I start my fort by chopping a large amount of trees, which I then use to forge loads of iron corkscrews and pipe sections, then I use them to reduce further need for trees. Also planning on some underground tree farming, my dwarves hate the sunlight. Last fort I built a 35 level pump stack, it was powered by a six wheel water reactor. I gave up on using non physics defying water wheels (channels etc.) when it became clear that the water physics of full water channels is dodgy, making it hard to get full power. Water reactors take just as long to get working so I don't feel like too much of a cheat. 100z level pump stack would take a long time to get working though. Can't really attempt that till you have 100+ dwarves and a decent iron industry, with full food/booze support. spoiler>>Better to have a pit trap set up to catch the FBs that will probably show up when you breach the various caverns on the way to the magma<<spoiler. In the end I tweaked my settings to make the caverns smaller, so magma see starts at about -40z rather than -100z+. Not sure about the frame rate hit. You only need to raise as much magma as it takes to fill the tiles under your forges anyway, unless you want to use it for traps aswell (why wouldn't you though?!). You can turn the stack on and off with a lever (I use hatches in my water reactors killing two potential frame rate hits with one lever).