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[Nicolai]

Hi,
I'm trying to tunnel magma to my smelters, from a volcano, but i'm having some doubts about how to break into the magma.
I can't really channel the tile away from above, since there is also magma there.
How do you guys usually do it?
Sacrifice a dwarf, and let him break the seal?

[IcarusOne]

you can put the workshops one tile above the magma, thats the safest option. If you really want to do it this way and you cant channel it from above though.. yes, you'll have to sacrifice a dwarf and be sure there is a linked floodgate in place, or the magma will just flood your entire fort. (Which is like losing your dwarf fortress virginity, by the way.)

[gtmattz]

Smooth then fortify where you want to tap the tube.  The fortification process is fast, and as long as you have easily accessible egress from where the engraver is carving the fortification, you should have no problems, but you might want to disable the engraver skill on all but a single unneeded peasant and have him do it just in case of !!FUN!!.

[Lytha]

Smooth then fortify where you want to tap the tube.  The fortification process is fast, and as long as you have easily accessible egress from where the engraver is carving the fortification, you should have no problems, but you might want to disable the engraver skill on all but a single unneeded peasant and have him do it just in case of !!FUN!!.

This is the way to do it. Be sure to assign another wall smoothing task somewhere else as soon as he has started the work on the fortification. This should stop him from idling around near the fortification, admiring his work (while his feet are set on fire by the magma).

[wuphonsreach]

If you have a pressure regulator, your miner will have high odds of escaping past the pressure regulator and getting up some stairs before the magma catches up with him.

[magma] - [wall] - [2 open tiles] - [pressure regulator] - [stairs up] - [corridor for magma]

But smoothing / fortification is an interesting choice.  (I prefer to risk a miner because I generally only have 1 engraver who is lengendary.  The miner is more expendable.)

If you have any sort of overhang where there is solid rock *over* the magma sea, then you can simply channel out a tile (which happens from above) with no chance of accidents.  It's tapping into the side of a magma pipe that gets tricky.

Interestingly, in the past, I've had unlucky miners attempt this.  They lived, but *both* of them on separate occasions both had their *lips* burnt off.  The mind boggles as the mechanics involved in order to get their lips burned off while mining...

[Nicolai]

I will try to fortify the last tile, and hopefully shut some floodgates behind him, when he runs.

Speaking off which, the mechanisms I use to link the floodgates with levers, do they need to be magma safe aswel?

[RiderofDark]

I will try to fortify the last tile, and hopefully shut some floodgates behind him, when he runs.

Speaking off which, the mechanisms I use to link the floodgates with levers, do they need to be magma safe aswel?

Yes.

[Nicolai]

I will try to fortify the last tile, and hopefully shut some floodgates behind him, when he runs.

Speaking off which, the mechanisms I use to link the floodgates with levers, do they need to be magma safe aswel?

Yes.

Typical.
Can I tell my mechanic to use certain rock types? He seems to make all the mechanisms out of non-magma safe.

[DryBones]

No, but make a stockpile set to only accept magma safe stones around your mechanics workshop. Workers use the closest possible materials, so that will work.

[Flying Dice]

Give a pick and enable mining for one of your half-dozen new High Master Cheesemakers and send him in, after deactivating mining for all of your contributing members of society.


Or, if you don't mind cheating, add [SPEED:1] to the dwarf entry in creature_standard.

[Anathema]

But smoothing / fortification is an interesting choice.  (I prefer to risk a miner because I generally only have 1 engraver who is lengendary.  The miner is more expendable.)

Oh no, not like that. You disable engraving for your legendary engraver, enable it for some peasant, then do the smooth/fortify trick. In my experience the dwarf lives most of the time anyway - say 3 times out of 4 - but even if he dies, there's no reason it has to be a valuable dwarf. And since engraving takes no equipment and, as you say, a fort usually has only one good engraver.. if you want to ensure the peasant takes the risk, turning off engraving for that one legendary engraver is much easier than turning off mining for all your good miners.

[gtmattz]

No, but make a stockpile set to only accept magma safe stones around your mechanics workshop. Workers use the closest possible materials, so that will work.

Wrong...

You can use the z-stones menu to limit the useable stone to only magma safe types.

[Lytha]

No, but make a stockpile set to only accept magma safe stones around your mechanics workshop. Workers use the closest possible materials, so that will work.

Wrong...

You can use the z-stones menu to limit the useable stone to only magma safe types.

Yeah sure, you can do it the hard way by toggling several dozen rock types (your way), or the easy way (the posting quoted by you.)

[RiderofDark]

No, but make a stockpile set to only accept magma safe stones around your mechanics workshop. Workers use the closest possible materials, so that will work.

Wrong...

You can use the z-stones menu to limit the useable stone to only magma safe types.

Yeah sure, you can do it the hard way by toggling several dozen rock types (your way), or the easy way (the posting quoted by you.)

One way which is almost guaranteed (posted method) versus one that may or may not work well, depending on the setup (the quoted method). Setting up a macro to turn off all non-magma-safe stones on/off should be a fairly easy thing to do, as well.

Creating a custom stockpile that is exclusively magma-safe materials still requires the player to go through the stone materials list, although the pile only has to be set up once. But if a player is going to do a lot of magma work, it's (probably) easier to do the z-stone method (especially if there's a macro set up for it).

[wuphonsreach]

No, but make a stockpile set to only accept magma safe stones around your mechanics workshop. Workers use the closest possible materials, so that will work.

Wrong...

You can use the z-stones menu to limit the useable stone to only magma safe types.

Well, it's about 90% right.  It all depends on where the dwarf is standing when they accept the "make item" task.  If they happen to be standing inside the circle stockpile around the workshop, then that's what they will choose.  But if they were around the back for the old brandy, then they might pickup some rock from down the hall, up 3 flights of stairs and behind a door marked "this way out".

A circular ring stockpile around a workshop centered in a 5x5 room will work about 90-95% of the time at getting you things made out of the rock types that you want.  And you can give the mechanics the colorful stones (to color coordinate your levers with your bridges), while you give the stonecrafters some junk stone that you don't want, and you can give the masons granite or obsidian or marble so that 90-95% of your stone furniture has the same color.