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[Oldfrith]

At the moment it requires channels and tricks to muddy stone. Would it be possible to designate an area of stone to be muddied, where a dwarf would grab a bucket and pour water over the tile?

EDIT: small rewording

[Bumber]

Have you tried a pond zone on the floor above?

[GavJ]

Have you tried a pond zone on the floor above?

This is a terrible terrible substitute for the excellent suggestion in the OP. What we actually want is one bucket on each tile once, not 173 buckets on one tile with the hopes of a random number generator having it flow to one specific other tile. (I don't mean it's a bad comment from you in the meantime, just that this is not a redundant feature)

There's no logical reason why dwarves couldn't just efficiently put one bucket each tile and be done in 30 seconds, also without having to build a chamber up above, etc. Thus, it should indeed have an option for this, since it's a very common and pointlessly frustrating part of the game.

[SixOfSpades]

I'm actually against this suggestion--I don't think it's a bad idea, I just think it's not good enough. Basically, I've always hated the dynamic that [ solid bedrock + sprinkling of water = rich topsoil ], and I see no reason to support changes based on that dynamic. I would much, MUCH rather see the ability to use the existing "stones" of clay loam (+ etc.) to build walls, floors, and ramps which, once built, revert to a "natural" state, as if they'd been there since embark. This has already been suggested, and IMO would be a far more realistic source of nutrients for farming--crops grow in soil, not on wet rock. Besides, the ability to build with dirt has more varied uses than simple farming, like making a rooftop flower garden, or making a completely camouflaged entrance.

I still think dwarves should carry buckets of water to every tile, but ideally that would be called by the "irrigation frequency" part of the Farm Plot sub-menu, after the Farm Plot is already built. Farming is currently way too easy, so irrigation (and fertilization if you grow more than 2 seasons per year, or 2 seasons of the same crop) should be mandatory, and different plants should require different amounts of watering.

[Insanegame27]

Basically, I've always hated the dynamic that [ solid bedrock + sprinkling of water = rich topsoil ]

Pfft, They're dwarves, thats how they do it. How are we mere humans ever hope to understand dwarven physics. I like your idea as well, but i like the OP idea better

Love the OP idea

[GavJ]

I'm actually against this suggestion--I don't think it's a bad idea, I just think it's not good enough. Basically, I've always hated the dynamic that [ solid bedrock + sprinkling of water = rich topsoil ], and I see no reason to support changes based on that dynamic. I would much, MUCH rather see the ability to use the existing "stones" of clay loam (+ etc.) to build walls, floors, and ramps which, once built, revert to a "natural" state, as if they'd been there since embark. This has already been suggested, and IMO would be a far more realistic source of nutrients for farming--crops grow in soil, not on wet rock. Besides, the ability to build with dirt has more varied uses than simple farming, like making a rooftop flower garden, or making a completely camouflaged entrance.

I still think dwarves should carry buckets of water to every tile, but ideally that would be called by the "irrigation frequency" part of the Farm Plot sub-menu, after the Farm Plot is already built. Farming is currently way too easy, so irrigation (and fertilization if you grow more than 2 seasons per year, or 2 seasons of the same crop) should be mandatory, and different plants should require different amounts of watering.

Bringing in soil instead of wet rocks doesn't make it any more realistic. It merely pushes back the non-realism by a season or two until you get to the point of "wait, aren't all the nutrients used up now, since there's no sunlight to make new high energy molecules?"

So making game design decisions based on "totally unrealistic idea > other totally unrealistic idea" seems unimportant.

If you want to argue about how to make it realistic, there are currently several threads about how, physically and chemically (or how it might), underground plants might work, etc. One is going on in DF general discussion right now. But just carting in soil once won't cut it.



You COULD make it so you have to cart in fresh soil EVERY PLANTING and then it would make sense, but that's about it, without a lot more science or a lot more changes involved.

[Bumber]

Bringing in soil instead of wet rocks doesn't make it any more realistic. It merely pushes back the non-realism by a season or two until you get to the point of "wait, aren't all the nutrients used up now, since there's no sunlight to make new high energy molecules?"

Just use fertilizer? Not necessarily just the current potash, either.

[SixOfSpades]

Bringing in soil instead of wet rocks doesn't make it any more realistic.

Um, actually, yes it does. Granted, the nutrient value of the soil is very clearly finite, but it's still a heck of a lot higher than that of wet rock, which the game currently treats as infinite.

It merely pushes back the non-realism by a season or two until you get to the point of "wait, aren't all the nutrients used up now, since there's no sunlight to make new high energy molecules?"

Exactly. Finite. But since caverns harbor not only lichens & fungus, but a rich biodiversity of trees, insects, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds, & even mammals, Toady is obviously saying that sunlight is NOT required, at least not for those plants that clearly get along quite well without it. We must accept that an alternative to sunlight (biochemically, if not illuminatory) is present. We can speculate about what that alternative energy source might be, but ultimately that's for Toady & Threetoe to decide.

If you want to argue about how to make it realistic, there are currently several threads . . . . One is going on in DF general discussion right now. But just carting in soil once won't cut it.

Went back 2 months, didn't see any thread titles suggestive of cavern ecology. Do you have a link, or specific terms to search for? Failing that, I'll just discuss it here.

1) Perhaps cavern plants have adapted longer & stronger roots that seek out nutrients by aggressively breaking into solid rock. This is the strongest argument against the "build farmland out of soil" plan, because it suggests that plants actually can grow on nothing more than wet stone. But a plant that can grow on wet rock would surely grow much more readily in a layer of soil with rock underneath. Besides, plants constantly driving their roots deep into the stone would crumble the stone, eventually causing the entire cavern to collapse.

2) If the cavern plants that you harvest (crops, trees, and some wild plants) cannot take sustenance directly from the rocks, perhaps there are other plants that can. Lichens can grow just about anywhere, and there's a whole surface of caverns that we cannot see: The ceilings. They could be literally carpeted with lichens, slowly feeding off the surface of the stone and the mineral-rich groundwater trickling in from above, and filling the cavern air with their spores--which, in turn, could be a major source of energy to other creatures.

3) When harvesting crops, you don't take the whole plant; the rest is left to rot, and assumedly the nutrients go right back into the soil. (Which shouldn't take effect immediately, but should still happen.) Mutually beneficial pairs (or larger sets) of plants could also exist, where Crop A extracts from the ground a mineral that Crop B then puts back, and vice versa. Crop rotation, fallow seasons, & composting & other fertilization techniques should all be Standard Procedure for all farms, not just underground ones.

4) About "draining" the mineral content of soil: I'd like the game to track soil quality, so that if a Farm Plot is built on Clay Loam and planted for many consecutive seasons, the ground turns to Sandy Clay Loam, Loamy Sand, and finally Sand, with the accompanying shift in what plants can grow there. The reverse process will also occur on land that you leave fallow, although more gradually, and dependent on the climate, biome, & nearby soil types: A sandy desert will NOT turn into a grassland & then a forest, simply because you're not farming there. But you do have the option of fertilizing & irrigating a field without growing anything on it, thus improving its value for later.

5) All organic material (goblin corpses, rotted food, XXclothesXX, nervous tissue, blood, vomit, eventually feces, etc.) should have value as compost. It seems a simple matter to create a new Zone designation for a Compost Pile, where these materials gradually decay into fertilizer, and/or enrich soil added to the mix. (This process happens only in the designated zone, to avoid killing your FPS by decaying the entire map.) For the impatient, atom-smashers could theoretically be reconfigured to not destroy everything, instead converting the smashed material/creature to its approximate value in compost.

[Tristan Alkai]

If you want to argue about how to make it realistic, there are currently several threads about how, physically and chemically (or how it might), underground plants might work, etc. One is going on in DF general discussion right now.

Went back 2 months, didn't see any thread titles suggestive of cavern ecology. Do you have a link, or specific terms to search for? Failing that, I'll just discuss it here.

I believe this is the one GavJ is referring to.  I necroed it a while ago, and GavJ has been quite active on it since then. 

The thread title was "Xenosynthesis and Magic Fields," started by NW_Kohaku.  That thread is a spin-off of a more general Improved Farming thread (also started by NW_Kohaku) linked to in the OP.  This thread in turn has a section (link to it is in reply #3) on xenosynthesis and why that term is being used. 

At the moment it requires channels and tricks to muddy stone. Would it be possible to designate an area of stone to be muddied, where a dwarf would grab a bucket and pour water over the tile?

For muddying a tile to farm on, I would want them to have to actually grab some dirt (which would require actually having some sort of soil on your map).  I would also want it to create a "pile of mud," not the "dusting of mud" typical of water.  The more complicated work-around with channeling can be left in as an exploit if people like it.  I don't really care. 

I'm actually against this suggestion--I don't think it's a bad idea, I just think it's not good enough. Basically, I've always hated the dynamic that [ solid bedrock + sprinkling of water = rich topsoil ]

Combined with my suggestion about actually grabbing dirt and specifically leaving a pile of mud, farming could require a pile, not just the "dusting" that tends to be left by water.  This should provide similar results (that rooftop flower garden, for example) without re-working the code for constructed floors. 

A lot of the rest of this seems to be covered adequately at some point or other of the general Improved Farming thread, particularly the section in reply #2 about water management. 

That said, I do like the idea of building walls out of earth.  Floors?  I don't know.  In particular, I have trouble envisioning it as strong enough to be used that way, barring implementation of something resembling adobe.   

[Deboche]

Dirt is a block in Minecraft. In Terraria, there's dirt, mud, sand and so on.

I really like the idea of hauling soil around though it shouldn't be handled in the way rocks are. It should require a wheelbarrow and realistically so should carrying a rock that can be turned into 4 blocks, each capable of becoming a 1 meter high wall. All of this is probably planned, along with beasts of burden.

And obviously we can't assume that clay and sand will forever be handled the way they are now where you can just take as much of it as you want from 1 tile.

As for fertilizing, we should be able to plant spores in the soil like cave spores and have animals graze over it. Since Toady is unlikely to ever implement feces, having the animals graze would be a good way to handle this.

[vjmdhzgr]

Exactly. Finite. But since caverns harbor not only lichens & fungus, but a rich biodiversity of trees, insects, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds, & even mammals, Toady is obviously saying that sunlight is NOT required, at least not for those plants that clearly get along quite well without it. We must accept that an alternative to sunlight (biochemically, if not illuminatory) is present. We can speculate about what that alternative energy source might be, but ultimately that's for Toady & Threetoe to decide.

I'm thinking it's either magma, or magic. Possibly both.

[Dorsidwarf]

Mushrooms and fungi aren't renowned for needing a great deal of nutrients anyway, without even taking into account the non-visible plant detritus, ceiling moss, and flat-out magic that permeates the underground world.

[Deboche]

But the underground world is something different altogether. It has water sources, animals and maybe even geothermal heat.

The discussion is about being able to make a farm on wet rock 2 z-levels down from the surface. The nutrients and energy have to come from somewhere.

[Niddhoger]

1) Perhaps cavern plants have adapted longer & stronger roots that seek out nutrients by aggressively breaking into solid rock. This is the strongest argument against the "build farmland out of soil" plan, because it suggests that plants actually can grow on nothing more than wet stone. But a plant that can grow on wet rock would surely grow much more readily in a layer of soil with rock underneath. Besides, plants constantly driving their roots deep into the stone would crumble the stone, eventually causing the entire cavern to collapse.

2) If the cavern plants that you harvest (crops, trees, and some wild plants) cannot take sustenance directly from the rocks, perhaps there are other plants that can. Lichens can grow just about anywhere, and there's a whole surface of caverns that we cannot see: The ceilings. They could be literally carpeted with lichens, slowly feeding off the surface of the stone and the mineral-rich groundwater trickling in from above, and filling the cavern air with their spores--which, in turn, could be a major source of energy to other creatures.

3) When harvesting crops, you don't take the whole plant; the rest is left to rot, and assumedly the nutrients go right back into the soil. (Which shouldn't take effect immediately, but should still happen.) Mutually beneficial pairs (or larger sets) of plants could also exist, where Crop A extracts from the ground a mineral that Crop B then puts back, and vice versa. Crop rotation, fallow seasons, & composting & other fertilization techniques should all be Standard Procedure for all farms, not just underground ones.

4) About "draining" the mineral content of soil: I'd like the game to track soil quality, so that if a Farm Plot is built on Clay Loam and planted for many consecutive seasons, the ground turns to Sandy Clay Loam, Loamy Sand, and finally Sand, with the accompanying shift in what plants can grow there. The reverse process will also occur on land that you leave fallow, although more gradually, and dependent on the climate, biome, & nearby soil types: A sandy desert will NOT turn into a grassland & then a forest, simply because you're not farming there. But you do have the option of fertilizing & irrigating a field without growing anything on it, thus improving its value for later.

5) All organic material (goblin corpses, rotted food, XXclothesXX, nervous tissue, blood, vomit, eventually feces, etc.) should have value as compost. It seems a simple matter to create a new Zone designation for a Compost Pile, where these materials gradually decay into fertilizer, and/or enrich soil added to the mix. (This process happens only in the designated zone, to avoid killing your FPS by decaying the entire map.) For the impatient, atom-smashers could theoretically be reconfigured to not destroy everything, instead converting the smashed material/creature to its approximate value in compost.

1) Its the underground.  There are no "nutrients" that exist in solid masses of stone that can entirely support a crop capable of keeping a person alive.  That is, unless you want to say that plants are coal-powered now, and have said plants only grow over (and consume) coal reserves.

2) You.... you are aware that lichens are A) not plants and B) are entirely photosynthetic.  All forms of lichen rely on the sun as an energy source.  Now, some lichen rely on cyanobacteria instead of algae to provide their photosynthesis.  You could say that DF lichen relies on extremophillic bacteria, but the supporting fungus wouldn't be able to survive the conditions any more than the dwarves could.

3) Right, but most all of the nutrients in a plant are tied up in the "fruit" or edible portion.  This all begs the question of where the energy is coming from.  "Nutrients" in the soil is NOT the same thing as a proper energy source.  The sun is the backbone of all plant growth.  Mushrooms do grow by decomposing organic matter in the absence of the sun, but they have -much- lower caloric yields.  If we are to assume that a plump helmet is just as fulfilling as an apple, it would need to rapidly strip even rich soil of "nutrients."  This also ignores the fact that mushrooms actually DO rely on the sun for a food source.  How do the other animals/plants the mushroom feeds off of get THEIR energy? The sun.  So while a mushroom doesn't strictly need sunlight to grow, the abundance of dead matter it feeds on will. 

4) You... don't really understand soil nutrients.  No amount of depletion will turn clay into sand.  Because clay is not sand.  It's clay.   Soil will not just magically regain nutrients when left fallow, either.  I'm mostly thinking about contained indoor farms.  Outside farms that are left to fallow replenish nutrients when grass grows over them, animals die (or at least crap on them).  Moles dig through and eat roots (and crap).  A contained indoor farm deep below the surface in a walled off room would likely remain barren no matter how long it was left fallow (no incoming source of energy/organic matter).  In both cases you are more interested in the organic content of the soil (although a buffet of minerals must also be present).  Sand/clay refers to the mineral content as well as the particle size.  Basically, we'd need a separate indication of the soil's fertility that we can control.  However... as you mentioned the base fertility of the soil should depend on the biome.  Forests and prairies will have rich, fertile soil- ESPECIALLY near water sources.  Deserts and badlands will be barren.  Generally, whatever the level of vegetation is present in hte biome (none/sparse/thick) should be a general indication of the default richness of the soil.  Farming should NOT be easy to do in the desert!

5) COMPOST! Yes this would be the solution.  I actually made a compost thread a month or two back that suggested collection useless plant growths (leaves and flowers) combined with rotten food and unusable butchering yields (nervous tissue).  I suppose worn clothing could also work.  Either we designate a zone, or I suggested a composting bin that could be loaded up and sealed.  Composting organic matter is not a process that can be sped up normally (although feeding larvae/worms organic matter and using their shit as fertilizer only takes hours).  Natural compost can be sped up to a process of a month or two if you control the heat/moisture of the process with the occasional rotation of the material.  The idea is that I don't want distillery level shenanigans where you produce fermented spirits in the matter of an in-game day (or less). 

As to your main point... it's circular logic.  The underground ecosystem works because obviously its working.  Yes, we all know the underground ecosystem is thriving as it is- Toady wanted an interesting underground environment that people could default to if they settle on glaciers or deserts.  However, in a game that considers itself a simulation and strives for realism (as much as can be had with hydra's and demons), an entire underground ecosystem as large and complex as is in DF cannot be sustained.  Now, large ecosystems can be supported entirely off of chemosynthesis, however these are almost always extreme environments hostile to "normal" life.  Commonly, sulfur is used as an energy derivative... however using it produces such lovely things as sulfiric acid or hydrogen sulfide.... both are toxic to human life.  Methane is another common element... most chemosynthetic biomes tend to contain either low amounts (1/2 to 1/3 standard levels) to a no oxygen whatsoever.   My point is that if the underground ecosystem is chemical-based... where are all these chemicals and their toxic byproducts?  Can something that produces sulfiric acid be safely eaten by another creature? Could you then eat the creature that eats the sulfiric acid bacteria? My last point is that just because a chemosynthetic biome can exist, it doesn't automatically stand that it can be safely linked to other food webs (ie dorfs and their domestic livestock).  Also, in entire caverns composed of marble or gabbro with only the occasional vein of gems... where is their chemical food source? Where is the brimstone? Where are the methane seeps? Volcanic vents don't tend to produce life in the absence of water either.

Honestly, the best response to keeping the caverns as they are and holding onto a shred of realism is to throw up our hands and say "magic."  This is what we get our panties in a twist over... not that the "magic" exists, but that there need to be rules and limits governing it.  If they are feeding off an alien power source, why are they all producing the same organic compounds (with a distinct absence of toxic byproducts) that dwarves can freely eat as easily as they do beef and turnips? Where is this magical energy coming from and why is it endless? Can dwarves interact/influence it in any way? So on and so forth. 

[SixOfSpades]

I believe this is the one GavJ is referring to.

Nice, thanks. I don't have time to delve into that thread tonight, but I'll bear it in mind.

Combined with my suggestion about actually grabbing dirt and specifically leaving a pile of mud, farming could require a pile, not just the "dusting" that tends to be left by water.  This should provide similar results (that rooftop flower garden, for example) without re-working the code for constructed floors.

Between [constructed dirt + time = farmland], and [hauled dirt + water = farmland], both methods seem realistic, likely to yield identical results, and a strong improvement over the current system, so I really have no preference between the two. True, constructed earth would be the way to go if DF were ever to implement packed/rammed-earth constructions, but that idea isn't really dwarfy enough to merit serious consideration at this time.

That said, I do like the idea of building walls out of earth.  Floors?  I don't know.  In particular, I have trouble envisioning it as strong enough to be used that way, barring implementation of something resembling adobe.

Yeah, I shouldn't have said floors; walls and ramps are quite enough. (With that said, however, walls + mining = floors. But as that's already an integral part of natural soil, we'll just have to wait until Toady implements structural strength and collapse dynamics.) Constructed dirt also shouldn't be immediately fertile: It should take about a season, maybe even a year, before it "goes native" and allows plants to grow.

As for fertilizing, we should be able to plant spores in the soil like cave spores and have animals graze over it.

No need for the "planting" part, as that happens automatically as soon as you have access to spores in the first place. As for pasturing livestock on farmland--it would be a bad idea to have your crops, and animals likely to eat those crops, in the same place at the same time. Which leads to crop rotation, and seasonal pasturing, and Animal Caretakers getting a Herd Livestock labor, making for a nice addition.

Since Toady is unlikely to ever implement feces, having the animals graze would be a good way to handle this.

"Ever"? Personally, I doubt that: While I quite understand Toady's reluctance to make "that game with the shitting, fucking, raping dwarves", it's also true that somewhere along the Push-To-Realism Timeline, there comes a point where the dwarves not shitting will be even more glaringly conspicuous than the alternative. Considering that the game now includes 4 separate varieties of amaranth, we might even already be past that point.

1) Its the underground.  There are no "nutrients" that exist in solid masses of stone that can entirely support a crop capable of keeping a person alive.  That is, unless you want to say that plants are coal-powered now, and have said plants only grow over (and consume) coal reserves.

It's the underground. It hosts a biosphere every bit as dense as the surface world's--although admittedly no longer as diverse, now that the overworld got a bunch of new plants. Therefore, there absolutely MUST be an abundant and rather global energy source to invigorate that biosphere. Arguing for strict realism is commendable in most cases, but not here: Following your "coal plants" argument would lead to making almost all of DF's caverns as sterile as Earth's.
But that's actually beside the point: You posted your response to attack an argument that I had already exposed as being flawed. I was pointing out that even one of the best rationales for the "crops can grow on wet rock" system didn't really hold up . . . literally.

2) You.... you are aware that lichens are A) not plants and B) are entirely photosynthetic.  All forms of lichen rely on the sun as an energy source.  . . .  You could say that DF lichen relies on extremophillic bacteria, but the supporting fungus wouldn't be able to survive the conditions any more than the dwarves could.

Yes--I mentioned them because lichens (and mosses) are among the very few types of flora that actually can live just fine on bare rock. They, as well as dwarves, can "survive" the conditions in the caverns quite well, due to the abundant free energy which is undeniably present.

4) You... don't really understand soil nutrients.  No amount of depletion will turn clay into sand.  Because clay is not sand.  It's clay.

True, but as DF's geology system doesn't currently offer varying levels of soil exhaustion, I went with a path that could be easily represented with DF's existing earth types, as well as understood by the vast majority of readers. As I wanted to convey verdant pastureland being rendered barren through constant mineral depletion, Clay Loam -> Sand seemed to get the point across rather well.

Soil will not just magically regain nutrients when left fallow, either.  I'm mostly thinking about contained indoor farms.  Outside farms that are left to fallow replenish nutrients when grass grows over them, animals die (or at least crap on them).

Yes. There needs to be some form of input, from things like deer/birds/worms, plants that replenish the minerals subtracted from the soil by the last harvest, and/or manual fertilization. Now, suppose we have an enclosed aboveground pasture. A few deer jump the wall (as deer do), eat some tasty plant life, leave some scat as they pass, and then leap the wall again & continue on their merry way. Does the pasture gain a net benefit from this? I suppose that the (possibly difficult to obtain) compounds contained in the deer poop provide enough soil enrichment to more than balance out the energy lost in the leaves that the deer ate (energy which, after all, can be easily be regained through photosynthesis), but I could easily be wrong on this.

As to your main point... it's circular logic.  The underground ecosystem works because obviously its working.

No. "Caverns work because caverns work" is indeed a tautology, but that's not what I said. I said "Caverns work because Toady says so". The act of begging the question is only a logical fallacy when one presupposes that one's conclusion is correct. In stark contrast, the deductive process of "B is true if & only if A is true. We know B=true, therefore A=true" is a completely sound one. Toady One the Great has provided ample proof that the caverns are thriving hotbeds of biodiversity. Such rich ecosystems can only exist with ample (biochemical) energy input. As the biological proliferation of the caverns shows zero correlation with proximity to energy sources such as coal deposits & magma tubes, and alternate sources like methane vents do not exist, we may take it as read that the cavern ecosystems must rely on some OTHER, currently undefined, energy source. I don't know what that source is, and neither do you. But if Toady shows us, time after time after time, irrefutable evidence that the energy source is present, it is not for you or I to dispute it. We can disagree with it, we can even mod it out of existence locally, but ultimately is it not our decision. A desire to maintain DF's attention to real-world geology and biochemistry is commendable, and applicable knowledge of those fields is even more so, but that doesn't change the fact that Toady seems to have decided that having lush caverns outweighs the weirdness of an "underground sun".

Honestly, the best response to keeping the caverns as they are and holding onto a shred of realism is to throw up our hands and say "magic."

Yep. Necromancers raise the dead. Dragons breathe insanely hot fire. Dragons breathe fire at all. Nether-caps have a constant temperature, impervious to the laws of thermodynamics. The same is also true of magma, which evaporates into thin air. The various flavors of Evil weather. The single(?) flavor of Good weather. All of these require "magic", or at the very least the influx of considerable amounts of energy. I don't understand them, in some cases I don't even agree with them. But I can suspend my disbelief enough not to fight them.

This is what we get our panties in a twist over... not that the "magic" exists, but that there need to be rules and limits governing it.  If they are feeding off an alien power source, why are they all producing the same organic compounds (with a distinct absence of toxic byproducts) that dwarves can freely eat as easily as they do beef and turnips?

A word of advice: Don't rely on scientific arguments to back up your views on these topics. These assorted phenomena are, quite obviously, not scientific, and so all of the "but that's not the way it works in real life" citations that you can muster will immediately fall flat on their proverbial faces, because they simply do not apply here. You'd be better off with quasi-emotional appeals like "this doesn't feel very dwarfy", or "DF would be a more complete game if it included X". Even so, I can't recall many instances of Toady changing his mind, certainly not on an issue as major as life in the caverns.