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[Three1415]

This may be a dumb question, but is it possible to have an embark that is completely lacking in caverns? There's zero water of any kind (even stagnant) on or near the surface in my embark region, which effectively turns any injury, no matter how slight, into an immediate death sentence for a dwarf, because once hospitalized they don't have anything to drink (indeed, a hapless dwarf is dying of dehydration presently after he broke his leg by dropping his own axe on it while felling a tree ).

Consequently, I've been digging deep shafts down at various points along the map, looking for a lake in the caverns, but have yet to pierce any of them, even with several shafts going as far down as z-level 50. I'm not sure if caverns can be heavily area restricted, and I may have just missed them, or if my embark is bugged somehow...

I embarked on a volcano, in a tropical climate; that may have something to do with it, I guess, or I could just be missing something completely due to inexperience. Any help/advice/answers would be appreciated--thanks in advance.

[Thisfox]

If you're in the corner of a tile, with a narrow embark site, you might miss the caverns entirely. They tend to be in the centre of tiles. Try the edge of your embark site closest to the middle of the tile.

I do recommend embarking in an aquifer next time. Aquifers are marvellous.

[King Kitteh]

I miss all the caverns and the magma sea probably 30% of the time. You just need to root about more.

[Werdna]

There's always the farm radar trick, if it still works.

[PatrikLundell]

The caverns are there unless you changed the parameters to remove them and dwarves to exist without cavern crops. If you're extremely unlucky, or have changed cavern water density, all the caverns can be dry, though.

I agree with Thisfox that aquifers are extremely handy to have, although they're a bit of a hassle to penetrate.

Finally, you can actually save hospital bound dorfs from death by dehydration even in the absence of water (but infections are an even greater threat then): monitor your hospital bound dorfs, and when they get really thirsty, remove the hospital zone and deconstruct the beds/racks under the hospitalized dorfs. They'll then haul themselves to a booze stockpile to drink their fill. Once they're rehydrated, restore the hospital. You may have to do this several times, but each hospital session causes the injured dorfs to heal a bit, so eventually they'll be able to get back to work.
Note the threat of goblets, though: dorfs unable to grasp used to grab a goblet and then sit with it at the booze pile until thirsting to death, while the "unlucky" one that didn't find a goblet could still drink directly from the barrel. I think that bug's fixed, though.

[Three1415]

If you're in the corner of a tile, with a narrow embark site, you might miss the caverns entirely. They tend to be in the centre of tiles. Try the edge of your embark site closest to the middle of the tile.

I do recommend embarking in an aquifer next time. Aquifers are marvellous.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that; I'll look around closer to the edges of the tiles. As for aquifers, I can see why they'd be helpful, but as I understand they can be somewhat difficult to deal with I didn't want to overburden myself with penetrating one while I was still figuring out how everything worked. Definitely noted for next time, though.

Finally, you can actually save hospital bound dorfs from death by dehydration even in the absence of water (but infections are an even greater threat then): monitor your hospital bound dorfs, and when they get really thirsty, remove the hospital zone and deconstruct the beds/racks under the hospitalized dorfs. They'll then haul themselves to a booze stockpile to drink their fill. Once they're rehydrated, restore the hospital. You may have to do this several times, but each hospital session causes the injured dorfs to heal a bit, so eventually they'll be able to get back to work.
Note the threat of goblets, though: dorfs unable to grasp used to grab a goblet and then sit with it at the booze pile until thirsting to death, while the "unlucky" one that didn't find a goblet could still drink directly from the barrel. I think that bug's fixed, though.

Yeah, I was wondering whether that would work or not; good to see that it does, which should buy me some time to root around for a water-bearing cavern.


Thanks for helping out a new guy, everyone .

[smithist]

Dwarven radar still works as per Werdna's post. I can't say I recall an embark that didn't have access to the caverns in some capacity.

Assuming I didn't remove them in advanced world gen which is sometimes nice for fps.