Print

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

[Dampe]

I'm about to begin my first (second, let us never speak of the first) serious fort, and I'm just really confused about cave adaptation in general. Can someone explain what it is and what I can do (if anything) to prevent it?

[Witty]

When in doubt, check the wiki

[toomanysecrets]

Basically if a dwarf has been underground a long time, he/she will have a negative thought when they finally do go back outside again. It's not a big deal, it's not a big hit to happiness and the only real downside is sometimes it results in dwarf vomit all over the place.

[Panando]

The dwarves it really might matter for is military dwarves. I like to have military dwarves train in a lit area because it's no fun for them to run outside to chase down some enemies, and start puking their guts out and getting unhappy thoughts. You don't want your military dwarves to have unhappy thoughts if you can help it, they already have to put up with getting injured and losing their squad mates and stuff.

[Dampe]

Alright, thanks.

[Quietust]

I don't know if these numbers have been verified against the current version, but earlier versions behaved like this:

* If a dwarf is in a "Dark" tile, cave adaptation increases by 1 every tick to a maximum of 800,000 (403,200 ticks is one year, so the maximum is just short of 2 years).
* If a dwarf is in an "Outside" tile, cave adaptation decreases by 10 every tick.
* If a dwarf is in an "Outside" tile while the sun is out (i.e. not raining or snowing), the following happens:
** If cave adaptation is at 604,800 or higher (1.5 years), the dwarf will experience Nausea, Pain, and Fatigue. The dwarf will also receive the unhappy thought "was nauseated by the sun recently".
** If cave adaptation is between 403,200 and 604,800 (between 1 and 1.5 years), the dwarf will become Stunned and experience lower amounts of Pain and Fatigue. The dwarf will also receive the unhappy thought "was irritated by the sun recently".
** Otherwise, nothing bad happens.

[m-logik]

Out of curiosity, Quietust, do you know if the sun exposure symptoms have a set duration? Or do they persist until the dwarf either goes inside or has their adaptation reduced below the thresholds for symptoms? If a dorf's adaptationometer goes below the "nauseated" threshold while still outside, will it become stunned and receive an additional unhappy thought for being "irritated"?

[Panando]

I don't know if these numbers have been verified against the current version, but earlier versions behaved like this:

* If a dwarf is in a "Dark" tile, cave adaptation increases by 1 every tick to a maximum of 800,000 (403,200 ticks is one year, so the maximum is just short of 2 years).
* If a dwarf is in an "Outside" tile, cave adaptation decreases by 10 every tick.
* If a dwarf is in an "Outside" tile while the sun is out (i.e. not raining or snowing), the following happens:
** If cave adaptation is at 604,800 or higher (1.5 years), the dwarf will experience Nausea, Pain, and Fatigue. The dwarf will also receive the unhappy thought "was nauseated by the sun recently".
** If cave adaptation is between 403,200 and 604,800 (between 1 and 1.5 years), the dwarf will become Stunned and experience lower amounts of Pain and Fatigue. The dwarf will also receive the unhappy thought "was irritated by the sun recently".
** Otherwise, nothing bad happens.

So that means you really need to have dwarves hang out in an outside area in order to ward off cave-adaptation, just having them occasionally see the sun will slow the onset of symptoms but it will eventually become full-blown if they don't spend at least 10% of their time outside. This probably explains why putting just a single tile light-hole above a barracks hasn't been enough to ward off cave adaptation.

[jcochran]

So that means you really need to have dwarves hang out in an outside area in order to ward off cave-adaptation, just having them occasionally see the sun will slow the onset of symptoms but it will eventually become full-blown if they don't spend at least 10% of their time outside. This probably explains why putting just a single tile light-hole above a barracks hasn't been enough to ward off cave adaptation.

Just make a nice wall enclosed meeting area above ground and you're good to go. Unfortunately, you can't roof over the area to make it totally secure. Such a roofed over area is still useful in that cave adaptation won't get worse while within it, but on the other hand, cave adaptation won't get better. And you don't need 10% of their time to be spent outside, only 9.09%....

[BoogieMan]

So that means you really need to have dwarves hang out in an outside area in order to ward off cave-adaptation, just having them occasionally see the sun will slow the onset of symptoms but it will eventually become full-blown if they don't spend at least 10% of their time outside. This probably explains why putting just a single tile light-hole above a barracks hasn't been enough to ward off cave adaptation.

Just make a nice wall enclosed meeting area above ground and you're good to go. Unfortunately, you can't roof over the area to make it totally secure. Such a roofed over area is still useful in that cave adaptation won't get worse while within it, but on the other hand, cave adaptation won't get better. And you don't need 10% of their time to be spent outside, only 9.09%....

Are you sure you won't be able to roof over it? I dug through a 3 layer aquifer and even after putting 3 ceilings over it (archer tower kinda thing) it still counts as light, outside, and freezes in the winter.

[jcochran]

Are you sure you won't be able to roof over it? I dug through a 3 layer aquifer and even after putting 3 ceilings over it (archer tower kinda thing) it still counts as light, outside, and freezes in the winter.

Are you sure you're reading it right?
You'll find that there are three attributes
Inside/Outside
Light/Dark
Above Ground/Subterranean

A dug out area that is subsequently roofed over becomes Inside/Light/Above Ground and yes, if you're in a temperate or colder climate, water will freeze there from time to time.

[Quietust]

Out of curiosity, Quietust, do you know if the sun exposure symptoms have a set duration? Or do they persist until the dwarf either goes inside or has their adaptation reduced below the thresholds for symptoms?

I can't check right now, but I believe it's a percent chance to trigger during each tick, so a long string of unlucky rolls could make it persist until they go back inside.

If a dorf's adaptationometer goes below the "nauseated" threshold while still outside, will it become stunned and receive an additional unhappy thought for being "irritated"?

Yes on becoming stunned, not sure about the thought - there are some thoughts which are mutually exclusive (such as "depressed about being confined"/"is happy to be free" and "suffered minor wounds lately"/"suffered major wounds lately"), but I'm not sure if irritated/nauseated are in that list.

[Quietust]

I've just checked the code in 0.34.11 and discovered several interesting things:

1. As I suspected, negative effects of cave adaptation have a percentage chance to trigger (1/1000 per tick) and they are cumulative, so a sufficiently long string of unlucky rolls can actually cause a cave-adapted dwarf to pass out from exhaustion upon stepping outside.
2. In the current version (and likely all the way back to 0.31.01), cave adaptation causes Fatigue and nothing more - due to what I can only assume is a bug, the usual Pain, Stunning, and Nausea are never applied at all.
3. It is possible to get both cave adaptation thoughts at the same time - as in previous versions, only the MajorInjury/MinorInjury and Jailed/Free thoughts are mutually exclusive.

[m-logik]

edit: wrong topic, ignore

edit edit:
On topic, I've had my current fort's cavern defense squad on surface patrol watching for the (now confirmed to exist by Quietust's code diving) double-negative thought. I couldn't figure out why they weren't vomiting despite all being "nauseated by the sun lately." So that's two mysteries solved. Thanks for the investigative work, Quietust.

[falcn]

Make the main stairs constructed (b-C-) instead of carved (d-).

This is z-7