40d Talk:Fire

Putting out fire

Not that it'll make much difference, as putting out fires in time to save a dwarf any injuries is nigh impossible, save for luck's intervention, but how do you put out fire?

I've been experimenting with this a bit, using the Dwarf Companion to help in this. I've managed to catch dwarfs and their clothing on fire by making paths through low-level magma (1 or 2 depth); No problems there. I do seem to have a few bugs in the next bit, however. My three experimental dwarves, (Each with different stages of fire injuries. One with only his upper body, another with both bodies and limbs at minimal, and another with all body parts, including internal organs in brown. After moving them into water, their clothes lose the flaming tag, with the exclamation points (!!) and flashing signature dissipating as well. However, this does nothing to actually remove the fire's effects. Even using Dwarf Companion's heal feature afterwards, the dwarves steadily lost health in the affected body parts until death, even though they were technically healed and no longer burning, or so the appearance of such was made.

I also tried placing them a Z-level above the Water, upon which, their falling caused an interesting thing to happen. The water immediately surrounding them instantly evaporated, and removed their burning tags, but the effect continued, as well. This makes me believe that the clothes may still be listed as burning, regardless of how they appear, and I am thus going to be trying to remove them from the dwarf, and see where that goes.

In the meantime, anyone got any suggestions? Jwguy 12:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Pretty sure if it catches on fire, it just burns. In adventure mode, despite being in a 7/7 murky pool, I still burned to death. Drunken dwarf

So, my miner just caught fire, trying to haul a rock submerged in magma. Someone helpfully hauled him to the royal chambers, now with a free space after the king consort just died of old age. I quickly activated the Noble Disposal System, and poured water into the chamber from the river. The body (he died while I was pulling levers to try and figure out which one was which), his clothing, and the beds seem to have gone out, from a few tiles of 7/7 water being poured onto him.

EDIT: No smoke, room submerged in 2-3/7 water, no smoke from body being hauled off, beds staying at xtower-cap bedx. Seems to be out.

Anyone able to confirm putting fires out with water? – unsigned comment by 81.110.246.251

Spreads?

How does fire spread in the new version. I don't have magma on my map so I haven't been able to experiment.

Maybe someone with experience could write up on the risks, ie how it spreads, how long it burns, how dwarfs react and what can be done to fight/prevent it. --Lucid 21:09, 31 October 2007 (EDT)

Could someone test to see what levels of water will extinguish fire somehow? Perhaps a fortress at high risk for fire could have emergency floodgates set up to dump precise reservoirs of water at important areas like the living quarters or food/booze stockpiles.

god save us if it is affected by the mud/blood bug too Thatguyyaknow 13:07, 8 November 2007 (EST)

no it ain't the blood bug, it's the fire bug. Someone copy and paste it from the old wiki. --Frostedfire 22:14, 14 November 2007 (EST)

I can confirm that fire spreads to adjucent squares. My fortress catched fire (long story) and wooden barrels and bins on stockpiles burned. When they completety burned out their contents catched fire and many piles of 20 !!leather!!, 20 !!cloth!! and 20 or more !!seeds!! generated very heavy lags. I didn't pay attention if it spreads diagonally but a burning item on the floor makes all 8 squares around it "warm stone wall" just as magma do to it's 4 directly adjacent squares.--Another 14:26, 26 November 2007 (EST)

Is there a way to intentionally start a fire? Diabl0658 20:12, 5 January 2008 (EST)

Dig into the side of a pool of lava. Remove a construction holding back lava. Open a wooden door holding back lava. Open a floodgate to lava. Some combination of pumps, stairs, ramps, walls, and stockpiles will allow you to choose what gets set on fire and where. Rkyeun 00:59, 9 March 2008 (EST)

Fire doesn't seem to spread by walking near it though... I forbade a few burning corpses and the dwarves had no problem stepping over it without catching fire.

Possibly fire on items like clothing or corpses will only spread to dwarves touching it.

A more informative page than "fire sucks" might be useful. Maybe a list of fire sources, what objects will and won't burn, how fire spreads and measures you can take to limit the damage or stop it. Maybe telling your dwarves to dump water in your hallways to keep a nice [1/7] coating?

In the 2D version 0.23, fire was like an invisible disease - dwarves didn't know they had it, it was contagious, and it killed them. Thus it was a major source of fun. In this version - I don't know yet. --Jellyfishgreen 09:05, 3 September 2008 (EDT)

Fireproof silk?

i noticed that cave spider silk clothes dont catch fire. i had a guy incinerated by magma touching him - he managed to move away and his silk clothing was all that was left Twiggie 14:06, 29 August 2008 (EDT)

If you get silk hot enough for long enough, it'll burn. It can take a while though. Odds are that if he managed to move away, then he wasn't touching the magma long enough to ignite the silk. --LegacyCWAL 18:40, 26 February 2009 (EST)

Forest Fire

I just started a new game near a volcano, in a forest. In the first winter, a fire imp left the caldera, and the forest burst into flame. Anyone see this before? The entire map went up in smoke... I lost 5 dwarves to it. --mabmoro 22:01, 31 August 2008 (EDT)

I've seen this multiple times on my current map, haven't lost dwarves, but did have a dwarf caravan run straight into one... As when I tried to pin down what started it and why, all the fire imps were back in the volcano (if they ever left to begin with), but at the exact center of the ring of fire was a pile of groundhog bones - so I think a fire imp wandered out, saw a groundhog, and fried it, causing a massive fire... that or groundhogs spontaneously combust now. Could probably use channels or walls as firebreaks to keep the whole map from burning when it happens, embark with a magma vent that (hopefully) doesn't reach the surface rather than a volcano, or try to close off the top of the volcano. Probably simpler to wall in any surface areas you're using and just tell your dwarves to stay inside when you see a fire though. --Nethras 15:02, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

I had a forest fire the other day - the burn pattern indicated it started in two places approximately simultaneously, in the vicinity of a Fire Man and a Cougar (though I never saw any bones). The Fire Man had been busy elsewhere with no such effect though, despite killing numerous groundhogs, a couple of Mules, a pet cat, and one of my dwarves.

The fire didn't manage to enter my encampment, probably due to the foot traffic killing off the vegetation around the entrance, but it did spread across the rest of that z-level. No harm was done to any living creature which encountered it though, as far as I could tell. --Raumkraut 16:50, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

Similar situation, I used a forest fire to kill a bunch of satyrs by trapping single satyrs in cage traps. I couldn't kill them otherwise because they aren't hostile and aren't animals, so military and hunters wouldn't touch them, but they do set off cage traps and once one is trapped, the other satyrs stayed close. So I scattered some traps near the caldera and waited; eventually a fire imp popped out, started a fire, and about fifteen satyrs all got roasted by the fire. Calenth

I've seen the aftermath of similar (burnt forest, caldera, fire imps, missing wildlife) and can verify forest fires are currently (40d) restricted to the same Z-level. --Jellyfishgreen 06:16, 7 October 2008 (EDT)

A fire started (don't know how) and burned down part of the forest. A bit later it started raining and the fire went out.

Stockpile exploit

"Fires won't cross an empty stockpile, providing an even fast way to create firebreaks."...not what happened at my own fortress. Maybe it doesn't apply if there's grass underneath? Needs more testing... – unsigned comment by MagicGuigz

I'll admit I'm not talking from my own experience. I got it off of the bug reports forum. [1] – unsigned comment by Fuzzy

I just checked, and fire will go right through as stockpile as if it wasn't there. Thus, I took that part out of the article. --LegacyCWAL 18:40, 26 February 2009 (EST)

Spontaneous Combustion?

A bunch of goblin clothes and bodies in my entrance hall just went up in flames mysteriously. There are no fire imps left on the map, the Magma Man is far away in the magma vent near the bottom (10 z-levels and 3 screens away - the site isn't even near the magma pipe). There's just a bunch of smoke and burning goblin clothes. The heck? --Squirrelloid 15:12, 12 December 2008 (EST)

Maybe it was in the bug forum, but I remember hearing of a similar known bug. {racks brain} Something to do with materials left in cages remaining tied to their owner. So if you strip the clothing off a goblin while he's in a cage, then drop the cage into lava, his clothes catch on fire. Or maybe it was the other way around. Assuming, of course, this is an example of this bug. -Fuzzy 16:02, 12 December 2008 (EST)

I did drop a goblin cage into lava... I don't remember actually stripping gear off of him, but he may have dropped something before getting caged... Must find a way to use this offensively... probably involving a goblin cage stockpile near lava, a goblin clothes stockpile near the entrance, and a booze stockpile immediately adjacent... --Squirrelloid 16:17, 12 December 2008 (EST)

What actually happens is thus: When the cage is destroyed by magma, the items inside mysteriously teleport to the precise location the caged goblin was trapped in, on fire. This bug is 100% repeatable and afaik not fixed yet. Hmmm! Replace the trap with a barrel after capture, and you might have a fairly reliable booze bomb. --Corona688 17:56, 12 December 2008 (EST)

If you figure it out, be sure to post the method in Talk:Alcohol#Booze Bombs. If you're going to be experimenting, why don't you try testing out the existing theoretical methods?

--Macdjord 14:44, 17 December 2008 (EST)

So, I haven't tried it with booze bombs yet, but I have used it for trap hall cleaning (goblins drop so much crap). Its really too bad silk doesn't burn.

There seems to be some preconditions to the item teleportation actually working - I think its a cage material thing but it could be a goblin equipment thing. I have had a 0% success rate with wooden cage traps and nickel cage traps. Metal cage traps which will melt in magma seem to trigger the bug upon destruction of the cage.

Now, my sample sizes aren't huge, so it could be that those trap types have only caught wrestlers. Since leather items burn up instantly in magma, and silk doesn't seem to have temperature, the goblin will need some metal items to hold the heat when teleported back to the cage trap square. That said, I haven't seen any items teleported if there wasn't also metal (all teleported piles have included metal), so maybe its a metal equipment specific bug.

Anyway, this definitely produces fire in the area (I have been using it to burn up leather items dropped by goblins), which means it should ignite barrrels and cause explosions - specific testing is obviously required.

--Squirrelloid 23:14, 26 February 2009 (EST)

Image

I added an image to the page to show what fire looks like. I don't see many other images like this on the wiki though, so I'm curious as to if this is a good thing or if I should remove it? --Lulzmango 00:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It's nice, maybe an alttext and caption text would add to it a good bit too Shardok 00:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

That image is made of 100% win! 3lB33 00:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks --Lulzmango 02:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like..that fire? --Dragon239 02:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion - someone should put up a picture of Smokey The Bear in section 3.2 sternly captioned, "Only you can prevent forest fires." I can do this if you guys want, I'm just asking for permission. 71.198.202.206 22:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Bad Cooking + Dumping Method

Hey, I just had a totally random fire break out in my food room, with all the bins and food catching on fire. I was lucky enough to isolate the room and have my dwarfs survive off that seasons' plump helmets until the fire burned out, but a few dwarfs did not escape. Whats worse is, they immediately ran into the meeting zone and socialized while on fire. I ordered their clothes (marked with the !!) to be dumped and that seemed to contain it, as my dumping area is a magma pit. Here's what I want to know, though:

• Can prepared food (the first items I saw on fire were a masterword fine dish and a bucket of fish) start fires?
• Does dumping worn clothing on fire contain it?

Thanks, --Iban 02:36, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The exact same thing happened to me, except my stockpiles were laid out in such a way that it was impossible to contain. 6 dwarves died of smoke inhalation, setting off a tantrum spiral. Anyway, the only thing I can think of is that fire imp meat may randomly spontaneously combust when it's taken out of the barrel. Or, it may be that it very slowly heats its surroundings, and after months in a barrel, the barrel reaches its ignition point. Those are my best guesses, anyway. Did you kill and butcher any fire imps? --Arrkhal 03:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

That is a FANTASTIC guess. Yes, there are a nuclear family living inside my volcano and my hunters must love the taste of fire imp meat. I think you're right about this. --Iban 03:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I highly doubt this; the real danger seems to be that posed by the average fire snake. If you get meat from them (yes, it does happen--I learned this from adventure mode firsthand by starting with it in my inventory) through whatever source--my most recent (accidental) source was a caravan, though I'm not sure whether it was a goblin one or not--it will almost immediately (within around 3 turns/steps, I think) set whoever is holding it on fire without actually being on fire itself. This means it will not wear out and will be a hazard indefinitely as a result. I lost a fortress to this literally yesterday, I'm reclaiming it right now. (Somebody managed to dump the meat, but the fire wasn't possible to contain.)

Personally, I think this holds some better long-term potential for weaponizing than the lignite/coal + bin exploit does, since that has apparently been known to not actually be permanent.

On a slightly unrelated note, I've got around 30-60 orcs hanging around outside as "friendly" creatures, which means I can't fight them with the embark force of 70. What fun! ~ Midna 22:30, 8 January 2010 (UTC)