40d Talk:Location

Trees do not only grow on the lowest Z-Level. I have trees growing on multiple Z-Levels. --Tracker 02:46, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Hmm. Maybe only up to a certain height? My first map--while initially pretty decent (sand, water, trees, rock, variety of minerals) had trees only in the most lower left hand corner (one screen's worth), which also happened to be the lowest surface level I had. But you are right, my current fort (nice entrance, there was a pocket by a river tributary that I turned into my entrance gateway, but no sand) has trees on two levels, the lowest surface, and the second lowest. Still, it's something to be aware of. --Draco18s 03:26, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Absolutely - that's why I changed it to say "lower" instead of lowest. --Tracker 03:35, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

So I noticed. :) --Draco18s 03:26, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Towns

Any benefit of building in towns? Other than mining under the elves and dropping them into pits? --Ikkonoishi 19:35, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

Yes there is. Humans are more than happy to share their stuff with you, and won't be at all upset if you rob them blind it seems. --Ikkonoishi 22:11, 3 November 2007 (EDT)

Think this'll ever get changed? Seems kind of unrealistic to me...--Tarsier 19:56, 5 November 2007 (EST)

Mountain tiles guarantee certain features.

As per my addition, for each mountain square in the 2nd zoom view, you're guaranteed pits, a chasm, and an underground river. I have confirmed this myself using the reveal tool, and Today has confirmed at least part of it: http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=001176 - Kjoery 16:49, 6 November 2007 (EST)

Confirmed this too.--Richards 03:20, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Towns Revert

Any reason why that edit was unacceptable to you Savok? I'm not going to revert, but I would like an explanation. --Ikkonoishi 12:06, 12 November 2007 (EST)

Errors in PNG?

Contrary to the text in the attached PNG, I've had fortresses with pockets of sand sufficient for glassworking even when sand doesn't show up in the embark screen. Kidinnu 09:25, 28 November 2007 (EST)

Yes, all maps I've ever had have had at least a few squares of sand. Is it guaranteed? --Penguinofhonor 22:18, 30 November 2007 (EST)

I have never seen any pockets of sand. --Strangething 16:27, 11 July 2008 (EDT)

Another error is that magma and volcanoes now appear on the map MikeWulf 23:41, 6 March 2008 (EST)

Note that underground magma is hidden. Only lava on the surface is shown on the map --Strangething 16:27, 11 July 2008 (EDT)

Layers

The paragraph about layers is not explicit enough for newbies. For instance, 'igneous intrusive' never shows up on the embark screen. What I would like to see is something like

• red sand - useful for glass making
• gabbro - in this layer you may find chalk, a flux
• felsite - in this layer you may find copper ore

etc. (Caveat: the data I gave as example is most likely false and/or incomplete).

This way, by comparing the embark screen to this page, the reader would immediately find out what (s)he may find in the site. --Aykavil 09:51, 10 July 2008 (EDT)

I added a link to stone layers. There's a lot more in-depth info there. --Strangething 16:32, 11 July 2008 (EDT)

Fun starting locations

A starting location that looks pretty good from the readouts can turn out to be as boring as hell once you arrive at it. Are there any tips for finding interesting locations? --Theory 16:46, 10 August 2008 (EDT)

Define "interesting"? Anything with a chasm or in a terrifying biome could be 'interesting', I'm sure! Personally I often like completely flat land, so I can make the area interesting with my own constructions! That said, I'm considering next building a settlement on the side/s of a steep canyon or river valley! --Raumkraut 17:51, 10 August 2008 (EDT)

Magma

Regarding finding Magma, this page reads: "look for darker igneous rocks like basalt, obsidian, gabbro" -- is this accurate? Basalt and obsidian are igneous extrusive, while gabbro is igneous intrusive. Only the igneous extrusive page calls out that magma is commonly found there. --Sev 20:41, 13 September 2008 (EDT)

Mode:Civilisation

I just noticed, when starting a new fort and choosing which dwarf civ I was from, a symbol I hadn't seen before. Normally dwarve homelands are just blue omegas, this time I saw an omega and also 2 blue îs. Anyone else seen this/know if this has any significance? --Juckto 05:25, 20 November 2008 (EST)

I've had this happen to human civs and one dwarf civ- it means they somehow acquired forest sites during worldgen. Random832 08:42, 20 November 2008 (EST)

The flipside of humans conquering forest retreats and building towns on them is that you can end up with elves living with them who wear metal armour. I had an 'elven diplomat' show up to discuss human diplomacy, and many 'human' merchants and guards were also elves. That could get scary in the event of a siege! --Navian 09:41, 20 November 2008 (EST)

Not five minutes ago I had a goblin ambush that was mostly made up of Elves. They all had goblin-esque second names, so presumably they were kidnap-ees, although it seems that you can have large families of elves/humans/whatever who are all descended from kidnapped children and now happily evil.--Quil 14:32, 20 November 2008 (EST)

Elevation changes and inaccessibility

I have my doubts about this being true. I'm on a huge mountain map and the wagons have traveled over its peak without a care, since they can go up ramps without a problem. I believe trees and boulders are what causes problems, not elevation.--Maximus 17:25, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Hmm, ok. I've just cured some accessibility problems on a fairly mountainous map myself, and it seems the problems were right outside my fortress. There's an elevation change only 3-4 squares below (i.e. to the south of) my entrance ramp, and when I used the "upward ramp" designation on the area, my Dwarves dug away at the 3x5 area I'd marked, and -hey presto- the next caravan could suddenly get the big wagons into my trade depot (the smaller ones could get there fine anyway). I admit I was felling trees in the area as well, for timber, but I'd been doing this for the past two game years and it didn't seem to make any difference to accessibility. Ah well, maybe some more testing is required! Saiph 21:01, 10 December 2008 (EST)

"Invaluable" vs. "Unnecessary"

Okay, rather than a revert war, could we have opinions on which form of the sentence (if either) is a problem?

I for one certainly did not misunderstand the original form as trying to say that magma was worthless, and I would be likely to interpret the current form as trying to say that magma is unnecessary.

If enough other people do/did see the original form as being misleading (i.e. were misled by it), then I will withdraw my objections, but I do very much think that the original form is both the more correct and the less subject to misinterpretation. It would be possible to rephrase further to avoid the "misinterpretable" part (e.g. change "it" to either "that" or "doing so"), but I think the end result would not be as good as the original form before this change was made. --The Wanderer 16:03, 17 January 2009 (EST)

"invaluable" according to Merriam-Webster: "valuable beyond estimation, priceless <providing invaluable assistance>"
I say you're wrong. --GreyMaria 16:15, 17 January 2009 (EST)

Yes, I know it means that. That's exactly my point; magma is invaluable, not unnecessary.

The original form said that magma is invaluable, meaning "valuable beyond estimation" exactly as you say. The current form says that magma is unnecessary. The people who edited it into the current form apparently didn't mean it to say that, but that's what it says; the antecedent for the "it" in that part of the sentence is the magma, not the burning of charcoal.

I could go into considerably more detail if you want, analyzing possible alternate forms of the sentence and alternate interpretations of those forms, but I hope it wouldn't be necessary... --The Wanderer 17:01, 17 January 2009 (EST)

My interpretation was that the convenience of magma made wood-burning for charcoal unnecessary. Unnecessary is being applied to the main subject of the sentence (charcoal). Talking about wood-burning under magma though is a bit confusing. "Magma is invaluable for fueling your smithies, making it unnecessary to burn wood for charcoal fuel." A bit wordier but a bit clearer? And this way we get to use both "invaluable" AND "unnecessary"! --Torasin 17:28, 17 January 2009 (EST)

That would work in theory, but it's not necessarily the best way of phrasing it in that context. Still, I don't think I'd object to it; I still don't think there was anything wrong with the original form (my primary evidence for that, aside from grammar, being the fact that I was not even slightly confused by it), but the form you suggest would be better than the IMO misleading current form. --The Wanderer 18:36, 17 January 2009 (EST)

Yeah, the antecedent for "it" is "the burning of charcoal". Fuck you too, English Language. --GreyMaria 19:34, 17 January 2009 (EST)

At least in English you can figure it out, as opposed to, say, Latin, where you can order the words any damn way you please and its supposed to mean the same thing. (Fucking Roman poets) --Squirrelloid 19:42, 17 January 2009 (EST)

I can see how it could be reasonably read that way, but as I've said (or tried to say) at least once, I find the current form to be considerably more open to the opposite interpretation than the previous one was. Some third form would probably be better than either, at least potentially, but I'd rather not leave it as it stands... --The Wanderer 20:32, 17 January 2009 (EST)

As a more productive contribution, the current version reads just fine. I don't understand how there can be any confusion whatsoever. There is nothing unusual about that sentence structure, and I can't imagine the average 5th grader would have much problem with it, much less adults savvy enough to play a game whose graphics are rendered mostly in text with a byzantine user interface. In short, there is no 'other way' to read the sentence. Grey Mario has it right - there is exactly one way to interpret that. --Squirrelloid 23:00, 17 January 2009 (EST)

The thing is, I would have said exactly the same thing about the original form, and I do see the current form as being at least as easily misinterpreted as the original form.

I suppose I am, at least partly, arguing from a position of "there was nothing wrong with the original so it shouldn't have been changed so we should change it back", which isn't a very defensible position if there's nothing wrong with the current form either. I *do* think that there's more wrong with the current form than was wrong with the original, but I don't have very much to back that up besides the simple fact that I was not tripped up even slightly by the original form whereas I did find the current form to read strangely when it was first changed.

I quite literally had difficulty figuring out what the commit message was talking about; the only conclusion I could arrive at was that the person who made the edit (you, if I'm not mistaken) had misunderstood the sentence.

If the commit message had said e.g. something about a grammatical fix, and had made the exact same edit, I probably wouldn't have said anything. However, since the commit message seemed to be based on the assumption that the original writer had misunderstood the meaning of "invaluable", it seemed obvious to me that the edit had been based on an incorrect premise and therefore was itself incorrect; I therefore reverted it with what seemed to me at the time to be an explanation of (or at least pointer to) the fact that the original form had not involved a misusage of "invaluable" but had simply been using it in a different correct manner. At this point I don't necessarily object so much to the current form (though, as I've said repeatedly, I do think the original was better) as to the notion that the original form was that kind of bad.

--The Wanderer 15:52, 18 January 2009 (EST)

The original was wrong. It said burning charcoal was invaluable. Needless to say, as most people assume basic grammar, then the original editor of course thought that the original writer had misunderstood invaluable. The grammar wasn't wrong, the word was. Thus the editor correctly reported it as fixing word usage. --Squirrelloid 19:12, 18 January 2009 (EST)

Since there is so much dissent over which word the "it" binds to in the sentence, surely we can agree that either form is going to mislead some people and do away with both. VengefulDonut 08:37, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Except 'it' isn't actually confusing - the grammar is simple and obvious. The Wanderer seems to have a problem understanding basic grammar despite english apparently being his native tongue (which I gather from a lack of strange phrasing characteristic of other languages in his prose - not that other Western European languages would disagree with english on this point, can't speak for other languages). I don't think it needs to be changed for this reason. Now, having 'burning charcoal' as the subject of a sentence in a paragraph about Magma may be a little strange, so there may be other reasons to want to change the sentence, but acquiescing to people's requests to avoid grammatical sentences because proper grammar confuses to them is a bad idea - that way lies madness. Anyone who is misled by proper grammar should blame no one but himself. --Squirrelloid 10:56, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Obvious... to you? Yeah. To me? Sure. To everyone? Not so much. We can't afford to be aloof in word usage when the target audience is so broad. While it is strictly correct and clear to those of us closely familiar with english, others who read this wiki might be taken for a spin. We want to prevent that. VengefulDonut 22:23, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Madness is a prerequisite to play this game, and edit this wiki, so, I guess it's not so bad! Yet, as a french canadian I think the initial wording was not misleading. But to prevent an edit war, we should rules that out in a pit, with sharp metal objet. :) --Karl 12:16, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Reworded what seemed to be the offending phrase to something somewhat wordier but about a billion times clearer, in my opinion. If you really think this tiny part of the wiki is quite so important, do feel free to replace it and keep arguing about what seems to be a rather minor point.--Quil 23:45, 19 January 2009 (EST)

What is the RED LINE (and other questions)

I'm using 40d and have been seeing something show up that I can't find an explanation for anywhere. That is, when viewing the accessable civilizations on the embark screen, often a red dashed line (-----) shows up next to a civilization (so far just Goblins). What does this mean? Furthermore, the ordering of listed civilizations seems to change by location does this imply their proximity to the site currently being viewed? I hope that these questions are in the right section. It seems that "embark screen" is synonomous with "location" in terms of this wiki. Thanks. --Jpwrunyan 18:57, 28 January 2009 (EST)

The red dashed line indicated that that civ is at war with you, and will generally be nasty to you, unless I'm mistaken. The ordering of listed civs indicated their proximity, although the one at the top will be your civ since YOU are that civ, so you're closest to yourself.--Quil 16:48, 9 February 2009 (EST)

That's what I thought... but I could have sworn I saw the WAR tag once and got cofnused.--Jpwrunyan 23:37, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Inaccessible places

On my Pocket world (I use an EEE,) the only cold biomes I've found are deep in the mountains, where I'm not even allowed to embark. Am I forbidden to go there because it's in the mountains, and if so, could I set up fortresses as far into the mountains as possible and pave the way to the colder areas?--Yrael_Talk^{12:09, 25 11 2024 (EDT)}

Isn't that weird? I understand not being able to embark to, for example, the middle of the ocean, but why not mountains? No trees? Bring logs. You could expand the size of your embark site either horizontally or vertically so that it touches at least one non-mountain space but if your framerate is an issue, I guess I can see why that might not be a solution for you.--Jpwrunyan 23:41, 9 February 2009 (EST)