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[UristMcPea]

When looking for embark locations I tend to prefer flat areas with a river, trees and thick soil to avoid tree roots growing into my farms creating holes in my fortress. In the last version I even managed to find embark sites that were partly covered by an aquifer, because I kind of liked the idea of having most of my fortress under an aquifer without having to pierce it. I found them by looking at the different biomes in the embark screen as aqufers seemed to be associated with biomes.

My problem right now, is, that in three consecutive embarks I found aquifers even if the embark screen said there're no aquifers at all in the designated embark area. There were, of course, aquifers nearby but not inside the 4x4-area selected for embark. What am I missing or what can I do to find areas with no acqufers?

[Rose]

When you're embarking, you can press F1, F2, etc, so see the different biomes, which have different features. You have to check each of them to make sure there's no aquifers at all.

That said, there's now light aquifers that are much easier to dig through, and are actually quite trivial.

[delphonso]

Aquifers not represented by F1,F2,etc can also be partially present since the map itself isn't purely in grids. If you truly want to avoid any and all aquifers - you should embark far from any of them. That said, an aquifer intrusion can be quite useful - unlimited clean water, a covered fishing spot. They have a lot of uses.

Mala is right though, with the latest update, light aquifers are a piece of cake. But presumably you're playing 44.12

[UristMcPea]

When you're embarking, you can press F1, F2, etc, so see the different biomes, which have different features. You have to check each of them to make sure there's no aquifers at all.

That's exactly what I did and it's also how I used to find an embark area that was partly "covered" by an aquifer. The aquifer didn't strictly stick to the grid but it was good enough to be sure that, say, in the upper left corner of the embark area there is none.

That said, there's now light aquifers that are much easier to dig through, and are actually quite trivial.

Now, that sounds interesting. I wasn't aware of that, as I am in fact playing the newest version.

I'm aware of the uses of aquifers and I do prefer to have one around, but never got the hang of piercing one.

Didn't know they can be used for fishing, though... Do you have to populate them with fish, first, or do creatures spawn in them at random?

[delphonso]

I'm not sure how it works exactly - and perhaps a more informed person can explain it better. As I understand it, fish are basically vermin, which means they can teleport around the map regardless of paths. So, if you can fish anywhere on the map, you can fish anywhere else. So if you have, say, a river - you can also fish from the aquifer (type of fish might differ, I tend to get pond turtles from aquifers always). If there's no fish on the map, though, the aquifer also won't have any - like in a desert.

It's the only form of fishing I allow - since regular fisherdwarves are 1. the first to die from sieges/whatever's in the caverns and 2. always miserable from the rain.

[Rose]

Yeah, in 47.01, light aquifers will drop 1/7 water every minute or so, very easy to deal with.

[Dragofire]

Quick tip - mod the raws so no layers have [AQUIFER].
Open an inorganic file
Replace-[AQUIFER]
With -  _ (or whatever you want that won't be rendered as a token)
Then click Replace All, close and save changes. Notepad is what I use.
Do this to the inorganic_soil, inorganic_mineral and inorganic_layer files.
Boom- no aquifers!

[PatrikLundell]

Quick tip - mod the raws so no layers have [AQUIFER].
Open an inorganic file
Replace-[AQUIFER]
With -  _ (or whatever you want that won't be rendered as a token)
Then click Replace All, close and save changes. Notepad is what I use.
Do this to the inorganic_soil, inorganic_mineral and inorganic_layer files.
Boom- no aquifers!

I believe there's a game switch to disable aquifers, so removing them manually shouldn't be necessary. However, doing so removes them all, so you can't get just a little bit to the side.

If DF reports that there are no aquifers in the biomes included in the embark rectangle, nor in the tiles bordering the rectangle (which could produce incursions with aquifers), there's a new pre embark info bug. It's known (0.44.12 and earlier, back to somewhere in history) that DF can report an aquifer when there isn't one, due to soil erosion not being taken into account (don't know how 0.47.01 handles it, though, but there's presumably no change beside the aquifer flow volume, or the associated bugs ought to have been reported fixed).

[Stormfeather]

I will agree though that the new light aquifers are trivial. You just need to dig out an extra space around whatever room you're digging then build a wall around (or just smoothing whatever wall you dig out if it's stone). At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it works - I've always been awful with aquifers and just avoided them like the plague except for a few times when I tried to see if I could manage to learn to deal with them. (I couldn't, at least not with the time and effort I spent on it.)

Just watch for heavy aquifers, since those are apparently the same as the previous versions' aquifers.

[UristMcPea]

Is there anything that an aquifer can do that a river or brook can't? Because I seriously consider modding them out as they do not provide the fun that I'm interested in.

[delphonso]

Hmm. Easy, safe, underground water source.

If they're a huge issue, go ahead and delete them. In the current version, they're trivial, though.

[SaD-82]

Is there anything that an aquifer can do that a river or brook can't?

A river usually is constrained to his bed and you need to channel for getting the water where you want it to be. An aquifer, usually, is all across the map (if you choose your embarking point to have it all across the map) therefore you just penetrate it by digging down which you, usually, will do in the process of playing. A more easy way to get all the water you need for all the purposes you want it to do. For me, playing without aquifers takes some portions away of the fun in DF.

[PatrikLundell]

Is there anything that an aquifer can do that a river or brook can't? Because I seriously consider modding them out as they do not provide the fun that I'm interested in.

Yes. Provide water when the surface is frozen (great fun when something causes a lot of injured dorfs that need hospitalization and you suddenly get "give water" cancellation spam). However, you can work around that with a cistern. Similarly, aquifers are safe from invader entry, but you can secure surface sources as well, although it requires some effort.

Basically the same as delphonso pointed out while I wrote my post.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Quick tip - mod the raws so no layers have [AQUIFER].
Open an inorganic file
Replace-[AQUIFER]
With -  _ (or whatever you want that won't be rendered as a token)
Then click Replace All, close and save changes. Notepad is what I use.
Do this to the inorganic_soil, inorganic_mineral and inorganic_layer files.
Boom- no aquifers!

I believe there's a game switch to disable aquifers, so removing them manually shouldn't be necessary.

There isn't.
There are options in some noob packs, which basically do the raw editing mentioned previously automatically. And Dfhack cheats to drain and remove aquifers. But there's no "remove aquifer" option in Dwarf Fortress.

That said, light aquifers are very useful and not particularly hard to work around. I kind of like disovering them unexpectedly. It's a minor game obstacle with benefits, like a crundle invasion.

Mmm. Crundle roast...

[CyberianK]

I saw some post ages that it is very bad for FPS to divert rivers and brooks because of some heavy flow calculations.

Are Aquifers also bad for FPS? Just using for hospital supply no insane water projects.
In past versions I always fully disabled Aquifers. If they arent too bad for FPS I might go with them again else I better get my hospital water from first cavern layer. Usually disable caverns2+3 as well for FPS.