New features spoiler:
(level -19) - eventually, I got a happy little pop-up about my miners encountering a vast network of underground caves. And no fooling it was pretty vast. It spanned several (5, I think) z-layers, and included mud, underground vegetation, and a handful of cave blobs. My 30-level staircase had to be re-routed, as it was currently set to pass through open space. No miners fell through or anything, but it was rather startling to pan down through the staircase only to encounter a large, randomly generated underground cave. I should also note that there were lots of exposed veins of ore. And only portions of the cave were exposed a kind of square of visibility based on where my dwarves had been, much like adventure mode.
Anyways, so I re-routed my stairs back through the stone, and had my miners continue to dig downward. Only a few more z-layers down (level -24) , I got another message about a vast underground cave system, and this one included an underground lake and more blobs. Snazzy. There was also another, more familiar pop-up announcement:
Old features spoiler: As the second (or third?) cave was announced, it came paired with the wonderful Your miners have strike Adamantine! Hail to the miners! or something like that. I was rather surprised, but quite happy, and looked around for the adamantine. As it turns out, it was an exposed vein inside the cave (level -32), and quite accessible. I decided to go for the gold, and dug a short tunnel over to it and decided to follow the vein downwards, knowing full well that this was pretty much a death sentence.
I designated a 2x2 stairway to be dug straight down from the main portion I had mined out, and after about 8 z-levels:
New version of old features spoiler: It's not what you're thinking I stared getting warm stone cancellation announcements (level -41). I did what I could to continue digging downward, and also retro-mined out exploration tunnels above the areas where I was getting the warm stones. A few strange things occurred during this venture.
First, when I finally did get the magma exposed, it was not just a pipe or a pool, but a full on LAKE of melty, glorious magma. At least 8 z-levels confirmed, but with the new only expose things within a certain radius of where it was discovered system, I couldn't see more. But yeah LOTS of firely fun. (it spanned levels -37 down to -44, that I could see)
The second thing that happened was that the adamantine vein I was mining out seemed to become increasingly enclosed on all sides by warm stones. It was like a narrow pipe of minable stone that continued to get more and more narrow. I had to designate increasingly strangely-shaped areas for mining and stair digging until, after about 17 z-levels of adamantine vein...
New version of old features spoiler: (level -48)
You have discovered an eerie cavern. The air above the dark stone floor is alive with vortices of purple light and dark boiling clouds. Horrifying screams come from the darkness below.
As my miners dug the stairway, eventually I reached what appeared to be a short 2x2 shaft that extended down from level -49 to -52. But starting at level -53...
old/new feature MAJOR SPOILER: This was not your typical small cramped/twisty glowing cavern with a few piles of ashed, a few elves/humans/dwarves caged in a small room full of horriffic engravings.
Level -52 was a 2x2 shaft.
Level -53 was an enormous, open room the size of the screen. Bigger, in fact. It was basically like breeching the ceiling of Hell itself. There were large, glowing pits of red, and a few craggy islands of slade. After the initial exposure where it suddenly shows you the (more or less) entirely of what you've uncovered, I could see that this room encompassed at LEAST levels -49 to minus ONE HUNDRED AND FUCKING SIX. That's right. I breeched the HFS, and it was a 50 z-level cavern of gloring pits, and it was evidently so deep and vast that I couldn't even see it all. My view was cut off at the edges because my miners were only at a single point of entry, and the game presently only reveals a certain amount of uncovered features.
And that's not even to mention what the fuck came out of the damn pit...
spoiler: periclase devil
boiling brute
RED MONSTER
wraith of brine
horned monster
steam monster
bee demon
Yeah, that's what came out of the pit. Monsters I've never even HEARD of.
This is probably also an opportune time to mention that the “view description” option for your dwarves now includes a lot more info, such as their various physical weaknesses ('He is quick to tire”), their physical appearance (“she is a stout creature”), and their HORRIFYING DEMON-INFLICTED INJURIES (“Her upper body is gone”).
Also of note is the fact that as one of my miners was fleeing the denizens of hell, he chanced to run not up the main stair shaft, but out into one of the previously mentioned cave systems. There, he encountered “cave swallow man blowgunners” and “cave swallow man spearmen,” the inhabitants of said cave. This was all seen as Urist McMiner's still living torso was thrown across the cavern by a steam monster. He died upon impact with the cavern wall.
Then a bee demon “killed” my wagon, and my last remaining miners fled into the wilderness as the demons and monsters swarmed out of the cave. Eventually, as the miners got hungry and thirsty, they wandered back towards the barrels of ale and food only to be once again sighted by the demons, chased down, and then torn apart. And thus ended my first game of Dwarf Fortress 2010. Everyone was killed before we ran out of food and drink, and the bottom half of the map's z-levels are hell. Lots of fun.
Here's a brief rundown of what I encountered at various levels (this is based only on what I was actually able to see):
+17 – top of the map
+2 – the highest land point of the map
0 – entry point from which I dug
-18 – the highest level of the first cavern I discovered
-22 – cave swallow man encampment
-26 – the surface level of the underground lake in cave #2
-32 – the highest visible point of the exposed adamantine vein in cave #3
-36 – the highest level of the magma sea that I was able to see.
-43 – the bottom layer of the magma.
-48 – this is the last layer of the adamantine that I was mining in before I punched down into the abyss.
-49 the small shaft into the abyss started here.
-53 – the shaft opened up into hell here.
-106 – the deepest visible point of hell (this was still just open air, not a solid rock surface)
- 127 – the bottom level of the map.
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Topic: What did you first do in new version? And first impressions. (Possible Spoilers) (Read 2727 times)