I usually make a big shrine that culminates in a single square with six trillion stones on it.

I am an idiot, who just figured out that the game only makes auxilary saves EVERY OTHER season. =_____=

What? It saves every season for me.

Self explanatory. Aquifer is being more troublesome than expected. This is the most pumps I can have active as of now because of the distinct lack of wood on the landscape anymore <_< Needless to say my miners really need to get better at swimming, lest they receive similar fates to the engraver and herbalist (???) shown, and the miner who died whilst channelling (moron).

Training swimming also gives handy stat attributes.
Remember that you need to have the dwarves in the area before it is filled with 4/7 water. a few 5/7 tiles are good and increase the rate of stat gain due to movement. Ideally, you have a bunch of ramps out that are blocked by doors which you forbid and unforbid to make the dwarves swim in circles.

[quote="Geti"]
Self explanatory. Aquifer is being more troublesome than expected. This is the most pumps I can have active as of now because of the distinct lack of wood on the landscape anymore <_< {/quote]

Erm... You sure you've even got those pumps working? 'Cause, y'know, waterwheels need flowing water around them to work, and those pools in your pics seems pretty stagnant. Unless you are using some nifty scheme with floodgates to channel water from the ocean into the aquifer, in which case I congratulate you. Even though it somewhat kills the purpose, since you wanted to drain out the aquifers... At any rate, I would still prefer plowing through it with a cave-in...

Yeah I'm pretty sure they're active.
You just have to get a dwarf to manually pump or do some channelling to get some movement into the water, but then you have perpetual motion pumps (only exploit I like to use). Currently It looks like it's pretty static because most of the water is on the level below.
The cave in approach would be nice if I didn't want to get through it right under my base <_< On a 4x4 embark you don't have as much dirt to toss around.

I chose it for the magma pipe, flux stone, and river (Which is actually just a brook, but still.) I also got out of the bargain a Kobold Den. What I did know about, but WASN'T prepared for was what "sparse trees" actually meant. No underground water too, I think, so no tower cap farms. WE MUST ADAPT! AND BUY CRAPLOADS OF WOOD FROM THE POINTY EARED PRANCERS. THEN KILL THEM.

Three of my Champions died, rather quickly, during a non-siege time. Turns out spears are extra-lethal in training. Especially those made of Addy...
Save scum time.

Also, just completed my spiral entrance to my fort. 4 corners, one 100% lined with cages, the other 3 with a weapon trap every 4 steps(spike balls/corkscrews). Looks like the next siege is screwed.
I also have a water tower, however it doesn't have enough pressure to properly force people away. I use it as storage for goblin prisoners. There are two diving platforms, one at 7z, which kills via drowning, and another at 19z.

Hyperkultra: Sparse trees are a ♥♥♥♥♥, especially on places with mountains either side of your valley...
No underground water here (Bar the HFS toad pools), but shedloads of lignite...

Edit: ♥♥♥♥ loads needs to be added to the filter...
Edit edit: WTF, why is ♥♥♥♥ not filtered?

Oh god, I'm dieing. Still early spring of my first year. Heres the alert log, all of it so far.

EDIT: From laughter that is.

Spring in my latest fortress. Six dwarves dead on the first two days. Most were killed by skeleton carp, one was eaten alive by a zombie deer, and the other threw himself in front of a berserk sea lamprey to give the last one a chance to flee.

Sole survivors: the expedition leader, "Big Cheese" FlamePaints and her pet mule. Exactly, the only dwarf with no survival skill whatsoever. Although she was an accomplished bookkeeper and appraiser. I was already starting to think "this ♥♥♥♥♥ is so totally ♥♥♥♥♥" when she suddenly decided to throw a tantrum, grab a steel axe from the woodcutter's corpse, and kill pretty much half of the living (or rather, undead) creatures on the map. Then I decided to see how far she could go alone. So far, she's got a nice underground fortress made, a full suit of carp bone armor, and quite an impressive killcount. No stone though, due to that cursed aquifer.

Yeah, I'm in a decidedly... Nicer realm. I haven't slaughter any horses yet, but my seeds are in the single digits, and booze may give out soon too. I'm getting just a bit worried about the food situation.

how are you running out of seeds if you're brewing?
3 guys have drowned in mine inthusfar, though only 1 was any use, the rest were only a nuisance because of the miasma. I still need to train my guys in swimming but its looking like i should get through tonight if i can find something to build walls out of >_<
I got another wave of migrants though, so I might be able to take apart one of the waterwheels for some more lumber and have the peasants manually keep pumping. I'll probably savescum a little if I try that though.

so... I'm having quite a few problems now with my different forts.

I can't get stone because of an aquifer. I've been trying to think of how to destroy a portion of it, so I can go under it, and *hope* to get more stone, but I don't know if it will work, and I'd like to run the idea past you guys.



dig down into the aquifer from above, and one space at a time, turn aquifer into just water, with a stone floor, and then, one space at a time, build a wall around. the trouble is, I need dwarfs who can swim in 7/7 water, and build.

once the walls are build all the way around, Find a way to drain the 7/7 water to at least 3/7 because my dwarfs seem to do that no problem. I was thinking at first try to dig down in 7/7 deep water, and hope the next Z-Layer down in that spot doesn't also have water already, and continue down until I get dry spots.

My 2nd draining plan is a well. I don't know if wells actually subtract water from a body of water or not, because I have yet to build one. ever.

My 3rd draining plan was a screwpump, which I can't do on this map because I have no power source. also i've never made a screwpump, because whenever I find flowing water there's always a carp and my dwarfs wont go near the water. hell I had a dwarf run from a turtle. (although there might have been something else there I didn't see)


What I need to know is, Can you mine out parts of an aquifer, can you work in 7/7 water, can you go down several Z layers in 7/7 water and not die, Do wells move water, can you make dwarfs use wells more often without being injured, and lastly, can a windmill, and screwpump, be build only using wood? if not I'm screwed and will have to abandon my fort, because i've just about run out of usable land. this place is practically a swamp. I have 3 Z-levels below ground, and even then, its more than half water... in the form of little ponds.

For a screw pump, you need a pipe section, a giant corkscrew, and a block. Then, you can manually power it with a dwarf. If you can make a block from wood, then you're all good. Or you could use a well, which does drain water very slowly.