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[Kel the Oblivious]

So what are your favored methods of clearing out all the baddies that hide inside the most useful resource in the game?

I generally use weapon traps and a narrow corridor. For some reason imps just love to go exploring into it, and end up diced and sliced. If the area is too big for that to work, a squad of marksdwarfs, spaced out so if a stray fireball hits on, the entire squad is not lit on fire.

Anyone have any different methods, or are these two pretty much the only method?

In addition, one of my marksdwarfs just dismembered a fire man with a turtle shell bolt.

And does anyone ever have any problems with magma men? I could swear they just sit at the bottom of the pool and don't ever move.

[Duke 2.0]

 Wait 'till they start wandering outside of the pipe.

 Then a band of five wrestlers, one axedwarf and one dwarf with a pickaxe come out of nowhere and brutally murders them. Then wait for another to move away from the safety of the magma pipe.

[Phazer]

If i dont wanna bother having it difficult i often use to build iron grates and putting up wall grates so those nasty imps cant get in i also use marksdwarves as they can shoot bolts through magma. a magma man once punched my woodcutter in the arms then my woodcutter thought it would be a smart idea to go to rest at the barracks where like 7 people lied wounded, after that i had to abandon the fort as everyone wanted to help those in the barracks and those that survived went tantruming but i dont remember if it was a magma man or fire man 

[Kel the Oblivious]

That raises another question I have had. How do I get military dwarfs to wield pickaxes? I see it show up ever so often, and I am wondering what the perk would be, asides the hefty damage they come with. What skill do they use to raise it, mining?

[Maska]

When I tap on, it's through only 1 square near the pipe and the first narrow corridor I seal with vertical iron bars. Then I usually construct a huge aqueduct to cool myself some obsidian floor on top of the pipe.

The aqueduct, even when unfinished, can be used for controlling fires caused by the damn imps and my dogs.

[Duke 2.0]

 Alternate strategy of mine: If I'm not going to dick about the top level of the magma pipe, I'll just make the magma access tunnel in such a way that all magma needs to go through about five fortifications.

[Osmosis Jones]

Off topic;

That raises another question I have had. How do I get military dwarfs to wield pickaxes? I see it show up ever so often, and I am wondering what the perk would be, asides the hefty damage they come with. What skill do they use to raise it, mining?

If a dwarf is drafted with the mining labour permitted, he will wield his pick in combat as long as he is set to unarmed. They use mining skill to determine the strike success, and although not as high damage as regular weapons, they have a high crit chance.

Because of this, by mid to late game, your legendary miners will make an extremely effective militia, roughly equal to a legendary speardwarf sans armour.

On topic; I avoid them personally, but the best method I have seen involved an array that dripped water onto the middle few tiles of the pipe, hence causing an endless succession of cave-ins. While this can be annoying due to the message spam, it quickly and efficiently sucks any and all magma denizens to the bottom of the map.

[Kazindir]

I don't, to be honest.

Initially I'll dig some tunnels to put some magma forge/smelters on top of so that once built there is no way out or line of fire but I leave the volcano monsters alone. They're happy enough where they are most of the time and it mens that later on in the game they're still there to cause the occasional bouts of havoc.

[Noble Digger]

Off topic;

That raises another question I have had. How do I get military dwarfs to wield pickaxes? I see it show up ever so often, and I am wondering what the perk would be, asides the hefty damage they come with. What skill do they use to raise it, mining?

If a dwarf is drafted with the mining labour permitted, he will wield his pick in combat as long as he is set to unarmed. They use mining skill to determine the strike success, and although not as high damage as regular weapons, they have a high crit chance.

Because of this, by mid to late game, your legendary miners will make an extremely effective militia, roughly equal to a legendary speardwarf sans armour.

On topic; I avoid them personally, but the best method I have seen involved an array that dripped water onto the middle few tiles of the pipe, hence causing an endless succession of cave-ins. While this can be annoying due to the message spam, it quickly and efficiently sucks any and all magma denizens to the bottom of the map.

This is why I bring 4 miner-masons at embark now. Leveling mining will give them agility, strength, and toughness, which straight-up increases the number of actions they can do per year, or per combat turn. This squad of four, unarmed and unarmored, mines with equal effectiveness through goblins.

Magma creatures are a non-issue and don't need to be cleared out. Since the magma pipe has a differing size on each level, there are levels where you can dig out the ground above the magma because the pipe is smaller above than below. Tap into the volcano from the side on one of these levels by digging a channel down into a wall tile which separates the magma pipe from a pre-prepared tunnel into the area below your future magma workshop. This should be set with a magma-safe floodgate and mechanism attached to a lever so you can close it off if you ever need to.

Code: [Select]

X = Floodgate   V = Channel location    ò = Lever

__|~~~~~~~~|__V_______ __ò    <- small level of the magma pipe, future workshop site
|~~~~~~~~~~~~|X_______/      <- large level, underworks site with ramp or stairs up
|~~~~~~~~~~~~|

Dig your channel where the V is so the wall behind the floodgate is destroyed, and magma will flow into the tunnel once the floodgate is opened. Note that the floodgate itself and the mechanism which attaches to it must be made of magma-safe materials: iron, steel, or bauxite for the floodgate, and bauxite for the mechanism. Only the mechanism which attaches to the floodgate needs to be magma-safe: the lever and the mechanism which attaches to it don't need this! When attaching a lever to a floodgate, the first of the two mechanisms that you select is the one that gets attached to the floodgate, and the 2nd goes to the lever.

Naturally you have a ramp or stairs which leads into this soon-to-be-magma-flooded chamber, so make sure to lock the door or build a hatch cover or grate to keep dwarves out before you open the gate and let magma flood in. Now, to keep magma denizens from coming up through your new magma works, you need to build the workshops carefully.

For: Smelters, Glass Furnaces, and Kilns, you will need a 3x3 area with the topmost tile channeled out, like so:

Code: [Select]

+X+
+++
+++

This tile corresponds to the one tile of the magma workshop that is solid. Once the workshop is built, this one tile will cover up the hole while still leaving the workshop active.

For a magma forge, it's different:

Code: [Select]

+++
X+X
+++

As you see, you need the leftmost and rightmost tile opened. Technically only one of the two needs to be open, but I usually do both since they'll be covered anyway.

Now, you've got a nice underworks to store magma for your workshop which is technically not exposed to your fortress, since you built an iron grate or a workshop over any hole which leads down into it. Magma will NOT flow upward hydraulically under any circumstances, except possibly in the case of one weird bug which involves pumping fluids up and down ramps several z-levels. In any case, this setup is safe and keeps you from having to kill the magma creatures!

[Sir_Geo]

I didn't really find them fun enough so I modded them to reproduce and I added a few other fire animals so instead of dealing with a few fire imps I sometimes end up dealing with a page of fire animals.
They also make good guards when trained 

[MuonDecay]

Those early squabbles with the fire imps are always beneficial to me!

I may lose a couple immigrants to fireballs here and there, but the fire imp bones and leather are pretty valuable and make fine trade goods. I usually set them aside to be used in artifacts, though.

[GenericOverusedName]

Find magma pipe.

Seal off magma pipe.

Hollow out the levels above magma pipe.

Create a large construction atop a single support above the pipe.

Link support to lever.

Pull lever.

Pray.

[Pojodan]

I generally end up just having a fairly lengthy channel from the pipe to my workshops, long enough that the magma creatures don't bother wandering down it.  If I've got the time and resources, I'll stick in an iron grate.

After some bad luck with imps giving me hell in the past, I figure they're not worth bothering with.

[Akigagak]

Sort of off topic:

Recently, I had a forest fire incident.
The hunter had set off a fire imp, which, when it tried to fire ball him, hit a tree.

EVERYTHING BURNED.

I had three dwarves left, one with horrible burns, and all three went into melt down.

[forsaken1111]

Personally I send unarmed unskilled wrestlers after them until one comes back alive. That man is then made a dwarven hero for killing something made of MAGMA with his bare hands (even if he no longer has those hands) and he is kept alive for as long as possible. When he dies, I build him a masterpiece obsidian coffin, studded with lead, menacing with spikes of sterling silver. It lies in a 3 story tomb made entirely of obsidian blocks, with magma rivers flowing on either side of the coffin. The top of the tomb has a single opening, into which all captured goblins, humans, elves and other creatures are thrown. On top of the tomb are four statues made of obsidian.

The whole thing is built inside the magma pipe, all submerged in magma except for the roof where the goblin hole is.