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[Mephansteras]

Yes. Right now water that is in a 'natural underground' square is pretty much immune to the effects going on aboveground. They do not evaporate in warm climates or freeze in cold climates. I've tested this extensively, as it's my primary way of ensuring water on a map without a brook or aquifer. One of the first tasks is always to drain a pond down into an underground cistern before it evaporates (or freezes, depending on the map).

I like the special cavern ideas. Especially ones that are good for specific things. Imagine ones where crops grow better? Or maybe a rare cavern where refracted light from crystals beams in natural sunlight, allowing aboveground crops to grow?

[G-Flex]

Yes. Right now water that is in a 'natural underground' square is pretty much immune to the effects going on aboveground. They do not evaporate in warm climates or freeze in cold climates.

Are you sure this is always the case? I thought water could still freeze underground in really cold climates, or else how do glaciers have more than one layer of ice?

[LumenPlacidum]

• The Nest: Even though the legends record the last dragon/hydra died in a battle two hundred years ago, an excavator could discover a nest, its entrance long since buried. Inside there could be hatchlings or even eggs. Do you seal it up immediately, or take a chance to have a pet dragon for your arena?
  

One thing that might be fun would be if you discovered natural cave features that the computer would then give you a metaphorical description of, when you click them on, like "You've discovered a grouping of stalactites that resemble a choir" or "this cave formation resembles a sleeping dragon". Obviously, someone who hasn't been up for the past 18 hours-unlike myself-should write the descriptions, but I think it might add some interest to spelunking in the deeps.

I'd just like to point out that these ideas fit together rather well to make for amusing and fun stuff for a player.  If you break into a cavern with a very large structure that the game says "looks like a large, oblong orb," then it could be an egg.  The player would not necessarily know that it's an egg.  There could be a periodic check to see if certain qualities for the area around the structure are met, such as the walls of the structure being warmed by magma or being wet stone due to flooding.  Once a pre-set condition is met, the egg starts to hatch and a megabeast is released into your fortress.

Or, if it's not an egg and the description above is actually used: "it looks like a sleeping dragon."  That's cool, but what if dragons do hibernate for thousands of years, and rocky crusts form on their bodies as they do this?  Those crusts would be disturbed by magma or trying to mine into them.  A miner who suddenly finds himself face to teeth with a grumpy dragon is priceless.

Of course, not all of these structures should be other things in disguise.  That ruins the surprise!

[SirHoneyBadger]

I like the "hidden megabeast" ideas.

Is anyone very familiar with the legend of the Bell Witch? If not, it's a haunting in Tennessee, I think, that's supposed to involve a powerful spirit that's tied to a local cave.

If you happened to build your fortress in even marginal proximity to such a haunted cave, the spirit, or spirits, connected to that cave might cause you a lot of grief.

Part of the legend is that several dozen miners died when a tunnel collapsed in the area, and that their spirits are part of the problem, so maybe when ghosts are in, your own dwarfs might come back from their stoney graves and haunt you, until/unless their bodies were recovered and placed into sarcophagi.

Other spirits, such as banshee or knockers (basically a sort of underground gremlin), might actually *cause* things like earthquakes, forcing you to send priests along with your mining parties.

[Granite26]

Don't build your fort on the old kobold burial ground?  I like

[Cheshire Cat]

I really like this old spirit idea. toady has allready talked about similar, in regards to how a fortress keeps track of every dwarf that has ever lived and died there, and how it would be interesting to make use of this info and stick a few ghosts around, who could tell you about themselves and their lives when you visited in adventure mode.

i also like the idea of having to bring preists with you to fulfill a specific function like expelling the damned banshees from that promising new ore vein in shaft 5. teach you to take on a hunted mountain range, and it also goes beyond the normal discussion on dwarf religion, which mostly has preists fulfilling a role a little like nobles, making demands for their church, and giving services to agreived dwarves to make them happier.

so yes, haunted ruins and the occasional occult/ghostly megabeast. though that sort of talk begins to verge on discussion on magic and stuff.

off topic - is there any discussion anywhere about this kind of religious thing, and has the word palladin come up yet? i like the idea of my champions weilding blessed hammers of adamantium and smiting the undead giant eagles from the sky with bolts that have little crystal vials of holy water on the end.

[SirHoneyBadger]

One of the nice things about 'old spirits' being around is that, as the player of the game, you yourself may actually be responsible for some of those old spirits, and have to deal with repercussions and consequences from your actions, several real-life weeks later (depending on how long you play a given fortress).

A few thoughts:

Dwarf soldiers *you* sent to their deaths might rise up as zombie warriors, forever seeking war and mayhem (and brains!).

You might have trouble from the ghosts of miners that suffered cave-ins or other disasters, where *you* sent them to mine, or the spirits might be helpful, alerting your dwarfs when something bad is about to happen.

Elven caravans that *you* ordered slaughtered might become spectres and banshees-for that matter, a ghostly wagon might appear to haunt you, for destroying an elven trade-delegation.
 
Kobolds might have ancient sacred burial grounds that, since you slaughtered their "tribe" and your dwarfs disturb their slumber and profane their holy ground, the land itself becomes Cursed.

Wizards (when we get them) might turn into liches after *you* kill them.

Megabeasts may come back from the dead, stronger than they were in life.

Items that have had too much blood spilled on them (not just weapons, but clothing, floors, anything), might become Cursed.

It'd be a nice bit of metagaming to have to deal, generations later, with a problem that you're ultimately responsible for, and that the dwarfs living under your command would have to suffer from, but that no living dwarf might even be aware of the circumstances of.

You might even have to have your dwarf sages research past events to find a way to put a stop to a bad haunting.

[zagibu]

I agree, but it doesn't have to do anything with underground diversity.

[Hoborobo234]

Megabeasts may come back from the dead, stronger than they were in life.

You can already get zombie Dragons

[LegacyCWAL]

Yes. Right now water that is in a 'natural underground' square is pretty much immune to the effects going on aboveground. They do not evaporate in warm climates or freeze in cold climates.

Are you sure this is always the case? I thought water could still freeze underground in really cold climates, or else how do glaciers have more than one layer of ice?

Worldgen doesn't necessarily follow the same rules as gameplay.  Just look at the examples of things like a brook or river that is perfectly natural until the instant somebody sees it, at which point it suddenly drains out through a wierd hole in its wall.  Or the murky pools in really hot areas that are full of water upon arrival, but dry up quickly and permanently.

[G-Flex]

Yes, but glaciers more than one level thick DON'T immediately melt their underground layers, meaning that the game itself is (at least in some respects) obeying rules more complex than "underground water is liquid".

[LegacyCWAL]

I imagine it's due to it already being subterranean ice from the beginning, and possibly from being "natural" ice, rather than stuff constructed out of ice.  It seems to me that being underground doesn't force water to be water, but rather just keeps outside factors from changing it into something else.  So if that's the case, then ice is already ice and thus wouldn't be subject to the "underground water doesn't freeze" rule.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Zombie dragons, yes, but that's one of many, many possibilities.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I did a general search, and I also checked the main page of this post, and as far as I can tell, noone's mentioned salt/salt mines. I was surprised (maybe Search isn't working properly? It only brings up two posts, and includes basalt). Not only would this be extremely valuable as a resource (to preserve food, and maybe corpses), and as a luxury, it seems like it demands special attention, being more akin to a gem or a metal than a "common" rock.

I could see salt being combined with meat to produce more valuable preserved meat, or just combined with other foods, for variety, and salt being a requirement for producing things like buckskin leather. It might even be something your dwarfs could bring to their wounded (along with honey, maybe?), to help the healing process.

Salt might also be washed away by water flows, so that, where you once had solid rocksalt, a few years later, you now would have brand new caverns. Ofcourse, in the real world, this probably would happen over aeons, but it might make a nice special event to have new caves suddenly but naturally open up, in a few months' time.

There might be exotic critters and special undead living in salt areas, too, and dwarfs might get dehydrated faster in salt areas.

[Othob Rithol]

if you use the search function within a thread it only yields finds in that thread. So what you got was the references to salt/basalt in the UD thread. Salt has actually come up many, many times.

Having said that, this post is more of a note to self to add salt deposits into the list at next edit..

Strictly as a game feature, its uses are outside the discussion. This sits on that odd area between "don't include because it is just a mineral" and "don't include because it is a non-UD game mechanic". In this case that little spot says "include because it is cool".

@ zagibu :  : that is my job darn it....but thx 

It has been a while since I went through my "Steel Glacier" days, so I can't remember exactly, but does an underlayer of ice actually report as under ground? Regardless, the point about worldgen physics vs game physics is completely valid : the game will generate odd features at worldgen that cease to exist within seconds of a Fortress start.

In many cases odd behavior is due to "status inertia" - that a condition will persist until acted upon my an outside stimulus. IE water will remain liquid unless the game detects that temp < freezing. Since being underground prevents that low of temp, the water never freezes.

If I recall correctly, whole tiles of ice won't melt at all. Rather you have cave it in (which somehow makes it turn to water on impact.) But that may be out of date.

In short, the suggestion is one for underground (on topic) game mechanics (not on topic) that already exist (pointless).