Print

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

[blue emu]

Using v31.19

As usual, I dug pretty deep with my original crew of Dwarves. It is now spring of the second year, I'm up to 13 Dwarves plus two children, and my 3x3 main central staircase has just struck SMR (semi-molten rock) at level -12... that's 154 levels below the surface. I didn't hit ANYTHING all the way down. No caverns. No Magma Sea. No [SPOILERS]. Nothing but solid rock. And one vein of Tetrahedrite.

Is my world solid all the way through? I'm lucky that my Dwarves didn't come out in India, and give an Elephant a nasty surprise!

[ext0l]

I once had do dig down ~170 z levels to find lava.

[Carrock]

It's possible that you digging has, by chance, simply missed every cavern layer.

[Girlinhat]

I've skipped the first and second caverns before, and nicked the third one barely, while digging down.  While unlikely, it IS possible!

[blue emu]

It's possible that you digging has, by chance, simply missed every cavern layer.

I suspect that this is indeed the answer. It's really freakin' ODD, though. I've played a lot of DF, and this has never happened to me before. Usually, I have to spend most of an hour carefully plotting the map in order to find a vertical section from the Magma Sea up to the surface, where I can run a pump-stack without intersecting a cavern... and this time, I somehow missed all three caverns AND the Magma Sea, too.

[squeakyReaper]

I've done this, in a way.  I breached the first cavern, skipped the second and went straight to the third.

[blue emu]

I've done this, in a way.  I breached the first cavern, skipped the second and went straight to the third.

... but you only missed one out of four (1st cavern, 2nd cavern, 3rd cavern, Magma Sea)... I missed ALL FOUR!

I still haven't found the Magma Sea... I hit the SMR that underlies it.

[Girlinhat]

I've hit HFS without hitting magma before.  DFReveal showed that half my map had no magma.

[Daetrin]

If you look closely, the main pillars almost always do line up, though how large those pillars are is completely random. If you dug through all three cavern layers without hitting them, you will almost certainly not hit the magma sea.

[blue emu]

OK... exploratory mining has found what must be the top cavern layer. The world is hollow after all!

Important discovery... Giant Cave Spider webs!!! I've temporarily abandoned my search for the other cavern layers and the Magma Sea, in order to set about trapping a GCS as soon as possible, before a Forgotten Beast shows up and makes the task far more difficult.

Once I've got a GCS caged, I can start preparatory work for creating my long-anticipated Forgotten Beast Petting Zoo!

[Girlinhat]

I suggest the old "wooden door" routine.  Set up a wooden door, with a cage trap 2 tiles away, all surrounded by walls.  The GCS tries to break the door, and gets itself caged.  Works on blind cave ogres as well.  Or you can try my method and get a soldier in full steel to lure it back, over the course of months.

[blue emu]

I suggest the old "wooden door" routine.  Set up a wooden door, with a cage trap 2 tiles away, all surrounded by walls.  The GCS tries to break the door, and gets itself caged.  Works on blind cave ogres as well.  Or you can try my method and get a soldier in full steel to lure it back, over the course of months.

I was going to use the old "kitten on a string" tactic (NOT the old "kitten on a string" tactic again??? ) supplimented with a wooden object (door, table, chair, whatever) in the same room for it to knock over, in case it prefers either live targets (the kitten) or furniture.

Back-to-back raising stone drawbridges to seal it in, of course, and cage traps strewn everywhere.

[ral]

This has happened to me. I got "lucky" and managed to dig all the way to the bottom with my first stairshaft without running into any of the caverns, which was good because I only wanted lava at the time. Once I started poking around on individual levels above the lava I quickly found the caverns.

So it's not that unlikely. I think the cavern algorithm may have changed in .19 so maybe it's more likely in .19....

[Girlinhat]

Drawbridges work, but don't actually cage it, which is important for safe moving.  Cage traps everywhere also helps catch various critters, in case you wanna train wrestlers on some trogs or want fresh crundle meat.  I also had a lack of luck catching cave dragons, so traps everywhere would certainly help the trickier of beasties.

[blue emu]

Drawbridges work, but don't actually cage it, which is important for safe moving...

The back-to-back drawbridges are intended to be closed AFTER the GCS is cage-trapped, so that I will be safe from attack by unexpected Forgotten Beasts or other cavern life while I'm down there recovering my new GCS-cage. That's also important for safe moving...

When dealing with the caverns, I always try to set up lever-activated drawbridge "air-locks"... so that, with only one door open at a time, nothing can actually get into my fort, no matter how powerful or how stealthy it is.