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[shadowform]

So, right now I'm working on the bottom floor of my palace.  The floors are engraved, and right now I'm busy putting down floors over any non-masterwork engravings, deconstructing, re-smoothing, and re-engraving to ensure that the entire floor is covered in nothing but masterwork engravings.  Is there anyway (aside from massive and unreasonable amounts of savescumming) to ensure that the walls are similarly engraved with nothing but masterworks?

[bmaczero]

If you level your engravers enough on the floors, I wonder if it's possible to get them high enough that they always create masterworks?

If not, a possiblity is digging out non-masterworks, building a new wall, and using Tweak to hide the stuff behind it and make it engravable.

[KylonOrina]

If you level your engravers enough on the floors, I wonder if it's possible to get them high enough that they always create masterworks?

If not, a possiblity is digging out non-masterworks, building a new wall, and using Tweak to hide the stuff behind it and make it engravable.

I believe even at Legendary +5 skill, you still do not have 100% masterwork chance.

EDIT-- Ah here it is. At legendary +5 skill, you have a 26.7% chance for masterwork and 73.3% chance for exceptional.

[NecroRebel]

Not really. If you have magma and water in endless amounts, you could repeatedly obsidian-cast the desired area, mine out the area, smooth and engrave the walls, and mine out all the non-masterwork walls until you've got no non-MW walls, then do the floors. This is probably easier than repeatedly savescumming, but it wouldn't be a good choice for you since you've already gotten a lot of floors engraved (the magma would obliterate the engravings), and probably isn't worth it anyway.

However, I've been thinking of this recently, and I think I may have hit upon an even better solution: statues. My thoughts go along these lines. According to the wiki, an engraved wall is worth the value of the smoothed wall plus 10*matvalue*quality, and only count on one side of the wall. A statue, on the other hand, is worth 25*matvalue*quality, are counted on all 4 sides, act as walls for room designations, and can be admired (which AFAIK engravings can't be). Thus, if you just don't use engraved walls except where necessary for placing doors, you'll have higher value, higher happiness, and no other penalties. There might be unforseen consequences to this, but at the moment I think that this should be nothing but awesome.

[EliDupree]

Also, you can use statues made of a 40x material!

The obsidian-casting idea is really the most excellent approach though.

[Hyndis]

I usually just have a few dedicated engravers. They smooth absolutely everything, including the obsidian I'm casting before I carve it up for the masons.

Not every engraving is a masterwork, but most of them are. Its good enough, and I figure some variety is always nice.

Some of the engravings of cheese are masterworks, other engravings are merely exceptional images of cheese. Variety!

[NW_Kohaku]

Not really. If you have magma and water in endless amounts, you could repeatedly obsidian-cast the desired area, mine out the area, smooth and engrave the walls, and mine out all the non-masterwork walls until you've got no non-MW walls, then do the floors. This is probably easier than repeatedly savescumming, but it wouldn't be a good choice for you since you've already gotten a lot of floors engraved (the magma would obliterate the engravings), and probably isn't worth it anyway.

However, I've been thinking of this recently, and I think I may have hit upon an even better solution: statues. My thoughts go along these lines. According to the wiki, an engraved wall is worth the value of the smoothed wall plus 10*matvalue*quality, and only count on one side of the wall. A statue, on the other hand, is worth 25*matvalue*quality, are counted on all 4 sides, act as walls for room designations, and can be admired (which AFAIK engravings can't be). Thus, if you just don't use engraved walls except where necessary for placing doors, you'll have higher value, higher happiness, and no other penalties. There might be unforseen consequences to this, but at the moment I think that this should be nothing but awesome.

... I have to do this for my grand meeting hall, now.  It's already a multi-floor affair with waterfalls, a zoo, and I was going to decorate with statues, but...

I could make it like the walls are all statues, which hold up the roof above them like a row of Atlases.

My dwarves could dine below a hall of their ancestors and the legendaries of my fort, carved in stone or metal, striding like Gods above them, looking down on them, judging them.  My dwarves could hear the voices in their heads: "I was the creator of Shattershins, artifact bronze warhammer, used to slay a hundred goblins, and decorated with spikes of amethyst.  What have YOU done for your dwarven bretheren, FOOD HAULER?"

[Sysice]

"Note that without food hauling, the fortress ends. Oh yeah, and the artifact bonus isn't that high. And our current champion has five thousand kills. *raspberry*"
Although that is a good idea. And making statues themselves walls does sound awesome...

[Urist Imiknorris]

If you level your engravers enough on the floors, I wonder if it's possible to get them high enough that they always create masterworks?

If not, a possiblity is digging out non-masterworks, building a new wall, and using Tweak to hide the stuff behind it and make it engravable.

I believe even at Legendary +5 skill, you still do not have 100% masterwork chance.

EDIT-- Ah here it is. At legendary +5 skill, you have a 26.7% chance for masterwork and 73.3% chance for exceptional.

And the chance of getting masterworks is capped at 1/3, at legendary +10, according to the wiki.

[NecroRebel]

And the chance of getting masterworks is capped at 1/3, at legendary +10, according to the wiki.

...What? Where's it say that? Every source, wiki and not, that I've ever seen said that the chance of a masterwork is capped at 26.7% at legendary+5, or skill level 20.

I feel I should mention that statues shouldn't be used for exterior walls, since they can be seen and IIRC shot through without penalty, so invaders could still interrupt your dwarves unless you've got walls around the statue ring.

[darkflagrance]

Another bonus to statues: they can be decorated with a screen's worth of gems, bones, and metal.

A downside to statues: tantrumming dwarves can smash your walls. Also, building destroyers will have a field day. Finally, I think walls don't count as iterated items, but statues will, meaning that statues will have a greater impact on framerate.

[Mechanoid]

Statues also don't block fluids from moving onto their square; and if they arn't magma safe, they'll always melt. Potentially even burn if flamable (lignite/coal statues...)

[shadowform]

Ugh...  if it's going to require obsidian casting and re-casting the walls, I'm not going to bother worrying about making all of them masterwork.

The floors are actually fairly easy to do: mass-smooth, mass-engrave, build floors over any non-masterwork engravings, remove the floors.  This reverts the floors to unsmoothed cavern floors, which allows them to be re-smoothed and re-engraved.

[zwei]

Ugh...  if it's going to require obsidian casting and re-casting the walls, I'm not going to bother worrying about making all of them masterwork.

The floors are actually fairly easy to do: mass-smooth, mass-engrave, build floors over any non-masterwork engravings, remove the floors.  This reverts the floors to unsmoothed cavern floors, which allows them to be re-smoothed and re-engraved.

Neat trick!

[NW_Kohaku]

Another bonus to statues: they can be decorated with a screen's worth of gems, bones, and metal.

A downside to statues: tantrumming dwarves can smash your walls. Also, building destroyers will have a field day. Finally, I think walls don't count as iterated items, but statues will, meaning that statues will have a greater impact on framerate.

Tantrumming dwarves are another thing entirely, but frankly, if a building destroyer gets into the heart of my fortress, then having them distracted by sitting there, deconstructing my furniture instead of killing what dwarves I still have left after all my defenses are breached would either be a blessing, or it would be too late for me to rally any defense, anyway, aside from maybe just trying to wall my dwarves off from the onslaught.

Walls that are engraved would probably have to count as iterated items (or at least, the engravings would), since they have unique (kind of) decorations engraved upon them.