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Author Topic: number of cavern levels  (Read 1278 times)

quarague

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number of cavern levels
« on: March 31, 2012, 12:53:41 pm »

So I thought every embark has 3 cavern layers where the highest one goes up to something like z-level 70-80. I started an embark (normal 4x4 size) in a freezing biome with a volcano and after lots of digging I found one level of caverns at z-level 2. Just checked it with dfhack prospect, the only plants / trees on the map are on z-levels 7 to -7, liquid water is on z-levels -2 to -7. So apparently this embark has only a single cavern layer, the lowest of the normal three.

On a side note, the wiki states that a well can be arbitrarily high above the water source and this is indeed true. A single bar of gold was enough to make a chain reaching down a total of 125 z-levels from the well to the water source. No idea what would be left of a dwarf that falls in there.

edit: I did use 'prospect all' to check, sorry for confusing wording. I did some more exploratory digging, straight lines through the entire embark horizontal and vertical every 25 tiles, repeat every 20 z-levels. If there are any cavern layers above z-level 7 they have to be really tiny and void of any plants, trees and water, so I don't think there are any.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2012, 11:42:05 am by quarague »
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Elone

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2012, 01:30:37 pm »

Have you been using the simple worldgen? This effect is easily achieved through the advanced worldgen, which I encourage everyone to slowly master. I prefer there to be a single widely open cavern, myself. You can set there to be only 2 or only 1 cavern, but you will get all the features from all three layers, like the dark blue trees.
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Grumbledwarfskin

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2012, 02:27:38 pm »

The default behavior of prospect and reveal has changed. Reveal does nothing by default, you have to add a command line argument to get it to actually reveal stuff. So you're probably only seeing trees from the areas that you've revealed legit.

Since I don't actually use either, I can't advise you as to what what the relevant argument is.
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GhostDwemer

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2012, 03:17:53 pm »

Nothing. The relevant argument is null. Just use reveal. The other options are reveal hell and reveal demon, both of which reveal the same thing, only the second doesn't pause. Prospect by default only prospects what is revealed. Use prospect all to get unrevealed stuff. You can also use prospect and prospect all from the embark selection screen, but this only provides a rough estimate.
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Grumbledwarfskin

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2012, 03:22:15 pm »

Did I get that wrong? I remember there being a few threads about how the options on some of those cheat programs had changed dramatically with the new version, but I guess it must not have been reveal. Sorry for any confusion.
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quarague

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2012, 06:12:11 am »

this world was made using simple world generation and I did use prospect all.
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Garath

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2012, 06:17:00 am »

well, if you just use prospect, it will only show what you have found. If you use reveal and then prospect it will look at the whole map. Alternatively, use prospect all.

I tried it and it still functions as before.
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SarZ

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2012, 09:43:13 am »

Same here. I used prospect and didn't see anything. Then I used reveal and then prospect and I got everything on the map.

For you it is totally possible to have dug through the other 2 levels of the cavern. Check what kind of trees are in the cavern you explored: for example Nethercaps and Blood Thorns will only grow in the 3rd cavern, so then you can be pretty sure you missed the other 2 caverns.
Happened to me yesterday: I found cavern 1, dug through cavern 2, found cavern 3 with a magma pipe, I broke through the pipe and found that it wend all the way up to cavern layer 2.
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kaijyuu

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2012, 10:28:32 am »

If you use reveal and then prospect, it won't give you accurate results since the candy and hell are hidden. Unless you use reveal all, but seriously, just use prospect all.
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SarZ

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #9 on: April 01, 2012, 10:53:22 am »

I usually only wanna know if there is any usable metal on the map. I wish Toady would fix that ... stupid metals! Usually I only find either copper, or iron. But I never find any bismuth or tin, so I can forget about bismuth bronze or normal bronze. It's ALWAYS either copper or iron (/steel), never anything else for armor/weapons.
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xeniorn

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #10 on: April 01, 2012, 11:04:38 am »

I usually only wanna know if there is any usable metal on the map. I wish Toady would fix that ... stupid metals! Usually I only find either copper, or iron. But I never find any bismuth or tin, so I can forget about bismuth bronze or normal bronze. It's ALWAYS either copper or iron (/steel), never anything else for armor/weapons.

I don't think that's something Toady will "fix". Dwarves are creatures of the earth and therefore are apt in geology and such stuff so they can presume you can find shallow or deep metals on a certain embark, but knowing exactly how much of each kind of metal you can find in a particular embark isn't something I would expect to see ever integrated in the game. People who would like to know that kind of stuff can use utilities anyway, but others who would like it more to be unknown would suffer from it being shown by default.
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kingubu

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2012, 12:06:14 pm »

All three cavern layers can be generated dry with no water or plants, except the third cavern which will have blood thorns and only blood thorns when dry.

I thought it was a bug when I first encountered it.  Thought I had broken something.
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Bilanthri

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Re: number of cavern levels
« Reply #12 on: April 01, 2012, 07:28:14 pm »

I usually only wanna know if there is any usable metal on the map. I wish Toady would fix that ... stupid metals! Usually I only find either copper, or iron. But I never find any bismuth or tin, so I can forget about bismuth bronze or normal bronze. It's ALWAYS either copper or iron (/steel), never anything else for armor/weapons.

I kinda like having only copper for weapons/tool material. It makes me get creative with my defenses and gives me something to ask the caravan to bring the next year. Remember, a cage can be melted down into a whole bar.
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