40d Talk:Well

construction questions

Where can these be constructed? only near an aquifer?--Alc 14:16, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Open space probably refers to just that - a dug-out space below it that leads to water. Will have to test, though. --Tracker 15:54, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Does it need to be a channel all the way down, on all levels below the well, or can you have normal floor below it all the way down to water? Can you put one well directly above another well, and have them both work (if there's water below)? --Sowelu 15:56, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

yes.no.no.--Koltom 12:27, 1 March 2008 (EST)

I've built a well directly above another one, both are stated as "Active" --ConstantA 01:36, 14 April 2008 (EDT)

Has it been verified that you need water down there? --Mitchy 11:22, 8 November 2007 (EST)

yes.--Koltom 12:27, 1 March 2008 (EST)

Does anyone know if it is okay to have a well like this?
(side view)

_W_ 
| |    <-- Empty space between water and well
|~|    <-- Water down here
---

--Delton 16:07, 14 November 2007 (EST)

Confirmed that the above is a functional well. --Delton 07:52, 19 November 2007 (EST)

Potential Problem

As of v0.27.176.38a, when using an artificaly created well (by designating a 'Pond' zone and having dwarves fill it), it is posible that dwarves will take water from the well in order to fill the pond which feeds the well, acomplishing nothing. To correct this, examine the items contained in the well by pressing 't', then forbid the bucket and rope contained in the well. This will stop dwarves from taking water from the well and allow you to fill it. You can then reclaim the bucket and rope to make the well usable again.

Should this be in the article?

Duo March 11th 2008

Flooding?

Gah! Why do my wells keep flooding? How can I prevent this? Runspotrun 06:08, 26 November 2007 (EST)

-- Well ... if you did it like I did (lol), you lost to backpressure. i filled from a reservoir that was taller than my well floor. (and it was attached to a brook. :) I'm working on using a floodgate and pressure plate to regulate water levels. Vaevictus 11:30, 20 December 2007 (EST)

Fair Warning

Whatever you do, don't let a barracks area overlap any of your wells. Military dwarves can and will fall in if they're sparring next to it. Ah well, I didn't want that full set of bismuth bronze armor anyway. -- Vanst 08:39, 26 December 2007 (EST)

Grates and Buckets

Buckets don't pass through grates, in the well construct. That means a well with a grate halfway will become dry. I had 2/7 water above the grate (and 5 levels of 7/7 water under it), but it was not enough. Wlievens 07:24, 23 January 2008 (EST)

flood?

I have a lake murky pool outside(reaching down one more z level). On the same level i want to construct a well inside. can i just build a channel, thus tap the lake on the lower z level and then build a well on top of the end of the channel? or do i need one more level free space? If i can, will the water flood my outpost or will it stop on floor level? would it help if i tapped the lake one more level down? --Koltom 17:12, 8 February 2008 (EST)

So long as the well is at or above the level of the pond you will have no problem. --Ikkonoishi 23:11, 11 February 2008 (EST)

It worked fine. Now however the murky pool is dry, so i built a new one tapping the river. ;) --Koltom 13:53, 22 February 2008 (EST)

Using Buckets?

I'm having a hard time getting my dwarfs to use their new well. I...

• Dug a Channel with water beneath it.
• Designated a drinking zone beside it.
  • The dwarfs now drink from the channel.
  • Looking at the space they're drinking from says Open Space
• Created Blocks, Bucket, Rope
• build well over the water beside the drinking designation.

Now what happened was I got a massive flood of messages saying something like "XXX Cancelled Drinking: No Bucket at well"

So I went and built another Bucket, and now I have 2 buckets sitting in my finished goods stockpile, and nobody who's willing to drink from the well. How do I instruct the lazy dwarves to go and get the bucket and use it with the well?

Zeidrich 15:15, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Why do you need them to use the well? As far as I know, the only time having a well is useful is when the injured need water. Even then, I strongly suspect that people can just drink from the river. --Shadow archmagi 16:02, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Well, I want them to use a well because I built it! It looks prettier than drinking out of the stream. I'm pretty sure they get bad thoughts when they drink directly out of the stream. In this particular circumstance I was short on brewable supplies and I had a bunch of thirsty dwarves. Regardless of whether or not I should necessarily be using a well, I would like know how to use it.-- Zeidrich 18:37, 29 February 2008 (EST)

Well, I believe that the well is *built* with a bucket, since you require one for construction. If it's really not there for whatever reason, then you may want to rebuild the well(and make sure that furniture hauling orders are ON), and if that doesn't fix it, then i think this is a bug and should be reported to the Toady One, along with the save. --Digger 05:22, 1 March 2008 (EST)

Yes, the bucket for 'normal' drinking is built into the well. U only need extra buckets to fill a pond or give water to a resting dwarf. Check with the q-menu if the well is even finished.--Koltom 12:27, 1 March 2008 (EST)

Nope, not a bug. I figured out what it was. Apparantly my architect was far too busy tilling soil and hauling rocks to go and gather the rope and the bucket and connect them to the well. So while I had all of the materials, and the well looked complete, it was actually waiting for construction. I think I was just confused by the message as my dwarves were trying to drink from it before it was ready. Zeidrich 11:54, 3 March 2008 (EST)

Another Fair Warning

Dwarves don't even need to spar to fall into wells, they will generally not avoid walking over a well tile. This will result in the warning "X cancels...dangerous terrain" followed by dropping in anyway. The last bloody fool who dropped in seems to have been gobbling away at his food while walking, down the shaft among his gear i found 1 dwarven sugar roast. I mean, i know my sugar roast is delicious, but can you please sit down first like any goodmannered dwarf? How will I ever clean up that bloody mess you left in our water supply? --Koltom 22:24, 13 March 2008 (EDT)

Might be a good idea to designate the well's square a restricted traffic area and the eight squares around it low traffic. This should make aimless wanderers step around it instead of going WHEE! Animals don't respect traffic though, so maybe there will still be dogs and cats in the well. Rkyeun 09:32, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

One can fix the problem of well-diving dwarves by building a staircase adjacent to the well for them to climb out of... as long as your well isn't deep enough that they are stunned by the fall, or you have running water that sweeps them away.--Zipdog 20:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

1x1 Well

Does anyone have a good plan for digging a deep, unconnected 1x1 well? I'm currently thinking about trying something like this design, side view:

  _W_ 
  | |     <-- Empty space between water and well
  | |     <-- Empty space between water and well
  | |     <-- Empty space between water and well
 |   |    <-- Opening room
 |~~~|    <-- Water down here
  ---

It would be built like below, with a level pulled to knockout the support. Would the center collapse leaving a nice shaft?

  _ _ 
  |r|     <-- Ramp down
  |r|     <-- Ramp down
  |r|     <-- Ramp down
 | X |    <-- stairwelldown
 | S |    <-- Support.  Water will be down here, but starts out dry?
  ---

Tulthix 12:49, 20 March 2008 (EDT)

It won't fall down as the ramps still have support from the adjacent stone/walls. I've been trying to figure out how to make a 1x1 shaft too but haven't had much luck. When getting the dwarves to build ramps on top of each other they do build a shaft downwards but after a certain depth the pathfinding seems to get confused and they stop. Yvain 02:36, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

I was able to accomplish this by digging out a side-wall and re-building the wall after deconstructing a staircase down the shaft one tile at a time. If you want it to look pretty the 1x1 shaft going down should have nice stone smoothing on as well (and it covers up the "filled in wall" seam. Alternate methods: sacrificial dwarf can pull it off (he will rot away at the bottom of your water tank) and a utilitarian "escape hatch" out the bottom of the tank. I like putting in an escape hatch at the bottom, connected to a lever, with a grate and outflow underneath so I can retrieve that adamantium armor that falls down there. (when I don't build in an escape stairway anyway). Weasello 10:34, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

I recently discovered a handy method for digging single-tile vertical shafts clean. Dig out the shaft by making it a tall stairwell. After it's dug out, channel out the stairs at the top. Your miner will stand one level underneath it and destroy the stairs from below. After that's gone, repeat this level by level, until you're at the bottom, where you can destroy the stairway going up with d > z. This also allows for you to smooth the walls of the shaft, or replace the dirt walls with constructed stone ones before you take out the stairs. Vanguard 16:49, 25 February 2009 (EST)

I don't see why you'd want a deep, single tile shaft. The deeper the well, the more likely it is to kill someone when they fall in. If you want a well to hold lots of water, it makes more sense to make it extremely wide, but not very deep, as dwarves who fall in would be barely effected by it, and it would take forever for that many tiles of 7/7 water to evaporate away. --Kydo 08:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Salt Water

I've had a map with only salt water and an injured dwarf. Nobody could give him water because it was all salty. But I built a well over the water and dwarves brought the injured dwarf water. This happen to anyone else? --Bouchart 12:29, 14 April 2008 (EDT)

    ...use a screw pump to pump the water into an artificial reservoir (ie one you dug) and
 it will be desalinated...

– unsigned comment by 24.224.178.153

That has nothing to do with the question, which is about "wells", not pumps. From the water article...

    Oddly, a well built over a source of salt water will still provide  
drinkable water to dwarves.v0.28.181.40d

And personally confirmed, in multiple forts. Editing that into this article as well.--Albedo 06:47, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

FAQ

"How deep can a well be?"

This was added to the Water FAQ. I thought it better to put here, and the answer can be put on the Well page if/when it's discovered; as opposed to creating an entire new FAQ page. --Juckto 06:04, 3 May 2008 (EDT)

At this time (33g) I believe there's no limit to how far from water a well can be, as long as all tiles between are open space.

I've got a particularly vertical map (something on the order of 50+/- levels!) so I'll give this some testing later and update this (within a week hopefully) if my tests conflict with my opinion that there's no limit. --Edward 21:59, 3 May 2008 (EDT)

I decided to make a fortress just to test this. I have a well 13 z-levels deep, with water only on that bottom Z-Level. Because this fortress was made JUST for this, and I've not done anything else, I can't really build a well tower to fully test it, as there's three alligators hanging out outside my fortress doors. When I get them out of the way and build the super-tall well, I'll let you know if there's an achievable limit. (Hey, there may be a limit outside of the game's current potential map generation) Should only take a couple of hours, at the most. --Kydo 09:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Smoothing walls for a well

Does smoothing the walls of a place to be filled with water prevent stagnant water?

Makes no difference. Rkyeun 09:32, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

Doesn't matter. Dwarves will still drink stagnant water from ponds. --Stinhad Limarezum 14:05, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Monsters and wells

Way back in the 2D days, monsters would sometimes come out of wells. Does this ever happen in DF3D? Now that there's a real Z-axis, I imagine that monsters aren't just randomly generated like they used to be... but I do wonder whether tapping an underground river might cause something unpleasant to ride the bucket upward. I'm playing on a map with an underground river and a chasm, and I'm wondering how careful I need to be with my wells. --Ookpik 05:45, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

IIRC monsters can't pass through grates - so instead of putting the well directly over the river, make an artificial stream with both ends blocked from the river by a grate. Random832 01:33, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

I've never managed to make a grate block any water creature. I've had perch and lampreys pass through grates and pumps to end up in my meeting area. I wonder if bars would work better... Corona688 02:30, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

Grates/bars don't block vermin-class critters, which most fish are. HeWhoIsPale 09:11, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

Right, but those can't attack you. It will (should) block carp. Random832 15:54, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

Can vermin pass through fortifications? Random832 15:55, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

Vermin don't have to pass through: vermin are spawned "near" the biome they don't need to be right in the biome (just like fire snakes turning up in your tunnels, they "appear").Garrie 03:03, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Zone only drinking

Will a dwarf still drink from a well if zone only drinking is set? --Groveller 02:14, 1 September 2008 (EDT)

Wells periodically and mysteriously destroyed

I don't know what's going on with my above ground wells, but it seems I have to rebuild them about once every year or so. My dwarves are a happy bunch so there have been no tantrums and no bouts of vandalism or building destruction are recorded in my justice screen. I tried setting the area immediately around the wells as low traffic and the well itself as restricted traffic, but they still vanish, leaving one of their parts in the river-fed pool underneath. Could it have something to do with the fact that my fisherdwarves sometimes fish from the wells? Or is there a minor amount of seasonal flooding that I can not see but will destroy the wells? Lungfish 15:17, 30 December 2008 (EST)

Does it freeze? I had to re-build my outside well once every year in the spring until I moved it indoors. So, in my experience, only if it freezes, otherwise I don't know. The reason the part is there is because it drops onto the ice, which then melts. One more question, is it in a brook, river, or pond?--Destor 15:35, 30 December 2008 (EST)

I think it is a regular, yearly, occurrence. I don't think it's a problem of freezing though, since I've never seen any ice and no one has ever walked over my moat. One thing that might be a clue: I built a well on the next Z level up from one of the wells that gets destroyed every year, and it's survived, so I think it is flooding or something like that. Also, I'm pretty sure the only ground-level well I have that isn't fed by my river has avoided destruction. But if flooding is the cause, I should see more water tiles, right? Oh well. Lungfish 06:35, 2 January 2009 (EST)

Mystery solved. At the very end of winter all the surface water DID freeze, but for such a short time that I thought it was just the game glitching out for a second. I guess everything makes sense now. I hope I can serve as a warning to future generations. Lungfish 01:22, 3 January 2009 (EST)

Dwarves refuse to use my well

i have an "Active" well, that my dwarves seem not to like. i am always getting complaints that i dont have a well, but some dwarves drink out of it! any ideas whats wrong? Corhen 02:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

• If a lot of dwarves are needing to use a well at once and you only have one, they might "think" that there isn't one at all. Also, unless your dwarves are injured, your well should be mostly unused as they should be drinking alcohol, not water. --Quietust 16:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Water in well bucket freezes

I have a couple of wells, pumped from a salt water sea into an entirely constructed cistern. The wells are enclosed, the cistern is enclosed, and I'm in a freezing biome. For some reason, the snow indoors won't go away, and while the water in the cistern is liquid, the water in the well buckets is ice. Is there a reason for this happening, and is there a way to stop it? Conan12 13:57, 12 August 2009 (GMT)

a deep well shaft contributes to the building quality

How does one check this? --Birthright 23:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering this too, and then reading you ask it gave me the (hopefully?) answer.

Since value is listed in the room list, you should be able to build a series of otherwise identical wells over:

• Increasingly deep open shafts, with a fixed water depth at the bottom, and
• Fixed open shafts, with increasing water depth at the bottom.

Once you've done that, if I understand the room list correctly, you should be able to compare values of wells, though you may have to have them all designated as meeting rooms for them to display on the list, I'm unsure. I'm haven't attempted diagramming here in the past, so I'll post this, and then see about adding a visual afterwards. And I still sometimes forget to sign --Njero 02:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

::Diagram:

 ::  First Case:       Second Case:
 ::  _W_  _W_  _W_     _W_  _W_  _W_
 ::  | |  | |  | |     | |  | |  | |
 ::  |~|  | |  | |     |~|  |~|  |~|
 ::  |-|  |~|  | |     |-|  |~|  |~|
 ::       |-|  |~|          |-|  |~|
 ::            |-|               |-|
 ::

--Njero 03:07, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Value is listed in the (r)oom list? I only see the quality(for designer and mason)..if it's added in there the display should change when the water level changes. So far i went with reading it out from the z-screen which always is a bit tricky. --Birthright 10:58, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe this affects the value of a well. The value of the well is defined largely by the materials it was made from. If a well is made into a meeting area room, the ROOM will have a higher value, based on it's constructed contents, but that's it, and dwarves will not gain a happy thought from drinking from a well in an excellent room. Because the reservoir is just dug out space below it, and thus cannot be part of the room, which can only be defined on one level, it cannot add to the value of the well. Also, water has no value, so it wouldn't change anything. A flooded bedroom is no more valuable than a dry one. --Kydo 08:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Architecture Value

Since wells are designed by an architect, they gain quality (and thus architecture value) from both design and construction, so building a well from valuable materials and using a highly trained architect and metalsmith can boost your created wealth to ludicrous levels. In my current fortress, a well built from an artifact raw adamantine mechanism (1.95M), an artifact adamantine chain (1.46M), a masterwork adamantine bucket (36K), and adamantine blocks (1.5K) with both masterwork design and construction boosted my fort's Architecture value by over 80 million.--Quietust 00:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

... words fail...--Albedo 00:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Awesome. However, the adamantine block seems like a waste of time - its just a drop in the bucket to the value - surely you have better uses for that adamantine? Now, if you could just get your dwarves to make an artifact adamantine bucket... =) --Squirrelloid 06:55, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

If you can't get an artifact bucket, decorating the masterwork one with everything in sight will probably add another few million to the total. --LaVacaMorada 07:48, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The adamantine block was just to make the well light blue in color (the block determines the color of the well) - I could've used raw adamantine, but I also wanted to determine how many wafers are used to make a metal adamantine block (strangely, the answer is "4"). --Quietust 16:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Fort Okilor (testdrink)

Okay, after reading this, I'm curious as to the exact details on a number of things. I'm setting up an experiment fortress, and putting the results here. I'll be uploading the save file elsewhere, for anyone who wants to see working examples of different well types. It is dedicated to one thing only. Wells. Okay, not just wells, but different ways of building and managing wells, and their properties.

1. The super-deep well. Because of alligator infested above-land, I cannot yet make a well tower to fully test it, but as far as I can tell, there is no limit to the functional depth of a well. The current super-deep well is 13 levels from bottom to top. The bottom level is at 6/7 depth. The well at the top? Perfectly functional. This kind of bothers me, because if I tied a dog to the chain, it wouldn't be able to go any father than 1 tile away. It means a rope's length is defined by it's function, rather than it's own properties.
2. I decided to build another well half way down the same shaft, directly in the path of the one above. It does not block the well above. Both function just fine.
3. I constructed a hatch cover even further below, again, on the same shaft as the first two wells. this, of course, blocked the wells, preventing them from functioning. I then connected the hatch to a lever, and pulled the lever, to see if the wells would suddenly become functional again. They did. That means we could use a one-shot pressure plate to close a hatch directly under a well when it senses overflowing water, preventing further flooding. I guess wells don't obscure because they're just a special hole in the ground. I read that grates, though they do allow water to pass through, will also obstruct a well. This is also confirmed. Personally, I'd say it's because a bucket can't fit between the bars, and leave it at that. Even so, grates can be connected to a lever, like a hatch. Don't know why you'd want grates in a well, but okay!
4. I've made a single large reservoir underneath the residential district, and put a well in several of the larger bedrooms. Multiple wells can draw from one source, no concerns. All a well considers is whether there is a single tile of 7/7 water somewhere below it in a straight line, with nothing obscuring. Also, a wide well reservoir takes FOREVER to fill. It's virtually impossible to accidentally flood your fortress, when it takes a half hour to go from 0/7 to 5/7. Oh also, in doing this, I've discovered that if you leave any stone on the floor of a well, and it accessible to your dwarves, it is elligible to be selected as an item for construction, from workshops AND architecture. My dwarves have been repeatedly opening the side door my miners used to dig out the well, grabbing stone for construction, and getting out before they drown. My dwarves are quickly becoming excellent swimmers, though my fortress' main stairwell is flooding. I've dug a huge sump to deal with that, and once the stone's been cleared out, I'll just lock the door. (hey, if they aren't drowning, why the heck not?)
5. I made a single-tile reservoir for a well, and just filled it from the large one with buckets. Just to see whether even such a small well is functional, given the rate of evaporation. With such a simple well literally directly next to it's source, yes, absolutely. It spams your dwarves with hauling tasks, but it will always be full to what your dwarves need, it will never overflow, it takes up almost no space, dwarves can't die from falling in, (Unless they REALLY suck) and you don't have to mess around with all kinds of complicated things with levers and floodgates and safely mining out filling pipes.
6. I tried to get a dwarf to try and fill a pond well from it's own reservoir. I simply forbade all the other wells' buckets. Sure enough, the carpenter came along with a bucket, took water from the only available well, the one he was filling, walked to the other side of the well, and dumped the water back in. To confirm, if your dwarves are filling a well from it's own reservoir, forbid that well's bucket AND rope. If the rope is still usable, they'll still use the well... Somehow.
7. By this point, a lot of the alligators had just... Kind of... Left? I dunno. There were five, now there's one. None deceased. In any case, it's much safer to go above ground now, even with the carp, so I'm going to make the super deep well into a super deep, super tall well tower. While making the well tower, the remaining alligator was killed by the carp. Okay, so, at 30 levels above water, I'd say wells have no depth limit, because this thing's still active.
8. In doing all of this, I've found a pretty effective way of avoiding flooding your well. Digging out and filling the reservoir first, and not even channeling a hole for the well, completely prevents the well from flooding. So long as you have something, like a flood gate, that can then be used to prevent further flow into the reservoir, it will be filled to 7/7 depth, with no pressure behind it, totally safe to mine into with a channel and build a well on top. It's making sure that there really is no force behind it that gets tricky.
9. Okay, my next idea is just sillyness. I'm going to make a well with a running water fall going down through the well into it's reservoir. Usually, I fill my wells from the side of the bottom level of their reservoir, but I've never filled one directly from above the well opening itself. If this works, it'll be a perpetual motion machine, waterfall and well, all-in-one. Oh, and of course I hit Hematite and lignite in the process of mining this out... Oh well, not like I really plan on playing this fort outside of well construction experiments... Okay, that didn't work. I'm-a gonna' save this now, and put it on DFFD, if anyone wants to see examples of what I've made. (Or if they want to make my perpetual motion machine work) Okilor Example

Preventing dwarves from falling down a well is actually fairly easy, from what I can see. I've had a well in my dining room and nobody's ever (to my knowledge) fallen in. Even so, that's mostly just luck. (And short-lived forts) So, to prevent dwarves and animals from falling into wells:

1. Put it somewhere out of the way. If your dwarves don't have any reason to path over it, they won't fall into it.
2. Surround it with restricted traffic control. Then dwarves will be less likely to actually walk over it, even if they do go through that area.
3. Don't make it a meeting hall, or people will throw parties at it, and dwarves don't really care about traffic, when they're on break/partying/nojob, because they aren't trying to find the fastest rout to their task, because they don't have a task. Also, animals like to ignore traffic control.
4. For the same reasons, don't put it in a meeting hall.
5. Don't put it in a barracks, or around other places where dwarves may be fighting for any reason, as dwarves don't look before they leap. Though, now that I'm thinking about it, it would be funny to watch a bunch of goblins go tumbling down a well... Hm... I'll have to think on that.
6. Making a well so it's at the end of a hall, with only one tile dwarves can stand on next to it, will dramatically decrease the chances of anything ever falling in. because then the only reason anything could have to go there, is to use the well, which does not involve standing ON the well.
7. Making a well's reservoir shallow, but wide, is also a good idea, I think. A wider reservoir holds a LOT of water, and takes a LONG time to dry out. If a reservoir is shallow, that means a dwarf will only fall one level or so, which can only cause momentary unconsciousness at the worst, from what I've seen of simple cave-ins. That means your dwarves won't fall down the well, break their leg and drown. Making an escape rout from a well is probably also a good idea, I think.

I noticed in the Well guide it says murky pools and brooks can be used as water sources for wells. This should probably be stated there, but just building a well over such a thing is a bad idea. Any dwarf who drinks from a well over stagnant water gets a negative thought about the nasty water. That water only becomes not-bad when you channel it to some other place. On the same line, I've also experienced that simply building a well makes salt water drinkable. Which means that desalinating by pump is not a particularly valuable bug, by comparison, though it makes a tiny bit more sense. --Kydo 01:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)