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[GrimDark_Majyyks]

Hi hello. I don't mean to cause anyone undue stress, but there appears to be a hole in my lake.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

***NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD***

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Current Version
This is the upload for A Thread I Made.

Some general notes and observations!

I appear to have failed to remember to remove a few really dumb edits I made in the reactions_smelter and entity_default raws that I used for a small project where I wanted to generate a lot of materials to create some above-ground structures. I may be able to do something about this in a future upload, but really the time is not presently available to me. The raw edits are really easy to fix and I will include instructions about that in the OP of the aforementioned thread.

As to actually embarking on the map there are a few things you should know! The first being that you should probably immediately abandon the fortress and Reclaim with more suitable settings, because I didn't Choose Carefully! and just used a preset save that I use for regions with more-or-less normal features. A lot of the problems with what I chose to embark with should be readily apparent from some further details I will be including in handy-list format:

• The initial Embark is on the ice. If you choose to see what you can do with the current array of dwarves and items I advise you move everything into the fort somewhat quickly as the ice will melt over the course of the spring season. It is very readily apparent when the ice is about to melt because all the snow disappears. If you are lucky it will be snowing at the time and you will notice the falling snow turn to rain, at which point you need to get everything inside and flood-proofed because the lake defrosts approximately five minutes afterwards.
• An obsidian shell will likely form over the volcano, but before it manages to form there will be a large quantity of COLLAPSE! messages to push through. It's not so many that you need must turn them off, but if the option is available to you I would suggest it because it is a rather spectacular thing to view!
• If you Reclaim you will probably spawn up the cliffs a ways but not altogether too far from good lakeside entry territory. Getting everything inside is key, do not dawdle, the thaw WILL come sooner than you expect it to, despite being a Cold region.
• Hunters aren't particularly useful if you don't intend to go outside frequently. I am pretty sure a fishing industry would be easy to get going though.
• Livestock that require grazing are not useful for anything other than immediate butchering. Egg-layers and possibly Herbalism can help with food variety until the caravans come.
• It is very easy to use this map to make a very safe fortress that can be used for !!Science!!, especially with a readily accessible volcano, lake, and accompanying aquifer.
• There is a farmable/mostly safe layer between where the lake-bed is and the aquifer begins (watch the north-eastern lake area though, bugger it all)
• The aquifer appears to be either two or three levels deep, will confirm later with a reveal.
• The lake acts a lot like an above-ground aquifer, however my current understanding indicates that you can dredge the "pseudo-aquifer" later (ie channeling into and removing the entire lake bed while it's frozen) and use the actual aquifer to fill the lake to a preferable level by way of screw pumps
• More pending!

Today I have made a discovery that, over the previous couple of months of my Uristian assimilation I had not once heard of. I am a very thorough archive binge-reader and have done a fairly extensive amount of research despite my relative newness to Dwarf Fortress, and generally am not inclined to participate in communities (even ones so actually charming as this {no, really<I do mean it>}). However, finding a volcano at the bottom of a frozen lake seemed like such a novelty I couldn't bear not to share it. I suppose this also doubles as an introductory thread, hi hello.

I'll try, from here on out, to not diverge from the fascinating topic of lake-over-volcano, but I have a nasty predilection towards pursuing more and more esoteric tangents so that maybe will not be A Thing I Actually Succeed At.

I am rather intrigued by the fact that the lake is presently 1 z-layer deep. I do not know if that is normal, as I haven't made a habit of embarking next to them until just now. There are a lot of sheer cliffs right by the lake that go up several z-levels, and very few upward slopes, which suggests to me that it maybe is supposed to be deeper because I've embarked next to places that are supposed to have a lot of sheer cliffs but none of them have been quite so unbrokenly tall as the one I am looking at. This may be nothing, as, again, I have little to no lake experience. It would be very exciting to be able to control the lake's depth via volcano dumping shenanigans, however, and as such I am going to hold out hope that it will get deeper when I plug the volcano up with floors and a bridge or two to serve as drains.

I am also excited by the possibility of having an entirely unassailable fortress, and am presently committed to keeping the main entrance at the lake bed, while producing a trade depot entrance elsewhere that my dwarves can access safely without any fort-endangerment. As a bonus I can then create a Caravan Escape path by way of constructing something or another that leads out of the fort via those cliffs I mentioned earlier.

Once I have information with regard to whether or not the water level will rise I can get a better grasp on which of my current ideas (so many! Can't record them fast enough) I can execute. The embark region is cold if I recall correctly, so I should have plenty of time to work with the ice during the non-summer seasons. So far all I have done is channeled into the ice so I can have the entrance on the lake bed, which I want, at some point, to make a structure of some variety out of so that I can have a tower reaching out of the lake (provided it fills more). Also, with the readily accessible magma, it should be pretty trivial to do away with the paltry influence of seasons and keep the lake liquid all-year round.

There's just so many things to do, and I am much too thrilled at the prospect. I am unable to parse anything else I am thinking or feeling into something coherent so I will just leave this here for now. Updates to follow!

[Swonnrr]

First: Stop your game, and backup a save. Some peoples will want it. 

Second: To science!
Doesn't the ice just above the magma melt? Is the topside of the volcano full magma, or has it be obsidianised by the water?
Does the lake melt seasonly? Even for a few days. I sense win in this.

[GrimDark_Majyyks]

Just did that first thing. I think, anyways. I copied the region from data/saves so hopefully that is sufficient. In any case I will be sure to keep the map handy as this is just the dandiest thing I have ever seen.

As to the ice above the magma melting; I do not think it will because the magma isn't moving as far as I understand what magma movement entails. Additionally the magma of the volcano tops off at 2 z-layers below the level of the ice so I am uncertain whether or not that is close enough.

The magma is exposed to the air for now, no sign of obsidian.

My present understanding of climate says that the lake should melt at some point in the summer but I won't know until it happens. I am fairly positive it will melt because I think I am near a temperate zone on the map. Once I collect sufficient presence of mind to begin designating how I want the fortress to be dug out I can let empiricism take its course, for now though I am having trouble deciding how to even begin beyond an airlock-entrance with emergency drain into the aquifer that I suspect is mostly confined to the area below the lake.

[Thuellai]

This is utterly fantastic, brilliant, I love it.

You're already doing Armok's work, sir.

Welcome to the community.

Also, I know some people have designed 'drop pods', rooms that can be safely caused to collapse into water (creating a room underwater)

I wonder if you could do the same with magma safe materials and drop rooms right into the magma sea?

[GrimDark_Majyyks]

I wonder if you could do the same with magma safe materials and drop rooms right into the magma sea?

I have read something to the effect that people are perfectly capable of doing that, however it is usually best to make sure only the best and brightest are in the pods at the time, as it is not possible to retrieve them as far as I know.

***UPDATE***

The thaw came slightly sooner than I expected. The embark site was on the ice, which thawed. I got the vast majority of my items inside the fortress, only losing a handful of logs. It was pretty obvious when the thaw was coming as all the snow vanished and exposed the ice. Also the snow shifted to rain. There was a fairly sizable delay between these events so I was able to react by making a couple of large "everything" stockpiles.

The water is behaving much like one would expect, falling into the volcano and producing steam and obsidian. The obsidian appears to mostly be caving in, but between the collapse message spam I can't tell if any are actually staying put or not. I think some of the magma has actually gone up a z-level but I am unsure if that will result in anything or not. If the obsidian falling is vertically displacing the magma then it is possible this is going to be more fun than anticipated.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To give you some insight into my present design, I channeled into the ice a little bit so that I could access the same layer as the soon-to-be thawed lake occupied. The circular area that I channeled will serve as an emergency drain when I can get around to digging down and finding the aquifer. I'm going to construct a second bridge on the north side of the "drain" and attach it to the same level so that it can function as an airlock. Hopefully two backup plans will be sufficient to ward away future water-based FUN.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The up ramp leads to the usual preliminary fortress constructions; small stockpile rooms, a couple of workshops, early bedrooms, et al. Nothing worth showing.

Will update once I can determine what is happening with the obsidian being produced.

***UPDATE 2.0***

The obsidian managed to get enough support to stick around and form a lid on top of the volcano. It was really fun to watch it happen, the steam narrowed and the whole thing closed off like a sphincter. I'll leave you to invent the clever butt jokes. Here are the three layers of results.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As it turns out, my lake is only one z-layer deep after all. I am a little disappointed, but there is nothing to stop me from fixing that when I can get around to building a screw pump tower up from the aquifer, which I still need to find.

As things stand, my current plan is to get a screw pump stack up and running as soon as possible. With that up and running I intend to fill the lake to a satisfactory level, at which point I will wait for the next freeze. When the freeze comes I will build pillars in the ice and from there I can construct sky-roads leading off the edge of the map. In the meantime, however, I will need to think of another way to safely house trading partners. I have a lot of upward z-levels to work with as the map is very cliff-happy so I should be able to make a sizable pit trap. Though the bridge airlock did give me another idea.

[cathartic rooster]

Just a note to everyone here.... I like this guy! (it might have something to do with me assuming he is The Warden from Superjail, but I digress.) I think he will be quite beneficial to the evil making machine that is DF.

[BoredVirulence]

I'm pretty sure I've seen a volcano in an ocean before. I was disappointed, as I wanted it on the beach.
This embark sounds much more interesting than mine was. I tried to build into the ocean, but my inexperience made it a foolish venture. Although, I did build the keep out of ice (only frozen for a small period of time).

[krenshala]

As for the aquifer level, be warned that the level of the lake may be the aquifer, as I recall reading a number of posts describing how sea level tiles act as aquifer tiles for the purposes of pouring water into them.  Because of this it may not be possible to increase the depth of the lake without dredging the bottom ... which would be a pretty dwarfy endeavor, I must admit.

Just a note to everyone here.... I like this guy! (it might have something to do with me assuming he is The Warden from Superjail, but I digress.) I think he will be quite beneficial to the evil making machine that is DF.

It isn't evil ... it is !!science!! there is a (minor) difference!

[silverskull39]

I wonder if you could do the same with magma safe materials and drop rooms right into the magma sea?

I have read something to the effect that people are perfectly capable of doing that, however it is usually best to make sure only the best and brightest are in the pods at the time, as it is not possible to retrieve them as far as I know.

can you drop rooms into the magma sea? Yes. With people in them? Yes. Will they be intact/survive? No. When falling walls/floors/basically anything hit the bottom of the magma sea they are destroyed. Semimolten rock just flat out destroys it.

As an aside, I suspect dwarven atom smashers utilize this fact to function by creating a small amount of localized
Semimolten rock at the point of contact by way of high pressure. It doesn't work on large creatures because their structural strength reduces the pressure beyond the creation threshold... but I digress.

[Ruhn]

If the entire room is built out of living stone, then only the furnature inside will deconstruct?
Of course this means that the room needs to be closed via a cave-in before being dropped.
Makes me feel like doing some science.

[Argembarger]

This kinda makes me want to go surround a small aquifer embark site with walls and submerge a fortress under 30 z levels of aquifer water. Or magma. Dang.

[Swonnrr]

Constructed walls are destroyed, AFAIK not "natural" ones. Casted obisidian, for example.
And candy tube doesn't suck anything.

Now, if only we could add these two things...

[JoshBrickstien]

You should upload the backup of your world folder to http://dffd.wimbli.com/ It's a free file sharing service for the Dwarf Fortress community.

[laularukyrumo]

Posting to watch. Good lord. All of my epic are belong to you, good sir.

[GrimDark_Majyyks]

Ha. Unfortunately I haven't made much progress as of yet today, as I spent the past four or so hours going through the mildly-slow-but-very-pleasant-and-free Native American health care system.

If I have to dredge the lake that shouldn't be too much of a problem because I have discovered that there is a layer between the bottom of the lake and the aquifer that is safe for digging so in theory I can just carve out large swaths of lake bed, especially during a freeze. Considering I have a uniquely easy-to-access source for casting obsidian I might be able to test MagmaDomicile things, but that will have to wait until I can devote sufficient time, as I am presently inundated with extra errands. I'll upload the save at some point on my return this evening. I anticipate I can make a lot of progress tonight while I scarf down my very stinky cephalexin. The away time is useful for planning, at least.

**UPDATE**

I have come up with a desirable solution to my problem of needing an entry shaft while maintaining an invulnerable fortress. Sometimes the best solution is the simplest one, which at this point is presently to produce the entry shaft to the far-east side of the fortress that can by readily abandoned once working skyways are in order. Once I am done with this small project (incidentally this will allow the animals I embarked with to reach grazing territory bonusbonusbonus) I will upload the save I backed up and toss it in the OP, and give you pictures of the temporary workaround option in case you happen to A) wish to download this map and B) want a suggestion on how to maintain an impregnable fortress (also in the process I can fish for better ideas then revert to an earlier save and use one of the better ones that come up hoo hoo hoo)