v0.34:Water

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Water is a fluid found all over the world. It flows from mountain springs, forming the world's oceans, lakes, rivers, and brooks. Water falls as rain and snow, and freezes into ice. Water is home to a variety of aquatic creatures. Many creatures can swim in deep water. Air-breathing creatures that are submerged in water can drown in it. Water comes in two varieties: freshwater, which makes up almost all inland water, and saltwater, which fills the seas. In this version, some brooks and murky pools can be saltwater even if the fortress site is partially mountainous. It is not known if this is a bug. To tell the difference, attempt to set up a drinking zone including some of the water in question. If there are zero tiles of water source available, the water is saltwater.

Mud is a contaminant which is created any time water covers an area. Any tiles that contain mud may be used for farming.

Water can be displayed in two ways, depending on the settings in d_init.txt. By default it is displayed with the symbols ≈ and ~, sometimes colored different blues, and white, showing ripples, and flow. Setting [SHOW_FLOW_AMOUNTS:YES] in d_init.txt will cause water to display using a depth indicator of 1 through 7 instead. Water can also take on other colors indicating contaminants such as blood, ichor, or goo.

Dark-colored water symbols indicate the water is one Z-level below the camera level. Water has 7 depth levels per tile, with 1 being a shallow puddle, and 7 filling the tile completely. Dwarves can safely walk through water up to a depth of 4. Dwarves finding themselves in water at a depth of 5 or greater^[Verify] are at risk of drowning unless they are skilled at swimming.

Interestingly, water can slow falls with deep enough water and short enough falls. If the water is deep enough relative to the height of the fall, dwarves can be less injured or even completely uninjured (from a 4 level drop to a 3 level deep pool, for example)

Processes

Evaporation

In temperate or colder climates evaporation only occurs when water or magma is at a depth of 1/7^[Verify]. Simply having 2/7 standing water is enough to prevent evaporation. Water or magma at 1/7 depth will even evaporate if it is on top of 7/7 depth water as shown in the example below.

█	█	█	█	█
█	1	1	1	█
█	7	7	7	█
█	█	█	█	█

Murky pools are an exception. In hot or scorching environments a murky pool can evaporate even when it is completely full. Murky pools also generate water to simulate seasonal accumulation from rainfall. This sometimes makes it possible for a murky pool to replenish itself even when it has been completely drained.

Freezing and thawing

Many environments get cold enough for water to freeze in winter. When this happens, any water that is exposed above ground will freeze into ice. However, water a single tile away that is in an underground tunnel will not freeze. When ice walls thaw, they always leave a 7/7 water tile regardless of how much water may have been present when the ice formed.

When outdoor water freezes or thaws it does so instantly. Any dwarf swimming in water when it freezes will die, and any dwarf standing on a frozen pond will fall into it when it thaws, most probably leading to drowning.

Mining ice can produce chunks of ice. Taking these chunks into a stone layer will cause it eventually melt, turning it into a "water" item (much like those hauled in buckets) which can't be used for anything. ^Bug:360

Caving in an ice wall into a stone layer will cause it to instantly melt into water (provided it does not become exposed to the outdoors), which can be used to get water near the surface in a glacier biome without having to use a pump stack to pump water up from a cavern pool.

If you constructed a well or a floor grate right over top of water and it freezes, the item will be deconstructed to its original parts, but some may fall into the water.

Freezing point

The freezing point of water, 10000 °U , is an important, if not the most important, temperature in Dwarf Fortress. Below this point, water freezes into ice, and above this point ice will melt into water. A biome that never dips below this temperature will make obtaining ice next to impossible, and a biome that never rises above this temperature will require underground storage, magma, or an alternative heating method to obtain liquid water.

Although it is most commonly known as the freezing point of water, 10000 °U is also the freezing points of standard blood, ichor, goo, slime, pus, milk, egg white, and egg yolk. Nether-caps are naturally constantly at this temperature, but will cause neither water to freeze or ice to melt. The temperature also acts as the condensation point of cave floater gas, at which it becomes cave floater juice. As a result of these dependencies, many creatures will die if they cannot keep their internal body temperature above the freezing point of water.

Below this point, many machine components will not work, instead displaying "Frozen here". This includes screw pumps, windmills, and minecart rollers. In colder environments, these machines must either be kept indoors or heated with nearby fire or magma.

Properties

Depth

Water can have a depth between 0 and 7.

Depth	Description
0	No water present.
1	Water may evaporate.
2
3
4	Cannot path through at this level and higher.
5	Swimming trains at this level and higher.
6
7	Risk of drowning. Can have water on floorless tile above.

Sourced water

Water that comes from rivers, brooks, oceans, aquifers or springs is considered to be sourced water. Any sourced water is an endless supply of water that can never run dry, although it can freeze for part or all of the year in colder biomes.

When using sourced water you should strongly consider installing floodgates and be aware of how pressure works or you could easily end up flooding your fortress and having a lot more fun than anticipated.

Flow

Water and magma are both fluids which are constantly trying to flow into adjacent tiles until they have filled all available space or until they run out of fluid. Fluids technically move in 9 directions: down, and to the sides. Fluids cannot move diagonally up or down. Fluids at a depth of 1/7 no longer attempt to move unless they can move down. Fluids under pressure can appear to travel upward until the pressure equalizes, though in reality they are moving downward and/or sideways relative to their source.

If the flow is strong enough, it can move objects such as dwarves, pets, stones, weapons or corpses.

Fluids in Dwarf Fortress act like a fairly thick, viscous material. This makes it possible to do highly implausible things like pump out a dry hole in the middle of a river or ocean.

Contamination

Water can be contaminated in different methods, both natural and artificial. This contamination can have a negative effect on the water's quality, and can even harm dwarves that ingest it.

Salt water

Dwarves can not use salt water directly; while healthy dwarves will usually prefer to drink booze, wounded dwarves can only be given water to drink.

To check to see if water is salty, use the i menu to see if the game shows the pond/pool as a water source. If the "water source (x)" is (0), then the source is salty. If not, then your dwarves will drink it.

A screw pump can be used to desalinate water.

Dwarves will drink water from a well over salt water, give it to sick dwarves and use it to clean wounds. You cannot designate the well as a water source, but the dwarves will still use it.^[Verify]

Stagnant water

Water taken from a murky pool or wetlands biome will be stagnant, just as water taken from near the ocean will be salty. Dwarves get an unhappy thought if they have to drink stagnant water, and a doctor cleaning a wound with stagnant water will have an increased risk of infection.

Similar to salt water, pumping stagnant water will make it clean. Also, if clean water touches stagnant water, it will kill it.

The game will describe stagnant water as stagnant if it was in a bucket or flask/waterskin, and looking at standing or flowing water with k will indicate whether or not it is stagnant.

Water laced with mud

If a water source is only one z-level deep and its floor is covered by "a pile of mud" (like most underground pools), then any water taken from it will be "water laced with mud". Drinking water laced with mud will give your dwarves an unhappy thought. It might also cause infection if used to clean a wound.

Unlike stagnant water, merely moving the water with flow or gravity will take care of the problem, since it only occurs if the water source tile contains "a pile of mud", and water coming into contact with a clean floor only creates "a dusting of mud".

Contaminants

Contaminants that get into water currently can do very strange things. A pool of blood that gets covered by water will be pushed out of the water as the water flows creating more pools of blood at the edge of the water. Overflowing a large reservoir that contains contaminants of blood will generate a large amount of blood very quickly. This behavior is thought to be a bug.

Getting rid of unwanted water

Water will flow off the edge of the map, endlessly, which is one way to get rid of large amounts of water (evaporation works better with small amounts). Underground, there are at least two ways to accomplish this. One is to channel your excess water into a cavern that is open to the map edge, as the water will flow out (depending on slopes, original water level and such). The other, probably easier method, is to mine to the map edge (since you cannot mine the map edge itself, just up to it), then smooth the edge and then carve fortifications into it. Water will flow through the fortifications and off the edge of the map. Make sure your exit flow is equal to or, for safety, greater than your input. One approach that may not work well is to dump your excess water into an underground lake that is open to the map edge, as such lakes have some sort of equilibrium built into them, and your excess water can cause the lake to flood.

Draining lakes and oceans from underneath can be a finicky task, but there's a bit of dwarven magic for it: build a retractable bridge on the level beneath the sea bottom, with ramps directly underneath it. Link this to a lever to control the flow as you desire. Now evacuate the dwarves and wall off the area above the bridge. Then, with the bridge in place, designate ramps around the bridge leading up - breaking through to the sea bottom. Now how can the dwarves dig these squares out? Yep, from beneath the bridge. In this way they get the water flow started without ever getting their little feet wet. This is a great way to set up channels one square in from the map edge near a water source, so that you can properly wall off the baddies from getting into the fort.

Raws

[MATERIAL:WATER] - reconstructed from data extracted from memory [STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:WHITE] [STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:ice] [STATE_COLOR:LIQUID:CLEAR] [STATE_NAME_ADJ:LIQUID:water] [STATE_COLOR:GAS:CLEAR] [STATE_NAME_ADJ:GAS:steam] [STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID_POWDER:snow] [STATE_NAME_ADJ:SOLID_PASTE:slush] [BASIC_COLOR:1:0] [BUILD_COLOR:3:0:0] [TILE_COLOR:7:7:1] [SPEC_HEAT:4181] [MELTING_POINT:10000] [BOILING_POINT:10180] [SOLID_DENSITY:920] [LIQUID_DENSITY:1000]