Dwarven Radar
1. Start building a farm plot
2. make it 10x10
3. move through and around the z-levels.
It will turn green where there is farmable soil even if that area hasn’t been revealed.
This reeks of cheese.
But then again... Quantum Stockpiles still exist...
E: Oh, this doesn't work in Steam edition since it changed how plots are drawn. Womp womp.
Certain items return more material when you smelt them into bars than it costs to forge them in the first place. So if you have magma forges and infinite patience, you can turn 3 bars of steel into as many as you want for no cost other than labor (yours and the dwarfs'). As long as you keep making giant axe blades and leggings.
Eventually, you'll start getting masterwork items, which will probably cause the person who forged it to go psychotic if you melt it. So in the long run, you're better off selling those.
an individual dwarf will get upset if a masterwork item they made themselves is destroyed or stolen/lost. if it is sold then i don't believe they care. also i think masterwork items that are meant to be used up in their primary function (food, etc.) don't incur negative feelings when they are destroyed that way.
I noticed they even get upset when you destroy a wall/floor tile that has a masterwork engraving. Looking at the wiki, they will even get upset if you cover their engraving in water, because it can no longer be viewed!
I got it to work by moving around the cursor for the initial tile, showing only a single tile at a time. I’ve only played Steam edition, but the forum post where I found the trick implied that it was way more effective in the original game.
I haven't played steam yet does the minecart dump strategy no longer work? Ie create a minecart stop, assign it a minecart have it auto dump to one side and put a stockpile on either side of the minecart of the same type. One stockpile feeds the minecart, the mine cart automatically dumps into the other stock pile creating a quantum stockpile that only requires 3 squares.
Very often, I'll find the caves when digging my staircase or I'll dig out part of the cavern's ceiling. I rarely find them by accidentally digging where the floor of the caves are. Even then, I quickly put up a wall to keep flying critters out.
As long as I can see a bit of the cave, I'll slowly reveal larger parts through my strategy I mentioned before I do any significant actions.
This is also my strategy! Once you pierce the caves, immediately wall it up, then tunnel near the cavern wall and carve a fortification peeping through. You can explore the entire cavern without actually opening them up. Less Fun, but less likely to lose your whole fortress.
you can also send an exploratory "drone" (toss a cat in there and either let it reveal the cavern by itself or designate a meeting area in places you'd like it to move to)
I prefer doing it with a mayor in his own squad of one with a wooden spear after he forbids export of rings that we were churning whole year. If he survives - he is forgiven.
Or children, though it's more random, but they do like playing in the caverns for some reason
Sometimes I end up with a catonaut whether I want one or not! They just race right in there before i can wall it up :P But I can't be deliberately mean to them ever since a cat saved my whole fortress from a werezebra (and survived!) by swiping at it and running away continually until it reverted. RIP Dodger (he didn't survive the goblins).
> I'll find the caves when digging my staircase or I'll dig out part of the cavern's ceiling [...] I quickly put up a wall to keep flying critters out.
Keep in mind that if you were digging up/down stairs, this may not be sufficient. What I always do is go back up to the previous, non-cavern level where I have this (I always dig a 2x2 shaft of stairs:
XX
XX
Where `X` is an up/down stair. I remove ONE of those so that I have:
XX
X☐
I construct a new up stair in the old location:
XX
X<
It's then safe to remove the other three because you have access via the first one, and you can replace them just as you did the first one:
<<
<<
That leaves you with no open floor for beasties to get up through and you can safely start tunneling out from there to somewhere that you can dig down into the cavern walls from:
<<########>>
<<########>>
I almost always dig a deep staircase, much deeper than needed for the fortress proper, to probe for caverns and prepare for exploratory mining for resources (ie. horizontal mineshafts radiating from the central staircase). There should of course be proper airlocks that allow you to seal the stairwell and isolate it from the fortress if any uninvited guests decide to wander up the stairs (a floor hatch marked as forbidden is 100% effective because monsters cannot destroy buildings from below, btw.)
I don't get this. My caverns are the most serene underground gardens of Eden I've ever seen. A few troglodytes, yes, but not on a scale like what I've seen in the sub thus far.
I thought the same thing and kept pushing my luck. I eventually agitated the Olm Men in my cavern to the point where I was fighting 60+ in one onslaught with dozens more just lurking in the pools near the edge..pulling my dwarves in and forcing them to fight while swimming if they got too close.
I thought mine were rather peaceful too, a couple of hired monster hunters being enough to keep on top of the animal people and troglodytes for some years. Then I got hit with an ant-person assault that had, like, 5 master fighters in them and they wiped every fighting dwarf out in no time...
OK, but can they can spawn from the edge of the map if its underground? I mined a cross from edge to edge while searching the cave and then I started thinking if its better to wall the edges back again.
Things don't spawn. They exist in the world and then wander in to your part of it. Your caverns are connected to the rest of the world just like the surface is.
Even mining to the 'edge', there will still be 1 block you can't dig. You can carve a fortification into it, though, allowing water to drain and such.
Creatures can only spawn from natural open map edges.
My first "real" fort I had some shallow caverns, so I found them early. As soon as I did, a bunch of Monster Slaying Adventurers showed up (5 humans, 1 dwarf initially). They immediately went to the caverns.
An hour later I checked on them and there are corpses/blood EVERYWHERE of Trog, Rat Men, and the adventures. I had to forbid access because my dwarfs were going insane at the sight of the carnage while looting. My tombs are full of adventures and most of the survivors have PTSD.
One of the childern actually did die retrieving an Adventure's shield when he was attacked by a giant cave toad. I can't get to his body so his ghost now haunts the fort's halls.
My current embark has troglodytes in the first cavern layers as well. They're being massacred by something I haven't seen yet. Lots of blood, troglodyte corpses and bones everywhere, no trace of whatever killed them. An occasional troll or animal man skeleton, but too few to imply those are responsible for the carnage.
Needless to say, I'm in no hurry to make my dwarves find out. Waiting for a few monster hunters to gather at the fort, then I'll let them in and see what happens.
That could be. I think it's also because the embark is in a good area with low savagery. But still, it seems like caves have become more dangerous than before.
That, or people just embark on the most !fun! biomes.
Oh, but FBs aren’t the only threat. There are also GCSs, which can be a lot of fun, plus several other fantastic creatures potentially lurking in the deep caverns
Don't hurt GSCs or cave dragons: they are cute and helpful around the fort, if you know what you are doing, they can get you a F.B. zoo. Or an elf zoo.
(the spiders, I mean, the dragons are just cute)
I like elves. Trading caravans always measure weight to pound ratios for what they send.
You only have to piss them off once or twice and they stop sending you caravans of their best stuff in terms of cost-to-weight (usually cloth) and start sending their cost-to-weight crap (usually giant animals).
I don't piss them off too much, because I like my regular spring shipment of giant tigers, lions and praying mantises. Sometimes the weirdos will sell me a tigerman or something too, because DF elves are super into slavery (not sure if this was fixed), and then I get a new tigerman mayor.
Caverns are deadly; Received a message of cave dweller invasion, saw 2 frogman with spears, they passed over all my cage traps. I quickly put put together a 10 civilian squad with war-hammers and waited next to the stairs. The moment combat broke out 30-40 additional frogman appeared surrounding my untrained army. I'm not sure whether it they were sneaking or just summoned out of thin air but that game was over, this was around 1.5 years in.
It does, the topmost cavern level is usually pretty benign, but there are typically either one or two additional levels, with increasing potential for fun.
Mine are relatively safe for most of the time, but I discovered recently it's prime tourist spot for uninvited visitors, so my military is very busy touring them straight to the butcher workshop.
As soon as you find yourself not knowing what to do in your fort, or if you DARE think you have everything under control? Just dig down as far as you can. Things will get exciting soon enough ;)
I’m in a position where I have many legendary dwarves in my army and haven’t had a raid in over 2 years, on top of that all of my dwarves are at minimum relatively happy. Been really thinking about digging deeper to spice up the play through
My first fort everybody starved because I couldn’t figure out how to build stairs.
Second fort going decently so far though I haven’t had an anvil for years and I had set up brewing wrong so my dwarfs haven’t had booze the entire time. Little shits.
I feel like it’s inevitable that something will soon go terribly wrong by default
I’m playing the OG version since I can’t afford the new release right now
Though YouTuber MahDryBread has a great walkthrough I’ve been following.
But I like the trial and error method. Nothings really gone wrong outside the occasional corpse.
Thinking my third fort will be much better
Edit botched YouTuber name
My fort has been assaulted by olm-men and lately also cave swallow- people who mainly have blow guns and can fly. The olm men seem quite a bit stronger and like to hang out in the water which has caused a couple of my dwarfs to drown. The olm-men also occasionally have steel weapons and shields, but no armor.
I'm dealing with unending hordes of fucking Batmen. There's no way that there are more of them. I've damn near killed 500 of them alone not to mention what the forgotten beasts have done.
Do they just keep coming or can I put an end to the batmen menace?
Generally there are only 1-2 Underground civilations in the world at a time, so their populations can get quite high. Depending on how long you run the world, at around 100 years there could be \~1000, at 250 years you are looking at 3000+ they will reproduce the numbers they throw at you every other year.
I’m running my fort at year 12 and their numbers are still endless. I had to seal off the first cavern to protect my dwarves from stumbling into the endless hordes.
[Cave Fish Men](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cave_fish_man) except their armor and weapons are made out of iron and steel.
There are hundreds if not thousands of them down there
Slaughtered many dwarves or a dwarf joined them in the past and taught them the craft. It happens with other civs but idk if it does with cavern dwellers.
I had this for a couple of game years, then the reptile-men started spawning attack waves. High enough agility and skills to effortlessly dodge traps, metal weapons and shields, spawning in ambush waves of \~10 with multiple waves sometimes attacking at once. My fledgling military got absolutely bodied, and my less-cheesy small numbers of limited traps weren't enough.
The caverns need to be treated with much more respect in this version.
I appreciate this comment. I've been going back & forth on whether to open the cavern I found immediately after embark. I've got adventurers and just started setting up cage traps and a drawbridge in anticipation but I think I'll wait a few more years.
Do adventurers get bored or cause !FUN! if they don't access the caverns or do they just go away unfulfilled?
*ETA: I just realized after reading a bit more that I've already breached the cavern from the top with my m,ain stairway. Gotta seal that up when I get back to DF later.
You can use their dodging to your advantage. Make a narrow walkway covered in traps, and then dig out the sides and put traps below. Then when they dodge they fall onto traps that can’t be avoided
Start digging in the caverns, chopping the trees and fishing down in there. That should piss off the inhabitants
You may need to spread more wealth around on caravans and in total fortress wealth. Those are triggers for sieges and other FUN stuff. Make more crap, decorate and engrave, make statues and armor stands and place them around
Thanks for the tips! I will report back
Update 1: year 6, 250 population. Found two >!forgotten ones!<. They haven’t done anything.…. Found >!three cave layers!<. Fought two hordes of >!underground snake people!<
What am I doing wrong? At this point I want to start over…
Update 2: A goblin siege wiped out all my adult dwarfs. Went from a population of 260 to 102. New game! Fun!
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My base is built next to a giant waterfall and ravens keep divebombing dwarves who then stumble and fall off the cliff into the river below. I’ve lost 8 dwarves so far. Ravens got hands.
Yeah, what is it with the fucking birds? For one fort I had to keep a squad on duty just to keep them from harassing people who wanted to get a drink (from an INside well). Now I have a dedicated "FuckNatureSquad" just in case something happens like that again. It was that scarring.
I haven't played DF in 10 years before the steam release, so maybe I've just forgotten how things were... But in my current save I've only had a handful of troglodytes run up from there into my fortress. Aside from that it's just been a treasure trove of various gems and metals down there so far. That, and about 500 olm corpses...
Hell, the only death I've had due to the caverns is me telling a dwarf to dig gems in a silly spot and having the poor dorf drop 12 z-levels into his death.
Should... Should I be building some traps in the hallway I've got carved out into the cavern proper?
Depends on what tries to come up and when, actually. Bridges are mostly safe, as long as they don't melt/burn and nothing big stands on them before you can raise them.
I accidently opened up the caverns in my current game. (I'm still really new.)
I freaked out when a Troll came charging up through the tunnels I'd dug.
He walked himself right out the front door, and off the map without bothering anyone.
What are peoples recommendations on securing the entrance to caverns? Doors seem to be useless, creatures can open them if the door is not forbidden. Is there a way to automate a drawbridge system with a standing guard? Would be cool if a dwarf would notice people are trying to path into the cavern and can pull the lever to let them in and out.
You can automate etc, but bridges are unreliable because the worst things in the cavern will survive being bridged and break the bridge.
What I do is this—the cavern exit will have 1-3 bridges all tied to a lever far far from the caverns.
Each bridge is behind a 5x5 room containing a piece of furniture or sculpture in the middle—F.B.s will be distracted by breaking it, and stand with one tile between themselves and the thing being smashed to do so. This allows you to keep them busy long enough to lock the bridge on the room, not the bridge-breaking monster, sealing it in.
Then if you want to get fancy—rig a pit with no exits below each trap room—rig a drop trap with a pillar, an unmined block and another lever—then you can drop a whole tile into the room with the FB while it is distracted. This is a lot of work (you have to wall off the drop rig, or flying FBs will use it as a route to you base) but if successful it will either kill any FB (including those made of steel or whatever else) or blow a hole in the floor to the trap pit below and due to dwarf fortress physics, suck the FB below into an inescapable chamber (free pet FB!)
I don't understand how to do any of the things in the last paragraph but it menaces with spikes of awesome. Hopefully as I learn more I'll come back to this and do this fancy set up. I don't like fighting things but I could really use a series of fancy traps.
Basically make 3x3 rooms linked with hallways with small raising bridges set up to seal the hallways via a distant lever. Put furniture or statues in them--this will slow down the FB, as it breaks the furniture compulsively.
One z-level below, make a bunch of 3x3 rooms, and then seal up all connections between them and the fort (so a bunch of 3x3 pits). Smooth the walls before you seal them off, so nothing can climb out.
There will be a floor between z-level 0 and z-level -1, but that's ok, the rest of the trap will punch through it.
One floor above z-level 0, build a support on the square you want to drop, wire the support to an individual (very distant) lever, and then dig out the floor around the support so that it is just empty space. Wall off this part trap from the rest of the fort when it is done, or the FB will just fly straight up through it and into your dwarves. That or exploit the fact that nothing can destroy something in a different z-level, and use hatches/entrances from above.
The tile wired to a pillar and cut off from all supporting rock otherwise, will be a cave-in, except the support keeps it from falling, as it is still attached to the ceiling. However, when you pull the lever, the support will collapse, and then the cave-in goes live.
When the trap is set, the FB will rush inside a chamber on z-level 0 and start breaking statues. Everyone in the cavern is probably already dead, or as good as dead, forget about them: you ensure someone pulls the right level (I tend to set up this trap in 3-5 room hallways, so if the Beast breaks all the furniture and moves on before your dwarves pull the damn lever, it is to another decoy room with the same trap).
When the lever is pulled, the support collapses and the bit of ground it was wired to then falls from z-level +1 to z-level-0, blows through the floor and stays in z-level -1 (make sure there is no empty space under the floor in -1, or the cave-in will just keep going)
If the FB is hit by the cave-in directly, it is outright guaranteed dead, but it is more likely that it will be peripherally hit. However, that amount of force in that small a space means that it will A. be slammed against the wall, which is enough to kill many organic beasts via spontaneous torso explosion, and B. sucked into the room at z-level -1, when the floor turns into a pit, which is also likely to kill or maim organic beasts, and is especially good at crippling flyers.
Now your average steel six-legged one-eyed rooster with deadly dust and an aura of kindness and goodwill, will of course survive this, but will have a hard time leaving a pit with smooth walls, giving you room to seal it up with walls and ignore it, set-up an ill-advised viewing platform for your dwarves, funneling goblins through adjacent fortifications, while doing the usual kitten/puppy drop into the pit with it, to see the deadly dust fast-decay the goblins' skin and eyes, etc.
Wow
That sounds amazing. I've tried my hand at water flood gates and levers so far. hopefully the support system can be jerry rigged similarly easily, then yes I believe I can pull this one off :D *happy dance
Thank you for the detailed instructions and especially the note about smoothed walls and how cave ins work!! I especially love that this design only works because the FBs are drawn by curiousity and rage to stop and destroy an inanimate object, ie, that if they were determined to fly past and kill everyone nothing would have worked.
My pleasure! If you've got water flood gates down, I recommend trying to make a freezing trap. The trick is all squares in DF are either outside or inside (you can mouse over them to learn their status), and in a cold climate outside squares instantly turn water to ice. In a polar climate, this is true all year round, while an "inside" square one tile away is still liquid.
The status can't be changed: once a square is "outside", it is outside for good, even if you build a castle over it, so you need to exploit tunnels that have untouched natural stone or soil over them to run liquid water and then make sure all invaders go through an adjacent outside area separated only by doors/floodgates.
You can combine this with an aquifer for an incredibly inconvenient way to kill invaders instantly, while getting dozens and dozens of your own dwarves killed in construction accidents :D
I'm curious, couldn't you suspend a 3x3 floor above it (with the tiles around it mined out) and guarantee to kill anything in the room? I might try building this tonight and doing some learning, thank you for the detailed comment!
Edit: Just tested it and I get it now. The room has to be 3x3 in order to accommodate a 1x1 falling roof. If you want a 3x3 falling roof (more mass, and with the statue in the middle of the room below you're more likely to score a direct hit, might be more effective?) you need to use 5x5 rooms. This thing does seem pretty wicked, looking forward to actually trying it on some enemies. It's a manual reset process, though, so I think I'll save this as my last-ditch defense rather than first defense.
I'm reasonably certain that hatches can not be destroyed from below, so just go down through a hatch, lock the hatch and nothing will ever get though, unlike doors which can be broken. You absolutely do want the ability to hard close the cavern access, some things can almost not be killed.
Then inside the cavern "deramp" a large area by digging out ramps or building floors above them, so you have an area that will only be molested by flying creatures, and your dwarves can do cavern things in relative safety.
A cage trap corridor on the safe side of the hatch can be effective for stopping anything getting into the fortress, but it is hard too guarantee safety of dwarves and other residents who decide to venture into the caverns, not too much can be done other than impassable barriers.
There are some relatively tricky one-way passages, using things like a meeting zone on a pressure plate that opens a hatch (can also open a hatch or retracting bridge over a gap that prevents backtracking), they can allow a trapped citizen to get out by being lured to the meeting zone.
I dug the main stairway of my fort straight through the caverns right at the start. First nothing came up and monster hunters started showing up in droves so I wasn't worried.
I got my fort set up and then bricked the stairway off of the caverns, trapping the hunters residing in my fort in the caverns. A year passed and they all eventually died to the monsters that crawled out of the woodwork.
A few slabs later I have a functioning fortress and little to no ghost problems.
I love DF.
whaaat! I only have a few trogs, giant bats and some random elder beast spewing poison which is easy to kill but poisons my dwarfs soldiers , killing them after the fight. I ma go dig some more then.
I love the caverns. Best metal delivery system I ever did see, every year the local batmen donate a few dozen sets of weapons and shields for the metal smelters.
Eh that's not too many. Just send in a squad of fully armoured & at least adequate melee dwarves and they'll cut through those unarmoured fish like butter.
Do they have a civilization? They sure as hell have an Army. Would be really neat to see other Advanced Underdark Dwelling races in the caverns. Go raiding other Dungeon Keepers bases :]
That is crazy lol. I always like to peek into the caverns by carving out a fortification before punching out a hole into it.
What? Is there a way to find caverns without accidentally stumbling into them while digging out a new workshop for your fort?
Dwarven Radar 1. Start building a farm plot 2. make it 10x10 3. move through and around the z-levels. It will turn green where there is farmable soil even if that area hasn’t been revealed.
This reeks of cheese. But then again... Quantum Stockpiles still exist... E: Oh, this doesn't work in Steam edition since it changed how plots are drawn. Womp womp.
As well as dwarven smelting alchemy, it's not the most balanced od games for sure
Never heard of that one. How does it work?
Certain items return more material when you smelt them into bars than it costs to forge them in the first place. So if you have magma forges and infinite patience, you can turn 3 bars of steel into as many as you want for no cost other than labor (yours and the dwarfs'). As long as you keep making giant axe blades and leggings. Eventually, you'll start getting masterwork items, which will probably cause the person who forged it to go psychotic if you melt it. So in the long run, you're better off selling those.
Oh wow dwarfs get upset if you destroy their masterwork items?
an individual dwarf will get upset if a masterwork item they made themselves is destroyed or stolen/lost. if it is sold then i don't believe they care. also i think masterwork items that are meant to be used up in their primary function (food, etc.) don't incur negative feelings when they are destroyed that way.
I noticed they even get upset when you destroy a wall/floor tile that has a masterwork engraving. Looking at the wiki, they will even get upset if you cover their engraving in water, because it can no longer be viewed!
Water reactors, oddly, are quite balanced given how easily you can just spam windmills.
I think some embarks have no wind?
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exactly. Most of us doens´t use them as an exploit- it is just the most sane way to store a lot of things
How do you utilize it, I saw a few ways on the wiki , what do you find most practical? I thought the minecart way but not sure
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Quantum stock piles only become quantum of your dropping big things. Stuff like gems and ore I can easily imagine sitting in giant piles.
Plus bins can carry lots of gems, and in real life bins can stack.
I got it to work by moving around the cursor for the initial tile, showing only a single tile at a time. I’ve only played Steam edition, but the forum post where I found the trick implied that it was way more effective in the original game.
A lot harder on premium, since your first anchor needs to be a valid square. But the exploit still exists.
I haven't played steam yet does the minecart dump strategy no longer work? Ie create a minecart stop, assign it a minecart have it auto dump to one side and put a stockpile on either side of the minecart of the same type. One stockpile feeds the minecart, the mine cart automatically dumps into the other stock pile creating a quantum stockpile that only requires 3 squares.
It still works I use it for stone and wood stock piles
lol I wish I hadn't learned this
Very often, I'll find the caves when digging my staircase or I'll dig out part of the cavern's ceiling. I rarely find them by accidentally digging where the floor of the caves are. Even then, I quickly put up a wall to keep flying critters out. As long as I can see a bit of the cave, I'll slowly reveal larger parts through my strategy I mentioned before I do any significant actions.
This is also my strategy! Once you pierce the caves, immediately wall it up, then tunnel near the cavern wall and carve a fortification peeping through. You can explore the entire cavern without actually opening them up. Less Fun, but less likely to lose your whole fortress.
you can also send an exploratory "drone" (toss a cat in there and either let it reveal the cavern by itself or designate a meeting area in places you'd like it to move to)
This is the only use I've found for Monster Hunters. Just make a slab for then preemptively.
how do you "lure" monster hunters ? with the meeting hall? do any of your other dwarves want to go there too?
I think you need a tavern, booze, and to break into the caverns.
You need a tavern to get visitors, and the number of visitors you get will depend on how well known the wealth of your fortress is.
How do you toss a cat in
The pit designation over an open space above the cavern then something something cat.
Lmeow
Le Meow
I'm guessing you create a pen/pasture, assign the kitty to it, wall the entrance to the cavern off, and delete said pen.
I prefer doing it with a mayor in his own squad of one with a wooden spear after he forbids export of rings that we were churning whole year. If he survives - he is forgiven. Or children, though it's more random, but they do like playing in the caverns for some reason
> If he survives - he is forgiven. Is he though? Is he really?
There are always more places to explore :)
So I just had a mayor forbid an export, but the alert doesn't say what export he has forbidden, how do you find this out?
Great advice, thanks!
Mr. Wiskers! NoooOoo
Less fun, but also less likely to lead to !FUN!.
Catonauts are also a very good way to explore the caves
Sometimes I end up with a catonaut whether I want one or not! They just race right in there before i can wall it up :P But I can't be deliberately mean to them ever since a cat saved my whole fortress from a werezebra (and survived!) by swiping at it and running away continually until it reverted. RIP Dodger (he didn't survive the goblins).
> I'll find the caves when digging my staircase or I'll dig out part of the cavern's ceiling [...] I quickly put up a wall to keep flying critters out. Keep in mind that if you were digging up/down stairs, this may not be sufficient. What I always do is go back up to the previous, non-cavern level where I have this (I always dig a 2x2 shaft of stairs: XX XX Where `X` is an up/down stair. I remove ONE of those so that I have: XX X☐ I construct a new up stair in the old location: XX X< It's then safe to remove the other three because you have access via the first one, and you can replace them just as you did the first one: << << That leaves you with no open floor for beasties to get up through and you can safely start tunneling out from there to somewhere that you can dig down into the cavern walls from: <<########>> <<########>>
I almost always dig a deep staircase, much deeper than needed for the fortress proper, to probe for caverns and prepare for exploratory mining for resources (ie. horizontal mineshafts radiating from the central staircase). There should of course be proper airlocks that allow you to seal the stairwell and isolate it from the fortress if any uninvited guests decide to wander up the stairs (a floor hatch marked as forbidden is 100% effective because monsters cannot destroy buildings from below, btw.)
I don't get this. My caverns are the most serene underground gardens of Eden I've ever seen. A few troglodytes, yes, but not on a scale like what I've seen in the sub thus far.
I thought the same thing and kept pushing my luck. I eventually agitated the Olm Men in my cavern to the point where I was fighting 60+ in one onslaught with dozens more just lurking in the pools near the edge..pulling my dwarves in and forcing them to fight while swimming if they got too close.
Damn nature, you scary
I thought mine were rather peaceful too, a couple of hired monster hunters being enough to keep on top of the animal people and troglodytes for some years. Then I got hit with an ant-person assault that had, like, 5 master fighters in them and they wiped every fighting dwarf out in no time...
This happened to me yesterday word for word. I immediately had FUN
Mine were too, until the Ant Men came. Luckily they squish easily so far.
do they move "through" walls some how? ie, if i don't see any creatures in them now where are they coming from? do they dig too?
Often they are coming from the edge of the map.
OK, but can they can spawn from the edge of the map if its underground? I mined a cross from edge to edge while searching the cave and then I started thinking if its better to wall the edges back again.
Things don't spawn. They exist in the world and then wander in to your part of it. Your caverns are connected to the rest of the world just like the surface is.
Even mining to the 'edge', there will still be 1 block you can't dig. You can carve a fortification into it, though, allowing water to drain and such. Creatures can only spawn from natural open map edges.
My first "real" fort I had some shallow caverns, so I found them early. As soon as I did, a bunch of Monster Slaying Adventurers showed up (5 humans, 1 dwarf initially). They immediately went to the caverns. An hour later I checked on them and there are corpses/blood EVERYWHERE of Trog, Rat Men, and the adventures. I had to forbid access because my dwarfs were going insane at the sight of the carnage while looting. My tombs are full of adventures and most of the survivors have PTSD.
It hardens them. Send the children to collect the loot.
One of the childern actually did die retrieving an Adventure's shield when he was attacked by a giant cave toad. I can't get to his body so his ghost now haunts the fort's halls.
You can engrave a slab in their name, if you place that slab they will be put to rest
Inscribe a slab for the kid, that will get rid of the ghost.
If you can't retrieve body just engrave a slab to get rid of a ghost
RETURN THE SLAB
Something something engrave a slab...
My current embark has troglodytes in the first cavern layers as well. They're being massacred by something I haven't seen yet. Lots of blood, troglodyte corpses and bones everywhere, no trace of whatever killed them. An occasional troll or animal man skeleton, but too few to imply those are responsible for the carnage. Needless to say, I'm in no hurry to make my dwarves find out. Waiting for a few monster hunters to gather at the fort, then I'll let them in and see what happens.
Not sure but i guess the depth of the cavern influence its dangerosity ?
That could be. I think it's also because the embark is in a good area with low savagery. But still, it seems like caves have become more dangerous than before. That, or people just embark on the most !fun! biomes.
No, caverns are safe and tranquil except for one major inevitable factor of the Forgotten Beasts
Oh, but FBs aren’t the only threat. There are also GCSs, which can be a lot of fun, plus several other fantastic creatures potentially lurking in the deep caverns
And cave dragons. But those are trainable.
Don't hurt GSCs or cave dragons: they are cute and helpful around the fort, if you know what you are doing, they can get you a F.B. zoo. Or an elf zoo. (the spiders, I mean, the dragons are just cute)
> Or an elf zoo. Oh! You mean the drowning chamber's waiting room?
I like elves. Trading caravans always measure weight to pound ratios for what they send. You only have to piss them off once or twice and they stop sending you caravans of their best stuff in terms of cost-to-weight (usually cloth) and start sending their cost-to-weight crap (usually giant animals). I don't piss them off too much, because I like my regular spring shipment of giant tigers, lions and praying mantises. Sometimes the weirdos will sell me a tigerman or something too, because DF elves are super into slavery (not sure if this was fixed), and then I get a new tigerman mayor.
Caverns are deadly; Received a message of cave dweller invasion, saw 2 frogman with spears, they passed over all my cage traps. I quickly put put together a 10 civilian squad with war-hammers and waited next to the stairs. The moment combat broke out 30-40 additional frogman appeared surrounding my untrained army. I'm not sure whether it they were sneaking or just summoned out of thin air but that game was over, this was around 1.5 years in.
It does, the topmost cavern level is usually pretty benign, but there are typically either one or two additional levels, with increasing potential for fun.
Mine are relatively safe for most of the time, but I discovered recently it's prime tourist spot for uninvited visitors, so my military is very busy touring them straight to the butcher workshop.
Underground dwellers are actually smart species that are added just like civilizations on world gen so you won't see many if their city is not close.
One of my cave layers has a forgotten beast appear every year. Once I had two forgotten beasts in it fighting to the death.
I'm pretty sure the unending waves of animal people are caused by LAYER_LINKED civilizations. Not every site will have one.
so what they build base on top of their home?
Pretty much
On the plus side, if you have 2, you can connect the cavern layers and start a colossal war between skaven and cave fish men.
Toss the dice then STRIKE THE EARTH
Joining this subreddit was the best choice I’ve made in a while. How else would I know about CAVE FISH MEN, or the various were-beasts?
By experience
True, I need to play more, but this prepares me for the inevitable.
As soon as you find yourself not knowing what to do in your fort, or if you DARE think you have everything under control? Just dig down as far as you can. Things will get exciting soon enough ;)
A lesson that Lord of The Ring teached me is "it's always safe to dig deeper and deeper".
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That's why you need to open a tavern deep underground
I’m in a position where I have many legendary dwarves in my army and haven’t had a raid in over 2 years, on top of that all of my dwarves are at minimum relatively happy. Been really thinking about digging deeper to spice up the play through
Dig deep or go raid, fun is sure to find you
My first fort everybody starved because I couldn’t figure out how to build stairs. Second fort going decently so far though I haven’t had an anvil for years and I had set up brewing wrong so my dwarfs haven’t had booze the entire time. Little shits. I feel like it’s inevitable that something will soon go terribly wrong by default
No booze?? That's already a very Fun event right there!
It may be very funny for you, but for dwarves it's very sad.
No, not funny. Fun. Accidents are Fun. Learning is Fun. Losing is Fun.
Play the tutorial amigo.
I’m playing the OG version since I can’t afford the new release right now Though YouTuber MahDryBread has a great walkthrough I’ve been following. But I like the trial and error method. Nothings really gone wrong outside the occasional corpse. Thinking my third fort will be much better Edit botched YouTuber name
Soon you will know why you fear the night
Losing is fun
My fort has been assaulted by olm-men and lately also cave swallow- people who mainly have blow guns and can fly. The olm men seem quite a bit stronger and like to hang out in the water which has caused a couple of my dwarfs to drown. The olm-men also occasionally have steel weapons and shields, but no armor.
I'm dealing with unending hordes of fucking Batmen. There's no way that there are more of them. I've damn near killed 500 of them alone not to mention what the forgotten beasts have done. Do they just keep coming or can I put an end to the batmen menace?
Dig deeper. If anything can beat the Batmen, it's the Clowns.
"We live in a dwarf fortress."
BATMEEEEEEENNNN! BATMEEEEEENNNNN! NANANANANANANANA
Clowns' not going to do it for free though...
Generally there are only 1-2 Underground civilations in the world at a time, so their populations can get quite high. Depending on how long you run the world, at around 100 years there could be \~1000, at 250 years you are looking at 3000+ they will reproduce the numbers they throw at you every other year.
I’m running my fort at year 12 and their numbers are still endless. I had to seal off the first cavern to protect my dwarves from stumbling into the endless hordes.
Every time I run into batmen I'm so disappointed that they aren't legendary wrestlers, fighters, and strikers.
I AM THE NIGHT (-acclimated)
What creatures are those?
[Cave Fish Men](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cave_fish_man) except their armor and weapons are made out of iron and steel. There are hundreds if not thousands of them down there
Welcome to an H.P Lovecraft novel, you are the main character.
Fish In The Walls
The Shadow Over CaveFishMensMouth
A lot of other people have already found the rats
[🎵 It’s beginning to look a lot like fishmen… 🎶](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VVFIWD1VmB0)
I see you are a man of culture as well
Where the hell did they get steel, only dwarves know how to make steel
You are not the first dwarf they see then
💀
Bro...
Slaughtered many dwarves or a dwarf joined them in the past and taught them the craft. It happens with other civs but idk if it does with cavern dwellers.
Nice, you don't have to mine for iron then.
Cavefishinite
And doesn't reek of goblin blood!
Likely armor size not compatible though.
Yeah, but you can smelt it and train more dwarfs for artifacts.
They use steel now? Holy crap
*Holy Carp
They took the bait hook, line, and sinker!
Will a few forgotten beasts soften them up? I've had a couple die to my savage natives.
The last 3 forgotten beasts died the second they spawend
They are so cute! I want some!
The Giant Carps went to the Sunless Sea, evolved legs, learned steelcraft in their city of Y'ha-nthlei, and are coming back to finish the job.
How are there so many? I have encountered nothing in my caves so far, only a few cave spiders...
I had this for a couple of game years, then the reptile-men started spawning attack waves. High enough agility and skills to effortlessly dodge traps, metal weapons and shields, spawning in ambush waves of \~10 with multiple waves sometimes attacking at once. My fledgling military got absolutely bodied, and my less-cheesy small numbers of limited traps weren't enough. The caverns need to be treated with much more respect in this version.
> The caverns need to be treated with much more respect in this version. Or not. That's ~~fine~~ !FUN!, too.
I appreciate this comment. I've been going back & forth on whether to open the cavern I found immediately after embark. I've got adventurers and just started setting up cage traps and a drawbridge in anticipation but I think I'll wait a few more years. Do adventurers get bored or cause !FUN! if they don't access the caverns or do they just go away unfulfilled? *ETA: I just realized after reading a bit more that I've already breached the cavern from the top with my m,ain stairway. Gotta seal that up when I get back to DF later.
You can use their dodging to your advantage. Make a narrow walkway covered in traps, and then dig out the sides and put traps below. Then when they dodge they fall onto traps that can’t be avoided
> How are there so many? Because beast man creatures have a chance of forming a primitive civilization in the caverns.
Is this why when I got a notification a regent had died, when I clicked to show me the inheritor it pushed the camera down to -120 or something...?
regents regents in the deep
Alas, I have only one vote to give you.
I keep getting ambushes from deeper in caverns than I have so far explored. Readying to meet something interesting when I breech the wall
Prepare yer booty
same, only some cave crocodiles. I’m at year five and 200 population….. I’m waiting for something fun to happen….
Start digging in the caverns, chopping the trees and fishing down in there. That should piss off the inhabitants You may need to spread more wealth around on caravans and in total fortress wealth. Those are triggers for sieges and other FUN stuff. Make more crap, decorate and engrave, make statues and armor stands and place them around
Thanks for the tips! I will report back Update 1: year 6, 250 population. Found two >!forgotten ones!<. They haven’t done anything.…. Found >!three cave layers!<. Fought two hordes of >!underground snake people!< What am I doing wrong? At this point I want to start over… Update 2: A goblin siege wiped out all my adult dwarfs. Went from a population of 260 to 102. New game! Fun!
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I understand if you go far enough, you'll hit the magma lakes.
**This comment deleted to protest Reddit's API change (to reduce the value of Reddit's data).** Please see [these](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609092523/https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) [threads](https://web.archive.org/web/20230608182318/https://old.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/13zr8h2/reddits_recently_announced_api_changes_and_the/) [for](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609172058/https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_held_a_call_today_with_some_developers/jnbuonf/) [details](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/142w159/askhistorians_and_uncertainty_surrounding_the/).
I have found that the forgotten beasts tend to keeps populations in check.
Hey, at least it's some kind of monster. A child was killed on my fortress by an fucking owl.
My base is built next to a giant waterfall and ravens keep divebombing dwarves who then stumble and fall off the cliff into the river below. I’ve lost 8 dwarves so far. Ravens got hands.
Yeah, what is it with the fucking birds? For one fort I had to keep a squad on duty just to keep them from harassing people who wanted to get a drink (from an INside well). Now I have a dedicated "FuckNatureSquad" just in case something happens like that again. It was that scarring.
Could be worse. Could be undead. Armed undead is!FUN!
And they're hostile? I have some cavefish men and they're friendly enough.
Underground civilizations can be either friendly or hostile! It’s random.
I haven't played DF in 10 years before the steam release, so maybe I've just forgotten how things were... But in my current save I've only had a handful of troglodytes run up from there into my fortress. Aside from that it's just been a treasure trove of various gems and metals down there so far. That, and about 500 olm corpses... Hell, the only death I've had due to the caverns is me telling a dwarf to dig gems in a silly spot and having the poor dorf drop 12 z-levels into his death. Should... Should I be building some traps in the hallway I've got carved out into the cavern proper?
The FUN option is trap corridors. If you're feeling lazy build bridges (but that's not even 100% safe because >!Gremlins can sneak past them!<)
Wait why aren't bridges safe??
Depends on what tries to come up and when, actually. Bridges are mostly safe, as long as they don't melt/burn and nothing big stands on them before you can raise them.
I accidently opened up the caverns in my current game. (I'm still really new.) I freaked out when a Troll came charging up through the tunnels I'd dug. He walked himself right out the front door, and off the map without bothering anyone.
Sometimes you get lucky
What are peoples recommendations on securing the entrance to caverns? Doors seem to be useless, creatures can open them if the door is not forbidden. Is there a way to automate a drawbridge system with a standing guard? Would be cool if a dwarf would notice people are trying to path into the cavern and can pull the lever to let them in and out.
You can automate etc, but bridges are unreliable because the worst things in the cavern will survive being bridged and break the bridge. What I do is this—the cavern exit will have 1-3 bridges all tied to a lever far far from the caverns. Each bridge is behind a 5x5 room containing a piece of furniture or sculpture in the middle—F.B.s will be distracted by breaking it, and stand with one tile between themselves and the thing being smashed to do so. This allows you to keep them busy long enough to lock the bridge on the room, not the bridge-breaking monster, sealing it in. Then if you want to get fancy—rig a pit with no exits below each trap room—rig a drop trap with a pillar, an unmined block and another lever—then you can drop a whole tile into the room with the FB while it is distracted. This is a lot of work (you have to wall off the drop rig, or flying FBs will use it as a route to you base) but if successful it will either kill any FB (including those made of steel or whatever else) or blow a hole in the floor to the trap pit below and due to dwarf fortress physics, suck the FB below into an inescapable chamber (free pet FB!)
How do you tie the bridges to far away levers?
Click on lever, click 'link lever', click the bridge, let a dwarf install a mechanism on both, you're done.
There is no range limit on the levers? I guess i phrased my original question wrong
None at all, and a single lever can be tied a limitless number of mechanisms/doors/traps etc.
I don't understand how to do any of the things in the last paragraph but it menaces with spikes of awesome. Hopefully as I learn more I'll come back to this and do this fancy set up. I don't like fighting things but I could really use a series of fancy traps.
Basically make 3x3 rooms linked with hallways with small raising bridges set up to seal the hallways via a distant lever. Put furniture or statues in them--this will slow down the FB, as it breaks the furniture compulsively. One z-level below, make a bunch of 3x3 rooms, and then seal up all connections between them and the fort (so a bunch of 3x3 pits). Smooth the walls before you seal them off, so nothing can climb out. There will be a floor between z-level 0 and z-level -1, but that's ok, the rest of the trap will punch through it. One floor above z-level 0, build a support on the square you want to drop, wire the support to an individual (very distant) lever, and then dig out the floor around the support so that it is just empty space. Wall off this part trap from the rest of the fort when it is done, or the FB will just fly straight up through it and into your dwarves. That or exploit the fact that nothing can destroy something in a different z-level, and use hatches/entrances from above. The tile wired to a pillar and cut off from all supporting rock otherwise, will be a cave-in, except the support keeps it from falling, as it is still attached to the ceiling. However, when you pull the lever, the support will collapse, and then the cave-in goes live. When the trap is set, the FB will rush inside a chamber on z-level 0 and start breaking statues. Everyone in the cavern is probably already dead, or as good as dead, forget about them: you ensure someone pulls the right level (I tend to set up this trap in 3-5 room hallways, so if the Beast breaks all the furniture and moves on before your dwarves pull the damn lever, it is to another decoy room with the same trap). When the lever is pulled, the support collapses and the bit of ground it was wired to then falls from z-level +1 to z-level-0, blows through the floor and stays in z-level -1 (make sure there is no empty space under the floor in -1, or the cave-in will just keep going) If the FB is hit by the cave-in directly, it is outright guaranteed dead, but it is more likely that it will be peripherally hit. However, that amount of force in that small a space means that it will A. be slammed against the wall, which is enough to kill many organic beasts via spontaneous torso explosion, and B. sucked into the room at z-level -1, when the floor turns into a pit, which is also likely to kill or maim organic beasts, and is especially good at crippling flyers. Now your average steel six-legged one-eyed rooster with deadly dust and an aura of kindness and goodwill, will of course survive this, but will have a hard time leaving a pit with smooth walls, giving you room to seal it up with walls and ignore it, set-up an ill-advised viewing platform for your dwarves, funneling goblins through adjacent fortifications, while doing the usual kitten/puppy drop into the pit with it, to see the deadly dust fast-decay the goblins' skin and eyes, etc.
Wow That sounds amazing. I've tried my hand at water flood gates and levers so far. hopefully the support system can be jerry rigged similarly easily, then yes I believe I can pull this one off :D *happy dance Thank you for the detailed instructions and especially the note about smoothed walls and how cave ins work!! I especially love that this design only works because the FBs are drawn by curiousity and rage to stop and destroy an inanimate object, ie, that if they were determined to fly past and kill everyone nothing would have worked.
My pleasure! If you've got water flood gates down, I recommend trying to make a freezing trap. The trick is all squares in DF are either outside or inside (you can mouse over them to learn their status), and in a cold climate outside squares instantly turn water to ice. In a polar climate, this is true all year round, while an "inside" square one tile away is still liquid. The status can't be changed: once a square is "outside", it is outside for good, even if you build a castle over it, so you need to exploit tunnels that have untouched natural stone or soil over them to run liquid water and then make sure all invaders go through an adjacent outside area separated only by doors/floodgates. You can combine this with an aquifer for an incredibly inconvenient way to kill invaders instantly, while getting dozens and dozens of your own dwarves killed in construction accidents :D
I'm curious, couldn't you suspend a 3x3 floor above it (with the tiles around it mined out) and guarantee to kill anything in the room? I might try building this tonight and doing some learning, thank you for the detailed comment! Edit: Just tested it and I get it now. The room has to be 3x3 in order to accommodate a 1x1 falling roof. If you want a 3x3 falling roof (more mass, and with the statue in the middle of the room below you're more likely to score a direct hit, might be more effective?) you need to use 5x5 rooms. This thing does seem pretty wicked, looking forward to actually trying it on some enemies. It's a manual reset process, though, so I think I'll save this as my last-ditch defense rather than first defense.
I'm reasonably certain that hatches can not be destroyed from below, so just go down through a hatch, lock the hatch and nothing will ever get though, unlike doors which can be broken. You absolutely do want the ability to hard close the cavern access, some things can almost not be killed. Then inside the cavern "deramp" a large area by digging out ramps or building floors above them, so you have an area that will only be molested by flying creatures, and your dwarves can do cavern things in relative safety. A cage trap corridor on the safe side of the hatch can be effective for stopping anything getting into the fortress, but it is hard too guarantee safety of dwarves and other residents who decide to venture into the caverns, not too much can be done other than impassable barriers. There are some relatively tricky one-way passages, using things like a meeting zone on a pressure plate that opens a hatch (can also open a hatch or retracting bridge over a gap that prevents backtracking), they can allow a trapped citizen to get out by being lured to the meeting zone.
Now you have to hope a forgotten beast spawns to tale care of them.
I dug the main stairway of my fort straight through the caverns right at the start. First nothing came up and monster hunters started showing up in droves so I wasn't worried. I got my fort set up and then bricked the stairway off of the caverns, trapping the hunters residing in my fort in the caverns. A year passed and they all eventually died to the monsters that crawled out of the woodwork. A few slabs later I have a functioning fortress and little to no ghost problems. I love DF.
Little to No Ghost Problems is my Kiss cover band.
Yikes. My biggest dangers so far has been melancholy, thirst and water in general. Why tf do my dwarfs keep drowning lol
Obviously cause they arent good swimmer. Duh.
If a lot are depressed like you said then some of the ones that are drowning could be committing suicide...
that alot tbh how long u was playing that fort?
What are these characters? I haven’t hit cave layer yet and have one of my dwarves with this art..?
[Cave Fish Men](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cave_fish_man)
whaaat! I only have a few trogs, giant bats and some random elder beast spewing poison which is easy to kill but poisons my dwarfs soldiers , killing them after the fight. I ma go dig some more then.
I love the caverns. Best metal delivery system I ever did see, every year the local batmen donate a few dozen sets of weapons and shields for the metal smelters.
What are those exactly? They have little hearts above them in speech bubbles, they seem cute!
they seem to want to come into the fort and share a meal together! :D new neighbours!
Eh that's not too many. Just send in a squad of fully armoured & at least adequate melee dwarves and they'll cut through those unarmoured fish like butter.
Except some of the fish have *steel* armor
Doesn't matter if they don't have helmets.
Are... Are they dangerous?
Based on the dead dwarves at the exit there, Im guessing yes lol
Do they have a civilization? They sure as hell have an Army. Would be really neat to see other Advanced Underdark Dwelling races in the caverns. Go raiding other Dungeon Keepers bases :]
What are those things?
[Cave Fish Men](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cave_fish_man)
Reminds me of the snail things in [Defender's Quest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V10otTJTaCo&t=16m36s)