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[Miuramir]

This entire thread is for !!SCIENCE!! about spoilers and the inner workings of the newest (0.50.x Steam) Hidden Fun Stuff.  You have been warned.

There are now multiple reports of exotic spires reaching improbably high into the sky in the new (0.50.x Steam) version.  Some of them are semi-stable, but as of this post the best documented case varies wildly every time you embark, with reportedly about a 50/50 chance of it even being playable; which implies some sort of un-initialized or accidentally-overwritten variable to me. 

Exhibit A (/u/Sigfrial) has pictures but no save or seed
Exhibit B (/u/SilverFlame97) has pictures, a save file, and instructions; AFAIK it's the first semi-reproducible save so credit to SilverFlame97 for the effort
Exhibit C (/u/Trick_Statistician27) has pictures but no save or seed (reported not reproducible by OP)
Exhibit D (/u/Wootersagain) has pictures but no save or seed yet
Exhibit E (/u/ArchTroll ) has pictures of a collapse-on-embark variant but no save or seed yet

As far as I can tell, without having had time to Delve Too Deep much myself, the intended behavior is that the new-style spires are a bundled cable of sorts through the magma sea, with sub-conduits that have various combinations of water, magma, fire, demons, angels, and ramps.  They are surrounded by rare gems, like the new "geode" features in the upper caverns, to encourage... avarice  

Sometimes, like the old adamantine spires, something bugs them out, and they stretch crazily into the sky; this used to be referred to as Armok's Whisker, Armok's Beard Hair, or the Great Adamantine Space Elevator.  Importantly, this seems to vary from embark to otherwise-identical embark, and doesn't show up in the terrain slope; indicating that it's due to some sort of data corruption bug.  As one might expect, various combinations of suddenly-released materials, cave-ins, hundreds or thousands of Z-levels of plummeting landscape mixed with magma and water, demon pathing, etc. render these a mix of fractional FPS, near-instant death, or actual crashes. 

I figured someone should start a thread to collect saves and do !!SCIENCE!! both for our own amusement and to help with bug tracking, so here we are.  Post about the expected / properly working new HFS and the weird bugs are both welcome. 

[TheFlame52]

Oh good, a science thread. I'll contribute my part.

The upper cavern geodes are tiny pieces of HFS. They can contain water, magma, fire rock, treasures, angels, or lesser demons just like any center tile of the volcanic rock. Confirmation that all of these can occur would help. I haven't actually breached hell yet. I keep delving too greedily and too deep for my own good.

I found that if you dig under a section of spire, (of course, dealing with all the problems in that layer) you can cavein the upper layers to trigger every event in the section at once. This is considerably safer than doing it layer by layer. Demons and angels will fight, and you can clean up the survivors much more easily.

Fire rock only spews fire orthagonally. Mining into the volcanic rock diagonally will protect your miners from fire rock. So will flooding the dig site to 3 depth.

[Miuramir]

Oh good, a science thread. I'll contribute my part.

Thanks for the info!  I've seen multiple clear reports of water, magma, divine-metal treasures, and demons; with somewhat confused reports of angels and "fire".  A lot of folks are not clear on the differences between forgotten beasts, necromancer horrors, demons, and angels (and admittedly with procedural generation it's not always clear), and none of the angel reports has had info on what class (and there may be new ones).  The reports of jets or floods of fire make more sense with your description of fire rock; we will definitely want more science on that!  Is it more of a material that spews fire, or more of a square full of fire that acts like a pressurized fluid?  Is it possibly based on the river source or magma flow code, but to generate fire rather than water / magma?  Does it generate "warm stone" warnings?

[Bumber]

Is it more of a material that spews fire, or more of a square full of fire that acts like a pressurized fluid?  Is it possibly based on the river source or magma flow code, but to generate fire rather than water / magma?  Does it generate "warm stone" warnings?

I would assume it uses fire breath code (i.e., miasma-like flows,) or fire imp fireball projectile. Haven't seen it personally since it was just an empty floor tile with no fire when I triggered it. (Must have dug in diagonally.) It gave a message about a jet of fire coming out of the rocks and "trickery". There wasn't any warm stone warning before or after.

[Eschar]

Oh good, a science thread. I'll contribute my part.

Thanks for the info!  I've seen multiple clear reports of water, magma, divine-metal treasures, and demons; with somewhat confused reports of angels and "fire".  A lot of folks are not clear on the differences between forgotten beasts, necromancer horrors, demons, and angels (and admittedly with procedural generation it's not always clear), and none of the angel reports has had info on what class (and there may be new ones).  The reports of jets or floods of fire make more sense with your description of fire rock; we will definitely want more science on that!  Is it more of a material that spews fire, or more of a square full of fire that acts like a pressurized fluid?  Is it possibly based on the river source or magma flow code, but to generate fire rather than water / magma?  Does it generate "warm stone" warnings?

1. I've seen screenshots of angels whose names matched the angel name procgen, and whose creature description confirmd that they are angels - "this being was created by [deity] and is of a part with [spheres]"
2. The fire just fills a few tiles with fire when triggered, starting at the mined out tile. It acts like FB flame breath essentially.

[TheFlame52]

The fire rock is a tile of any material within the volcanic formation that when mined, turns into fire. It's not something that triggers on reveal like the other surprises. Specifically when it's mined.

[Mobbstar]

I had cracked a HFS geode and received a notification with an evil face icon, along the lines of "How? We've checked this rock for heat! What devily is this?!"  By the time I noticed the message, there was nothing noteworthy except a single tile of smoke inside the geode.

Glad to know what it was.  Do we have a cool name for it?  Fire geyser?  Krissure?  Flamethrower trap?

[TheFlame52]

[GoldenSire]

Hey guys, u/ArchTroll from Reddit,

So I zipped a file here with the stuff you need I think - save (region4), world log seeds I have, no idea which one is it, but based on the name I think it's 4th one. And pictures how to replicate. Just embark at the same place all the time and you'll get immediate access to caverns + world falling.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AZPCJyAzJY7moIZ-bvGMzGFwFfVHqIc/view?usp=sharing

If I didn't include something, because it's my first time doing it - do tell

[se5a]

I've got a couple of volcanic walls encrusted in gems in my current fort, I've explored them a bit and had a couple of critters coming out that I was able to deal with with only a few military dwarf deaths, however I recently had one that had webs and killed 3 squads nearly instantly when they all rushed front on into his fast shooting web attack, I save scummed at that point. I'm going to try see if they have trap avoid, assuming they do, but I've got a weapon and some cage traps around down there, just need to get in a situation where I can test it.
It appears that enemies still can't path up through hatches overtop of stairs so that's one protection that seems to still work.
I've got fortification walls set up, but my marksdwarfs are pretty useless at being stationed, and the couple that DO show up often bring an empty quiver, not sure if my marksdwarf squad also doubling as the captain of the guards police squad is causing issues, ie I suspect they're too busy beating up tantrum civilians to come station themselves quickly.

I STILL haven't found the sweet sweet blue metal that I've been looking for yet though, and I've uncovered most of the magma sea on a default size embark. is it not guaranteed now? do we sometimes get these gem walls instead? is it still there but deeper?
one of the badies that came out of the gem wall had some faceted metal armor and weapons, not sure the stats on that though, might be worth melting it down and making some armor that fits for someone out of that, seems lighter than steel.

[Bumber]

I STILL haven't found the sweet sweet blue metal that I've been looking for yet though, and I've uncovered most of the magma sea on a default size embark. is it not guaranteed now? do we sometimes get these gem walls instead? is it still there but deeper?

Pretty sure candy is always buried beneath one of the new gem clusters. (But not every magma sea gem cluster has a candy cane.)

[se5a]

I was suspecting it to be somewhere in there. maybe I should try digging under the gem cluster. might be safer for now.
I want to get a candy  hammer for my hammerer.

[Sigfrial]

Hey there, it's u/Sigfrial!

So the main reasons I never uploaded a save or seed or anything was three-fold tbh

1) I actually didn't know at the time that this was some sort of wild rare glitch, so whoops
2) I was playing a modded game (using the Dwarvemon mod on Steam, as well as no aquifers)
3) My severe ADHD pushed me to abandon the fort shortly after, make a new world and continue playing.

Had I known there would have been such an interest i would have saved more info, but alas it would have also required several very specific mods to play. Regardless, I hope ya'll can figure out what causes this because it's very very cool!

[se5a]

Looks like mineral guardians are not trap avoid, (I caught one in a cage trap without web tricks) some of the other nasties are though.

[TheFlame52]

Looks like mineral guardians are not trap avoid, (I caught one in a cage trap without web tricks) some of the other nasties are though.

Now that promises some Fun.