Print

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

[vonFaust]

This is harder than you guys make it sound. What are your suggestions for exploratory mining of the magma finding variety? I like to imagine there'll be a lot of it when I find it, so I tend to not mine out more than 20 or so squares. For reference, I'm digging out from the stairs diagonally, and then connecting the ends. So it looks like a big box, with an x in it. Efficient, or no?

[Andrew425]

I just build stairs straight down.

Considering that i've occasionally found it at depths of more then 120 z levels your way can take some time

[Organum]

I just build stairs straight down.

Considering that i've occasionally found it at depths of more then 120 z levels your way can take some time

Yeah. It's usually as easy as designating an up/down stair down to the bottom level. Sometimes I hit semi-molten rock before magma, though...

[vonFaust]

I just build stairs straight down.

Considering that i've occasionally found it at depths of more then 120 z levels your way can take some time

Yeah. It's usually as easy as designated an up/down stair down to the bottom level. Sometimes I hit semi-molten rock before magma, though...

I've dug a stairwell to the complete bottom that I'm allowed to, and haven't hit any signs of magma.

[Andrew425]

Is the ground molten to hot to dig down?

[Starver]

My current fortress plans generally involve a regular grid, in some form, and so while I'm getting one of my (usually two) initial miners digging out infrastructure, enforced through the burrow system, I have another digging down-shafts, and if they get nowhere (or hit caverns, and I want to get past them) they dig another shaft, and another, and another...  Until I get what I'm looking for.  And with the advantage that hitting caverns shows me where the other shafts should go.  (You can either start afresh, from the top, or send a side-shaft out to where you're going to want to punch through and continue from that level, according to you design philosophy.)

Even three or four 100Z stairwells (give or take) is equal to a fairly small "initial room system", if both are dug into rock, and if you get both (or all) initial miners in on the first room so that everyone can unload the wagon (or return harvested wood/plants) quickly and then switch to one exploring while other is expanding outwards,


After a few years it might end up like this, I suppose, but you can probably derive from that what I did to start with, and see some still not completed explorations from various stairwell digging designations...

[Starver]

And... when you hit SMR, you've generally managed to miss the magma, by hitting a "non-sea" part of the magma-sea layer.  Although there may well be folds and diggable rock poking out under SMR projections into which you can dig, that's difficult to finesse, with no revealed magma.

You can go to a few levels up from there, aim sideways until you hit hot rock and then dig down (although you may have hit the border of the magma sea...) or start from just below the last fully identified open area[1] to make sure you're hitting everything from above.  Don't try wandering off to one side and digging up (especially ramps), for various obvious reasons.  Unless you want what will inevitably happen to happen, of course.

But if sending down exploration shafts, you're pretty likely (though not guaranteed) to find magma-tubes poking up through one, two or even all three cavern layers, which might be better for you.  even if you're not getting "Magma!" messages, explicitly, keep an eye out for obsidian in the area of caverns you've had a view of, and it might show where (in an upper cavern that you might have missed) the tube might be open-topped, and side-tappable for all your magmaworkshop needs.


[1] If that's the surface, and you've punched through all three caverns and magma-sea, you've been particularly unlucky if your cavern settings haven't been deliberately set to give very sparse layout.

[vonFaust]

Is the ground molten to hot to dig down?

No, it's just a rough-hewn granite wall at -151 and it wont let me designate it at all. No messages, jut not able to designate it.

[Andrew425]

I would then go up about 2 z levels dig giant tunnels going each way and then try to dig down at intervals of about 10.

[DS]

That's very odd. Did you change world gen parameters at all? Removing cavern layers, etc.

[vonFaust]

That's very odd. Did you change world gen parameters at all? Removing cavern layers, etc.

Nope, nothing. I'm now revealing more of the caverns with fortifications, hopefully I'll find signs.

[Starver]

Rough hewn granite?  Should be able to designate that.  Unless it's an edge block.

There are two possible types of rock (SMR and... a super-dense rock that's not spoiler-metal, but may be considered spoiler-rock) that can't be mined, but "rough hewn granite" should not be undiggable.  (Caveat, DF version 40d, and before, may have a bottom layer that you can't dig into (channels, down-stairwells or up/down stairs, and you're stuck with upwards and sideways designations) , but DF2010, i.e. any version 0.31.x, is going to have one or other aspect of !!FUN!! prior to anything like that, even with (I'm pretty sure) drastic worldgen changes...)

Other than that, you can't mine constructions, but that's not what you have, either... (All 'constructions' down there that I know of are spoiler-rock and should have been diggable, except for their material.  But I must admit I've only seen a few of those.)


I may well be not understanding what you've found, of course.  Maybe when you've explored further (as per your ninja) I'll pick up more from your descriptions.

[Sphalerite]

On version 40d, the lowermost level of the map was simply undiggable.  It wasn't very far down, either - only 15 Z-levels below the lowest surface point on the map.

On the current version, you should not have a layer of granite that can't be dug through.  If you do, upload a save so we can see if this is some kind of strange bug.

[Jessoftherocks]

If I'm really serious i make a save from the original embark and from one of the corners on the map i count twenty squares in and twenty down, dig straight down till i can't anymore, if I do find something like a cavern i screen shot it , continue process as much as needed.  the sccreen shots help for when you scum that embark and load the untampered save. This will be your guide as to where to dig accordingly. Helps to some extent when figuring out defenses for caverns and whathaveyou.  godspeed.

[Girlinhat]

Just a note, I've done some few tests on mineral placement and can share some prospecting secrets that I've gleamed from the code.  There's a way that worldgen places minerals that can be slightly abused to find ore quickly, and I'm really amazed no one has been over it already.