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[amade]

Hi guys. Been years since I last touched DF, had sworn not to touch it after the last time it consumed my life. But finding out there are minecarts in the game have snared me into it again.

Long story short, I've got a really cool volcano embark but no surface water. So I need to get to an aquifer. I start digging from the top of the mountain and about 150 levels later I breached cavern level 1. Although there's water in it, I'm not too keen at perusing the caverns yet.

Checked the wiki and it says that it's very unlikely for aquifers to be in high elevation terrain (which pretty much covers the whole embark site), which makes sense, but the embark screen did say there are aquifers in all 4 tiles (checked each biome) I chose as the embark site.

So my question is, where is the aquifer? Can aquifers be below cavern layers? Do I need to try drilling in several spots from the surface? Have I missed something important or been misled by the embark screen?

[Luriant]

Dig in the corners of the map, when a partial biome colide with the predominant biome in the tile.

If you see a different biome in the surface (change of grass, trees, color of soil, the river only freeze in one zone, or some parts more fast than others), you have the same difference in all levels, different stone and soil. Dig in this biomes, and you can find the aquifer that embark show.

Create a copy of the map, retire the fortress and select a new embark. You can see the diferent biome in your surroundings. The aquifer is in the border next to that tile.

[Thisfox]

Hi Amade. I agree, the damn game consumes too much of my life too.

Your aquifer will no doubt be as far from the mountain biome as it can be. A weird corner with unusual plant life is usually the best place to search for damp earth.

[PatrikLundell]

There is a setting to turn off aquifers, and aquifer indications have occasionally been wrong. An aquifer has always been found in the soil levels for me (sometimes extending down into suitable stone), but the top has always been shallow (probably never deeper than 5 levels below the surface).

If you're using DFHack you can follow up on Luriant's suggestion by using the tool script here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160856.0 which can show you where your biomes are.

However, digging 150 levels to reach cavern 1 sounds like a mountain, and that's not a likely location for an aquifer. Thus, I suspect you need to secure cavern water. That can usually be done reasonably safely by digging out a cistern in the rock beside a cavern lake (preferably one with an edge access so the water won't run out), build a drawbridge airlock in a tunnel up to, but not through, the wall to the water, dig a tunnel above that one with a drawbridge, hook all the drawbridges up to levers (and test that the hookups are correct and the drawbridges are raising), and then send a miner to channel down on the wall separating the water from the tunnel below (and air/rock from the tunnel above) when the cavern seems reasonably safe. Close the upper drawbridge after the miner has retreated. Brick up the access to the cistern while it's filling, close the airlock drawbridges when done and remove the blocking wall, and then top up the cistern periodically by letting water into the airlock, close the outer bridge, and then open the inner one.
Don't try fortifications, as submerged ones can be swum through.

[amade]

The biomes are actually temperate saltwater swamp all around including the site I'm embarked on. For some reason there's a tall towering volcano sitting surrounded by miles of flat marsh. There's hardly any flat surface where I embarked so identifying differences in soil and vegetation is rather tricky.

Anyway, I cheated and used reveal to scan the the layers near the lowest point of the surface and found a very small patch (about 50x50 tiles) of soil that is damp. Aquifer found. If I didn't use reveal it's very unlikely I would've found it at all without drilling in dozens of spots.

Alas, it's quite far away from the main hub of my fortress. I was expecting the aquifer to cover a vast area. But I guess it's a good excuse to start another large construction project.

[Melting Sky]

The biomes are actually temperate saltwater swamp all around including the site I'm embarked on. For some reason there's a tall towering volcano sitting surrounded by miles of flat marsh. There's hardly any flat surface where I embarked so identifying differences in soil and vegetation is rather tricky.

Anyway, I cheated and used reveal to scan the the layers near the lowest point of the surface and found a very small patch (about 50x50 tiles) of soil that is damp. Aquifer found. If I didn't use reveal it's very unlikely I would've found it at all without drilling in dozens of spots.

Alas, it's quite far away from the main hub of my fortress. I was expecting the aquifer to cover a vast area. But I guess it's a good excuse to start another large construction project.

I hope you are aware of the dangers of map revealing and reverted to an earlier save afterwards?

[GhostDwemer]

Melting Sky, what dangers are those? I've never noticed any problems with revealing and unrevealing a map. Not saying there aren't any, maybe I've just been lucky or not noticed. What problems have you seen?

[amade]

I hope you are aware of the dangers of map revealing and reverted to an earlier save afterwards?

Yep. Well aware of it. And I did revert to an earlier save.

[Melting Sky]

Melting Sky, what dangers are those? I've never noticed any problems with revealing and unrevealing a map. Not saying there aren't any, maybe I've just been lucky or not noticed. What problems have you seen?

I haven't used the DFhack reveal command in ages so I'm not sure if its been updated since back in the day or not, but if you un-paused the game with the HFS revealed all Hell broke loose. Literally. I remember there were issues with the reveal becoming irreversible or very difficult to reverse if you un-paused and saved afterwards. Basically what it all boiled down to is if you valued your FPS and your embark it was best just to go back to an earlier save if you decided to use the reveal command. I'm not sure how fool proof the reveal/unreveal cheat is these days, but it was dangerous and buggy enough back in the day that standard procedure was to revert to an earlier save afterwards.