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[TheCobblestoner]

So, I just discovered a pretty big cavern, and I'm a bit of a newbie to Fortress mode. I explored it a bit (not with dwarves, with the camera) and I saw a mangled Giant Cave Spider corpse.. should I be worried? Also, how should I explore it/block it off/whatever else I should do?

[wierd]

depends on what mangled the GCS...


If you dont have military dwarves yet, seal the breach with a wall.

[Z49000]

Drop a cat, a cheese-maker or some expendable fort member down there to scout out the local caves, beware of giant olms, cave crocs and giant bats, get as much steel, bronze, iron or copper gear for your soldiers, separate the cavern area from your fort with a drawbridge and most importantly, make sure to line the hallway to the cavern entrance with a metric crap-ton of traps.

Or alternatively, just block the cave off until you feel ready.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Maybe a blind cave ogre or troll killed it, or it just slippped and fell from the wall, or a lucky dwarf punch it in the face. You can check the game log for any spider raleted message.

[King Kitteh]

There's not much interesting in the caverns if you aren't after the critters or abundant wood.

I typically wall it off with a drawbridge as an entrance. Plop some cage traps in front of that and you'll net yourself some creatures.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Caverns are best as follows:

1.  Wall off almost everything, make the cavern have a definable entrance and exit and make sure easily accessible cage traps are in the way, so useful migrating monsters (e.g. jabberers, rutherers) are caught. Incidentally, insert the [PET_TAMABLE]  into their raws to make them war jabberers etc.

2. The actual base entrance needs A. a lifting drawbridge, not the disappearing one, and you want to make sure the mechanism side is facing your dwarves and the sheer wall side is facing the cavern, and the lever lifting it is nowhere near the bridge itself. B. in front of the bridge you want multiple armor stands weapon racks or other furniture. If you want to be fancy, wire the ceiling above to collapse, otherwise just expect to one day seal the cavern for good and never return.

[obolisk0430]

If there is floor fungus in the caverns, dig out a sizeable patch of clay/soil underground.  Floor fungus will spread there, and you can use it as a pen to keep grazing animals in your fort and away from invaders.

[Findulidas]

Unless you are playing on an embark with no trees or plants the caves are of little use. Except sometimes leading to !FUN! of course, which is on second though the best use.

[Slogo]

Caverns can be an important supply of silk depending on your luck and what the cavern spawns (either Giant Cave Spider silk or Cave Spider Silk).

[Akoto]

I founded my current fortress deep within the natural caverns. It's actually my favorite kind of fortress to do! For me, the natural subterranean kingdom has a different feel to it. Convenient that it usually has all of the resources you need plus heaps of fertile land for farming.

It -is- dangerous, though, more so the deeper you go. Forgotten beasts can also crop up in the caverns. For me, when I found in a cavern, I do my best to quickly dig out enough space to have bedrooms for the founders, storage space for things I brought on embark, and space for workshops. I'll quickly move everything and everyone in, make a pasture for any animals just outside, and hurry up with securing the place. That early on, I've found it works better to just use engineering than a military, starting with immediately erecting walls at the entrance with retracting bridges to seal the openings. If you can safely entomb your dwarves in their cavern fortress as needed, just about any cavern resident or invader won't be able to get to them.

Early on, my current fortress faced a lot of attacks by cave ogres and trolls, as well as flying heads. They wrecked my farmland more times than I can count. Gradually, though, I worked out how to address these issues with engineering. I walled off farmland in the cavern and made it accessible only via an underground tunnel within the fortress. Voila, no more wrecked farmland, and I can wait out sieges without losing access to food!

So, that's one use for natural caverns: a cool fortress built upon a living environment, like a surface fortress but still underground! Oh, and no worries about being isolated, as caverns and visitors will happily make the trek down.

Otherwise, well, natural caverns are useful for their resources. New resources become available the deeper you go, but the dangers are also greater. I've found they're good sources of gems and metals, and the types of wood and plants you can get in caverns aren't available anywhere else. As has already been mentioned, if you're fortunate, there are cave/giant cave spiders down there producing silk. If you work carefully, you can wrangle them into a silk farming operation!