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    Dwarf Fortress ☼Bi-weekly DF Questions Thread☼

    March 20, 2020

    Dwarf Fortress ☼Bi-weekly DF Questions Thread☼

    ☼Bi-weekly DF Questions Thread☼

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 05:07 PM PDT

    Ask about anything related to Dwarf Fortress - including the game, utilities, bugs, problems you're having, mods, etc. You will get fast and friendly responses in this thread.

    Read the sidebar before posting! It has information on a range of game packages for new players, and links to all the best tutorials and quick-start guides. If you have read it and that hasn't helped, mention that!

    You should also take five minutes to search the wiki - if tutorials or the quickstart guide can't help, it usually has the information you're after. You can find the previous questions thread here.

    If you can answer questions, please sort by new and lend a hand - linking to a helpful resource (eg wiki page) is fine.

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    ☼Fortress Friday☼

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 05:07 PM PDT

    Our weekly thread for posting interesting events without cluttering up /r/dwarffortress. Screenshots, stories, details, achievements, or other posts are all welcome here! (That includes adventure and legends mode, even if there's no fortress involved.)

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    Made a new world. Year 422, this dwarven civilization is almost extinct, with 50 dorfs left. Guess who will be the next embark. Some history details will be in the comments.

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 05:48 AM PDT

    At2AM, learned windows were destroy able... FUN tomorrow (Meph Pack)

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 12:51 AM PDT

    Cavern Quickstart Step-by-Step

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 02:41 AM PDT

    Why Rush for the Caverns

    So I like to place my main fortress staircase in the 1st cavern level and build my fortress around the caverns. Partially this just feels like the dwarfy thing to do (I'm not a hill dwarf building a fort near the surface, I'm actually living in the stone).

    But there are tangible advantages to doing this:

    • It is much easier to embark in a treeless (or few-trees), waterless, embark when the caverns are not merely immediately available, but convenient. Treeless means I can seek out metals in the mountains. Waterless means higher FPS and more embark locations to choose from. Note that while the ability to create a tree farm is guaranteed, early water isn't a guarantee (my current fort has no natural water outside the 3rd cavern level).

    • Your fort is much less dependent on the surface due to the large amount of subterranean soil.

    • Live combat training in the 1st cavern level greatly speeds up military development and the butchery industry.

    • Lots of open space speeds up some fortress development. However, this is contingent on the 1st cavern level not being completely full of water. If it is, you still get underground trees with a bit of work and a mostly-convenient water source, but this benefit is unavailable, and the other cavern benefits are reduced.

    • Lots of metal/gem tiles revealed very early.

    • Your fort is closer to other important underground things (like the 2nd cavern level or the magma sea).

    • Because you'll likely get a chance to place your entrance to untamed caverns before you build your indoor trade depot, you can plan a single bastion of defense for both above ground and underground use. You could even have both entrances share a single drowning chamber or pit (if you are lucky, you could use a naturally occurring pit for the trap!)

    • Underground farming takes less time to set up (no irrigation required). Even if your cavern is mostly flooded, as long as there is some exposed soil you can still usually get this benefit with a minimum of walling off.

    • When underground trees are cut or shrubs are harvested, cavern soil tiles will be converted to biome-appropriate soil tiles. If you're lucky, this can mean sand. This is a small benefit as this can be triggered in regular forts deliberatly by deconstructing farm plots.

    • Caverns have a reasonable amount of variety, meaning it is difficult to build exactly the same fort every time.

    Compared to the challenges of doing this:

    • There is a large lag-time between when you start mining and have your first permanent workshop space compared to a surface fort. This time may be especially substantial if it takes you an entire season to find the caverns (which isn't unreasonable).

    • Near immediate military danger requires early defenses and walls. This can be somewhat complicated as the walls may need to be multiple z-levels high to be truly safe. This can be annoying when there are lots of z-levels to cover (6+). This is the largest challenge of the caverns, but not as large of a disadvantage as the above.

    • Caverns push you towards creating burrows, especially when large portions are settled, which can be a bit tedious. There are ways to get around the use of Burrows.

    • Open space, particularly many z-levels (8+) of it, can make for an inefficient starting location as fortress growth upward/downward may be restricted in the absence of constructed towers (cool, but a lot of work to build).

    • Caverns tend to have similar elevation to the ground elevation. This makes some embark locations better than others in a somewhat non-obvious way. Picking a table-flat embark location may make the caverns easier to manage, picking a high-cliffs embark may make the caverns harder to manage (but also less likely to be completely flooded). You can also play around with advanced world-gen settings to make the caverns much more predictable and cover fewer z-levels, but I don't encourage that.

    • Caverns have a reasonable amount of variety, meaning it is difficult to build exactly the same fort every time. Some templates may need adaptation depending on location.

    --

    Quickstart

    So, here I am to share how I take advantage of quickly creating the main body of a fortress on a cavern level as I previously mentioned I planned to do. I assume that anyone reading this already is very familiar with the basic controls of game, including military commands.

    1. The Jump-off Point. Immediately dig a temporary entrance close to your wagon down 50 tiles. If you find unflooded cavern, great, skip to step #3. If not, dig out a 21x7 temporary fort (later this will likely be converted into my prison or a noble's quarters) to keep your dwarves occupied and get some of the necessary hauling mostly done. While this is being mined out, keep your non-mining dwarves occupied in some other fashion (for instance, step 2 of this guide for more detailed instructions). I like to split the shaft down 10-20 levels and so that I can seal the entrance there, but it is more efficient to just floor over the top. You might be able to make your temporary fort down less tiles, I tend to embark in the hills or mountains, so the base elevation above sea level that I usually embark at may be unusually high.

    Split the 21x8 area up into three parts: a 3x8 living area (dining tables, chairs, beds), a 18x3 space for 6 workshops of your choice (for instance, Smelter, Mason's Workshop, Carpenter's Workshop, Craftsdwarf's Workshop, Mechanic's Workshop, Leather Works/Forge), and a 18x5 stockpile space, split largely half and half between furniture and your other stockpiles. I recommend a multi-stockpile with everything enabled EXCEPT refuse, stone, bar/block, wood, and furniture coupled with small separate stockpiles for wood and bar/block (a smelter running coal can easily end up uselessly filling a lot of space when the items could just be left in the actual workshop for a while, you only need a 1x3 bar/block pile for your smelter so that some of the results are stored in bins, wheras if you embarked in a treeless zone you may have 20+ wood in your cart and bringing all that down into the available space at once wouldn't do). Double check to make sure you don't have refuse enabled on your multi-stockpile, that would be bad. Keep your dwarves from being idle and get the non-stone stuff down from your cart.

     

    2. Finding the Caverns. Once this area is mined out, go up a couple z-levels (to -48). This is faster than making a separate tunnel from the surface because we are so far underground. It also will reveal metals/gems for mining. More usefully, the tunnels don't need to be sealed at all if you don't find caverns. Dig up/down staircases extending several levels up-down at about 30 tiles away from your starting area, and again at ~60. I recommend 3-4 exploration tunnels, one for each miner (the result being 6-8 separate exploration staircases). It is not uncommon for the 1st cavern level to be deeper (say, -58), or shallower (say, -35). It is possible for the 1st cavern level to be much, deeper, or much shallower, but my experience (bearing in mind that I do tend to embark on hills and mountains) is that they tend to more or less extend to around -50. Usually even relatively flat cavern levels have 4 separate z-levels to them, so you don't need to hit it on the nose. It may be useful to examine revealed tiles with d-m, which will show wet/hot stone. Also, note that diagonal tunnels reveal more tiles than orthogonal ones (though those take more effort to designate).

    While all the mining is going on, have your mason prioritize doors more than usual, as those will be useful in quickly sealing tunnels. Have your carpenter make a wooden shield (the most effective kind due to their low weight) or two. Also if you brought smithing materials on embark, employ those in making an axe with a quality modifer on it for your soon-to-be militia commander, along with whatever else you want to equip him with, just don't load him up too much so he can still chase down hostiles that get in your fort. Even if all your military dwarf has is an axe and shield, he should fair very well against any cavern denizens you may find.

    There is no need whatsoever to do things precisely in the way I describe, but I find this way of doing things particularly resilient against evasive caverns that make take a long time to find, leaves minimal clean-up once the caverns are found, and leaves the useful byproducts of exploratory mining (stone, gems) convenient to your fort.

    If I find the 1st cavern level is completely flooded, a cavern start is almost certainly impossible (the exception is when the 2nd cavern level is above -65, but that may not be super common, and has the potential to be both more rewarding and much more dangerous), so I will either abandon or build a completely normal fort only deeper (and with easy access to water and tree growth), but generally few of either the advantages or challenges of a regular cavern start. Otherwise:

     

    3. Exploring the Caverns. Upon finding the caverns, I need to make a plan to create a safe zone. However, first I need to actually see what is in the caverns. Or at least need to see a better chunk of them. Before I can do that there is some prep that needs to be done:

     

    3b. Look at 'u'nits and find all of the cavern creatures you can see. Check each one on the wiki to see if it will attack your dwarves. If those creatures are close, you may either wall off the caverns for an in-game month or two or send your military dwarf to deal with them. If the creatures are far, keep a mental note of that so that you can execute your plan to control the caverns safely, but changing longer term plans based on transient creatures is probably a bad idea.

     

    3c. If there is any visible danger and it isn't right in your face, secure a small area of the caverns to build a small farm. If you haven't built a temporary fort already, you'll want to build a few workshops and some stockpiles. Build your workshops closer to where you think your main staircase might me, and your farms in a corner your dwarves will trample less. Build your doors and only a few walls to lightly seal off a small cavern area in a way that's easy to change.

    If there is visible danger and it is right in your face, consider killing it with your military dwarf and possibly temporarily conscript a partner for him. There is very little that a lightly-trained dwarf with an axe can't simply take on in the 1st cavern level, it's your unarmed civilians that are in danger for the most part. That said, if you run across a pack of more than four troglodytes all bunched up together (if there is more space between troglodytes, your dwarf can beat them sequentially or chase them off), perhaps building doors and locking them until they move on is the wiser decision.

     

    3d. Once you are satisfied that your civilians are safe against immediate threats, send your military dwarf out to explore the remainder of the caverns that can be explored without mining. Hopefully that's most of it, if it isn't (due to trees, cliffs, etc) consider sending a miner to make a way for him once or twice, but don't overdo it, making the the cavern convenient to your dwarves by doing this also makes your dwarves convenient to the caverns. Make your decisions based only on what you can explore quickly -- you can always seal off more cavern when you are better established.

     

    4. Planning the Land Grab. Now that you actually know what the caverns look like and your dwarves are beginning to plant their first crops, try to pick places to seal off that can create a safe area for your dwarves to exploit. Here are some things to consider:

    • Low-openness areas can make great 1-tile chokepoints. If the choke point goes multiple z-levels up, try to make your chokepoints such that a staircase can be mined next to them, rather than constructed. This will greatly speed up designation for when you want to wall things off properly.

    • High-openness areas can be great because they are often simpler in terms of which passage leads where. Instead of four 1-tile chokepoints in a low-openness area, you might be able to get away with two six-tile chokepoints. High openness areas also have more soil, though the difference is marginal because you even low-openness areas likely have more soil than your dwarves can farm anyways, the advantage of having more soil has more to do with trees and cavern crops.

    • Water is dangerous. Don't put lots of effort to control any beaches areas yet, those are hard to seal. Dropping a barracks at a beach can deal with most 1st-cavern things (so long as there is a mined way to get out of the water in case of a bad dodge), but it's likely more trouble than its worth. Having some (but not tons) of water somewhere in the 1st cavern level is great because then you will get a free tree farm and with a bit of work an underground water source.

    • Large amounts of cavern z-levels (6+) can be a challenge as those can be very hard to seal off from fliers. Thankfully, fliers can be vanishingly rare depending on the cavern.

    • Cliffs are pretty useful if you can control the top of the cliff. Natural cliffs in the caverns likely have fewer z-levels to the cavern roof making it easier to seal off an area against fliers (there are exceptions where the cliff is only slightly up from the bottom of a deep pit). Constructing overhanging floors and smoothing the edges is sufficient to make cliffs safe from nonfliers.

    • The expectation is that if there isn't any water and if the caverns are flatish you can seal off 4-8 different places and control a good 30ish% of the caverns. If neither of those things are true sealing off a cavern section will be more difficult, but even sealing off 12 locations against grounded non-building-destroyers isn't that hard, even if it is harder in the the latest 4.7x version of the game due to climbing. The trick is that if you have more and longer locations to seal it will take long enough that you may run into a building destroyer or flyer before you complete your walls. In that case you may opt for a smaller 5-20% control in the near term and only take over the majority of the 1st cavern level in a later year. This is not as good as it could be, but by no means terrible. My current fortress I only got a 30x70ish section sealed off due to most of the caverns being down a chasm with more than a dozen z-levels of empty space (going to need a lot of stone to seal pieces of that off from fliers). Even if you choose to go light on territory, you now have a good amount of room to work with, especially for farm plots.

    • Bear in mind that 1-z-level walls may be (I suspect, this is completely untested) not as good as doors or other unwalkable constructions in the current version as rough walls will be easily climbed if the cavern is multiple-z-levels in height and even smooth walls will be climbed. You will need to make an overhanging floor and smooth the adjacent natural walls to prevent climbing, as non-tree surfaces cannot be held from beneath, and natural walls that are smoothed cannot be climbed. In general, you'll be sealing to the roof eventually anyways to lock out fliers.

     

    5. Securing Civilian Safety. Now that you've made your plan to seal things off, evaluate whether you want to do this all at once or in multiple phases. For the most part all at once is easiest and best, but you will have to be vigilant with your military dwarf if you choose to do it that way. Check the 'u'nits list often for hostiles. Drop an armor stand, weapon rack, and a coffer near an important place for your military dwarf to hang out and have him train there and execute your plan.

     

    5b. If you don't have trees in your 1st cavern level, send a miner to dig a (sealable) staircase down to find the 2nd cavern level (or even 3rd, if he misses the 2nd). Release the spores!

     

    6. The Fortress' Core. As the sealing is going on, find a place for your main staircase. The ideal staircase is as follows:

    • In an area that's flat and therefore easy to view. If the cavern areas around your staircase are on multiple z-levels it will be more difficult to mange.

    • In an area with relatively few cavern z-levels. You want to be able to have your main staircase go up and down productively, with plenty of mineable space on all sides (ideally avoid a location near a great chasm).

    • In a natural pillar (because constructing all the way to a cavern roof is a pain, though this can be worked around)

    • In an area with open areas around it. This is a relatively small preference, because you can just have dwarves mine away the swiss-cheese tunnels, even if they are multiple z-levels (just take basic precautions not to cause a cave-in, more on that later), and farms work perfectly fine even if they have a bit of non-soil floor in the middle of them (and if two areas are completely separated, just build multiple plots).

     

    7. Space Created. Embrace the wealth of open space you've won. Next to your main staircase in the cavern, place at least four workshops (not including quern and screw press, which would also be convenient here and don't take up space) from either the common ones (carpenter, craft, mason, or from your main industry). And next to the workshops, stockpiles, and next to the stockpiles (and the food stockpile in particular) near a natural wall so your dwarves don't path over them too much, farms. To the side of the farms, or even in the midst of them (if there was a 3x3 or larger natural stone pillar you decided to clear away but did not choose as your staircase) build a Still and Farmer's Workshop. Dig a refuse stockpile closer to where you want to build your main entrance into the rest of the caverns and build the butcher and tanner's workshop there, you'll probably end up butchering some of the tavern wildlife. Plop down a table and chair in a quite space for your manager/bookkeeper and get him counting goods.

    Don't be too greedy for cavern soil that you fail to take advantage of your space, there is plenty of soil to go around.

     

    8. Strategy to Keep Civilian Dwarves from Killing Themselves. As soon as you have a refuse pile or a loom or somedwarf with hunting labors enabled, you've got the potential, and the likelihood, of dwarven Darwin Award candidates. Dwarves can and will collect refuse from any available place underground, including where one cavern denizen killed another. This is of course, highly undesirable.

    There are, in essence, three strategies for keeping dwarves from walking to the ready claws or slavering jaws of cavern life, pick one.

    Strategy 1: Ensure that no jobs get automatically created outside of your walled area. This is extremely difficult, and it is very easy to miss something. For instance, some cavern denizens carry weapons, and if one kills another...well, you don't happen to have to have a weapons stockpile, do you? I think there's some auto-forbid stuff that is on by default that helps handle this sort of thing, but it doesn't handle everything you need by default.

    Strategy 2: The Airlock. Extremely easy to implement. All you need is some space and two sets of doors, both forbidden. When you want your military to go out, unforbid one set of doors, s-a-m your squad into the airlock, forbid the doors behind them, and unforbid the second set. Upgrade to drawbridges later. Be very quick to act every time a new cavern entrance is created. This is a good solution, but if you want your civilians to occasionally go into the caverns, for instance, your butcher, this makes that kinda difficult.

    Strategy 3: Burrows. The thing to remember with burrows is that, by default, jobs outside the burrow get cancelled silently. Jobs inside the burrow but with no path to the job create cancellation spam. Burrows, once CIV is assigned to them, define safe zones, not danger zones, so burrows keep your dwarves from getting killed accidentally very well, but are somewhat tedious to set up. Best advice: be permissive with your burrows, having a small zone just outside of your defensive line isn't likely to create many jobs when unsafe, so you're unlikely to get dwarves doing something they absolutely shouldn't even if you are relatively permissive with your burrow designation.

    Here's my strategy to setting up burrows:

    Burrow 1: "Above Caverns". Select every square in every z-level from the very top of the map to 1 level above the first spaces of the caverns. If something dangerous shows up in your fort, assigning them to only this burrow will usually send your dwarves hurtling outside in a jiffy. This takes less than half a minute to make.

    Burrow 2: "Above Cav Indoors". Select every square in every z-level from one level below the lowest outside tile to 1 level above the first s paces of the caverns. If something dangerous shows up outside your fort, this will keep your dwarves from trying to re-pasture animals. Sure ideally you'd also not include the trade route ramp when that gets built, but as I said, dwarves are still relatively unlikely to get jobs in such locations -- it isn't necessary, takes time, and I don't use this burrow much.

    Burrow 3: "Cavern Fort a-70". Select most of the squares that can be mined without going into untamed cavern from the very top level of the caverns down to -70. There are some things you might not know about the caverns to that depth, but be permissive. Civilian dwarves need to not only have a job within the burrow, but also need to be able to path to the burrow to start walking out to the job, so discovering more cavern tiles without deliberately mining into them isn't going to result in dwarves running out to collect refuse, just job cancellation spam which you can deal with then. Don't worry about being tile perfect, just select the things you vaguely think you might mine in the future. You'll figure out it's your burrow when the dwarves never get around to mining your designation if you expand there, which you probably won't. Creating this may take around 20 minutes or perhaps more depending on how careful you are. Yeah, painting this is tedious, but it solves so many problems really elegantly.

    Burrow 4: "Fort Expansion/b-70." Leave it blank for now, but rather than constantly updating the above burrow, I add stuff here as needed and have an easy way to send my civilians back into familiar territory if something goes awry.

    Theoretically adding a burrow for your military to auto-engage cavern denizens in using the "defend burrow" order could be pretty neat, but I've not done that yet. You don't need a burrow for your Trade Depot since the priority of the "Trade at Depot" job was greatly increased a long time go.

    Assign CIV to "Above Caverns", "Cavern Fort a-70", and "Fort Expansion/b-70" during the "Inactive" alert and your civilian dwarves will stay where they belong.

     

    9. Fortress Layout. You can still have workshops with doors on them, in fact, the next order of business is getting mined out stockpiles (dwarven demand for stockpiles is pretty hefty, and you don't want your dwarves to have to walk too far cavern soil) and a normal (if smaller than otherwise) workshop level for your most and least important workshops. Also a dormitory. Hold off on your temples until the first caravan leaves, but after that you have the opportunity to create a small one with the extra space you have for no additional work. You can replace that with a grand cathedral later.

    Find the 2nd cavern level if you haven't already and finish properly sealing off your caverns but the barracks next to where you send military dwarves into expeditions into the caverns is low priority. Also continue with building the stuff you'd regularly build. Dining hall, cistern (perhaps you want to use water from the 2nd cavern level for this if there is none in the 1st?), ramps leading outside (ideally next to where you'd send your military into the caverns for a single point of defense) the lot. I wouldn't be too worried about subterranean defenses next to your barracks though until you have surface defenses set up, the 1st cavern layer is unlikely to have anything to keep you up at night with training military dwarves on watch.

     

    10. There's Loot in the Caverns. Regularly send your squad to seek out cavern denizens to train up and to supply your butcher. Strong squads will also make surface dangers less. You'll want two separate squads when you get enough migrants so you have one group seek cavern foes, and the other group remain available for defense.

     

    That's basically the gist. Everything else is pretty normal, refer to steps 7+ in my other guide if you really want tips on what to build next. Once you have an indoor depot, make sure not to wait too long before sending goods to your depot, IIRC traders will start leaving at the same time of year as usual so they won't spend as much time sitting at the depot proper if the path too the depot is inordinately long (unless you make the path particularly circuitous, I think a depot at -120 would be just fine).

    As with every other embark, knowing a few things about sealing tunnels is important. Having an early military is even more important than usual. Unlike before, knowing how to build constructed towers and safely remove multiple z-level pillars or towers are important skills to deal with the natural open space present in caverns. Moreover, a cistern from cavern water is more likely to have enemies attempt to enter, make sure you know how to secure a cistern. Additionally, it may be useful to know how to tell cavern levels apart. It isn't always possible to tell the 1st cavern level apart from the 2nd, but there are signs.

    Building Towers:

    Towers in the cavern are pretty darn easy to designate if you can mine out the staircase rather than construct it. The big rule is this: construct floors before walls to avoid dwarves getting stuck, and if you don't want "rounded" walls with corners on the inside, you'll either need to construct some sort of scaffolding or suspend the construction of one of the wall pieces next to each corner and use the implied floor from the wall below, one z-level at a time because dwarves will only make constructions from orthogonal tiles. A square tower of arbitrary height (but the floor will be no wider than 19x19 without multiple staircases) can be constructed waiting only five times for the dwarves to complete their work if only you can mine out the staircase. Otherwise it's 5+N waits (you can do it two waits less by relying on implied floors from walls of the level below, but I think it's easiest just to do the steps I line out below after having constructed the entire stair) because you can't order constructions built on top of unconstructed constructions even if they are stairs and even if it's obvious they can support each other, ugh. The following steps assume a 1x1 pillar that you can mine out, larger natural pillars may require some minor adaptation in how step 2 is executed, and the tower may be wider than 19x19.

    Step 1. Designate your mined-out staircase, wait for that to complete. If you have more than just a 1x1 pillar, you will want to mine out each level, or destroy them first (see the

    Step 2. Have all of your floors constructed (each floor will require four designations, and each designation must have one tile orthogonal to your stairs). Wait for that to complete. Hint: for a tower with a 5x5 floor, two of your floors will be 2x3, and two of your floors will be 3x2, there is no other way to do a large (11x11 or more) tower in one step for a 1x1 pillar of stairs.

    **Step 3.* Then have all of your walls EXCEPT for one wall adjacent to each corner constructed, you will need designate the corner walls together with the wall adjacent to each corner that you do construct, otherwise the game will not recognize that the wall is connected. Instead of the wall adjacent to each corner that you do not construct, instead, construct a temporary floor (or 1x2 bridge) to provide access to that corner tile. The dwarves might suspend the construction of a wall that they can't reach if they don't build the floors/bridges first, but outside of that you don't need further input to get the corner walls built. Wait for that to complete

    Step 4. Remove your floor/bridge. Wait for that to complete.

    Step 5. Build the final 4 walls on each level.

    See also the wiki page that describes more or less how this sort of thing works, and how to fix mistakes in construction.

    Removing Pillars.

    So, not creating cave-ins should be easy, but sometimes it isn't. One case when it isn't is removing an entire pillar structure while also trying not to be painstaking about designating only a few channels at a time. The key to doing this quickly is the difference between Channel and Carve Ramp. In many cases these are identical in function, but not all. My experiments lead me to believe the following.

    Channel: The dwarf must be able to path to the z-level the channel is designated on. They do not need to be on that z-level. I suspect channeling from below works on the same principle that building destroyers trying to destroy buildings from below works on. Because dwarves may be standing on the same z-level they are channeling from, it is possible for one dwarf to channel the rock from under another dwarf. This is usually harmless, but isn't OHS compliant. Channeling is the only way I've found to remove a carved down staircase.

    Carve Ramp: Ramp carving may be done from on the same z-level or above regardless of the considerations that apply to channeling. If dwarves feel like pathing to the level above, it is possible for one dwarf to cave a ramp from under another dwarf, but if they can't initially path to the z-level above, they won't bother to, as there will always be a job right next to them. Additionally, ramps cannot be used to remove the tile above an already mined out tunnel. This makes designating entire levels to remove with Carve Ramp both more and less safe. More safe because it's more independent of order, less safe because if you miss an overhang on the level, you're going to cause a cave in for sure (though in every case this is true there is a high risk of channeling causing the same cave-in). Carve Ramp cannot remove stairs.

    While channeling out each level entirely seems to work just fine, sometimes the dwarves will find themselves unable to complete the channeling, because they don't leave a path to do so. One way to do avoid this is to use priority levels and only channel the outermost tiles first. However, a faster, better way to do this is to use carve ramp on the level below, and only use channeling to remove stairs. Annoyingly, if the stairs are not removed before the carve ramp orders happen, it is likely for a dwarf to choose a carve ramp order at the far end of the pillar. This isn't usually bad exactly, but it looks awkward and dwarves will remove tiles that other dwarves are standing on.

    Therefore the following instructions will quickly and safely remove a pillar with no overhangs.

    Step 1. Designate staircase all the way up. the pillar.

    Step 2. Designate a channel on the staircase of the uppermost level to prevent pathing. Wait for this to be complete. There is no other way to remove the down staircase without causing a cave-in, and that is, IMO, the most arcane thing about the whole process. I definitely hurt some dwarves while testing this.

    Step 3. Designate up ramps on the level below the target (uppermost) level. Wait for this to be complete.

    Step 4. Repeat step #2 and #3 until only the ground level remains.

    Step 5. Designate a channel on the final up/down staircase. Wait for that to be complete.

    Step 6. Designate remove up-stairs/ramps on the final up staircase and any remaining ramps.

    If there is an overhang, that is, any tile that has empty space below it. That tile must be channeled, as an up ramp cannot be designated below it, and if the tile is ignored it will become a cave-in for obvious reasons. WARNING: in the case of an overhang of more than one tile only the outermost tiles can be safely channeled.

    Removing Towers.

    Removing towers is is like above, but instead of mining designations, "remove construction" is used. On wall tiles, this works almost exactly like regular mining, and on floor tiles works almost exactly like channeling and has all of the same risks. Once the walls are removed, removing the floor tiles must be done exactly like an N-tile overhang (because that is what it is). Remove the outermost floors only, and do not remove further floors until that is complete. But wait, there's more. Is almost certainly possible for dwarves to remove floors that other dwarves are standing on and it may be less safe to do this than to carve a ramp under a dwarf. To avoid this, only remove every other outermost tile (corners first), so that no two dwarves will be working on adjacent tiles removing each other's platform. Once that is complete, remove the staircase pieces one at a time from the top down.

    There are almost certainly somewhat faster ways to remove a tower, but this strategy is simple to describe.

    Secure Cisterns

    First, read the guide on how to create a cistern in general. Securing a cistern involves two main concerns:

    1. Building destroyers can destroy floodgates

    2. If a floodgate is destroyed (or if a hostile makes it through while the floodgate is open) a climbing+swimming monster might be able to get up out of your well.

    There are strategies to defend against building destroyers while still using floodgates. One involves taking advantage of what I consider weird game behavior. Another is just to construct a wall behind the floodgate when not being in use. Carved fortifications may help dissuade, but not prevent, building destroyers from reaching your floodgate.

    However, the real solution is to replace the main floodgate with a raising bridge, which cannot be destroyed when raised. In the event of something that swims in while your cistern is refilling, having your military stationed nearby during the refilling process should deal with all your security quite handily.

    A serious incursion into your fortress from a cistern is reasonably rare occurrence even when the cistern isn't built with security in mind. The real danger of using cisterns is not remembering to deal with pressure and flooding your dwarves to death.

    submitted by /u/genkernels
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    Train Kea to steal old socks

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 04:41 AM PDT

    I was complaining to my wife about these damn Kea's stealing all my things and she asked me:
    "Can you train the Kea's to steal your old socks?"
    My mind froze for a moment trying to process this information. Imagine the possibilities if such a thing were possible... Birds to send messages between civilizations, monkey squads to steal from other civs, training monkeys to steal your own unwanted clutter.

    One day Tarn, one day...

    submitted by /u/Urist2020
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    DevLog 19 March 2020: ". . . there should probably be some pictures, ha ha. "

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 11:18 PM PDT

    They refuserade to stop making Cups... I DONT NEED 500 CUPS! Sent everything to the Trade Deport...

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 11:03 AM PDT

    They've discovered abstract art.

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 05:11 PM PDT

    Gatestar Guildhall Complex

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 05:39 PM PDT

    I like this rolls into a ball - amazing

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 03:14 AM PDT

    The mountainhome trader threw in a little surprise with the booze we ordered...

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 02:22 PM PDT

    That's not a good time to be sleeping.

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 10:05 AM PDT

    What can be worse then an Elf

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 07:10 AM PDT

    Diseases mod

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 07:58 PM PDT

    A long time ago @meph modded in disease mod into masterwork mod and disabled it and I went and worked on it and modded it back in and tried to play.

    Well now that coronovirus is sweeping the world and china has finally seen a recede in new cases, it got me to thinking about that mod.

    That mod did a good job at modeling sickness. The fort would get sick and overload the hospital and eventually herd immunity would take over and the sickness would go away.

    That game has taught me so much about life (like construction queues and stockpiles and harvesting food and maximum number of labors per person and diseases)

    submitted by /u/Thistleknot
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    Oh, okay, it's not like there was work to do or anything.

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 08:52 PM PDT

    Baby Human

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 04:38 AM PDT

    Trying the new pets in Adventure Mode - Unicorns are absolute kings

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 06:08 PM PDT

    I was hoping too see my dwarves dance but then I got to see a whole musical number.

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 04:16 AM PDT

    I was anxious if my tavern's floor space was enough for my dwarves to dance. turns out I was worried for nothing lol. Thats a Mother dancing while holding her baby with 3 dwarves simulating instruments and 1 dwarf singing. description of the performance

    EDIT: reddit wont show the gif via the title for some reason

    submitted by /u/em312s0n
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    Mountainhomes and how they entertain themself

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 03:32 PM PDT

    So I was browsing through Legends Mode for a bit and checked out the mountainhome of the only dwarven civilization in my current world and saw some odd hobbys

    First of, they are misunderstanding the concept of a shooting tournament by throwing the crossbows

    https://imgur.com/9IGSyQO

    I was curious, so I checked what they do beside that and I found out, that they are huge wrestling fans! It also seems, that one person is always winning.

    https://imgur.com/YnJMIml

    I took a look at him and to my suprise it is a demon

    https://imgur.com/FHxDE15

    Actually never saw something like that before and I am really into trying out to beat him in a brawl in Adventure Mode!

    submitted by /u/Uhrenkerl
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    How to start a good fortress

    Posted: 20 Mar 2020 07:26 AM PDT

    i just started playing and i have a small fortress going, not much in it at all but i want some tips on how to sustain it and make it better

    also i cant grow plump helmets but im trying to do it above ground, is that a problem?

    submitted by /u/TheIllusioniSt6669
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    [Modded] It ate a fucking clown master

    Posted: 19 Mar 2020 04:20 PM PDT
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