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[TheFreshPrince]

Can I drain water from my second cavern layer river down on top of said magma pool to cool the magma, then mine the adamantine?

Any tips for doing so? Nothing too fancy please, my expertise in such pursuits is very basic.

[Minnakht]

Try the following:
1. Mine a shaft that leads from the cavern ceiling above the magma pool to the edge of water in the cavern above. Don't dig into the level with water on it, dig into the level above. If the natural stone doesn't reach water's edge, construct walls to make it.
2. Build a screw pump, blocking off the shaft with the impassable end. The other end should be next to the water.
3. Tell a dwarf to pump and see what happens. Maybe it'll make obsidian that sticks to the adamantine spire and doesn't just fall down into the magma sea, it's worth trying.
4. If it doesn't work, tell the dwarf to stop, also ensuring that all the fluid calculations cease quickly enough to preserve FPS.

[Mimodo]

To the first bit... Not easily. I had a similar thing, you'd essentially need to channel the entire area above the magma sea, then drain the water into it... Then that would give you one later of obsidian. Rinse and repeat for every layer of magma you want to work around

[TheFreshPrince]

Ok thanks guys, not sure if the adamantine is worth it, though if this vein extends down far I suppose it would be.

[Tacomagic]

Try the following:
1. Mine a shaft that leads from the cavern ceiling above the magma pool to the edge of water in the cavern above. Don't dig into the level with water on it, dig into the level above. If the natural stone doesn't reach water's edge, construct walls to make it.
2. Build a screw pump, blocking off the shaft with the impassable end. The other end should be next to the water.
3. Tell a dwarf to pump and see what happens. Maybe it'll make obsidian that sticks to the adamantine spire and doesn't just fall down into the magma sea, it's worth trying.
4. If it doesn't work, tell the dwarf to stop, also ensuring that all the fluid calculations cease quickly enough to preserve FPS.

Pretty much this.  You can increase your chances by pouring the water in such a way that it flows down over the survace of the adamantine spire so that the water spreads out on all sides.  That gives you a good chance of creating a ring of obsidian around the spire.  Stop the water, carefully dig the ring leaving at least one point of contact with something, dump in more water, repeat.  It's time consuming, but you can cast a spire in obsidian through dogged perseverance.

Of note, you'll get better coverage if you work it so that your water source is pumped into a cistern, and then the cistern dumps in high volume out the base towards where you want to cast.  That prevents low-flow from creating areas that don't get cast.

Aquifers are awesome for this if you have one anywhere in your embark.

[TheFreshPrince]

Why is an aquifer better than a cavern lake or river?

Also, how do floodgates work? They are connected to levers right, and the level can be activated to open and close the floodgate regardless of how much water is passing trough it's tile? Or will a floodgate not close if there is too much water in it's tile?

[Tirion]

Why is an aquifer better than a cavern lake or river?

Also, how do floodgates work? They are connected to levers right, and the level can be activated to open and close the floodgate regardless of how much water is passing trough it's tile? Or will a floodgate not close if there is too much water in it's tile?

Floodgates can close at any water level, just not if any solid item or creature is on them. A drawbridge is a monster-and Xyak wool sockX proof replacement.

[Loci]

Assuming you're talking about the magma sea (and not a magma pool feature), draining the top layers should be relatively easy. Dig a ring of down stair tiles around the spire on the level right above the magma. Flood the ring, creating a ring of obsidian tiles on the level below. Remove the top layer of magma inside the ring (pump, drain, etc.) then flood the ring with more water to create an obsidian disc on the next level down. You can then mine out some of the obsidian and continue casting smaller discs downward until you hit a magma flow tile. Casting magma flow tiles is only slightly more complex (you need to dig a down stair then construct an up stair in the magma flow tile before obsidian will form).

For an actual magma pool feature, new magma will "spawn" at a 7/7 depth in a tile above the current level of the magma, up to the pool's original height. This randomly appearing magma makes working around the pool quite deadly, though it can still be done if you're willing to sacrifice some dwarves.

When casting obsidian, down stair designations are almost always superior to channel designations since dwarves cannot be washed down through the stair tile into the magma/obsidian.

[Tacomagic]

Why is an aquifer better than a cavern lake or river?

The flow of lakes and rivers are based entirely on how many tiles align with the side of the map.  In the case of rivers, this typically only amounts to 3 or 4 tiles, for the most part.  This rather significantly limits their water generation.

Lakes are a lot better than rivers in that they typically have tons of source tiles available to them, so they make good, fast sources that refill quickly.  But they still have a drawback.

Both require you to build your systems, pumps, etc right next to the body of water you want to draw from, which either exposes them to building destroyers, which can end in FUN! depending on the design, or makes you have to take extra effort to wall off your sources to protect them.

Aquifers are an expandable liquid generation source that are fully controllable by you.  This means you can build all your water-works without exposing workers or the machinery to outside forces.  It also means that if you need more flow, you can just dig out more tiles and increase the surface area of water production.  You can fill a lot of water at tremendous speed with an aquifer this way, much faster than a river, though not as fast as drain dumping a lake.

This makes them particularly well suited for cistern filling. 

[gunpowdertea]

And in the old version the water needed to drop at least one additional z level for obsidian to form in the magma sea. I don't know if that is still true. There was a thread where somebody described in detail how to drain the magma sea completely (well, almost).

[nasobema]

I just had the same project and learned quite some new things about magma and support...

The idea was to channel a ring of 2 z-levels above the magma sea that encloses the position of the candy spire and close its upper level with retractable bridges.
Then the bridges were flooded with water and upon retracting the bridges, the water was supposed to drop 2 z-levels onto the magma sea creating a ring of obsidian. This is more or less following the design commonly used for obsidian farming.
The ring was then supposed to fall down to the floor of the magma sea. After several steps I hoped to have an obsidian hull around the spire and planned to pump remaining magma out.

Well, the obsidian ring did form but stayed exactly in place. Apparently diagonal support across z-levels is enough to hold it up.
When trying to widen the channel so that the support would vanish, my dwarves punctuated a wall to magma at the same z-level with predictable results (fun...).
Thus I learned that magma is not pressurized and magma not flowing up through channels does NOT mean, you're at the highest z-level of magma...

[gunpowdertea]

Plus note that if obsidian falls down through the magma sea it won't accumulate at the bottom, but disappear... so the plan would not have worked anyway (at least that's how it used to be).

[Tacomagic]

Plus note that if obsidian falls down through the magma sea it won't accumulate at the bottom, but disappear... so the plan would not have worked anyway (at least that's how it used to be).

Still works that way. Anything that lands in the lava-flow sitting on top of the SMR vanishes.

[Quietust]

And in the old version the water needed to drop at least one additional z level for obsidian to form in the magma sea. I don't know if that is still true. There was a thread where somebody described in detail how to drain the magma sea completely (well, almost).

From what I recall, that only applied if you were using a bucket brigade - if the water is already on the map (e.g. flowing from a river, lake, cistern, or aquifer), then it doesn't matter how far up it is.

[nasobema]

Plus note that if obsidian falls down through the magma sea it won't accumulate at the bottom, but disappear... so the plan would not have worked anyway (at least that's how it used to be).

OK. I guess that makes it a double face palm...

DF - real life simulator, you never stop learning...