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[Gork]

Okay, a few months ago I stopped playing DF for some reason or another, but now the charming little dorfs hooked me up again. Since I sucked back then and still suck at fortress design, I tried to pick an easy terrain to settle down: a forest with a magma pipe, HFS, flux and literally hills of magnetite looked perfect. Unfortunately, there's also the little issue of a terrifying mountain, chasm included, next to it, and while I found no giant eagles on embark (one showed up later at the other end of the map), a troll and a pack of antmen assaulted me on the 30 second mark.

After burying the poor war dog who died there, things started marching smoothly. I walled in the fortress entrance, and a layer of loam or whatever made farming easy, which is why I didn't concern myself with water until a troglodyte mauled the adept mechanic/architect who was trapping the entrance. Now, when I tried to tap into my pseudo-moat to make a well, I found that it had evaporated entirely, leaving me with muddy loam to quench my poor dwarf's thirst.

1) How can I stop water from boiling away?

Fortunately, some immigrants showed up during the first autumn, so that makes up for the impending death of my mechanic (now dehydrated and starving. I don't know why he's starving though... I have plenty of food in my stores). The next inconvenient is the wildlife, since the poor groundhogs in the valley are getting massacred by a mysterious force... probably the hordes of terrifying monsters living in the chasm. But, in order to start my war industry, I need to find the magma pipe hidden somewhere in the obsidian plains.

2) Does the chasm prevent me from using the Depot trick in all Z-levels to find strange features?
3) Eh... below the surface there's a layer of loam, can I start digging for magma in the level immediately under it? I'm using 30x30 squares in order to find the pipe, but there's a LOT of obsidian so I'm quite clueless on where to dig.

That's it for now, no goblins have appeared yet. An advantage of having so much obsidian is that a 2x2 room with a cabinet and a coffer is a Decent Quarters, apparently.

[sonerohi]

Water can be kept from evaporating if it's underground, so if you have a channel up top like this

Code: [Select]

+-+ with the - as the channel, then underground it needs to look like this

Code: [Select]

O=-O with O's as the walls, the = as a dug out tile, and the - again, this time just the ground tile exposed to open air. All the water inside the = won't evaporate, but stuff in the - will.

The depot trick will only stop working near the chasm. Areas not near the chasm will still be prospectable.

[Gork]

Okay, thanks for the help. I may be on to something, there's a dark patch at the top-right corner of the map... but on the surface there's nothing but alunite.

And, I've ordered the construction of an underground reservoir of sorts. That will save my mechanic if it rains before he dies.

[Gork]

My suspicion about the alunite was right...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Okay... can I stop the death of the rest of my fortress now?
Edit: The staircase I dug is just one z-level above the pits. I guess I'm safe for now... demons don't dig right?
Edit: Nevermind, Spirit of Fire appeared out of nowhere

[Gork]

The death of my mechanic now seems a rather trivial matter.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Forest fires are quite deadly when you stop to think about it. Next questions, do demons respawn when reclaiming? 

[SolarShado]

I duno about "respawn", but any that were there when you left should be there when you return.

[Marlowe]

For future reference, 3Dwarf can be used to find hidden underground features. You need to set it to "show hidden tiles" and nose around though.

[Gork]

Solar: I think there's a limited amount of demons generated by a pit, right? I was wondering if, when you reclaimed a fortress, this demon count was reset or it picked up where I had previously left it.

Marlowe: 3Dwarf looks awesome, when was it made?
P.S.: I stumbled upon the magma pipe by pure chance, while digging near the chasm.

Anyway, I decided to savescum to a save I had before finding these other features, since the area was completely ravaged after 2 failed reclaims and many forest fires. I did find the magma pipe, as I previously mentioned and, of all dwarves, my armorer was struck by a fey mood. It was a battle for survival (or greed) as my novice marksdwarves and legendary miner held fire imps at bay until the blacksmith was done with a peculiar selection of materials.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

However, of all metals, he picked a particularly valuable one...

Perhaps I'm not so doomed, after all.

[Gork]

Well, I decided not to use up another thread for my petty fort, and I still have a couple of doubts.

1) How do I make it so my dwarves spar with copper weapons and actually fight with *Obsidian short sword*? I manually forbade obsidian short swords after a goblin ambush, undrafted and then redrafted my soldiers, and they still wield them. Grrr...

2) By the hand of my engraver, my dwarves now live quite comfortably:


However, I've heard that when dwarven economy kicks in, my dorfs will have to pay rent for their bedrooms. Can I "switch it off" by murdering a couple of nobles?

[NooklearToaster]

There's an economy option in init.txt, just turn it off. It's grouped with temperature and weather and such.

[Pilsu]

You can't turn it off once it's begun. Do it before it's too late

[Gork]

Awesome. Next time I'll try to take economy into account instead of ditching it. 

[Pilsu]

It's not worth it. The economy is fundamentally broken and causes nothing but hardship

Plus it's irritating to have legendaries steal goods from you

[jplur]

It's not worth it. The economy is fundamentally broken and causes nothing but hardship

Plus it's irritating to have legendaries steal goods from you

I take it you enjoy assigning those bedrooms by hand?

[Stromko]

Dwarves take bedrooms even before the economy kicks in. You have to manually assign the most appropriate rooms to nobles either way.

Also there's another init option to make all rents = zero, I think that can be enabled after the fact. At least if you resize or reset the room's rent it should revert to zero, thus anyone can rent it no matter how luxurious it is.

I find it interesting to have the economy just so I can place shops, makes the fortress more like a city or something. Of course a lot of the shops end up being 'exotic clothing stores', where dwarves go to buy goblin loinclothes. Freaks.