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[Glitch(TMG)]

Okay. So, I'm returning to a fort I have on DF after a long hiatus, and unusually enough, I remembered exactly what I was doing--or attempting to do--before going on hiatus: trying to get a dead dorf body out of a river so I can entomb it. I will attempt to illustrate the river z-level as best as I can...

XXXX~~
XXXX~~
XXXX~~
XD^~~
X^~~~
X^~~~

X = wall(ground on the next z-level above)
D = dead body
^ = upward slope
~ = water (7/7)

The upward slopes are, of course, completely submerged in 7/7 water. The dead body is on top of a slope, also submerged, all against the wall. The upward slopes are there because I had done some channelling for something. The rivder is also a real river, not a brook, it can't be walked across. What I want to do is get that body out of the river. Before I say anything else, I should probably say I'm playing DF v0.31.25, an older version (never bothered to upgrade).

My first thought was trying to dam the river, but to my frustration, there's no decent native way to do so, just four 'hack' methods from the wiki: ice, draining, magma, natural cave-in. I cannot do any four of those:

Ice method requires river to freeze in winter, my climate doesn't.
Natural cave-in requires a natural formation above the river, and I don't have one. (as an aside, I actually did try to built a 'corral' of constructed walls ringing the body--but a construction that cave-ins automatically deconstructs. This is stupid.)
Draining requires either a bottomless pit or a massive natural canyon, and I'm not tearing up my landscape for that.
Magma requires digging deep enough to find it (which I haven't done yet, I'm running an expectionally compact and minimalistic fort), but even if I did, I wouldn't want to tunnel up all the way from the magma to the surface to pump it up.

So, with me at a loss, I put this challenge forth to you, the DF community. Can someone figure out how to extract a body from a river, with or without damming(and if it includes damming, coming up with a new method that's not as impractical as the existing ones)?

[MonkeyHead]

Lots of pumps. 3 or 4 should divert enough water to get an expendible or 6 down there to carry stuff out. Just be sure to have somewhere sensible for the water to go.

[weenog]

If you're not willing to do some heavy duty excavation and construction for it, you don't want the body that badly.

Did water not exit by flowing off the edge of the map in v.31?  Cause otherwise I don't see why you don't just make a small drain canal.

[Glitch(TMG)]

Just be sure to have somewhere sensible for the water to go.

That would the the core aspect of why that particular solution is impractical for me, yes.

If you're not willing to do some heavy duty excavation and construction for it, you don't want the body that badly.

Drat. I was afraid of that...

Did water not exit by flowing off the edge of the map in v.31?  Cause otherwise I don't see why you don't just make a small drain canal.

I'm...not entirely sure what you mean or how that would help. The water still flows in from the starting point of the river, and the place where the body fell in is actually almost right in the center of the map.

[weenog]

I started playing with v.34.07, so I don't know from experience what conditions were like in .31.XX.  But in .34.07 onward, any fluid that hit the edge of the playing area with no obstructions would leave the playing area completely and permanently.  You don't have to store it in a lake or reservoir, you don't have to drop it down into hell, it's just gone.  A small ditch or tunnel that can direct the water to the edge of the playing area after it's pumped out of the river should get rid of it simple and clean.  If you opt for the underground tunnel method, be aware that you can't dig into the very last tile on the boundary of the play area, so you have to open it to fluid flow by smoothing it and then carving fortifications into it.

[Glitch(TMG)]

Oh, that's what you mean. Yeah, the only issue with that is that the body is in the middle of the river...but hmm. That might work. I'll keep my ears open for any other ideas before I try this, though.

[weenog]

If leaving the ground as undisturbed as possible is really that big of a priority to you, you could try annihilating the water yourself instead.  Make the canal lead to a small nearby disposal pond, put an atom smasher in the pond and run it with dwarf power or a simple repeater.

[Yovatsap]

Or you could always just engrave a slab...

[Glitch(TMG)]

Oh, I'd forgotten about slabs/memorials, haven't done those before...eh, I'll see if I can try the pond/atom smasher, and if not, I'll just engrave a slab. Thanks! And if anyone else wants to try and come up with ideas for this, go ahead!

[Maynot]

You can literally build a floor over the river and build pumps that are aimed  against the flow.  Build walls around the sides of the river to prevent flooding.

Alternatively you can floor/wall over most of the river and pump the water over the area with the dwarf corpse.  Make sure to calculate for a recovery hatch.  And of course build walls around the river where the water drains to prevent flooding.

[Panando]

The trick with pumping a river is to build a row of pumps completely across the river, pump upstream, and force the pump output back into the river, by completely walling the outlet tiles in so the water can only go down and can't spread out. The magic of DF fluid dynamics will then cause the pumped water to be teleported off the map edge upstream (pumped water will teleport through 7/7 deep water), thus no spillage, and the river downstream of the pump row will drain out.

The only collateral to this is that some of the building materials will fall into the river and be unrecoverable.

[DTF]

Would water pressure be enough to move the corpse? As in: you dig into the river from below the corpse and it will be flushed down a corridor with floodgates. When the corpse is inbetween 2 floodgates, you close them and can drain the water out of that small area fairly easily and retrieve the corpse.

[atazs]

You could use dfhack to spawn magma in the water or if the ghost is bothering you you can just make a memorial slab

[Glitch(TMG)]

Hrm. Well, I went on a test fort to try out making an 'atom smasher' as practice before I do it for real in the fort where I'm trying to retrieve the body, and...I can't seem to get the 'atom smasher' to work. I build the drawbridge over flat ground aboveground (it was something like 5x5) and linked it to a lever. I put refuse there, I put a live dog and dorf on the space, both when the drawbridge was raised and lowered, and every time, the only thing that happened was that all and sundry got knocked to the edge of the drawbridge and did not erase from existence. In the case of the live dog and dorf, they were merely stunned and had no lasting injury, and that was with the drawbridge repeatedly raising and lowering with them in the same space. Didn't try it with fluids, though.

Would water pressure be enough to move the corpse? As in: you dig into the river from below the corpse and it will be flushed down a corridor with floodgates. When the corpse is inbetween 2 floodgates, you close them and can drain the water out of that small area fairly easily and retrieve the corpse.

That...is a brilliantly simple idea and I can't believe I didn't think of it already. This is what I will do!

[King Mir]

Only in dwarf fortress are the options for the simple task of getting a body out of water so convoluted.