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[Clouded_scythe]

Hello I am a shamless newb and would like some help on a few things i cant to save both my own and my dwarves lives seem to figure out these questions
1. i cant find the underground river to save my life.
2. The starting area i ...well start out in seems rather small compared to the MASSIVE areas i have seen on the internet how do i expand.
3. Z Axis you say what is that and how do i use it.
4. WHy is there a big C killing all my dwarves like they where legos to lava.
5. How do i set other oders it only lets me check the ones that are already set i want one dwarf to only take the crap my miners dig up to stock piles

[Samyotix]

1. i cant find the underground river to save my life.

Same here. Keep digging :-)
(I have no idea at what level to expect the river, but I know it's there ...)

2. The starting area i ...well start out in seems rather small compared to the MASSIVE areas i have seen on the internet how do i expand.

When selecting the area to embark, press Shift and U/K/M/H to resize the area.

3. Z Axis you say what is that and how do i use it.

It's the third dimension: up and down.
To use it, erm, I'm on a different keyboard layout probably. Hit the key, you see the level above or below the one you saw before. The X Cursor is really useful here: Say you want to build stairs down.
Place Down stair, press "Z-1" key, place Up/Down stair, press "Z-1 key", build Up stair. You just connected 3 z-levels      

4. WHy is there a big C killing all my dwarves like they where legos to lava.

Press v, check out what creature that is. Undead elephant? No, that'd be E ...
Difficulty depends a lot on where you embark, each kind of biome has different animals. If you see skeletal eagles, you're in trouble.

Wiki has these:  Biomes  

Regions

Depending on the temperature range and biome, a range of different shrubs (herbs), tress and animals will show up on that map. So my last fort e.g. had hoary marmots and horses which meant hunting was easy. The current one has skeletal mountain goats which have already killed 2 out of my 4 starting dogs.

BTW. critters (and where they show up) here: Creature

Big C. Hmm. Colossus, Crocodile, Cow, Cyclops, Cave Swallow?.
Colossi seem to be rare and only show up after a while, I've never seen one. If you have a cave on your map, unfriendly creatures may live in it; if you settled near swamp, you may run into skirmishes with the local wildlife from time to time.

If you're very unlucky, the live C and the dead dwarf means your hunter had no bolts, tried to wrestle a cow, and lost :-)  Press v, check the animal, after it killed a dwarf it should have a hero name :-)

5. How do i set other orders it only lets me check the ones that are already set i want one dwarf to only take the crap my miners dig up to stock piles

Stuff miners dig up ... stones and ores ... so the relevant task is stone hauling. To make a dwarf do lots of that, turn his other jobs off.
You cannot directly set any of these "move stuff from a to b" orders, just arrange stockpiles in a semi-logical fashion and hope for the best      

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

[ChaosFollowing]

Cave rivers are not guaranteed. They are possible in any mountain biome, so if you want one, look there. Dwarf Prospector util reveals these on the world map, along with closed magma vents, chasms, and adamantine.

You can resize the starting location on the embark screen. Also, DF is now 3D, so you can dig down(or up). This is the Z-axis in action. To dig down, dig some stairs down, then on the floor below(press > or possibly * if that doesn't work to view the floor below) dig some stairs up. You can now dig around that staircase, opening up additional floors.

[Clouded_scythe]

well it turned out to be a colosus which is crap and i liked that place too. but thank you for the acessing new levels tip i can finally mae it 3d but they dont do anything with the stair cases  and i still have no clue why they wont build anything i tell them to lazy bastards

[Temetrix - Nilk]

quote:Originally posted by Clouded_scythe:
<STRONG>well it turned out to be a colosus which is crap and i liked that place too. but thank you for the acessing new levels tip i can finally mae it 3d but they dont do anything with the stair cases  and i still have no clue why they wont build anything i tell them to lazy bastards</STRONG>

How did you make this staircase? If you want to go one level down, first you dig downward stair on floor then it reveals one wall tile from level bellow... You need to then designate this wall to be dug into upward stair.

Hmm... do you really have those jobs enabled you need to make buildings you want?

[Clouded_scythe]

Thank you all for your help i have moved to a new area that i now can go up and down in i have them doing mostly well i have no water tho which sucks no rivers or anything but plenty of beer and i dont have any (so far) dangerous animals yet thank you once again for the help

[Clouded_scythe]

What is an Aquifer and why does it make finding stone harder

[Solara]

An aquifer is underground water...like a lot of underground water. You won't be able to dig down very deep before you hit it so you'll probably only have a couple of layers of soil to work with.

[lastofthelight]

An aquifier is a layer of subsurface water. In real geology, you'll find it in porous stone above nonporous stone.

In fantasy game terms, it means when you dig, you'll hit some underground layers of water, which keep you from getting to the good stuff beneath it. Usually, I just look for an area with solid stone and dig underneath the aquifier, but some people more experienced/intelligent then me have complex pumping schemes going on.

[Clouded_scythe]

thank you for the help how would i find a way around them and do i hav eto trabel east and down to find the underground river

[lastofthelight]

If by underground river, you mean the "aquifier" - thats not a river, thats something else. There /is/ something called an underground river, but its not in porous stone - its just a river thats underground.

If by underground river, you mean an actual river, (say you used the prospector utility to see that there should be one in your map) - well uh, those are pretty hard to find, and I'm not the best person to be giving advice on that.

About finding a way around "aquifiers" - well, one way is to do what I do, dig somewhere else until you see solid stone, and then just go around it. For example, this is what I recently did - and boy, I hope my formatting keeps on this, otherwise this will sure look stupid:

<glacial>  <glacial> <glacial>

<ice>           <ice>         <ice>

<clay>          <clay>        <clay>

<stone>         <aquifier>     <aquifier>

So, if that shows up as the 4x3 grid I intended it to show up as, I just dug around on the level /above/ the aquifier, until I found stone that wasn't damp (which means there wasn't an aquifier below it>  - and then just kept digging, effectively bypassing it.

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

P.S. Of course, that might not work for /all/ aquifiers, so your milage might vary. Otherwise, see: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Aquifier

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: lastofthelight ]

[Nesoo]

quote:Originally posted by Clouded_scythe:
<STRONG>thank you for the help how would i find a way around them and do i hav eto trabel east and down to find the underground river</STRONG>

Ahh, I think I get it now. It seems that our friend here has likely been confused by the river that was in the 2D version of the game.

In the old 2D version, there was an outside river, the cliff face, the underground river, the chasm, then the magma. This is no longer the case. The only features you can be guaranteed are the ones you see when you're selecting the embark rectangle. So, if you want to be sure you have water, you'll need to include a brook or river in your selection, or, if you don't mind "cheating", use the Regional Prospector to locate an underground river and include that in your rectangle.

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: Nesoo ]

[Clouded_scythe]

Oh...really so the needed object of water isnt garentted to be there...oh ...maybe "SOMEONE" should fix that on the wiki which said it was there no matter what

[Conservative Swine]

I have questions.
1. How do I fill in a channel square my dwarves dug?
2. I designated several farm squares. How do I tell if they are good to go and what do I need to do to it?
3. Can floors be smoothed or whatever while they are occupied by stones or workshops and stuff?
4. How do I train my dogs?
5. How do I get a dwarf to work on something specifically, like crafts or whatever? Right now they are figuring out who does what themselves. Mainly digging and moving rocks.

[Grek]

1. Rewall with the [b-C-w] menu. Capital C is important.
2. Make sure you've ordered them to plant something by going to the [q] menu and putting the cursor over the farm, then selecting a plant for each season.
3. Stone, yes. Workshops, no.
4. Build a kennel [b-k] and issue an order for 'train war dog' or 'train hunting dog'. Make sure you have a dwarf with the animal trainer job enabled.
5. [v-p-l] menu brings up the labour menu for the dwarf that the cursor is over. Select jobs you want that dwarf to be doing and deselect ones you don't want him doing.