Stupid dwarf trick

xTATTEREDx  · +FINE+  · *SUPERIOR*  · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡  · ☼MASTERWORK☼

v50.14 · v0.47.05 This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated. More Info · V

This article or section has been rated D for Dwarf. It may include witty humour, not-so-witty humour, bad humour, in-jokes, pop culture references, and references to the Bay12 forums. Don't believe everything you read, and if you miss some of the references, don't worry. It was inevitable.

A stupid dwarf trick is any project that requires a large amount of time and/or effort. They may provide a practical benefit, but are frequently done for the sake of doing them. They exist primarily as a challenge for experienced players. And remember... no wagering.

Adventure mode fortress

Build a fortress specifically for exploring in adventure mode. You can either make a nasty monster-filled challenge, or a smörgåsbord of masterpiece adamantine weapons and armor. Possibly both. Breaching the caverns or hidden fun stuff should ensure the fortress is occupied. Building a fortress is now possible inside of adventure mode as of DF v0.43.

Difficulty: The sky's the limit.

Usefulness: None for fortress mode, but filling it with high-quality equipment can certainly be useful for adventure mode.

Alarm clock

Are your soldiers all sound asleep while blood soaks the walls? No need to deconstruct their beds one by one, if you bought the Dwarf Wakey 3000! Simply a solitary floor tile balanced on a support, one or more can be toppled with the pull of a lever to produce an earth-shaking racket that'll have them leaping for their axes!

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Limited. They'll sleep through anything the noise. Although they have been known to awaken when drenched in water, possibly due to thinking it's alcohol, making an alarm clock is not impossible, if carefully prepared.

Alphabet cages

Use captured monsters in cages to spell messages.

Difficulty: Medium. Vowels are hard to come by.

Usefulness: Absolutely none whatsoever. (Easy reminders in case you're too lazy to use notes?)

Altar of Armok

Build a large altar made out of adamantine, clear glass, magma, and obsidian. The main altar should be hollow adamantine with clear glass "windows." It should have magma inside. The altar should be adorned with large obsidian spikes, as it pleases Armok.

Difficulty: Medium, raising with the amount(and respective difficulty) of bonuses you add.

Usefulness: Low to medium. If the chamber containing the altar is consecrated as a temple, dwarves will go there to pray, and may gain additional happy thoughts for admiring the altar's materials and craftsdwarfship.

• Bonus: Guard the altar with a megabeast.
• Bonus: Cover the altar with blood of a Titan.
  • MegaBonus: Cover the altar with blood of a denizen of the HFS.
    • ArmokBonus: Build the altar in the HFS.
• MegaBonus: Cover the altar in a temporarily lasting strength inducing extract.
• BerserkBonus: Cover the altar in a nausea-inducing extract.
• BloodBonus: Also cover the altar in an extract inducing slow death.
  • SychronizationBonus: Make it so that a dwarf that goes into contact with the altar dies the moment the strength runs out.
• SacrificialBonus: Sacrifice a dwarf to the altar every day.
  • MegaSacrificialBonus: Sacrifice an elf to the altar every day.
  • HistorySacrificialBonus: Sacrifice a human to the altar every day
    • MegaArmokBonus: Sacrifice all three species to the altar every day!
• MonarchBonus: Build the altar in the monarch's throne room! Yes, this stacks with the ArmokBonus up above.

Aqueduct power

If your river's a long way away from your fortress, building a trans-map axle may be less efficient than building an aqueduct and pump stack driven by waterwheels in the river. The pump stack raises it to the height of your fort, where it flows through the long, long aqueduct and drives waterwheels on the other end. Getting the water pressure just right so it powers your waterwheel without flooding the fort can be Fun. Diagonal channels make good pressure reducers.

Difficulty: High. Lots of stone, lots of engineering, lots of dangerous outdoor work, lots of trial-and-error for the receiving waterwheels.
Aquifers will absorb any amount of water at any rate. Using an aquifer as drain for the reservoir will nullify the risk of flooding the fortress due to the drain not keeping up with the supply.

Usefulness: High. As much water and power as you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.

Aquifer power

Aquifers can be a resource of immense power. If you have two levels of aquifer, you can generate a continuous flow by draining one level of aquifer into another and plant waterwheels above it. One stream can power a lot of wheels.

Difficulty: High. Anything to do with draining aquifers is very Fun.

Usefulness: High. The lowly windmill pales in utility compared to a waterwheel.

Archaeological excavation

A Fortress in the Caverns, built by the first dwarf tribes. Build the Fortress however you see fit for those prehistoric Dwarves (i.e. only primitive metals, elaborate tombs for the chieftains with burial objects, cave art, etc.) and abandon it. Then, embark with modern Dwarves, and excavate the ancient Fortress. Sort of like the Adventure Fortress above, only for Reclaim Mode

Difficulty: As High as you want.

Usefulness: Not applicable.

• Bonus: A Museum detailing the lives of those early dwarves.
• Bonus: Create a save with your First Tribe fort collapsed/flooded/etc, for other users to explore. Leave them some Fun what-does-this-lever-do problems to solve.
• EncinoDwarfBonus: Some of those early dwarves frozen in a block of ice.
• FunBonus: Breach the HFS.
  • MegaBonus: Do a cave in to the HFS after fighting it leaving multiple signs of battle in the fortress, to be dug by your modern dwarves.

Artificial waterfall

To keep the waterfall going, you need a pump stack, preferably powered by a windmill or water wheel. Alternatively, an aquifer, or other limitless water source, makes for a waterfall entirely underground.

Difficulty: Moderate (Low if there is an aquifer above pouring down).

Usefulness: Dwarves love waterfalls. Putting a waterfall in your meeting hall will give your dwarves good thoughts, although it can significantly lower frame rate.

• Bonus: Build it in a "Warm" or hotter climate so it does not freeze.
• DwarfBonus: Build it in a freezing/cold/temperate climate and keep it going entire year!
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use magma. It does not freeze, even in a freezing climate!
• MegaDwarfBonusEXTREME+: Use magma and water in the same waterfall. The results will enshrine you in dwarf history! Possibly permanently.

Ballista battery

Overlap a few ballistas to completely cover a narrow corridor. There is an unavoidable risk of your operators wandering into the line of fire.

Difficulty: Low. If you insist on highly trained operators with high-quality ballistas, it gets harder.

Usefulness: A complicated and dangerous way to defend a single corridor. Ultimately extremely effective. Sometimes.

Bastion

Construct an isolated burrow containing a farmer and some labourers, containing at least an uncontaminated well (an aquifer is great for this) and some farms. Use whatever elaborate mechanism you wish to seal it off from the rest of the fortress. Congratulations; your bastioned dwarves and their descendants will keep your fortress alive forever until one of them goes nuts.

• Bonus: Build your bastion at least in part in a clay or sand layer, add a little magma, and continue manufacturing useless crap even as the world crumbles around you!
• Bonus: Build it on top of a tower outside, and then deconstruct the stairs up.
• Bonus: Fill it exclusively with vampires, to avoid having to worry about food, children, and aging.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Hollow out a shell around your bastion, connecting it to the rest of the cavern by a single 1x1 adamantine support, and flood the shell with magma.

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: High. If your bastioned dwarves have high enough quality living space and few enough nonbastioned friends, it makes the fortress functionally immortal.

Bathtub

Stop dwarves from hauling in tons of exotic, poisonous sludge into your fortress by creating a tub filled with 3/7 water that everyone has to get through to enter the fortress. Include a system to change the water, so that they don't bathe in grime.

Difficulty: Moderate

Usefulness: Low in most cases. High in some evil areas.

• DwarfBonus: Make it drain and refill itself with clean water automatically once in a year.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Clean it with magma.
• *MegaDwarfBonus*: Have an alternative bathtub-buffered entrance next to the main one, which opens automatically when sanitizing the main one and closes and sanitizes itself when it is no longer needed, so that no jobs are canceled during cleansing cycle.
• ≡MegaDwarfBonus≡ : Make it clean itself with magma automatically once in a year, but make it wait for the moment when it's unused, so that no dwarves or pets are incinerated.
• ☼MegaDwarfBonus☼: All of the above, plus make it detect when there should be no dwarves or pets around, but invaders are in it, so that the cleansing cycle can be started prematurely.

Boat

In intermittently freezing biomes, ice may be used to create actual floating boats, submarines, or other floating objects/forts; as constructions built on top of ice do not collapse when the ice thaws.

Difficulty: High. Needs an intermittently freezing biome, construction is limited to frozen periods, and there's a substantial risk of flooding, drowning and being encased in ice.

Usefulness: Low. Forts within boats are protected from invaders while the water is unfrozen, but they're also trapped within the confines of the boat.

Note: You'll probably want to limit your saves to the colder months.

• DwarfBonus: Have the dwarves live on the boat.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Make miscreants/nobles walk the plank.
• *MegaDwarfBonus*: Bury your treasure on shore.
• ≡MegaDwarfBonus≡ : Have pet kea for each of your dwarves.
• ☼MegaDwarfBonus☼: Build it on top of an ice tower.

Bolt splitting operation

One curious property of Dwarven Physics is that a bar of metal makes 25 bolts, but if each of those 25 bolts is melted separately, they will become 2.5 bars, generating metal from nothing. Prior to the update that allowed splitting stacks at the trade depot, the difficult part was separating the stacks of bolts into individual bolts without destroying them. EliDupree originally discovered this trick:

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The yellow @ at the right is a stack of marksdwarves (all in different squads so that they'll stand on the same tile) equipped with adamantine bolts, standing on top of a stairway surrounded by fortifications. The blue ☻ at the left is a single Perfectly Agile soldier with orders to patrol up and down the line of green doors, with little delays at the top and bottom. (The doors are free-standing; they were built attached to a wall, then the wall was removed.) The "g" at the left is a goblin standing on a pillar (pitted from the z-level above).

When the dwarf at the left runs up or down the line of doors, it opens all of them, and some of the marksdwarves loose their bolts. By the time the bolts get there, the doors have closed, so they hit the doors and fall into the channel, where they can be collected and melted separately. (That distance is exact, by the way. Any less and they sometimes get shots through the doors, which kills your goblin. Also, with less-skilled marksdwarves, some of the bolts will stray and land on the floors, but that isn't enough to worry about even with mere dabblers.) Naturally, this is also an excellent way to train marksdwarves.

Another design resembles a tower where marksdwarves shoot from the top, with the following setup: (click then press '<' and '>' to go through different z-levels)

		╔	═	╦	╦	═	╗
		║	<	╠	╣	g	║
		╚	═	╩	╩	═	╝
		<		0	1

		╔	═	╦	╦	═	╗
		║	X	╠	╣	O	║
		╚	═	╩	╩	═	╝
		<		0	2		>

		╔	═	═	═	═	╗
		║	X	+	/	.	║
		╚	═	═	═	═	╝
		<		0	3		>

		╔	═	╦	═	╗	+
		║	X	║	.	║	+
		╚	═	╩	═	╝	+
		<		0	4		>

		╔	═	╦	═	╗	.
		║	X	║	.	║	.
		╚	═	╩	═	╝	.
		<		0	5		>

		╔	═	═	═	╗
		║	>	+	@	║
		╚	═	═	═	╝
				0	6		>

The '@' is any number of marksdwarves standing on a down stair. You may want to use a defend burrow order to restrict them to that tile. The 'g' is a goblin or any other creature your marksdwarves will normally fire at upon encounter (pitted from 2 z-levels above). The 'O' is a well, which is suspected to be preventing dwarfs from plunging in and starting brawling with the creature. Marksdwarves will be able to see the goblin or whatever creature below and will loose all bolts in their quivers on them. Curiously, nearly all the bolts will fail to cross the bend in the middle and will fall onto the tile '/' where they can be collected. This disregards crossbow and archery skills and the only difference they make is the speed at which the bolts are split. This design has the advantage of taking less space and being easier to set up, however it is reported that sometimes the dwarves will not miss some of the bolts. If you are only stationing one marksdwarf in the tower, stationing another one may help the first one miss all of his bolts, even after the newly added one is then removed. Sometimes dwarves will spam job cancellation on the bolt collection level, and it is also reported that sometimes some dwarves will start firing when they are on the bolt collection level. In such cases you may want to seal the collection level off and open it once in a while to retrieve the bolts.

Difficulty: Moderate. The hardest part is keeping the system running reliably.

Usefulness: Moderate. While there are certainly easier ways to generate adamantine, this is perhaps the most dwarfy.

• Bonus: Build a repeater to open and close the doors automatically.

Break the dam (release the river!)

Dam a river (or brook) using something non-permanent (floodgates, drawbridges) and build your fortress entrance in the now dry river bed, make sure you can seal it off nicely (floodgates anyone?) then wait till the first Goblin siege, let them get to your entrance floodgates, seal them, open the dam and laugh maniacally.

Difficulty: Low

Usefulness: Instantaneous death to all sieges

• DwarfBonus: Use magma.

Bridge-a-pult

A bridge that raises under its victims' feet, flinging enemies away.

Bridges don't fling creatures in any specific direction, apart from "up". So it's more of a spring-board than a catapult. If there's a lot of open space above the bridge, creatures can get flung very high - ten z-levels and more - and take appropriate falling damage. Most of them will land atop the bridge, and bringing the same bridge down will simply crush them.

Difficulty: Fairly easy. Getting the timing right promises to be the biggest challenge.

Usefulness: There are far more effective ways to defend a fortress, but few are as entertaining.

Cat-a-pult

Essentially a Bridge-a-pult, with specific ammo.

Usefulness: Can be used as a way to stop a catsplosion if used with male cats. Cats can also be replaced with elite citizens of your fortress.

Difficulty: Very easy, given that you have live cats in your fortress.

Corpse processing facility

WARNING:The system can freely jam on any body parts besides hands and heads without killing undead. With the help of a necromancer, corpses your dwarves refuse to butcher can be brought back to life and re-killed to yield bones and skulls for your bonecarvers if they are mushed up enough.

1. The simplest way to do this is with the help of height. A 1x1 pit with a minecart stop that dumps corpses down the chute, and several alternating floor hatches that close and open (linked to a repeater) with necromancers behind windows overlooking each layer of hatches to revive the bits of corpses. 2 windows with a mechanism controlled door in between, in front of each necromancer group can be used to control vision; but the system can only be stopped by unlinking the minecart dump to the refuse pile in your routes. Note: when I built this I had 3 hatches with 6 necromancers overlooking each (I had plenty of them since I embarked close to 4 towers). Revived corpses drop to their death and explode onto a tile with unright spikes linked (note that some of them will survive, so you need the spikes with a repeater or lever). The corpses that explode from the impact of height (or from other body parts/undead crashing into them) will hopefully yield bones. You make choose to re-haul up the body parts for another round, but only body parts still attached to a grasping part or the head will be revived, and this system isn't very efficient in the first place, so it may not be worth the trouble. Note that whole corpses usually yield 5-8 bones upon death (avg 6), arms only yield 1-4 (avg 2). You may also use this system with or without necromancers and pit live goblins into it, they usually yield 6 bones and some body parts.

2. The second way is much more efficient than the first, but requires 1 or more artifact mechanisms to make it work. Instead of using height to kill the corpses, a weapon trap with an artifact mechanism and 10 serrated blades of any material can be used instead (since artifact mechanisms never jam). Only 1 necromancer is needed for this method, and is positioned 3 tiles away from the weapon trap, overlooking it behind 2 glass windows with a mechanism door in between to control its vision. Your 1x1 pit should still be 5 tiles deep at least though, to prevent dwarves being spooked by the revived corpses. When you're ready, link up the route to the minecart and watch body parts revive and slowly get mowed down. It's recommended you have more than 1 of these small pits set up so you can grind more corpses and clear out 1 pit at a time while the others keep grinding.

Note: To clear out pits, turn off all refuse stockpiles that accept anything other than bones and skulls by turning on "accept from links only" so your dwarves only haul out the bones and not the trash.

Note: Try to use raising bridges as the door for each pit, kobold body parts tend to get mixed into the grinders which can lock-pick its way out of doors and result in doors with "door taken by intruder" and a couple hundred zombie body parts overrunning your fortress from the inside (a.k.a fun).

Note: I didn't try this with many building destroyers, but I'm pretty sure the glass windows are safe. Fortifications are not usable since corpses and body parts tend to get tangled up in them and are hard to get out, and spook dwarves trying to clean out the pits.

• Bonus: Use water to clean out the contents of the pits and wash them onto a 1x1 refuse stockpile.

Difficulty: Hard

Usefulness: High, and becomes higher the more corpses you have; especially useful for getting something more out of necromancer sieges than just useless corpses. Can also be used to recycle dead stray animals and your own dwarves that your dwarves refuse to butcher (don't forget slabs).

NOTE: necromancer siege's corpses now drop clothes and gear.

Crocodile farm

They're a thing in real life, and you can make them a thing in-game too! Use cage traps to capture multiple breeding pairs of alligators, cave crocodiles or saltwater crocodiles, train them, then create an area to store them with nest boxes. Breed them so you have more crocodilians to keep laying eggs, rinse and repeat.

Difficulty: Medium, somewhat dependent on RNG - you need to find someplace with available crocs, you want said crocs to actually spawn and you want said crocs to actually get caught in the traps. May Will also lead to an explosive and FPS-shattering crocsplosion sooner or later.

Usefulness: Very high, you'll never have to worry about food again simply from cooking the eggs, and that's not counting butchering the crocs when they're adults.

• Bonus: Have alligators, cave crocs and saltwater crocs all present in the farm.
• SwampBonus: Have your croc farm submerged in anywhere between 1/7 to 3/7 water. You gotta keep your crocs healthy and wet! But make sure not to submerge the nest boxes!
• SavageBonus: Have giant alligators or/and giant saltwater crocodiles as part of your farm.
• TrainerBonus: Have your dwarves become Expert alligator/cave croc/saltwater croc trainers.
  • SteveIrwinBonus: Have your dwarves become Expert trainers of all croc species.
• HungryHungryCrocBonus: Build your farm in such a way that sieges have to go through it to reach your fortress.
• UltraCrocBonus: Have alligator men or/and saltwater crocodile men inhabiting your fortress and helping train the croc farm.
  • UltraArmokCrocBonus: Have an entire fortress of croc men handling a croc farm. You're dwarves in spirit.

Dam

Build a wall across a riverbed to stop the flow of water. Floodgates optional.

Difficulty: On a map that freezes in the winter, or an aquifer located below the river, this is easy. Otherwise, very difficult. (See dam, or Moses effect, below. But with the bonuses it gets a bit harder.

Usefulness: Depends on how many bonuses you fulfill. The power station is obvious, and with the control room you could build up a nice defense system.

• Bonus: Excavate a reservoir and a lower river valley.
  
• Bonus: Build a control center to control the water flow.
  
• Bonus: Draw your entire energy from a power station within.
  
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use screw pumps and another dam to replace the water with magma.

Danger room

A room full of upright spear traps linked to a lever or pressure plate. Teach your dwarves to dodge the pointy sticks!

Difficulty: Low to Medium, depending on how you activate the traps.

Usefulness: Low. While this used to be a very effecting training method in past versions, the combat changes in 0.43.04 has made them much more deadly, even for militia dwarves. They also wear down your dwarves' armor and shields quickly, making them harmful for your long term survival even if your militia dwarves manage to survive the room itself.

Downside: Civilians and pets that wander into the danger room will inevitably get killed, even if you use low quality training spears.

• MegaDwarfBonus: Menacing spikes greatly increase the danger, and may help train your medical team (and/or your coffin construction crew).
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use adamantine spikes! On the plus side, you have a thriving coffin industry going now.

Day care

A room where you put all your dwarf children so they cannot be kidnapped by snatchers. Make a room with beds and tables and stuff, then turn it into a burrow, then add all your children to it. Remember to include a food chute to quantum stockpile a huge amount of food and alcohol on a 1x1 stockpile (so it doesn't rot) in the room. High quality food, furniture, and socializing should keep them happy. Note that the children will no longer be able to perform certain useful tasks like crop harvesting and deconstruction, and will not level up their skill in various professions like an otherwise vulnerable child, but this is a small trade-off if they usually get kidnapped before maturing anyway. This is probably obvious, but make sure this room is guarded, otherwise it will turn into a Dwarf Orphanage (Dorfanage) (with Goblins and Minotaurs welcome!)

Difficulty: Low. With the invention of burrows, you can designate the Day Care to contain all children, so it is unnecessary to use suicide-booth-micromanagement to contain the children.

Usefulness: Low. Think of the children, they will grow up and enter adult Dwarf life completely unprepared for the things that await them, having spent their entire lives coddled in a safe room. They might make good nobles however.

• Bonus: Add dogs and/or other creatures on lashes to constantly bite and scratch the children, so their attributes will raise due to constant fighting and dodging. When they come of ages, you will have incredibly tough, strong and agile dwarves, but covered in scars and psychologically traumatized.
• DwarfBonus: Add a small amount of magma mist to mentioned above, that'll burn the fat and make them fireproof.
• ArmokBonus: Combine this with danger room.

Doberman bomb

Whenever a dog or cat gives birth, stuff all the kittens and puppies in one cage in your entryway. Link this cage to a pressure plate beside it. Should your last lines of defense be breached, goblins will step on it and in the next instant be torn apart by dozens of goblin-seeking hostiles and distracted by dozens of surplus targets. The trap actually going off will probably be very bad for your frame rate.

Difficulty: Low to high, depending on the animal you use

Usefulness: Medium to very high, potentially fortress-saving

• Bonus: Train the dogs inside as war dogs
  • DwarfBonus: Use giant badgers, tigers, alligators, bears, or anything big and aggressive when tamed
    • MegaDwarfBonus: Use giant cave spiders, cave dragons, blind cave ogres, crossbow-wielding giant desert scorpions, jabberers or something really dangerous and rare.
      • UltraMagmaArmokBonus: Use one (or more!) of the following list: dragon(s), a bronze colossus(es), a forgotten beast(s) (bonus points for flesh-melting secretions), an undead giant sponge, or the denizens of the Hidden Fun Stuff.

Drophole

Imagine an execution tower, for rocks and pants. It's nothing but a very deep 1x1 up-down staircase for express service to the depths. Designate a garbage dump beside the top and dwarves will pitch anything marked for Dumping into it.

Difficulty: Harder than it sounds, there's always snags along the way. Surprise caverns can cost you miners and tools. Hitting water can be vexing. Dumping and reclaiming things can be a chore. It may serve as an unintended highway for Fun of any liquid or airborne variety

Usefulness: It's far easier to drop ore 100 z-levels to the magma sea than carry it. You can use this to transfer items between burrows.

• Bonus: Minecarts can make this semi-automatic, fed from a stockpile.

Drowning chamber

Difficulty: Moderate.

Usefulness: You can kill prisoners, useless peasants, irate nobles, hammerers, untamable animals, or anything else. Just be ready for something that knows how to swim. Also useful for catching fishies.

• Bonus: Utilize lava.
• Bonus: Utilize trained fish.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Edit the raws and do both.

Dwarfputer complex

A big mess of fluid, machine, and/or creature logic full of hatches, floodgates, gears, pumps, etc. and powered by waterwheels, windmills, or useless idle dwarves. Hook it up to doors, bridges, and traps.

Difficulty: Medium to high, depending on what you want to build. You'll want to build for very high water flow if you have more than a few fluid gates.

Usefulness: Your mechanics and architects will level up very fast. Manual pumps give something for your haulers to do. Try and make a clock to trigger different mechanisms in different seasons. See if enemies actually blunder into your intricate traps. Watch all hell break loose as water freezes and building destroyers enter your computer.

• Bonus: Use lava.
  • Doombonus: Use lava and build it so that building destroyers that enter the complex get killed by the mechanisms they destroy.
    • SelfRepairingbonus: Use both lava and water and implement the building destroyer killing system, but modify it so it's self-repairing, filling up broken spaces with obsidian.

Dwarven apartment complex

Essentially, one of the many possible megaprojects dedicated to providing dwarves with rooms so high above the ground they get vertigo. Every floor must have plenty of rooms of at least 2x3 squares, with walls and a door surrounding this. Oh, and it has to go up as many Z-levels as possible. For extra credit, decide on what the top story will be (i.e. as many levels up as you deem possible, minus one so you can build a roof) and turn this into a Royal bedroom for a noble, complete with gem windows, artifact/masterwork components, and untold numbers of armour stands and weapon racks. And then build some shorter but wider apartment buildings nearby to turn your fortress into essentially a giant fist with extended middle finger. Extra points for adding extra useless things for luxury, such as a magma-based heating system, fireplaces in rooms, and a lock-down lever in case of goblin attack. (or a self-destruct lever connected to the main supports, in case your dwarfish tenants are unsatisfied with your ☼5-star service☼).

Difficulty: Low, although the walls around the rooms can be a bit fiddly due to the impossibility of building walls on constructed floors (yes, an extra credit challenge is to do this without using Remove Construction).

Usefulness: Limited, because you could just dig the things underground and save yourself the hassle. However it is much harder to flood a tower than a cave, in case you're prone to fun by water. Additionally, if you have the time and resources to train a sizable force of marksdwarves, placing a few "security rooms" (with barracks, ammunition store, ration cache, armory, etc.) at appropriate floors, complete with fortified balconies, will allow you to take advantage of the higher vantage point.

• MegaDwarfBonus: Extend the tower to have levels below ground as well as above.
• MegaOrwellBonus: Make the whole construction out of clear glass. (privacy? Whatever for?)

Dwarven courtyards

Dig large shafts [first dig the staircase to the desired depth, digging out the size you want the shaft to be on all layers. Channel the outer later, then install supports on the base floor. Link the support to a trigger, clear everyone out, destroy the remaining staircase and pull the trigger] then cover them in glass, creating an indoor but light area that will keep dwarves from being irritated and nauseated by the sun, also improving general happiness and allowing close proximity to caverns and magma.

Difficulty: Medium, make sure not to mess up or you will lose your miners

Usefulness: Medium. creates vertical circulation and brings light to lower levels.

• Bonus: Punch a large shaft through a multi-level aquifer (hint: punch through the aquifer from below).
• MegaDwarfBonus: Create a network of self-sufficient communities per shaft, allowing them to be sectioned off in case of disaster. (I plan on colonizing HFS eventually on this paradigm, creating a mining team of soldiers to extract, manufacture and ultimately use adamantine products without being connected to the main colony in order to take on the demons while keeping the rest of the burrow safe.)

Dwarven disco ball

Why waste all those cut gems on things that only some selfish noble will enjoy? Create as large a wall-less sphere as you can, then cover it in Gem Windows of 3 different-colored gems to make it shine! The bigger, and more valuable gems involved (e.g., rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, or colored diamonds if you're really masochistic), the dwarfier.

Difficulty: Constructing a sphere is very hard, especially the larger you make one. Gathering enough differently colored gems can also be very hard, depending on stone layers. Trading helps a lot.

Usefulness: Negative. More value can be created by encrusting furniture, and Gem Windows lack quality.

• Bonus: Alternating alunite and obsidian tiles to make a 'dance floor'.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use lava contained in glass for illumination.
• UltraDwarfBonus: Caged "dancers".

Dwarven labor camp (aka Dwalag)

Create an aboveground walled fortress in a freezing climate with guard towers, barracks, housing, and armories. Dig a long ramp downward and add a large mining network below the surface. Make some small military squads to guard the camp. Designate the lower levels as workshops, and when migrants arrive, assign them to the mines. Give the workers minimal food and only water (no booze, booze is for the hypocritical decadence of Dwarkuta's leaders). Have them haul the stone and metal they mine back to the surface and ship the raw materials off to the Motherland. Import only food, booze, weapons, fuel, and other necessities.

• Bonus: Build the giant digging machines. They don't actually have to dig anything.
• Bonus: Go into the raws and rename the beverage of your choice to "Dwarven Vodka", and drink to the glory of the Motherland!
• MegaBonus: Escape. Wait for a goblin siege, then get everyone underground and block the entrance. Let the goblins in. Wait a few months. The goblins are now the guards you must kill.

Step 1. Secure the keys: Make improvised weapons. If you have obsidian at your disposal, make rock short swords.

Step 2. Ascend from darkness: Get your dwarves out of the mines and into the camp.

Step 3. Rain fire: Use your imagination. Try using magma, if possible.

Step 4. Unleash the horde: Attack!

Step 5. Skewer the winged beast: If the goblins brought a giant bat or other flying creature, kill it.

• Bonus: Use a ballista.

Step 6. Wield a fist of iron: Break open the armory and equip your rebels with armor and weapons.

Step 7. Raise hell: Exactly what it says on the tin.

Step 8. Freedom!

• MegaDwarfBonus: In Adventure mode, try (and probably fail) to lead the prisoners to freedom.

Dwarven refrigerator

Dig down to the 3rd cavern layer and harvest as many nether-caps as you can. Make them all into barrels! Nether caps have the unique property of being 10000° Urist, which is 32°F or 0°C. Now your dwarves can enjoy their favorite alcohol, cheese, and plump helmets chilled to perfection! If you've set your population cap very low in the INIT files, caverns aren't extremely dangerous, but you should still be on the lookout for nasties down there. Remember to wall off your entrance to the cavern once you're finished.

Difficulty: Low to Medium

Usefulness: Low. Booze stored inside will not perish due to heat if say, magma is dumped on it.

Bonus: Also use nether-cap wood to build the walls, floor, ceiling, and door.

Bonus: While we are at it make all your coffins out of it. 'Cryogenically' freeze those corpses!

Dwarven machine gun

Build a high fire rate, minecart firing machine gun. Must be fully automatic, capable of reloading itself, and should not jam due to minecarts being disrupted by collisions or derailments.

Difficulty: Medium to high, depending on fire rate, reload downtime, and whether or not minecarts are filled with magma.

Usefulness: High. A sophisticated minecart trap can keep out even the most persistent invaders.

• Bonus: Automatically reload minecarts with magma.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Integrate the trap with a dwarfputer so that it can automatically send minecarts to where they are needed most.

Emergency destruct stairs

A tall column of stairs plunging all the way down into the underdark, with a one-tile wide area of thin destructible floor all around it. In case of subterranean invasion, a thrown switch drops a stone O straight down, ringing the staircase and neatly severing all inter-level connections at a blow. Does with one lever and one support what would take dozens of bridges or hundreds of retracting grates.

Difficulty: Harder than it sounds.

Usefulness: Sometimes... sometimes they fly.

Execution tower

Just a tall tower to chuck your captives to their deaths.

Difficulty: Easy.

Usefulness: Lets you dispose of prisoners, and claim expensive silk, meltable iron, and (eventually) useful bones. Also highly amusing.

• MegaDwarfBonus: Send prisoners straight to hell. May make retrieving items difficult, however.

Flamethrower bunker

If your fortress happens to be visited by a dragon, capture it in a cage trap, then release it into a sealed bunker with fortifications around the edge. When invaders arrive, watch them get roasted.

Difficulty: Low, but requires a fair bit of luck - a dragon (or fire-breathing forgotten beast) needs to survive worldgen, then it needs to attack your fortress (instead of a giant/minotaur/ettin/cyclops or other megabeast), and finally it needs to make it to your cage trap without being killed by something else.

Usefulness: Medium. Dragonfire can kill almost anything, but will be blocked by a shield greater than 99% of the time. Adding a combustible floor (such as a paved lignite road) will significantly increase lethality for shield-toting targets. Also, any protective bridges in front of the fortifications may melt under sustained fire, leaving you with a bunker that nobody can safely approach; building the bridges (and mechanisms) from metal (or slade) will make them immune to the fire. Additionally, a skilled enemy archer can easily kill your dragon with a lucky shot if line-of-sight access is available.

• Bonus: Capture a fire-breathing titan or forgotten beast and use it.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Release the denizens of the hidden fun stuff and use them.

Flood the world

Difficulty: High danger. Will kill your frame rate unless you sink the world below water level (river or ocean).

Usefulness: Will prevent any sieges, at least. Or anything else, save for the occasional invasion of sociopathic giant sponge.

• Bonus: Use magma, just like Boatmurdered.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use trained fish to kill off all creatures not of your colony.
• MegaArmokBonus: Mod the game and do both.

Gladiator arena

Station some soldiers at the bottom of a shallow pit and dump your captives in. You can also use dangerous animals instead of soldiers. For extra points, put the prisoners in cages connected to ramps underneath the arena floor. One lever will open both the cage and a hatch above the ramp. Variant: build prisoner cages inside the arena, link to a lever outside the arena, lock the soldiers in, and then open the cages.

Difficulty: Low, but time consuming. Some danger depending on the relative skill of your soldiers and the danger of the captive. (If the prisoners have weapons, you can remove them by using d-b-d to dump the cage and its contents, then looking at and undumping the cages themselves with k-d).

Usefulness: Low to High, depending on how long your soldiers can draw out the execution. Equipping your soldiers with wooden training weapons can greatly increase the fun (and/or Fun if their armor isn't as good as you thought).

• Bonus: Losers get incinerated by Magma.
• DwarfBonus: Winners also get incinerated by Magma.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Use your arena as a "trial by fire" for migrants.

Grazer reanimation facility

Just as stables, but without grass, and on a reanimating biome. Pasture every grazer in a separate box, and build cage traps to recapture the animal after it joins the Dark Side. Make sure to forbid the area after you finish setting things up, because you don't want your dwarves getting killed caught instead.

Difficulty: Low. You always get some grazing animals to start with.

Usefulness: You get a decent supply of zombies to use in your cunning traps. Depending on your style of play, this may prove to be worth the effort.

• DwarfBonus: Use war elephants, or any other giant grazing animal you bought seized from elves.
  • MegaDwarfBonus: Use giant elephants.
    • BoatMurderedBonus: Release them all simultaneously to challenge your militia/play out a !fun! scenario for your fort.
• MenagerieBonus: Create a zoo using only undead grazers.
  • DwarvenMenagerieBonus: Combine this with the Zombie Thunderdome and have a rotation of undead cows fighting in the arena only to be re-caged when they try to leave.
    • ChampionBonus: Give each grazer rooming in the zoo according to their kills, with the champion having the most luxurious room.
      • AltarBonus: Turn the champion's room into an Altar of Armok.
      • FreedomBonus: Let the champion and higher-ranking zombies roam freely in their rooms, having to be re-captured for each battle.
        • !FreedomBonus!: Release the champion into your fort.
• HolyGrailBonus: Use white bunnies.

Greenhouse

A greenhouse is just a farm with the ceiling channeled out from above. This lets you grow outdoor plants without venturing above ground. For maximum style, build the greenhouse above ground and cover it with a glass roof to keep your farmers safe.

Difficulty: Low.

Usefulness: Medium. Surface plants can be grown at any time of the year, and some are more useful than those available underground - for example, sun berries can be brewed into valuable Sunshine, and whip vines can be milled into superior quality flour. Having greater food and booze diversity can also keep your dwarves happier.

• Bonus: Give it a glass floor to allow surface plants even lower down.
  • DwarfBonus: Utilize volcanic glass.

Hammer of Armok

A gigantic hammer made out of pure steel and/or valuables looming over your fortress entrance ready to smite those foolish enough to lay a siege on you. Also gives you a psychological advantage over the traders who unload their goods under it. Attach to a lever-linked support for quick-smiting.

Difficulty: Low. Depends on size and materials, though. Make it a gold hammer menacing with adamantine spikes, if you're going for high quality.

Usefulness: Low-medium. 10x10 size is minimum for practical effectiveness. 30x30 attached to a handle extending from your entrance actually works against sieges.

• Bonus: Cover it with blood.
• MegaDwarfBonus: Make it hollow and fill it with Magma
• ArmoksMachineHammerBonus: Set up an automated system that allows you to reset it quickly. Obsidianizers and the magma sea will be your friends here.

Human Fortress

Instead of digging a fortress, build above-ground houses. Create walls to keep the nasties out. The only thing you may have underground are mines and stockpiles. Create a huge stone fort for your nobles.

Difficulty: High. Building stuff will cost you resources instead of gaining them and flyers can be a real pain. Keep several Marksdwarfs handy!

Usefulness: N/A. (No cave adaptation)

• Bonus: Pave the roads between houses.
• HumanBonus: Dig a moat around your castle.
• MegaHumanBonus: Fill the moat with lava.
• SurfaceDwellerBonus: get the stone for your constructions entirely from open-pit quarries, i.e. by channelling instead of mining.
• MegaSurfaceDwellerBonus: Never use picks at all, all stone and metal must come from caravans or embark.

Ice tower

Building a huge tower is easy. To make things more fun, make one out of some exotic material, like glass, ice, gold, or soap.

Difficulty: Low. You need to be on a freezing map to pull off an ice tower.

Usefulness: Depends entirely on you.

• BabelBonus: Use DFHack's infiniteSky and build to the heaven itself.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Construct a sturdy vessel hanging over the top of a magma pipe or volcano, outfitted with everything your intrepid crew might need for their journey of exploration - food, booze, sleeping quarters and a bridge are a must, but depending on the amount of effort it can include other items such as a recreation deck, water reservoir and trade depot for dealing with the natives. When all is ready, lock the explorers inside and send them on their way. Bonus points if you can detach it from inside so you can use it in Adventure mode later.

Difficulty: Moderate to High, depending on the size of the ship. For bonus points, carve the entire thing out of existing rock overhanging a magma pipe and engrave it with messages. Burrows hel