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[Agifem]

Hello everyone,

I've played this magnificiant game for a few weeks now, after a friend suggested it to me, and I'm getting decent on it. So far, I always choose an easy starting location (volcano, river, with soil and low mineral scarcity), but after reading about aquifer, I've begun to wonder how to go through it. So I've read a lot of topics about it, until I started a game, to try to apply the methods suggested. However, I've encountered a problem : Aquifers are not what I thought they were.

From all the topics I read, I thought that aquifer was one or several layers of water. However, it appears they are more like one or several layers of water-producing dirt, that don't become water until after they've been dug.

My main question is : how am I supposed to dig through this ? Even with channeling, it doesn't appear that I can dig more than the first layer. And if I use a cave-in plug method, the plug would allow me to dig deeper, but with a much narrower mine shaft, making the subsequent layers more difficult to cavein.

Could someone help me understand how to do ?

[Jelle]

Yeah you got it right, an aquifier is just stone or soil that contains water, not an actual reservoir. As soon you dig out one square the surrounder aquifier stones will start releasing water.
There's no real way to drain an aquifier, they produce an infinite amount of water. And since dwarves are afraid of moving through water making consructions to contain it is difficult.

There's one fairly easy method of breaking through an aquifier, kind of a cork plug method. What you do is you mine out around a block of stone or soil that is not an aquifier above the aquifier you want to break through. Then you channel out one level of the aquifier wich will quickly fill with water. Then you mine out the last bits of support holding the cork in place, dropping it into the channeld out water filled tiles, efectively making a patch of safe stone to mine through.
You'll want to make sure the plug is more then 3x3 so you can safely dig a stair through at least one tile.

[Alastar]

While aquifers can be a bit of a pain at the start, they're very useful later: Endless safe water source (no freezing, no dwarf-eating mutant zombie carp)  and drainage (it'll absorb pressurised water).

There are multiple ways of breaching it, plugging seems the easiest when applicable. The wiki has fairly good information about alternatives.

[Rose]

Personally, I always prefer pumps for digging out aquifers, as they don't rely on having a plug, and they can make a hole of any size.

[Agifem]

There's one fairly easy method of breaking through an aquifier, kind of a cork plug method. What you do is you mine out around a block of stone or soil that is not an aquifier above the aquifier you want to break through. Then you channel out one level of the aquifier wich will quickly fill with water. Then you mine out the last bits of support holding the cork in place, dropping it into the channeld out water filled tiles, efectively making a patch of safe stone to mine through.
You'll want to make sure the plug is more then 3x3 so you can safely dig a stair through at least one tile.

That I had understood. However, what if the aquifer is also present on the level below ? Can you reuse the cork/plug, and with the same size ?

[blake77]

DFwiki on aquifiers:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Aquifier

Cave in method for two layer aquifiers:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31651.0

Breaching aquifiers using pumps:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=79224.0

[Jelle]

Yeah if you've got multiple layers of aquifier you'll want to make the plug big enough to carve out another plug out of that one to drop below into the second aquifier once you breach the first.
Multiple layers can be tricky though, if the plug ends up to small to breach through all of them it might be an idea to switch to pumping and walling for the last stretch.

[nanomage]

Yeah if you've got multiple layers of aquifier you'll want to make the plug big enough to carve out another plug out of that one to drop below into the second aquifier once you breach the first.
Multiple layers can be tricky though, if the plug ends up to small to breach through all of them it might be an idea to switch to pumping and walling for the last stretch.

That's not quite right.
The thing is you don't carve later plugs from the dropped former one. If you tried to do so, you would be unable to remove the aquifer layer tiles from below the first plug in order to drop it.
Instead, you drop rings of regressing size down, each subsequent ring being 4 tile narrower than the previous. I never actually tried this with more than 2 aquifer levels, but the potential is only limited by the width of your embark.
However, multiple-level aquifers are almost exclusively stone ones, and these are much easier to get trough, because they contain veins and they may be smoothed.
I'd recommend pump&vein method for multi-level stone aquifers.

[nanomage]

sorry, double posted accidentally

[Agifem]

There's a lot of precious information there. Thanks to everyone, i'll dig through it all. Pun intended.

[i2amroy]

Just want to say that so far of all of the aquifer breaching methods that I have found that this one tends to work the best for me and it can easily deal with aquifers of any thickness.

[nickbii]

That method iam2roy mentioned is the best I've seen. Granted I haven't made a detailed study of all methods, and it takes a while, but it works and nobody dies.

Nick

[GreatWyrmGold]

I like freezing aquifers. No (required) caveins, works quickly, and leaves a massive hole leading into your fortress that nothing wrong could go wrong with. Also, dwarven popsicles.

[jaxler]

set a human style fort dig out the levels and wait for the winter to freeze the water(remove the roof first) to my knowledge you can(?) remove ice like a rock

(i dont usually screw around with a dwarf killing monster like water)

[Triaxx2]

On the other hand, if you freeze the aquifer, you can then construct a shaft in the middle of it, surrounding a stair case, and have an instant moat when the water thaws.