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[Sabre of Pain]

people talk about it all the time as a way to make mud and such but nobody says how to do it and i sure as hell cant figure it out

[Akura]

Uh... That's not how you do it. To make muddy ground, you need to pump water onto it.

The way you would do that by buckets is to designate the area above it as a Pit/Pond, and set it to pond, but that's really not the best way for it.

[gtmattz]

Uh... That's not how you do it. To make muddy ground, you need to pump water onto it.

The way you would do that by buckets is to designate the area above it as a Pit/Pond, and set it to pond, but that's really not the best way for it.

It is quite adequate, and is no better than any other method.  IMO it is actually better than a pump because pumping is a whole lot of steps to go through for something that you need to do one time, while a bucket brigade simply needs 4 or 5 buckets and  access to the level above your farm plot, and is much less prone to over-watering causing evaporation issues and is pretty much impossible to accidentally flood your fort with.

And for the explanation of how to 'do it right':

dig out your farming room on z-2, and on the z level above it channel out one tile (this is to ensure that the whole farming area remains subterranean, if your farm is on z-1 and you make a hole that will make the tile under the hole outside, making growing underground plants there impossibe). 
Next designate a pit/pond zone over the hole (I), once the zone is designated hit 'P' to access the pit/pond settings and then hit 'f' to designate it as a pond to be filled.  If you have some buckets and water your dwarves should start dumping water down the hole. 
Go down to the level of the farm and watch the water spread out, once all the tiles where you want your plot are wet, remove the pond zone to stop the watering and you have mud forever.

[gtmattz]

Uh... That's not how you do it. To make muddy ground, you need to pump water onto it.

The way you would do that by buckets is to designate the area above it as a Pit/Pond, and set it to pond, but that's really not the best way for it.

It is quite adequate, and is no better than any other method.  IMO it is actually preferable to a pump because pumping is a whole lot of steps to go through for something that you need to do one time, while a bucket brigade simply needs 4 or 5 buckets and access to the level above your farm plot.  Buckets are also much less prone to over-watering causing evaporation issues and is pretty much impossible to accidentally flood your fort, while pumps, due to their extremely high output, can lead to inadvertent muddying and/or submersion of your entire fort...

And for the explanation of how to 'do it right':

dig out your farming room on z-2, and on the z level above it channel out one tile (this is to ensure that the whole farming area remains subterranean, if your farm is on z-1 and you make a hole that will make the tile under the hole outside, making growing underground plants there impossibe). 
Next designate a pit/pond zone over the hole (I), once the zone is designated hit 'P' to access the pit/pond settings and then hit 'f' to designate it as a pond to be filled.  If you have some buckets and water your dwarves should start dumping water down the hole. 
Go down to the level of the farm and watch the water spread out, once all the tiles where you want your plot are wet, remove the pond zone to stop the watering and you have mud forever.

[MaDeR Levap]

This is crappy because you cannot be on same level. Very annoying.

[Yarma]

Yea, i wanna make my farms on the same level as my water source but im confused as how to do it.

[Joishi]

As was suggested initially, the best way is to make a screw pump, which you can do entirely from a carpenters shop out of wood parts if you're just gonna use it to pump water.

A screw pump (b->M->s) setup I use usually looks like this..

Code: (upper level) [Select]

wwwwww
wwwwww   <--- (w)ater surface
..p...   <--- (p)ump
.WpW..   <--- (W)alls (constructed)
.WvW..   <--- (v) channeled out (creates an up ramp on lower level)
.WWW..   <--- (.) presumably surface/grass


Code: (lower level) [Select]

wwwwww
wwwwww   <--- (w)ater underground
......   <--- (.) unmined area
......
..^...   <--- (^) up ramp
.. ...   <--- ( ) mined area
.. ...
<farm>  <--- opens up to your planned farm (mined out already, and preferrably closed off from your fort with doors).

you have the TOP of the river or pool water source, and then, with two tiles between, you want to channel out the ground.  You need to construct some walls around the channel so the water doesn't just spray out everywhere, but instead is trapped and goes down the channel.  You also need to construct the pump so that it pumps in the correct direction.  Once everything is built, have a dwarf (with pump operating labor enabled) go pump water down.  You need to watch the farm fill up with water, because pumps work VERY fast .. as soon as you have enough water, stop the pump and then wait for the water to evaporate/get to 1/7 level everywhere.

Making a pump requires 3 parts:
blocks (wooden from carpenters shop)
gigantic screw (wooden from carpenters shop)
pipe section (wooden from carpenters shop)

When you're done flooding your farm with water, you can construct a wall (b->C->w) in the couple of mined out areas between the ramp and the farm so that no creatures can fly into your fort through the hole.

[Yarma]

Thankyou. Can the pump move water up and down levels aswell?

[Joishi]

Technically, the pump pulls water from a level directly below it onto the current level.  So it pulls water UP one level -- that's why you have to channel the ground and wall it in on the other end - so the water falls back down into your farm where you want it.

Since pumps pull water up one level, you can pull water up as many levels as you might need (in the future) by creating a pump stack.  That is something I have yet to do, though.  People tend to use pump stacks to get

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

magma

to where they can use it.  But if you do that, you'll have to make your pumps out of some other material than wood.

[Johuotar]

dig out your farming room on z-2, and on the z level above it channel out one tile (this is to ensure that the whole farming area remains subterranean, if your farm is on z-1 and you make a hole that will make the tile under the hole outside, making growing underground plants there impossibe). 
Next designate a pit/pond zone over the hole (I), once the zone is designated hit 'P' to access the pit/pond settings and then hit 'f' to designate it as a pond to be filled.  If you have some buckets and water your dwarves should start dumping water down the hole. 
Go down to the level of the farm and watch the water spread out, once all the tiles where you want your plot are wet, remove the pond zone to stop the watering and you have mud forever.

Oh so thats why it never worked for me, you gotta designate area over the farm. But seriously, isn't it weird you cant just order dwarfs just to splash over farm?! 
I really hope thats upcoming feature.