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[Tripwyr]

Does anybody have any tips? It's Freezing, no trees, no vegetation, calm surroundings. I've got no soil (I assume that's normal) and limestone right under the ice. I've never done Freezing before, and I've always used farms for my food. Obviously farming won't immediately be an option unless I get lucky with underground water, so what's the best solution here? Is breeding animals a reasonable method, or will I have to hunt/dig to cavern for farming?

Additionally, since I'm in a calm surrounding, I won't immediately require large numbers of weapons. However, since I don't have any sand or trees, I'll eventually need magma. How soon should I go out of my way looking for them?

Any advice would be appreciated

[Rose]

farming is perfectly viable on naturally occurring cavern mud.

[yaklin]

you shouldn't have to go out of your way for magma, just dig down eventually you will hit either a pipe or the magma sea.

[fivex]

You embarked on a glacier?
Cave in some ice walls in a low enough area bellow the surface.
You will get some ice.

[Tripwyr]

farming is perfectly viable on naturally occurring cavern mud.

Oh of course it works, I've done it a few times before. The issue is that I then have to either build my entire fortress down near the caverns, or carry the food up and down anywhere between 5 and 50 sets of stairs. I was curious if bringing a few animals right at embark will provide enough food (butchering males, leaving females) to support the fortress, or if I would definitely need to find other means.

You embarked on a glacier?
Cave in some ice walls in a low enough area bellow the surface.
You will get some ice.

What would I do with this ice? Usually magma is pretty close to the cavern anyway, so melting the ice would be more trouble than simply farming in the cavern.

[fivex]

farming is perfectly viable on naturally occurring cavern mud.

Oh of course it works, I've done it a few times before. The issue is that I then have to either build my entire fortress down near the caverns, or carry the food up and down anywhere between 5 and 50 sets of stairs. I was curious if bringing a few animals right at embark will provide enough food (butchering males, leaving females) to support the fortress, or if I would definitely need to find other means.

You embarked on a glacier?
Cave in some ice walls in a low enough area bellow the surface.
You will get some ice.

What would I do with this ice? Usually magma is pretty close to the cavern anyway, so melting the ice would be more trouble than simply farming in the cavern.

Whoops.
I meant water

[Valkyrie]

The caverns make freezing & glacial areas much easier than they used to be.  The caverns provide a readily available supply of melted water, and a source of gatherable plants and trees - essentially, everything that you lost on the surface from it being a freezing climate.

It's just a matter of how much of that you want to use, and how dangerous the animals in your caverns happen to be (I have no idea if the Surroundings indicates for the caverns, or just the surface).  Can farm on the pre-existing mud as mentioned, or bucket-brigade from the underground water to farm wherever you like (since the common 'drain the murky pool'-style irrigation isn't much of an option).

If you're talking about altering your Embark options to compensate, that really depends on what you value.  I usually wind up with ample extra poitns that I 'burn' on extra mining picks and lumber, with only minimal food and drink.  If you're concerned about sustinence, though, bringing extra drink (or plants to brew into drink) along with animals to butcher would certainly buy you time.  If you bring (liquid) drink, I'd try to move it underground soon - I'm not sure exactly how it works, but when I had my trade depot on the surface in a freezing biome, many of the trader's liquid goods would be frozen solid - lye and such.  The alcohol didn't /seem/ to freeze, but that might've been the details of my temperature, or just a matter of time with the ale's specific heat.  If barrels of ale can freeze as well, you might run into problems if they're left on the surface.

[Tripwyr]

Much appreciated, Valkyrie. I'll probably end up digging down to a cavern fairly early and using the mud for farming. If I did that, I'd probably wall it off early so that the cavern dwellers don't bother me until I'm ready for them.

@Fivex, does that work? It seems like a lot of trouble, but if it works I may consider it at some point as well. Yes I'm on a Glacier.

[bumblepuppy]

Hi there,


Glaciers and tundras are my favourite embark site -- probably 70% of my fortresses are founded on those biomes. Here are my suggestions:

1. After breaching the caverns multiple times and dying from surprise invasions of cave crocs/crundles/elk birds, I decided to try a different method of setting up farming. Instead of looking for existing mud, I decided to try making my own. I dug a large room next to a cavern pool, and then dug a narrow passage to the pool, smoothing and fortifying the tile bordering it. I installed a floodgate to regulate the water supply. Using this method I could flood a room and leave it covered with mud for farming and not breach the caverns.

2. I usually bring 36 or more of ale, rum, wine and beer on embark. Alcohol is more important than meat since you can always kill something on the map for it but brewing alcohol needs plants, which you can't farm above ground. Thankfully you are on a calm biome and not a savage one -- yetis are really tough foes at the start.

3. Traders were a really easy solution for me when I wasn't confident enough to dig to the caverns. Just make lots of stone crafts to buy all your required supplies!

4. You might need to, err, dispose of early migrants if your food and drink starts to run low before you've found a way to replenish them.

5. Drop the embark axe and bring more lumber for constructing beds. You might want to reserve one log to make a training axe for chopping down those giant cavern mushrooms.

6. Some sites are cold enough to kill your animals and dwarves if they stay out too long.

7. If your embark site has no traders, there is not much reason to build a substantial amount of your fortress in upper z-levels. For this reason I tend to build my fortresses near the magma sea nowadays. I'm closer to my food supply and the lovely lovely magma, and if you are thoughtful enough to not dig straight down and instead shift your stairs around every few z-levels, you will leave yourself extra breathing space when goblins come knocking on your door. (This might leave you more exposed to HFS, which I haven't had much experience with, so take this with a grain of salt.)

[Tripwyr]

I decided to set up a cage trap outside (with corresponding walls to funnel wildlife) and managed to catch one or two animals. Is there any easy way to kill these so that I may butcher them? Lacking a Dungeon Master they are un-tamable.

[LemonFrosted]

Surroundings do impact the caverns. My last couple of Haunted and Terrifying embarks the caverns kept sending me Zombie and Skeletal trogs and these weird baboon like things.

[FleshForge]

Another option not mentioned is just drilling for water in the caverns, and pumping some up or just using a well, and irrigating higher up.  I've tried the ice cave-in thing many many times, and it's very easy to screw up even if you have the perfect geometry of ice to work with.  A well is muuuuch simpler, although you probably will want to seal it up later on if you're not prepared to have big nasty critters pop up in your well room.

As to stuff in cages, if you want to kill it, a safe way is to build the cage in some kind of hole, link it to a lever, and shoot it with crossbows.

[krenshala]

Can't you "mine" the glacier and bring the ice "rocks" to your farm site to muddy it when they melt?  You might need to enable picking up refuse outside to get them to carry the ice in (garbage dump in the center of the farm and tell them to dump the ice rocks), but i know the ice will melt once you get it underground.

I haven't tried this, so I won't be surprised if there is something that prevents this from working.

[Bronimin]

-

[krenshala]

Can't you "mine" the glacier and bring the ice "rocks" to your farm site to muddy it when they melt?  You might need to enable picking up refuse outside to get them to carry the ice in (garbage dump in the center of the farm and tell them to dump the ice rocks), but i know the ice will melt once you get it underground.

I haven't tried this, so I won't be surprised if there is something that prevents this from working.

i think that the ice rocks just melt to form a water item (if this makes sense). same as when a rock melts in magma, it gives a magma item.

Time for some !! Science !! ?