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v0.31:Caverns
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Caverns are huge natural underground tunnel systems, inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures and plants. They go up, down, left, right, and about anywhere else. Vanilla worlds provide three cavern layers, the first one residing about 15 z-levels below the surface. Number, size and z-position can be altered in the world generation parameters.
The caverns will usually have open map edges, allowing animals to migrate into and from the cavern. By exploring the caverns in adventure mode it is possible to travel large distances below the surface - the caverns effectively connect all sites that acess them.
Layers and Types
The cavern closest to the surface usually has few monsters (the occasional giant olm or toad) so it is pretty safe. The subsequent caverns will become increasingly fun, so don't dig too deep without making adequate preparation.
Depending on your world generation settings, cavern layers may come in the following variations:
Dry: Regular cave floors with no vegetation.
Wet: The whole layer is muddied, providing soil to a variety of underground plants.
Aquatic: Major sections of the layer are filled with Template:L, forming a gigantic underground sea, including Template:L and possibly camps of Template:L and other aquatic creatures.
There are three layers of the actual cavern, beneath the third layer is the Template:L.
They usually don't connect under normal circumstances.
Other Features
Deep pits: deep pits are... deep pits, they go from one cavern level to the next, and they are a fixed shape, when they hit the next cavern level they end up 'merging' into it (no other way to explain it), and the top z-level, the z-level it hits the next cavern level, is un-muddied rough rock floor where the the normal space of the deep pit and the random rock spires of the cavern collide.
Magma pipes: Magma pipes are tubes extending from the magma sea and their shape is fixed, it's really random if you find one, it could extend to the top cavern, or even just a few z-levels.
Dangers
There are many, many dangerous Template:Ls in a cavern, including Template:Ls, Template:Ls, Template:Ls, Template:Ls, and others. Also, any cavern of sufficient size will be inhabited by Template:Ls, which can be both benefit and hazard.
Vegetation
Depending on whether they can support plants, caverns will, from the topmost to the deepest, feature the following vegetation:
Level one: a benign (or as nice as caverns get) level, it has shrubs, Tower-caps, and Fungi wood, it will very likely have a gigantic pool at the bottom level.[Verify]
Level two: a level filled with, in addition to the above, Goblin-caps, Spore trees, Black-caps, and Tunnel tubes.
Level three: a level lacking the trees the first level had, while still having those the second introduced, also has, Nether-caps, and Blood thorns.
Plants from recently discovered layers will also start sprouting in your artificially muddied areas (but not on the already mudded areas that the caverns are generated with).
Benefits
Caverns provide ever regenerating resources in form of underground forests, animals to hunt, and fish. On breaching a cavern layer, a variety of ores and gems lining its walls will be revealed. Also, underground caverns can be used in constructions and traps. Throwing your prisoners into a damp hellhole filled with ravaging beasts is a nice addition, too.
When should I start exploring?
Likely the best time is when you get your first migrant wave, and have a military. As you can handle what tries to attack, and you don't have a siege to worry about, earlier is fine, but you will likely get a bunch of dwarves killed. The subsequent caverns will become increasingly fun, so don't dig too deep without making adequate preparation.
Not all parts of a cavern are immediately visible; A good portion of a cavern is revealed once you breach it, but other parts remain hidden until your dwarves explore them. Since you often don't know what you'll find in a cavern, they can be exciting places, but also very dangerous.