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[CaptainLambcake]

A cave crocodile attacked on the 2nd cavern floor, which happens to be mostly water.  Most of the dead were on land and were recoverable, but one body fell in and another lost an arm.  How do I go about retrieving the parts?  I've already given them slabs, but I want the bodies as well.  Thank you.

[PatrikLundell]

There are a number of alternatives:
- Seal the edges and then drain the lake. Sealing can be done with magma or cave-ins.
- Seal an area around the bodies (magma, building while pumping water away with screw pumps, or cave-in a ring around the area) and then pump the water out).
- Obsidianize the tile and the tiles around it and channel out the center tile to recover the remains.
- Just pump and send someone down to recover the body (part). Quite likely to fail due to pumping causing water to stream and move the part (as well as pushing the pumper into the water).
- Dig a drain that can be closed off and then start to drain the water, hoping to get the flowing water to move the desired item (s) down into the drain.

My choice is the first one, since I always want to secure caverns completely, so those steps will have to be taken eventually anyway. However, that will take quite some time, especially since I tend to focus on the above water entrances first (easier to seal and land critters tend to be a greater threat).

[CaptainLambcake]

I've been playing DF for over 2 years, but I sadly never learned about drains, cave-ins or the like.  In fact this is my first fort finding candy.  How would I go about causing a cave in?

[PatrikLundell]

There's a first time for everything

When wondering about anything, try the wiki as the first resource since there's an amazing amount of info there, and you don't have to wait for answers.

To generate a controlled cave-in you need to partially dig out, support, complete dig out, and disable the support of a block of rock.
First you need to determine the shape of the block to drop. Note that it has to fit completely into the target space, where it will fuse with the floor. Even a single tile of the falling block hitting a wall before that will stop the fall and cause it to fuse there instead. Trees have to be removed, as even the smallest twig will stop and suspend the falling block. Also, if there is empty space below the target floor the block will smash through, which might not be intended and can lead to various amounts of !Fun!.

Say your desired block is an L shape with 3 tile N/S, with a single E tile at the bottom, w tiles high to reach the cavern roof and completely seal off the target passage. We assume the cavern roof is flat, to avoid complications, and we also ignore the danger of critters for the time being.
The two lowest roof levels contain the tiles for the cave-in. The level above that should be dug out completely above the rock block, and to provide access I'd add extra room for easy access:

Top level. Dig priority 4:
WdWWWWWW
W......W
W.h.h..W
W.h.hh.W
W.h..h.W
W.hhhh.W
W......W
WWWWWWWW

first block level, dig priority 5
WiWWWWWW
W......W
W.hhh..W
W.hWh..W
W.hWhh.W
W.hWWh.W
W.hhhh.W
W......W
WWWWWWWW

Second block level, breaching into the cavern. Dig priority 6
WuWWWWWW
W......W
W.hhh..W
W.hWh..W
W.hWhh.W
W.hWWh.W
W.hhhh.W
W......W
WWWWWWWW
W = Wall
d = Down stair
. = Open floor
h = Channel
i = Up/Down stair
u = Up stair.

When the top level has been dug out, build a Support on top of any of the tiles in the "island" and hook it up to a lever. Once the lever has been hooked up you channel away the "bridge" at the top level so the block is now fully supported by the support. Get your dorfs out of the way and pull the lever, and the whole chunk of rock fill fall down and fuse with the cavern floor below.

I actually use another level of rock to not having to worry about cavern critters. I shift all the stuff above up one level and then dig out a floor below the lowest one (i.e. an open 7*6 floor below the hanging rock segment). This no part of the digging process is open to the cavern, and thus completely safe (apart from your own mistakes and dwarves total disregard for safetly, of course). When the lever is pulled the cave-in will smash through the floor below, and if the cavern is two tiles high, it will fuse with the ceiling rock as well, thus sealing the hole it just made.

The extra walk tile around the channel is strictly not needed (apart from when you channel down to the cavern, where the dorfs will need somewhere to stand), but are a remnant from when I dug floors first and then channeled.

[CaptainLambcake]

Another of my dorfs drowned, so I'll be trying this, but I was able to build a dig out a giant room under the area the drowned was in, and channel into it.  Once his body fell into the room I closed a floodgate, and managed to recover it.