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[DaMunky89]

Just checking, that's the kinda thing that's important to know before you start playing with magma, if all you have for stone is obsidian. >_>

The wiki was sorta unclear on this, but I figure it should work because if it didn't then the magma pool would melt through the rough obsidian walls separating it from the rest of my base.

[Skorpion]

Obsidian is NOT magma safe! I don't know where people keep getting this idea.

However, magma will not melt anything it's adjacent to. When it occupies the same square, anything not magma-safe will melt. You can hold back magma with a door or floodgate of anything, but it will deconstruct when opened if anything in the building is not magma-safe, because the non-magma-safe parts will melt.

[dogstile]

Obsidian is NOT magma safe! I don't know where people keep getting this idea.

Its found alongside magma alot, many people think that to be alongside magma, you'd have to be resistant to it, but nature is complicated.

[DaMunky89]

Ah, I see. That would be why my friend said "yes" when I asked if an obsidian floodgate will hold back magma, but why it didn't appear in the wiki as "magma-safe". >_>

I guess I'll just make do until I can trade for some bauxite...

[Skorpion]

Well, if I can hold back magma with only a loam wall, it's obvious that it doesen't melt natural walls, isn't it?

[slink]

And sadly, lignite walls next to magma won't ignite either.

[darthbob88]

And sadly, lignite walls next to magma won't ignite either.

Constructed ice walls will hold back magma. Natural ice, apparently, will melt, and coal veins would probably ignite. Bauxite is not necessary for holding back magma; nickel/nickel silver, iron/steel, platinum, glass, and (raw) adamantine will all do the job; the only thing you'd really need bauxite for are the mechanisms used to connect the floodgate and the magma, and for that you can mod one of the above metals to be [ANY_USE] to make it possible to forge mechanisms from them.

[Skorpion]

Or you could NOT mod the game and just use water to block off magma, because natural walls block perfectly fine.
Obsidian casting: The cause of, and solution to, most of a dwarf's problems.

[Nadaka]

An obsidian floodgate will block magma as long as it remains closed. When it is opened, then it will deconstruct and melt.

[assimilateur]

I guess I'll just make do until I can trade for some bauxite...

You only need that bauxite for the mechanism directly attached to the floodgate. You can make the floodgate out of something much more readily-available like nickel silver or iron, and the lever as well as the mechanism attached directly to it, out of whatever stone you got lying around.

[Kanddak]

Yes, obsidian floodgates will do a perfectly fine job of blocking magma.
It's when you open them and let them stop blocking the magma that you'll run into difficulties.

[DaMunky89]

Or you could NOT mod the game and just use water to block off magma, because natural walls block perfectly fine.
Obsidian casting: The cause of, and solution to, most of a dwarf's problems.

This is actually a good idea. Instead of having a magma floodgate, I'll get a water floodgate above the magma channel to dump a unit of water on it when I want to stop the flow... Then I can have a dwarf uncover the channel again when I want to open it. I mean, it's not like I need precise timing. I'm going to be filling a 5 x 5 x 5 tile pit one 1 z-layer deep at a time, and then dumping water on it.

[LegoLord]

Constructed ice walls will hold back magma. Natural ice, apparently, will melt, and coal veins would probably ignite

The latter is incorrect.  Ice walls are a hard-coded exception to the natural-and-constructed-terrain-won't-melt rule.  That is why the ice walls will melt; the game is programmed to treat that particular material specially.  Many have reported putting magma into lignite veins and only having the items melt, but not the walls.

[Poot]

Newbie question since we're on the same topic: someone said bauxite was not needed except for floodgates on magma. I specifically chose a place with lava, but the dwarf traders don't offer bauxite; I want to start magma forges soon. So, what's the plan? Abandon the fortress and try to start on a civ with bauxite? Or do floodgates matter?

[assimilateur]

It depends on what you want to do with magma. If you just want it to power magma forges, then I guess you don't need floodgates. Otherwise, you're going to have a problem without bauxite. It technically isn't needed for the floodgates themselves, as you can forge them out of iron (and some other metals), but each one of them requires one bauxite mechanism to be operable (i.e. for you to open and close it).

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that you need to regen and get bauxite, you could as well get a mod that makes alunite, among others, magma-safe. Do a search for molten boulders or molten rocks or something, I think one of those is what the mod was called.

EDIT: or you can mod the game yourself. If you go to your raw\objects folder, you will find a file that's called matgloss_stone_mineral.txt. Look for the entry on bauxite in it, copy the lines [MELTING_POINT:13600] and [BOILING_POINT:15000] and add them to another stone that you want to use instead of bauxite for your magma-safe mechanisms and/or floodgates.