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[armadilloHD]

Went back to my first fort which was originally abandoned in spirit because of a lack of interest and also a mediocrity in playing and ran reveal and I found some pretty cool shit among all the boring stone.




It appears to be an underground river with no actual source leading off map falling into what seems to be the smallest bottomless pit/chasm I've ever seen.  How could this happen.

[Kadzar]

All underground rivers are like that.

[assimilateur]

Sorry to be such a buzzkill, but that actually seems to be quite common. The last couple of times I generated a world with an underground river I wished for it not to drain in a chasm.

While having a mini-chasm and drain might be nice in itself, it's a death sentence for your (large) underground river dwellers. Except several screens worth of deceased lizardmen, giant toads, etc., when you press 'u'. Before even discovering that river, that is.

All underground rivers are like that.

But you don't necessarily get that part (with the drain) on your map, right?

[Retro]

What they said. If your river begins on the map, it'll appear as if from nowhere, and if it ends on your map it always ends in a little chasm bit there. Otherwise it just goes on and offscreen. Someone should really emphasize this on the wiki; there's a thread like this every now and then.

[armadilloHD]

Oh don't i feel silly now

[Sutremaine]

But you don't necessarily get that part (with the drain) on your map, right?

If you have UGs visible in the site finder (this option is in the init file), then embarking with a site that contains both of the end tiles of the river will give you the drain. One end tile and it's 50/50 whether you get source or drain*, and no end tiles equals... no chance of a chasm, and the river will source from the edge of the map in the same way as an above-ground one.

*assuming you don't have prior knowledge of the flow direction, natch.

[assimilateur]

If you have UGs visible in the site finder (this option is in the init file), then embarking with a site that contains both of the end tiles of the river will give you the drain. One end tile and it's 50/50 whether you get source or drain*, and no end tiles equals... no chance of a chasm, and the river will source from the edge of the map in the same way as an above-ground one.

*assuming you don't have prior knowledge of the flow direction, natch.

Makes sense.

[Untelligent]

The best part about this is that if you embark on the whole river and dig out the rest of the mountain, you end up with an awesome waterslide.

[Bryan Derksen]

I had a Fun situation once where the river didn't end in a chasm, instead flowing off the edge of the map. For whatever reason the rate of flow of water into the river was greater than the rate it could drain off the edge. The result was that the entire tunnel carved out by the stream was filled with pressurized water. And there was a lot of tunnel.

I wound up puncturing the roof of the underground stream down near its lower reaches. Since I came in through the roof there wasn't a "damp rock" warning. All I got was an "Urist McMiner cancels job: dangerous terrain", and then by the time I'd paused and gone over to have a look half my fort was flooded with high-velocity drownage. Lost many dwarves.

[lastofthelight]

Neat!

Sadly, I've never seen a pressurized or useful (read: high up enough in a mountain to be of use in traps) underground river. I hope the ones in DF2010 are more Fun.

[Retro]

Neat!

Sadly, I've never seen a pressurized or useful (read: high up enough in a mountain to be of use in traps) underground river. I hope the ones in DF2010 are more Fun.

Like maybe a year ago someone had a map they called 'Waterworks' - a UG river like 20z off the main ground level and two bottomless pits (one was a 1x1 chasm technically) on that main level. Creates lots of opportunity. You'd have to search it, though.

[Argonnek]

I had an awesome UG river once. I used it to execute goblins by chucking them over the edge, where they were pushed by the water into the chasm.
Also, UG river water is only pressurized if you hit it at a point lower than the source. I discovered this the hard way in my first fortress.

[They Got Leader]

Guys, I hate to be the largest buzzkill ever, but if you didn't already know, the beginning of an UG river is just a little waterfall where the water spawns randomly. And it ends where it waterfalls into a bottomless chasm. Sorry to burst the bubble...

[assimilateur]

Essentially restating what has been said several times in this thread already isn't exactly bursting anybody's bubbles. It is a buzzkill all right, but probably not for the reasons you intended.

[NW_Kohaku]

Neat!

Sadly, I've never seen a pressurized or useful (read: high up enough in a mountain to be of use in traps) underground river. I hope the ones in DF2010 are more Fun.

Actually, my game has a river hanging out 7 floors above "ground level" that appears on the west end of my embark point, and flows off map fairly soon from there.

I also have a bottomless pit and a chasm and a magma pipe... I'm still hooking them all up to one another.