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[Breakfast]

Other than setting up shop near a volcano, are there any other methods of getting magma relatively early on that don't involve lots of fun?

[Girlinhat]

Magma is a synonym for Fun.  Try a less Fun liquid, like water.

[MrWiggles]

Not really. You can try embarking on a very low elevation site.

[Breakfast]

Magma is a synonym for Fun.  Try a less Fun liquid, like water.

What I'm aiming for is magma forges. Water forges just aren't the same.

[Iren]

Dig a lot, avoid opening your tunnels into the caverns (construct a floor or a wall if this happens by accident). Dont dig candy tubes until you think you can handle the circus.

[krisslanza]

Magma is a synonym for Fun.  Try a less Fun liquid, like water.

I don't know, water is a pretty Fun liquid if you break into an aquifer or an ocean. Or a river. Or any pressurized water source.

[Tevish Szat]

I get magma in the first year through a simple digging to victory strategy: bore a 1x1 up/down staircase in 3x3 landing rooms straight down.  When/if you breach caverns, seal them IMMEDIATLEY with walls, hatch covers, or constructed up stairs as you are able.  When a digging designation cancels for warm stone, you're on magma: go up a level and dig on top of where the designation canceled, and all ajacent squares: if you're stopped by warm stone at any point, go up and do it again.  If you aren't stopped by warm stone, the uppermost warm stone layer is ABOVE magma, not next to it: dig through THAT warm stone, and channel a square that was formerly warm.  This will get you a glimpse of your magma source, so you know its borders.

Pick two adjacent levels, at least the lower of which has your magma source.  On the lower level, dig rooms for as many magma workshops as you think you'll need, remembering that the blocked square of most (all the furnaces) is in the north.  On the level above, dig the EXACT SAME LAYOUT.  Channel the squares that will be non-walkable for the workshops you want to build, and build the magma workshops on the upper level.  they will be unpowered.  Surround your staircase on the lower level with constructions and one magma-safe door facing the magma.  Your workshop blueprint should be between the stairs and the magma.  On the lower level, dig passages so all the workshops are connected, and a passage to the magma.  Don't break through the last wall to magma yet: first clear all objects from this floor, including stone, by dumping/quantum stockpile.  You may want one close by on the upper level.

Once the lower level is clear, it's time to power your magma industries.  turn off mining on all dwarves except one junk dwarf (most recently I picked a fresh migrant who claimed novice strand extractor and high master liar), and have your masons make a blank slab: whatever unlucky soul breaches the magma has, at best, a 50% chance at survival.  Designate the last tile separating your lower blueprint from the magma source dug.

As soon as mr. junky starts digging, pause.  Profile a lever somewhere in the fortress to him (it doesn't even have to do anything) and order it pulled.  This might make him a couple ticks quicker to run.  When the magma is breached, it's a race between the junk dwarf and it for the magma-safe door to the stairs.  If the dwarf makes it, he lives and you get your pick back.  Otherwise, mourn the loss of the pick and engrave the slab.  For extra points, place the slab somewhere in your magma industries.  Construct a wall that blocks off the access/escape door so building destroyers can't mess you up, and you've done it: Safe, powered magma industries in record time.

You don't have to build all your magma workshops before breaching magma, but if you can't build it, don't channel its room yet, as that provides a clear shot for magma creatures to enter your fort.  only open up access to magma RIGHT before you build your shiny new magma workshop.  In particular, you'll probably have several blank rooms set aside for magma forges, as you won't have the anvils when you first breach to build more than one or two.

While you can extend this setup by building another template and breaching magma again, that might cause your old magma workshops to "flicker" as the new area fills, and it requires another suicidal magma breach, so build the first one big.  A good size for your metal industry would be 9 magma smelters and 6 magma forges (15 workshops) giving you an edge on smelting and some room to not be disrupted when a mood claims a magma forge.  The remainder depends on how much you like glass and pottery: any number of magma glass furnaces can be supported as long as you have one (prefrably non-magma) glass furnace set to gather sand/r for every 4 furnaces making glass.  If you want to make clear glass, you ALSO need (by my estimation) 3-4 wood furnaces, 3 asherys, and 3 magma kilns for each 2 magma glass furnaces making clear glass.  I haven't played with the pottery industry much, but 4 magma kilns for actually making things with a regular one just gathering clay sounds like good proportions, same as green glass.  All in all, have room for a good 20-30 workshops if you want to never have to do it again, a dozen or so if you don't mind a repeat performance.


EDIT: okay, that probably doesn't sound convenient, but trust me it's a lot easier than it sounds spelling out every step.  barring bad luck with the exploratory mining, you get ACTIVE magma smelters and forge(s) by the first winter, without much disruption to your normal industries.

[i2amroy]

@Tevish Szat
This is pretty much what I do too though I tend to just set up the last tile that breaches the magma as a fortification because: it helps to keep beasts from pathing in, it means I'm not risking a valuable pick, and I think the 1 tile advantage of not actually having that empty space there might help them escape a little more securely (so far I haven't lost any dwarves to breaching the magma). Though I also tend to wait until about year 3 or so when I have a relatively stable fortress.

[Benedict Hardy]

awsdaswd

[Lexx]

Set up a basic surface fort that can survive till you have the dwarfpower to tunnel down to the magma then colonize the area near it. Then move all your fort there so they need never deal with the surface again.

[Oaktree]

If you don't want to suicide a dwarf find the edge of the magma source and then channel down to that from above to breach it for access to your magma reservoir level.  And then floor that square immediately to reseal access to the upper floor.

[sirdanilot]

Why do it the hard way? Just dig down until you get to the magma sea, sealing all caverns immediately as you find them. Then dig out a large space right above the magma sea (yes, you will get annoying 'warm stone located' messages, suck it up. you can turn off the continuous pausing of the game in the .init) and channel out tiles so you can efficiently place your workshops (the center upper tile of the workshop is the impassable tile, blocking magma creatures). Be quick to place your workshops to avoid magma critter fun, and you may also want a pet-impassable door to block off your workshop. Perhaps some cage traps to capture cool magma critters.

Now, this is an idea I haven't tested out myself, but perhaps you could dig down a hole from your upper fortress layers (where you have iron and coal) all the way down to the magma workshop, designate a garbage zone next to it and dump all your mined-out iron and coal. This avoids hauling a single stone 200 z-layers deep every single time. This is something I should try out myself, actually... the only problem is that all your garbage will fall down there too, but you could also use a refuse and corpse stockpile for that.

[Kon]

I dig down to the magma sea soon after embarking using, more or less, the technique Tevish Szat describes above. There is no need to risk the life of a miner though. I learned how to do this from The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress – Part 11: “Burning hot mag-ma!” (link below). I dig a stair down from the magma forge level. On the level below, dig out where you want the magma to go (as shown in Newby Tutorial), carve a fortification two tiles away from the magma, place a floodgate next to the fortification, connect floodgate to lever on level above, channel the tile between fortification and magma from level above (as shown in Newby Tutorial), floor over the down stair and the channel, open the floodgate using lever. The fortification prevents the boulder you get from channeling from getting caught in the floodgate The key is the finding a spot that you can safely get to and channel from above that is a next to the magma sea below. below (as shown in Newby Tutorial).

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31928.0

[Psieye]

Wow, people sure make this sound hard:

Dig down. Plug any cavern breaches. Arrive at magma. Figure the rest out by trial and error.


One line of description to cover how to get magma forges after 1 season from embark (assuming flat region with say, 50 z-levels between surface and magma).

[Tevish Szat]

If you don't want to suicide a dwarf find the edge of the magma source and then channel down to that from above to breach it for access to your magma reservoir level.  And then floor that square immediately to reseal access to the upper floor.

That works if your forges are above the magma, otherwise you'll flood them.  The last time I did this, I actually built well below that because there were some nice stone layers between caverns 3 and the Great Magma Sea, an a magma pipe that went all the way up to near the top of caverns 3.  Building down there, next to the pipe, meant I was (ab)using the fact that magma doesn't have pressure to create my industries.


I may have to try the fortification breach next time.  While 7/7 flooded fortifications offer no defense, not risking a pick is good.