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[bloodslave1087654]

Hi DF newbie here. I discovered DF about 2 weeks ago, and have found many tutorials to help me play it since then. However one thing still eludes me and that is irrigation. My dwarves keep starving to death because i cant get farms up and running inside my mountains, and when the raiders come i lose. So i ask the forum, HOW DOES I IRRIGATE!?!?!!?!??!?!!?!?
Also i understand that it is rather difficult to avoid starting in a dangerous place in DF or i have REALLY shit-luck. My first attempt at a fortress was undone by those masters of genocide, otherwise know as carps, completely killing off my party of dwarves when they tried to drink from the rather conveniently placed river. Attempt #2 they somehow unearthed demons at ground level and were all killed. And attempt #3 they were burned to death by a dragon. So i ask the forum, Is this a common thing or do i have garbage luck?

[strider_ani]

Heh, my first few goes were devoid of any danger whatsoever so In this case I envy you for all the fun your having.

To irrigate you need to muddy the area you place you plot by letting water get to it.
I tend to build a flood gate at one end underground connected to the river and then build a door on the other side of the growing room and then lock the door and open the gate for a bit and then turn off the switch once the room is full of water and unlocking the door so my dorfs can plant there.

[bloodslave1087654]

Wow i must be new. Getting burned to death by a dragon within 2 minutes is fun?

Ok so i need doors, floodgates, and a watersource. Now how would one go about putting it all together? Do i need to have a farm floor below a river or above? ANd how do i safely flood without obliterating my fort?

[Max White]

Believe it or not, getting roasted by dragons and finding demons in the first few levels is something to be happy about, and we all envy you for your awesome luck!

After all, soilent green IS people losing is fun!

[bloodslave1087654]

Well ive run through about 8 forts now and i have had any fun since then. I cant seem to get the hang of:

A, Keeping food in my fort.
B, Keeping Goblins out of my fort once i start digging deep.

[AncientEnemy]

sounds like you've just had good bad luck with embarks locations. really the easiest place to start is a flat forested area with no aquifer. just poke around the embark screen or search for a river+no aquifer with the site finder and you should find something.

as for feeding your dwarves the easy way: after you've found a site like this (which will almost certainly have a few murky pools) do the following:
bring 16x plump helmet spawn
give one dwarf proficient growing, and no other jobs
dig out a large room underneath one of the smaller murky pools (for example if you have a murky pool, with 6 tiles of 7/7 water, dig out a room that has at least 42 floor squares)
dig into the bottom/side of the murky pool, and let it flood the room (if you make the room large enough the water will spread out to 1/7 and then evaporate)
build a 4x4 farm plot on the now muddy floor of that room (make sure it's not somewhere that got exposed to light when you flooded the room or it wont work correctly with underground crops)
set it to grow plump helmets for every season.

now your grower will get to work and start planting. just make sure to brew some of the plump helmets (you want booze anyway) so you get back seeds and your grower can continue year round. getting a farm going like this is probably he first thing you should focus on in an early fort. once you've got it down, you'll have a pretty much unlimited supply of food.

[Max White]

Ok, so if you REALY want to know how to irrigate, I will tell you, BUT about two weeks later you WILL regret it. Your best off trying our anything you can think off until you manage to pull it off, and laugh every time things go wrong.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

First step is easy, dig out the room you want to use as a farm, make sure it is water level or lower.
Now have a miner dig a tunnel towards the a river, oh yea, you need a river. DO NOT YET connect to the river, stop short just one tile away from it.
Now you are going to need to build a mechanics workshop, and tell him to make three mechanisms.
While he does that, build a flood gate.
When there all built, put the flood gate at the beginning of the tunnel going to the river, and build a lever in your dinning hall.
Link the level to the floodgate.
Now, go to surface level and find the tile DIRECTLY ABOVE the one stopping water from flooding the tunnel, and channel it out.
Your tunnel will fill with water! now just pull the lever, let the room get wet, before pulling the lever again and letting the water evaporate.

[bloodslave1087654]

Many thanks to the both of you.

[Max White]

Let it be known that the person who had the most fun was the first to play it (Apart from toady) because he has had the most time to fail.

[strider_ani]

I am always somewhat disappointed when my plans of waterfall covered bedrooms work.

[Dewar]

Fishing is still a decent way to get food. Fish are bugged right now, but there appears to be no shortage of turtles in any map I've picked with a decent amount of water.

[Marconius]

I'd suggest gathering plants at the start. It's a nice way to feed 7 Dwarves, bring some variety of booze into your fort (if you brew the stuff) and it keeps your farmers busy while your miners are digging out your first rooms.

Irrigation is tricky business. I usually start by digging out a large chamber and connecting it to the river, thus creating a source of underground water that never freezes and does not have carp! Since I'm fancy, I tend to use a flood gate and a pressure plate for this: pressure plate into the large chamber, set it up so it closes the floodgate when the water level is above 5.

Irrigation is easy beyond that: just dig a straight channel out from this large room, then dig a hole into it that leads to your would-be farm. Close the hole with a floodgate; let the channel fill with water, close the floodgate to the chamber, open the floodgate to your farm and voilá, instant muddy soil!

Of course I flooded half a dozen fortresses before I managed to get this right, but it works fine now. It not only provides irrigation, but also a safe source of water that I can channel deeper later on as well.


As an alternative method, I heard that if you dig a hole and channel it out from above, you can designate it as a pit/pond and have your dwarves haul water there with buckets. I've yet to try this, but it seems like a neat way to do it.

[Max White]

DISCLAIMER: Using buckets to haul water may become ineffective when your major exports are food and clothing, and so you build 5 10*10 sized farms to produce the amount of crops required.

[Marconius]

Well yeah, but what kind of lousy dwarf would base his trade on farming? That sounds like something a sissy elf would do!

[Max White]

The kind of dwarf who likes to use hes metal for more important things then giving it away to sissy elves.