Funny, my mist generator is usually directly linked to my death traps - literally. One of my favorite trap designs is to have a large reservoir of water that's being constantly filled. When it starts to overflow, the excess water is dumped through the dining hall to form mist. Meanwhile, if an enemy triggers the pressure plate outside, then it locks the doors and floods that section using the same reservoir. When the trap reservoir refills, then the mist resumes... Usually just in time to soothe a few measly survivors from a tantrum because some hauler was outside during the attack -.-
I've recently taken a shine to architecture. I'm particularly fond of cornering my buildings. Build a regular 5x5 tower, but the corner wall tiles will be a different material than the rest. In particular, I like using native stone construction, like limestone, conglomerate, whatever layer stone is plentiful, and having the corners be iron, at least partially upwards. I like the feeling of "rock solid construction" studded with metal supports. The more elaborate/fancy ones get bronze walls and steel corners.
Point is, there's a lot you can do with colors and materials to make things look nicer. Recently I was building a hollow tower, and made the base of microcline, and the main tower of granite. The microcline was used to curve around towards the back, making a smooth round of color change that used the less-plentiful microcline some, and the infinite granite more. Sadly I lost that save, but I may do a [SPEED:0] to recreate it and show the idea.