actually, but why use trickier to produce ones), iron, steel (why waste steel if you've got iron, though), candy, and nether-cap. Check the wiki on how to produce a pump stack. I'd power the stack with water wheels, because:
- Only some embarks have wind (latitude dependent)
- Wind mills produce 0/20/40 power depending on embark latitude, and are vulnerable to building destroyers unless you pour a fair bit of work into securing them (especially the power train).
- Water wheels produce 50 power. If you've got an aquifer you can do that completely safely.

If the only thing you're going to use the magma for is power a new workshop a bit higher up (as opposed to e.g. spreading death and mayhem on your enemies, or obsidianizing cavern lake entrances) you may consider pumping each level of the stack manually, or, easier, fill a magma safe mine cart (the materials above EXCEPT nether-cap) with magma and manually haul it up to a track stop by a channeled out singe tile in your workshop floor, have the track stop dump the contents, collect a second dose (workshops require 4/7 magma), build your shop (after removing the track stop, of course), and repeat for any other workshops. You can also use the method to create a magma dumping pit for stripped enemies (see mass pitting on the wiki).

I'd seriously consider the pump stack because it's a great opportunity to get an understanding of a new aspect of DF.

You don't need a huge pool of magma for your workshops a single tile of 4/7 depth is enough for each shop. Thus, I'd dig a tunnel above which I'll place the shops in a row (you can make a bend if you like, to get the shops where you like them of course). It doesn't hurt if the tunnel is longer than needed, but it's no great calamity if it's too short, is it's possible to extend it.

[Gigmaster]

You've got four options:

1. Relocate your metal industry to a platform above the magma.
2. Use what is called a 'magma piston'; in brief, it involves some creative mining, where you mine out a literal piston with a stone 'head' which you drop down into the magma lake beneath, which then displaces a large amount of magma above it. Useful if you just want to power some stuff; less useful if you want to weaponize that sweet, sweet magma. Look here for more information.
3. Use a magma pump (what you seem to be primarily considering here). As Kneenibble suggests, green glass is your go-to material here; making the pump-stack items out of metal is impractical and time-consuming. For... whatever reason, all glass, however, presents an anomalous resistance to magma. Go figure. If you're so inclined, you can also make the blocks out of green glass, or you can use one of the magma-safe stones here.

For more information on pump stacks, or screw pumps in general, look here.
4. Use a minecart bucket brigade-type system. If you haven't encountered them yet, minecarts are fabulous, fun little devices that can solve many tricky needs and cause many blunt-force trauma related problems. One use is to run a track through a liquid (magma, in this case), through which a minecart dips into and fills up before rocketing away to a dumping area. I haven't personally set one up yet, and for your first magma-transport project I suggest you go with one of the above, but if you're curious you can look for more info on minecarts. Check out the 'loading liquids' section specifically in regards to your needs.

[PatrikLundell]

I've actually never used a liquid loading device successfully, as my attempts were cut short by the discovery that nether-cap mine carts would disappear without a trace when I tried to use them to scoop up magma (I didn't have any iron [no invaders bringing any yet], so I was out of mine cart materials, except candy). The system I regularly use is to pump magma up one level into a single tile "room" on the outlet tile with a floor grate (magma safe!) to let the excess magma down into the channel below. A dorf hand cranks the screw pump for a few moments, the cart is full, the pumping is stopped, and the mine cart is designated to the "Magma Dump" route route stop (from the "Magma Filling Station" route route stop located at the output tile). A dorf then carries the full cart to the destination route stop, where I've built a track stop to dump the cart contents in the desired direction.
I use magma safe doors on both the pump side and the filling side of the magma filling station, although I don't think it's actually needed.

Oh, if you use a nether-cap mine cart in a magma filling station it will be put on fire, so that didn't work either...

[Gigmaster]

Nethercap does... odd things with the temperature system. The oddity (as far as I know) is that, while nether cap is NOT fireproof, its temperature never changes from the freezing point it always sits at. This, it can be on fire, but totally unaffected, much like artifacts can be. I'm guessing that there's a simplified material check when a cart is filled with something, versus the material the cart is made of, and if that material's 'flammability' doesn't pass muster, it gets removed, much like how the technically undestroyable-by-fire nether cap cannot be used as magma forge building material.

[gchristopher]

4. Use a minecart bucket brigade-type system. If you haven't encountered them yet, minecarts are fabulous, fun little devices that can solve many tricky needs and cause many blunt-force trauma related problems. One use is to run a track through a liquid (magma, in this case), through which a minecart dips into and fills up before rocketing away to a dumping area. I haven't personally set one up yet, and for your first magma-transport project I suggest you go with one of the above, but if you're curious you can look for more info on minecarts. Check out the 'loading liquids' section specifically in regards to your needs.

One cheesy trick for the magma minecart bucket brigade is to carry nested minecarts so they don't injure your dwarves. Load a couple iron (or other magma safe) minecarts with magma, then immediately load those into a third minecart. Carry that minecart to whereever you want magma and dump them. 4/7 is enough to power a magma workshop.forge. It'll probably take some annoying micromanagement of hauling/loading/dumping.

(Though, I've never really tested how bad it is to carry a hot minecart, so maybe you can just carry the hot ones around, but others report burned dwarves.)

[PatrikLundell]

I tend to have my dorfs carry magma filled mine carts around a fair bit, without ever having noticed any burns. I try to equip them with a full set of clothing, so they ought to have their hands protected, but you never know when they decide to shed the old set.

[Quietust]

Nethercap does... odd things with the temperature system. The oddity (as far as I know) is that, while nether cap is NOT fireproof, its temperature never changes from the freezing point it always sits at. This, it can be on fire, but totally unaffected, much like artifacts can be.

Actually, it's more like how coal burns in DF - the fact that it's on fire will cause the item to take damage at a fixed rate, but since it never heats up to the HEATDAM_POINT (by comparison, coal heats up but has no HEATDAM_POINT) the damage won't be accelerated, so it should totally burn up after about 9 months of in-game time.

I'm guessing that there's a simplified material check when a cart is filled with something, versus the material the cart is made of, and if that material's 'flammability' doesn't pass muster, it gets removed, much like how the technically undestroyable-by-fire nether cap cannot be used as magma forge building material.

From my faint recollections, magma has a tendency to instantly destroy any non-INORGANIC items that get dropped into it, even if they are fully stable at 12000 degrees. This includes glass, which is why it had a history of being labeled non-magma-safe even though it really was.

[Gigmaster]

Ahh, hence all the warnings I remember before where you can't let your magma pumps get submerged by reverse pressure down the line if some of them get deconstructed or destroyed.

That nine months figure you mentioned... how did you arrive at it? Is there a 'hitpoint' total for material, or for an item type (or a combination of the two) that's included in the raws? And does this mean that artifacts, like coal, have no HEAT_DAM point?

[Quietust]

That nine months figure you mentioned... how did you arrive at it? Is there a 'hitpoint' total for material, or for an item type (or a combination of the two) that's included in the raws? And does this mean that artifacts, like coal, have no HEAT_DAM point?

All items which are on fire take 10 points of "wear" every game tick, and every 806400 "points" of wear will increase the item's damage level (i.e. "item" -> "xitemx" -> "XitemX" -> "XXitemXX" -> destroyed); as such, a burning item will be totally consumed after exactly 322560 game ticks (which, at 1200 ticks per day, takes 9 months and 16.8 days) unless the item takes additional damage from other sources (such as exceeding its HEATDAM_POINT, which is what usually happens with wood and other organic materials, or being attacked by a building destroyer).

Artifacts never burn away, because their artifact status locks their "wear" level at zero.