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[blah28722]

The wiki article on tower cap farms seems to be a bit outdated, so I thought I'd ask here.

What are the conditions needed to create a tower cap farm?
Does muddied soil not work?
Is there a biome requirement?
Does it need to be from a underground pool?
How fast do tower caps grow?

Also, a few advices on making a full scale farm, please. One that can support an entire fortress indefinitely.

[Albedo]

Afaik, it's not - all info should(?) be accurate.

1) as stated in wiki.
2) sure, as stated in wiki
3) no, as stated in wiki
4) sim
5 - not stated - variable. Some quite fast, a year and a half, others closer to three.  There's a big randomizing factor in there somewhere.

Advice - bigger is better.  Don't go half-ass, then try to expand, as irrigation will kill any saplings.

Also, saplings are extremely fragile - if walked on even once, they might die.  seal off your TC farm from casual travel, and/or make heavy use of traffic zones <d, o>

[detinith]

Nothing matters with towercaps except that you expose an underground body of water (river or lake) somewhere in your map. From that point on, all underground muddy surfaces can grow a towercap. To make a farm out of it, just mine out a huge room, flood it, and drain it. They grow on rough, smooth and engraved surfaces (growing on an engraved surface will technically deface that artwork). If you want to make a particularly large tree farm, you should build a paved road or a separate corridor for traffic, since saplings are just lil mushrooms

For my personal tree farm, it wasn't long at all to see saplings start growing. Once I saw them though, it was about 2 more years before any of them were grown, and by then more saplings come up and are growing. Now it's a nice seasonal supplement to my stockpile of elven hatred.

[blah28722]

So there is some sort of requirement with underground water?

Could someone explain this a bit more?

I usually only find ponds, which are aboveground.

[Demonic Spoon]

You need to have discovered a underground pool or river for any underground plants or shrubs to grow.

ONce you have discovered such a pool or river they will start growing randomly on muddy rock, muddy soil and soil floors with nanother soil layer beneath them. Though they will grow much slower in that last named location.

[blah28722]

I'm sorry for being a bit slow on the uptake for this one, because I've never actually seen an underground river or pool in-game.

I know underground rivers are semi-rare and can be found through the find site tool. Are underground pools near rivers or are they also rare?

[Firnagzen]

They're rar-ish, too. Maximum one per mountainious region tile.

Also, beware: towercap saplings will not mature if there's anything else on the tile with them. So make sure you thoroughly clear your farm before wetting it. And don't step on the saplings.

[Christes]

Underground pools are also listed on the site tool, actually.

[Demonic Spoon]

Yeah, make sure cave spider can't reach the farm as their webs will stop the saplings form growing.

[dragon0421]

I'm currently building an elaborate tree farm. First I dug out the rooms, flooded them, and drained them. Then I cleared the rocks and smoothed a grid of walkways, removing the mud (towercaps and trees never grow adjacent to each other). Then I restrict the traffic where the towercaps will grow and make the paths high traffic. Once it's all built I plan on tapping the underground river; I'm waiting because flooded rooms tend to lead to dead shrubs that take forever to go away. Once shrubs start growing I'll have my woodworkers clear them to maximize towercap density.

[Jim Groovester]

I'm sorry for being a bit slow on the uptake for this one, because I've never actually seen an underground river or pool in-game.

I know underground rivers are semi-rare and can be found through the find site tool. Are underground pools near rivers or are they also rare?

Let's be clear: underground rivers and pools are special map features that are buried within the earth. When you discover them by digging them out, you will get a popup box saying 'You have discovered an underground river' or something to that effect, and the game will pause and the screen will center on the discovery. That message is the trigger for tower caps to grow.

Tower caps will not grow, under any circumstance, if you have not discovered an underground river or pool. Murky pools on the surface will not enable tower caps to grow if diverted underground. Likewise, brooks, streams, rivers, and any other source of water will not enable tower caps to grow if diverted underground. Only the discovery message will enable tower caps to grow.

Unless you have a underground river or pool breach the surface, but that's incredibly rare, and you'll know when that's the case once you start recognizing the just exactly what these two features look like.

[Albedo]

I had an UG pool exposed, one of my very first maps, and a good one too. Got the message right off the bat, right at embark, before I even upaused the game.

File got corrupted.  Natch.

[Quietust]

Effectively, underground rivers and pools contain tower-cap spores, and once you reveal the feature, those spores get released.

[Albedo]

blah - I'd be really interested to know what info you get out of this thread that you could not find on the wiki (and/or what you thought was "outdated") (and why?) - you'd be doing everyone a favour if you let us know, so we could add it.

[blah28722]

I take back what I've said about the wiki being outdated. It seems that I just didn't understand what it said.

Some of the pages regarding tower cap farms mention only wetting the rock, which led me to believe that you only need to wet it to grow tower caps.