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[Nobbins]

So my friend challenged me to create a mostly above-ground fortress. The area I embarked on is really weird though. First, there's about a million trees. Second, there's an open magma pipe. Third, there's a major river with a ton of carp in it, and fourth, it's on an aquifer. The aquifer seems to take up and entire layer, so I can't go down and mine for much stone, except for small bits of obsidian. So I'm basically building a huge tower of wood. Problem is, the fire imps are already starting forest fires, thank god it's limited to one z-level. But I'm worried they might shoot a fireball at my tower and burn it down. Any suggestions?

EDIT: oh, and most standing water dries in the summer. The river stays full though.

[darkflagrance]

Wooden constructions don't burn. Build a wall/moat around the area where you plan to build your base, and the forest fires won't reach you.

[Martin]

River and open magma pipe = obsidian farm. You've got unlimited resources for an aboveground fortress.

[Nobbins]

River and open magma pipe = obsidian farm. You've got unlimited resources for an aboveground fortress.

The magma is one or two z-levels above the river, plus I don't want to risk fire imp attacks more then I'm already at risk for. Plus I've never experimented with obsidian farming before or used pumps. Tips?

[TKGP]

IIRC stockpile tiles stop fires. It's a little cheat-y, but perhaps better than having your entire map sans fort burned to a crisp, if you don't have any moats or walls set up yet.

[Martin]

Well, find some bones or wood and make a bone crossbow and a bunch of bolts. Send him over to take care of the imps. He can fire down into the pipe. Up close, they're easy to kill - it's only at range that the fireballs are a problem.

Over by the pipe build a 20x20 area that you will pump magma into. The walls can be wood. A floodgate and lever are best, but a door can do in a pinch, at least until you get your first bit of obsidian. Above the 20x20 area, build another 20x20 room with retracting bridges as the floor with all 4 bridges linked to a single lever. This can all be wood since it's where you're going to pump the water. Build an aqueduct from there over to the river and build a pump stack to move the water up and over to the room. A waterwheel will do a nice job powering it and use a floodgate on a lever to stop the flow of water into the 20x20 room.

Use a dwarf to pump at least 2/7 magma into the bottom room. Get at least 2/7 water into the top room. Pull the lever to retract the bridges dropping the water into the magma. Wait a few minutes and send a miner in there to get your 400 obsidian out.

You can make all the pumps out of wood, as well as the whole construction. You'll just need 15+ stones to create the mechanisms to get levers/links for all of that going.

You could consider building two of them next to each other (build one, and use the materials from that to build the other, but make space for 2) so that as one is getting excavated the other is getting set up and put a room off the back of both of them with a stone stockpile and a bunch of masons workshops. You want to get those rooms empty ASAP so you can just keep cranking out stone. Turn them into blocks - building an aboveground fortress means a lot of material hauling and a bin with 10 blocks in it is a lot faster than 10 trips back and forth with one stone.

[mal7690]

Wooden constructions don't burn. Build a wall/moat around the area where you plan to build your base, and the forest fires won't reach you.

Better idea:
Build a wall/moat around the magma pipe so you have the entire forest isolated from the imps.

[Martin]

Easy to kill them that way too - just have a single opening with a trap in it.

[wagawaga]

But crossbows are the only way to go if your fire imps spend all the time just outside the pipe, like they did in my last fortress. Discovering to have a fire imp that was standing in the nobles corridor made me happy though.

You can make all the pumps out of wood, as well as the whole construction.

I think you're wrong. Wooden construction are as solid as steel ones, but with pumps it's a bit different.

IIRC, if a pump is made of a non-fire-safe aka flammable material (e.g. wood) it will burn up after some time pumping magma.

The materials can however be non-magma-safe as long as the pump never is submerged by magma.

So replace the wooden block with a rock block, and the wooden pipe and corkscrew with a metal (any metal, even copper) or glass pipe and corkscrew.

Also, if you want to breach the aquifer to get ores, you can dig down near the pipe - about 2 to 5 tiles around the pipe there will be no aquifer.