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[fluiddruid]

In searching for a good map (never done good aligned) with flux and no aquifer, I found a Freezing embark square that was Mirthful.  I figured, what the hey, let's give it a go.  I loaded up with mostly food, booze and wood and headed out.  It turns out there's a 15x25 or so area that isn't Freezing, and does grow trees, though the rest of the area appeared featureless.

When I got to digging, I found that the first four layers were sand.  I cleared a space to move inside, then proceeded downwards. The next layers were all dolomite and iron ores -- nice!  I wanted to save the flux and ore (and not use my miners yet on that level), so I dug a bit deeper to try to find common stone.  On level 10, I found granite.  Good enough, and I started hollowing out a small area to be able to make doors and cabinets, and to get my stonecrafter going since I knew I'd need whatever the trade caravan brought.

Bang, I got the cavern opened message.  Didn't mean to do it so early, but I knew I'd want it ASAP for wood and water to get my farms going, so I thought it a stroke of good luck.  I walled it off for now just to be on the safe thing.

Here's the thing though.   I started looking through what was exposed.  The portions I could see made it look like half an egg at first -- narrower where I had broken out, then expanding from pretty much the point I broke in, to the point where it'd consume my central stairs in a few levels.  But as I went down, it stopped expanding, and pretty much just went down, and down, and down.  A vaguely circular cavern, no floors to be seen, with a clear line of sight going down until it finally passed out of view somewhere in the level 40s.

Odd.  Not really what I was hoping for since I needed trees, but fortunately cracking the cavern brought on some saplings.  Due to the pressing need for drink and no immediate method to get water, due to the lack of water, I set my herbalist (and a fortunate herbalist migrant) to start gathering the plants that started to spring up on the sand levels, and started mining out vast stretches of sand to encourage native life to grow. 

Once winter hit, I was feeling more comfortable, so I thought it was time to deal with this cavern.  Being still a relatively new player, I wasn't sure how to chuck someone in the pit, so I put a puppy in a cage built on a floor extending out into the cavern to see if that would work.  I tried to destroy the floor several times but the dwarf responding kept trying to get on the other side.  Argh.

Finally I tried just digging a channel to release the constructed floor (about 4 tiles).  The responding legendary miner, and also my expedition leader, ran out onto the floor and channeled out so fast that I wasn't able to stop the moron.  Fine.  Evolution at work, moron.  Enjoy your adventure.

As soon as this happened, the game froze up for several minutes.  When it worked everything out, there was quite a bit of dust and the miner, of course, was dead.  The puppy lived through the fall, it seems, though he's immersed in deep water. 

On floor 103.

What the hell - a 93 z-level cavern, straight down?  Right in the middle of the map, so I wonder if that means there are no other caverns.  You want me to die, don't you?!  And no path down.  The only floor, other than a few scant ramps on some of the levels, is down at the very bottom, and it's pretty small; most of it's water.

In any case, this is my only known source of water.  I wonder, can a well go down that far?  Would it be usable?  As soon as a dwarf gets hurt, I'm going to need water in an awful hurry.  Looking around, there seems to be a very small area that has some tower caps, but not nearly as much as I'd hoped for.  Ugh.

My fortress is currently bin-free except for what I've gotten my cloth and leather in, and all barrels are consigned to booze production.  And, of course, I got about 25 useless migrants.  I don't have nearly enough wood to even provide them beds.   Fortunately, despite the lack of containers, the fortress is managing; I have plenty of haulers since I have no farms and little production to speak of, other than my steel industry, which is going nicely.  Due to ineptness on the part of my hunter dwarf's shooting ability ('skilled' my ass, when you can't kill one thing with 25 shots), I've consigned my military to try to chase down musk oxen, with very limited success.  They don't seem to be fast enough, but have cornered one or two on the edges of the map.  Fortunately, my giant mock-farms seem to be providing my plant needs well until I can manage to get pumps going; I've never done a pump stack or any powered machinery, so it'll be interesting to learn.  I'd better learn quick as I'm already teetering on the edge here, and I'm concerned as to what's going to happen when that body starts to rot.  No chance of retrieval anytime soon.

[iceball3]

Interesting, do you mind posting a screenshot?

[Urist Imiknorris]

I had that happen. It's annoying when the rest of a cavern is on two or three levels and there's a sloped pit down to a pool of water on level negative ninety million, especially considering there are no other caverns anywhere in that space to break the monotony of rock, rock, rock... while you're digging down to the magma sea.

[Diakron]

Couldn't you just grow stuff on that small patch of green you have?

just thinking out loud...

[Emily]

You don't need to break into the caverns anymore to get saplings growing in dirt.  They'll pop up all over your fort if your in a sand layer.

Anyway... move your fortress down to floor 103?  It's usually faster than pumping water up to you... that's what I usually do with magma.  I think a well might work, too; try it and see?

[Urist Imiknorris]

A well would work, but it would take forever to get the water.

[Patchy]

Make your barrels and bins from iron or whatever else you have since wood is so scarce for now. The well would work too, you only need to bucket brigade 10 or so buckets from the well to get a 5x2 farm going above the cavern. And if you have booze, you only really need water for the wounded which the 1 well can handle. Or if you do find the well forming a line, build 2 wells so they can work in paralel.

[DDR]

I'd build a well now, it'll take _forever_ for them to draw water up - but they will. Start working down to the bottom, and set up fort there.

This is odd. I want one.

[Zidane]

I make my barrels out of useless metals like lead and Nickel.

[Gnauga]

Note that if you're making charcoal to fuel your furnaces and forges, you will spend double the amount of trees. One charcoal is needed to smelt the ore, and another to craft it into barrels. Metal barrels is only a viable substitute if you have access to magma or a stone fuel like bituminous coal.

[fluiddruid]

I'll try to get some screenshots up soon, but in the meantime, to address questions/concerns/suggestions:

- Yeah, I could grow stuff on the small patch of green, but right now it's wood that is harder to get due to the long maturity time.  As such I've tried to leave the area alone as a tree sanctuary, though of course I'm getting some in the sandy layers too.

- Thanks for the tip about the change to saplings, I didn't know that one.

- Moving the fortress down is probably a good plan.  Despite elves, gobbos, and humans listed on embark, so far all I've seen (after two years) is the dwarven caravan, so there isn't a lot keeping me at the surface.

- Well's installed now, we'll see how it works out.  I certainly have enough idle dwarves now that I've gotten bin production going.

- Unfortunately there really aren't a lot of useless materials.  Other than some small bismuth deposits, it's pretty much all hematite and limonite that I've found. 

- No charcoal - I don't have the wood!  Other than one seed charcoal, it's all bituminous coal, though my needs far exceed the deposits found so far.  Fortunately I still have three legendary miners so I'm scraping by for now.  I have enough barrels in rotation by using them exclusively for booze, and so the brewer keeps using them again and again as they're freed up, so I'm making entirely bins (other than fulfilling military needs) until I can get my finished goods and bars/blocks stockpiles under control.

My other project right now is building some large walls across the map, with small gaps filled with cage traps, to start trying to catch more musk oxen.  I'm thinking a breeding program is going to work a lot better than my hunting program, especially as I move farther from the surface.  The only other things I've seen are the occasional polar bear and wolf pack, and I wouldn't mind bringing those in too.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Breeding animals is a very good way to have more food than you want or need, especially with large animals like muskoxen. Smart idea if you're settling the depths.

[Emily]

If you were to flood a large area--which requires probably doing it down at the water area--for tree farming, you'll also get farming space and shrubs of cave plants.  You don't need dirt to farm cave plants, just mud.

[Kregoth]

make more then 1 well above that chasm. I would say 10 would be great sense it will take forever for each one to bring a bucket of water back up.

also explore the first cavern more there may be more to what you are seeing, maybe you will see some other water in it.

[Hyndis]

There is no maximum limit to how deep a well can go. You want a well that drops the bucket 93 levels? You can.

However the deeper the well the longer it takes to get water. This means that the bucket needs to travel 186 levels per 10 units of water, which is enough for 10 dwarves to get a drink. It would be enough for healthcare, but not enough to sustain a fortress.