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[lastofthelight]

A list of questions I have, after--- wow, I've been playing this game /way/ too long. The other thread was answered pretty quickly and this game really /is/ as fun as I'd heard, so I figured - and I apologize for starting two threads - I'd just make a new list of questions here.

1. I adore caves.  I checked out the cave entry on the wiki, but it claims they are almost impossible to find. I know caves will only occur in an area with limestone (or similiar topography) where you have old streams/the water table has dropped low enough to make them visible. Uh...other then looking for limestone mountainous regions, does anyone know of any tricks to find caves more easily? It might be fun to try making a dwarf fortress inside a cave.

2. Do they have glacial caverns? Has anyone ever seen one? That'd be even cooler then a limestone cave.

3. Suppose I've created a water supply underground, and I want my dwarves to dig through to it so I can expand/change where it goes. Won't the dwarf doing so be drowned? Other then digging through one floor above and pumping (I've no idea how to pump yet; I don't understand the wiki's number/letter system yet - which is really DF's I understand, but you'd be surprised how much the colors help. I know it can be done though!) - other then digging above and pumping, is there any way to just dig through without the miner dying?

4. I've figured out how to get the trader's working - but I had a representative come and go without me noticing (well, I noticed the going, not the coming) - to get the trader to work, I have to q my trade depot, and tell it that it needs a trader. Did I need to do that with the representative, too?

5. If I refuse to make beer, apparently my dwarves will very slowly loose their addiction to it. Has anyone tried this? If I put my dwarves through A.A., will they be better dwarves for it in the long run?

[ May 17, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

[BurnedToast]

1. make an adventurer, go to town and ask about the surroundings over and over (and take quests). Eventually you will find someone who will tell you about a cave somewhere and it will now show up on your map, try and remember it's general location. kill the adventurer (or retire in town, or whatever) then start a new fort - the cave will show up on the dwarf mode map too making it easy to settle on. AFAIK you can get caves in any rock type.

2. I don't think there are glacial caves, but I don't start many glacial forts so I don't know for sure. It would be pretty cool to find one though!

3. Dwarves don't drown immediately, and if they have swimmer skill they don't ever drown as long as there is some air (i.e the space above them is empty, or the water is lower then 7/7). if the water supply is sealed off (no new water coming in) you can just dig into it and let the water drain out, when it gets to 1/7 it will dry up to nothing eventually. the miner should be OK as long as there is plenty of room for the water to go. just be careful not to flood your lower levels!

4. the dwarf representative meets with your expedition leader, the human one meets with your trader. They will meet automatically if the trader/leader has no jobs to do. So kick the trader out of the depot if you need to, and if they keep doing other jobs then temporaraly draft them (soldiers won't take other jobs but they will meet with trade reps). The trade reps should stay around till they meet though, the only reason they will leave before the meeting is if you don't have anyone for them to meet with (your leader or trader died and you didn't get a new one).

5. dwarves never lose their addiction to booze, no matter how long you wait. They will just be miserable and work slow forever. I admit I've never tried it for longer then a year or so but I doubt it ever changes.

[Kagus]

1. I believe you will be sorely disappointed by DF's caves.  It is essentially a hole in the ground (not cliffside, ground) that leads to a maddening network of spidery tunnels that go off in random directions.  They do not seem to appear in glacial areas, and are not more common in areas with limestone.  To find them, ask someone in a settlement about the local surroundings and hope you get lucky, or take a quest from the mayor (note: you don't actually have to set off on the quest after taking it.  There's no time limit or anything, and you don't get any goodies for completing it), since they will almost always direct you towards a cave with some beastie in it.

2. See above.

3. Not much.  But then again, there's not much reason to expand a reservoir in the first place, since you'll generally need very little of it.  I'm sure there are some good ways of going about it, but they escape my mind for the moment...

5. Dwarves are unique among animals in that they are alcohol dependent.  The messages that appear in the dwarf's profile indicate how long it's been since a dwarf has had a drink, and thus how much he is suffering from it.  Dwarves will move and work much more slowly if they do not get their ration of booze on a regular basis, getting slower as time goes on.  They will never lose the need for alcohol.

EDIT:  Daft, he beat me to it.  And I forgot a question.  How shameful.

[ May 17, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[lastofthelight]

Ok, thanks guys! That helped alot and cleared alot up - I especially had a misconception about the booze.

Another question though.

Uh...I'm in a glacial fortress right now. Or trying, at least. However, whenever I dig into the glacier, I end up with little blocks of...water. I'd understand if it was just digging inside of it, but digging along the edge gets me water too.

This isn't even the wierd part yet.

/I just built a masonry workshop out of water/

[Derakon]

Ice is solid water. You can build things out of it. It's a bit weird, but perfectly accurate.

[lastofthelight]

Oh, I figured it would say ice if it meant ice. Thanks!

[lastofthelight]

Hmm, another question.

I have a glacial map, as I mentioned - but there was supposed to be (according to this reveal utility) an underground river to the right of this chasm. But I've been digging and digging and can't seem to find it, and I'm worried about my dwarves not having water. Any tips? I can't seem to get the glacier ice to melt into water either, so I really need to find this river.

[Duke 2.0]

Well, there are no real ways of finding an underground feature other than mining out the bottom level somewhat fully, or using reveal.

Sometimes the cave river will only be twenty tiles long on the extreme edge of your map stuffed with cave river creatures.

[lastofthelight]

Yeah, the cave river in this case was 12 z-levels down and far south of where I would have guessed from the prospect map.

Anyways, another annoying question!

Suppose I set a dwarf to do nothing but fish, clean/prepare fish corpses, and cook.
Will he cook those raw fish automatically, or do I need to tell my dwarves to manually cook/prepare each and every last fish they ever catch?

[Dareon Clearwater]

Fishing takes major priority over nearly anything else, your fisherdwarf will mainly fish and drink beer, stopping only to sleep.  It's better to have three dwarves in that production chain: one fisherdwarf, one cleaner, and one cook.

[lastofthelight]

UPDATE!

YES THERE ARE!

So, I decided to go into adventure mode to map out caves. Several hours worth of dying to giants, cyclops, (a demon whom ruled over a goblin city. Wtf? I wish my fortress ruler was a demon), when....

I found a cave in a glacial area. Bordered by dense forests, so I checked it out - no quest, but hey, who cares.

Interestingly enough, I went up the slopes of the glacier and then decided to go to sleep - it was night, and I wanted to see. When I woke up, the slopes were gone - and murky water was covering the ground near where the slope had been. I couldn't get back down. So I wandered around a bit and night fell again - and wow, the slopes appeared - I still wasn't connecting this to temperature at this point, I thought I was lost.

So anyways, I keep looking for this cave, but on the way get ambushed by a Yeti (whose blood flows away the next morning, turning an entire watery section of my screen red) - and eventually find the cave...on /top/ of the ice glacier. The z-screen indicates that its next level (the same level with one ramp all caves have) is also made of ice, but...both are filled with water, so alas, I cannot enter. By this point, I'm thirsty, used up all my water, and of course can't use the /masses of liquid water around me/ to drink from.

So I leave the screen and re-enter (using the search function claimed my thirst would get reset that way - it didn't) - and re-look for it, but all I find where the cave entrance was this time is ice; though its possible I got lost. Before I could make sure, I died of thirst, which seems to be more dangerous then those damned spiders.

Sorry if thats a story more then a question, but it was very wierd.

Sadly, since dying, I don't seem to be able to find the area again.

[ May 18, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

[Duke 2.0]

Fascinating.

You can drink water you are in by [E]at and selecting the option "Here".

Oh yes, you only get refreshed if you TRAVEL on the map. Just pressing [T]ravel brings up the map. Moving on the map travels and thus refreshes you.

[lastofthelight]

Ah, thanks for the tip. I didn't realize i had to move.

Also, I managed to find the place again on fortress mode, but its much less interesting - theres no water, only ice, and the cave (which I've found) - is, in fact, entirely filled with ice (which is what its walls are made out of, so its a rather lame cave) - and theres an aquifier, but I havn't found it/the details of it yet.

EDIT: VICTORY!!!

The ice on top was a cap. Down below I managed to dig into the cave system (this expedition is totally dead though; I have a hard enough time getting food without wasting a season digging) - into a cave system, which is half ice and  half silt. I think this is as close as I can get to a glacial cave, and its good enough for me. Its pretty much what I'd expect from one anyways; I mean, they'd be caused from running water, and this is certainly in an area where I've /seen/ water running. Don't know if the Dwarf Fortress engine is smart enough to know that, but most of the geology I've seen it use seems pretty damn accurate thus far.

[ May 18, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]