40d Talk:Glacier

No animals at all, what about polar bears? I'm thinking about starting up an Inuit fortress soon, any tips for glacier would be appreciated.

I've seen animals on a glacier, don't worry. But you'd be well advised to bring a couple dozen dogs anyway, they ARE rare, and usually bad-tempered.--Zombiejustice 14:05, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

Also there are plenty of stones and ores, glaciers are quite ore rich.

Do rivers in glacier zones ever melt? Just curious... Xaque 22:25, 13 August 2008 (EDT)

I think glaciers are, by definition freeing. So, nope. --Simmura McCrea 08:42, 13 December 2008 (EST)

melting ice/farming

Can someone discuss how to get an underground farm set up on a glacier?--Jpwrunyan 07:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Mining a Glacier

I recently started a new fort on a glacier and started to dig down using up/down stairs for the central column for my fort. I designated all the stairs first, and then let my miners loose on them. The composition of the ground was several layers of ice overtop of layers of rock, the first of which was an aquifer layer. The dwarves mined the up/down stairways fine until the hit the rock. Let me see if I can explain this properly.

All the levels of ice, except the one right above the rock/aquifer, ended up with up/down stairs. The layer of ice that was right before the rock ended up with just down stairs, not up/down ones, but my dwarves were not stuck on that level. Nor could they continue their mining because they could no longer reach the level as the continuous stairway now had a break in it. Because dwarves digging down in such a manner mine the up/down stair from above, my best guess as to what happened was that the up part of the stairs melted (though there was no evidence to suggest this). I subsequently dug ramps all around the stairwell but these did not melt. They also did not provide access to the above level due to the finicky nature of ramps. However, in the process my miners did get stuck on the bottom level and were able to build up stairs from some nearby ice they had mined out and thereby escape.

It seems as though the melting of anything ice from being indoors and underground isn’t completely true. The stairs were all labeled as both inside and underground. However, as soon as I broke the surface of the last level of ice with the up/down stairs, the ice up/down stairs were replaced with rock down stairs. I would surmise that the melting of constructed objects only occurs at levels that are not ice levels. So, if you carved out your fort from ice you would be able to build ice constructions like walls inside, as long as it was on an ice level.

This really needs more testing. I was using version 40d16. --Frewfrux 17:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The above was done with ice ontop of a rock layer that was an aquifer. I've recently tried with a non-aquifer layer of rock and the same thing happened except I didn't end up with the down-stairs. I will continue to test soon and will update the main glacier page with the results. --Frewfrux 20:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Quietust: Amazing discovery about the soil! (Is it when you build and deconstruct *any* construction, or just ice ones?) This must be all the dirt in the glacier ice that escapes when an ice construction melts. Yeah, that’s it. It’s not a bug.

Your change mentions that “up stairs” will disappear. Do you mean the up part of the up/down stairs, the entire up/down stairs, or a carved up stair itself? I have only experienced this with up/down stairs myself, but haven’t actually tried with plain up stairs. My theory is that anything carved from the lower level of the glacier that breaks the surface of the stone will instantly melt into thin air. There are only two possibilities here, up/down stairs and down stairs. (You can carve down stairs from a natural wall, right? You don’t have to dig it out first? For some reason I can’t recall.) This would explain why carving ramps works, but if you were testing with plain up stairs, then my theory is no good. --Frewfrux 00:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The "soil" oddity is actually a known bug, and it happens with any process that alters the floor type (removing a construction, building a paved road, or designating a farm plot) "001058 □ [dwarf mode][jobs][constructions] (Report) when a wall placed on stone is deconstructed on the lowest glacier level, you can get soil instead of stone". --Quietust 00:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I did some more testing and discovered that my theory was correct after all. Up stairs work just fine, but both down and up/down disappear entirely. I also tested out smoothing ice walls verses non-economic (Quartzite, in this case) and economic (Obsidian as I didn't have access to any flux at the time. Here are the results:

Each smoothing and engraving occurred three times after my bookkeeper got the records up to date and all food and drink was forbidden, all tasks stopped. The stone detailer was of the lowest quality possible.

Starting fortress wealth: 10296

Wealth after three smoothings of Quartzite wall: 10300, 10304, and 10308

Wealth after three engravings of Quartzite wall: 10318, 10328, and 10338

Wealth after three smoothings of Obsidian wall: 10342, 10346, and 10350

Wealth after three engravings of Obsidian wall: 10360, 10370, and 10380

Wealth after three smoothings of Ice wall: 10388, 10396, and 10404

Wealth after three engravings of Ice wall: 10414, 10424, and 10434

Fortress wealth was checked separately after each smoothing or engraving. The result is that smoothing of any stone adds 4 to the value of the fortress (before adding quality mods) regardless of stone type, however the smoothing of Ice adds 8 to the value of a fortress. Engravings always add 10 (again, prior to quality mods) regardless of wall material. --Frewfrux 05:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Smooth ice is pretty. Also, I have one very small problem with the above; I am 95% certain that *smoothed* walls have no quality mods. Aside from that it all checks out. Now we just need to figure out how ~80 dwarves cram themselves into a crowded dining room and somehow not melt a hole in the floor with their body heat. --Mr Frog 08:58, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Animals from traders

I just had my first caravan show up. Initially I thought they didn't bring any creatures. I bought the cages anyway and put them in the animal stockpile which was when I noticed that there was something in them. A closer examination revealed a lot of them contained animal corpses. Is this a normal behavior for glacier biomes? Animals in cages from the traders have difficulty surviving the elements? Or is this something unrelated? --Frewfrux 03:57, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

This happens to me in my taiga fortress. I'm not sure if there's some temperature at which (most) animals can't survive or if animals just take damage while being transported through a cold or freezing biome, but it seems to happen in colder regions. Immigrant pets and animals you bring at embark seem to be unaffected. --LaVacaMorada 08:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

melting ice

Frozen ice that is mined and which turns into ice melts into water but this must not be confused with traditional water. Apparently mined ice acts like a stone with a very low melting point. Natural water (for drinking and farming) is a completely separate entity that freezes into an ice tile which can be mined. So anyway, this is hard to explain but drinkable water is like a raw rock tile with special rules and uses. Ice is like the stone left over when you mine raw rock except it melts into useless puddles. I have updated the page info accordingly. --Jpwrunyan 23:11, 1 January 2010 (UTC)