Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LionsLinden]

Unable to find a suitable embark location for my needs which would just include a very steep mountain/hill I had the idea of making one myself. Has anyone done something along these lines before? I plan to construct a huge tower which houses both a magma and a water pump stack. I will then let it rain magma and shortly afterwards water to form an obsidian mountain. So far I don't know if I need some sort of containment on the ground level or if some kind of natural formation will be created when I just let both liquids rain from my tower.

[Wellincolin]

Good luck, post results.

If hard enough, try to include it on the megaprojects article on the wiki.

[Loud Whispers]

It's ambitious. You'd have to do it layer by layer to make sure it settles evenly though

[gzoker]

You will have a million little magma and water pockets, and the casting process will be interrupted by cave in messages every second.
Building a case every level, then destroy the whole thing will be tedious. But you will avoid the miner-killer magmapockets. I think this is a megaproject in itself. If you don't have a problem with using dfhack, then you can make the whole obsidian mountain with it, or just the casing, and cast the levels yourself.

half ninja'd

[gchristopher]

I think you'd encounter the least hassle by smoothing the lowest level, building walls around the area to cast the obsidian, then retracting bridges above the entire area. Then you could control dropping alternating layers of lava and water.

That'd be a lot more setup work, but once you cast the entire column of obsidian, you don't have to deal with pockets of magma or water, and it'd be a standard, reliable obsidian casting operation.

You should do it in the middle of a lake! I've been wanting to do that for a long time.

[Friendstrange]

The only problem with this is that you would need to have a constant magma flow on the topmost levels or some sort of cast so that the magma on them doesnt evaporate or flow downward. Making a cast every level would be my prefered method, even if its a hassle.

If you manage to make it work though, remember you can also cast off several areas or lines so as to carve interesting designs on the landscape, a negative if you will. You could make your own Nasca Lines, pitfalls, pools, etc and then pour water on top of the obsidian to make grass grow. Terraforming with magma can be pretty fun.

[LionsLinden]

I already found a perfect site for this mission. It's a 5x5 embark with a stream running right through the middle. North of the river is a terrifying sand desert and south of the river are plains of tropical grassland. I also plan to kind of split the stream so the final mountain will sit right in the middle of the river.
The best outcome would be guaranteed by doing an already suggested negative of the final mountain and then fill it layer after layer with obsidian. But this is also the most work. So it is also the dworfiest way!

[Hyndis]

Its doable, but extremely tedious to build.

If you're going that route then you will need two pump stacks all the way to the top of the map, plus a casing around the entire block of obsidian you're going to cast.

Its probably faster and easier to just build the entire thing out of blocks at that point. Build an obsidian maker deep down in the guts of the fortress. Load the obsidian onto minecarts, ship it up to your mason workshops, and then ship the blocks up to your construction site and build the entire thing out of obsidian blocks.

[Helgoland]

Drawbridges are your friend!

Code: [Select]

O_____O
O     O
O     O
O     O
O     O
O~~~~~O

Side view; O is wall, _ is drawbridge (retracting), ~ is magma/water/obsidian.
1) Pump water into the upper chamber.
2) Stop pumping.
3) Operate drawbridge.
4) Operate drawbridge again.
5) Pump magma into the upper chamber.
6) Stop pumping.
7) Operate drawbridge.
Operate drawbridge again.
9) Repeat until desired height is reached.
10) Dismantle constructed walls, pumps, and drawbridges; shape obsidian block to your liking.

You can also build great obsidian farms like this - it leaves no magma/water pockets at all!

[Canisaur]

Unable to find a suitable embark location for my needs which would just include a very steep mountain/hill I had the idea of making one myself. Has anyone done something along these lines before? I plan to construct a huge tower which houses both a magma and a water pump stack. I will then let it rain magma and shortly afterwards water to form an obsidian mountain. So far I don't know if I need some sort of containment on the ground level or if some kind of natural formation will be created when I just let both liquids rain from my tower.

In the future, if you're trying to get a steep hill, you can also tweak the erosion settings in the advanced world gen parameters.  If you minimize erosion you'll end up with a lot of sharp cliff edges rather than rolling hills.

[Triaxx2]

I found a perfect basin by looking for river intersections near the mountains. It's more than 40z by 40z in total.

Of course I'm not building quite that large on mine, but it's still quite a nice place.

Consider leaving some water running through the bottom layer, so you can have a well built in.