Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Gullydwarf]

Hey there,
I have finally managed to set up a safe and managable fortress without too much FUN!
But because I have a few Goblin ambushes outside being chased away by a Coral Ocean Titan I have sensibly closed my gates.
No time for experimenting outside so now I am digging for cool stuff like ores but I am wondering if I am doing this wrong?
I have set up a 20x20 digsite which mostly contains Rock Salt right now. I found a big patch of magnetite and a few gems. Now I started digging out one layer lower and all I find is Rock Salt with it's iron ore and yellow jaspers, but not yet any other type of ore.
Is it usefull to dig deeper or will I only ever find Rock Salt? is it usefull to move the digsite somewhere else? Right now the site is at the upperleft corner of my map keeping a 5 tile distance from the edge to prevent FUN! from flowing in. Should I try other corners of rather the centre of the map?
Right now I'm about 5 z deep with the second layer of digging. Making sure I find every possible thing in the area by digging tunnels of one wide seperated by two non-dug tiles.
I am really done with coal and iron ore... I want some other metals!

[vogonpoet]

When hunting ore, I go with massive grids of  2-wide corridors criss-crossing the entire map along the x and y axes, with two "shift clicks" between each parallel corridor.

If I am desperate for gems, I might come back and do a finer mesh later, but in the .31 series, I really don't remember being desperate for anything.

Also - do this with lots of z levels on different soil layers  - so dig down until you hit something which is not rock salt, then make a big grid there also.

[Psieye]

5-z levels deep? That's nothing. Dig way down, it's z-levels that matter if you want to change what ore you find. Exactly what ores are possible to find for each rock type is another subject, but right now you just want to explore so dig DOWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

[Gullydwarf]

shift+click is a fast way to dig tunnels? Cannot try right now...

[gtmattz]

keeping a 5 tile distance from the edge to prevent FUN! from flowing in.

There is no reason to do this, mining the edge tiles is impossible, so you cannot inadvertently open the edge and let anything in.  In fact, smoothing and fortifying the edges of stone layers is a common method to allow liquids OFF the map, as water and magma will flow through the fortifications and disappear.

[celem]

shift+direction moves the cursor 10 tiles at a time, so its useful when moving large distances.  you hit enter to start designating your dig, then maybe shift+down, shift+down and enter again...bingo 20 long tunnel, then shift+right, shift-right and you hop along to designate the next row in your grid

[Burning_Iceman]

shift+direction moves the cursor 10 tiles at a time, so its useful when moving large distances.  you hit enter to start designating your dig, then maybe shift+down, shift+down and enter again...bingo 20 long tunnel, then shift+right, shift-right and you hop along to designate the next row in your grid

It's also possible to use right-click to move the cursor when in (d)esignate mode (though not for q, v, k or t).