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Digging designation canceled

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This article is about the current version of DF.
Note that some content may still need to be updated.

This error message pauses the game and zooms to the location where the warm or damp stone was located.

Warm stone preview.png

Warm or damp stone can be very dangerous, as it indicates the presence of nearby magma or water, respectively. However, the stone could be warm/damp because the magma/water is beside the tile, directly above the tile, or directly below the tile - and, most of the time, you don't know which. You will only know if you are near the surface and find the damp stone below a known murky pool or river.

In this case, digging the room around the butcher was cancelled due to the last, bottom right tile being below the pool floor. The pool is known since it is on the surface. Note that it was possible to dig below the upper level's damp tiles of clay.

The safest thing to do is back off several tiles, mine up a z-level then approach the location again. Rinse and repeat until you emerge above the surface of the magma/water. Note that you will not receive warnings when digging staircases upward. If you plan on digging a staircase to a higher z-level, make sure there are no heavy aquifers or magma in your way!

Side Profile: 

   Below tile   Beside tile  Above tile            Key

     #######     #######      #######          # Unmined stone
 ↑   __o####     #######      #######          # Warm stone
 z   ###~~##     _o#~~##      ###~~##          # Square that was just canceled
axis ###~~##     ###~~##      ###~~##          ~ Magma
 ↓   #######     #######      __o####          _ Floor of the tunnel
     #######     #######      #######          o Miner

Only in the middle case would it be unsafe to mine out the square that had just been canceled: In the first and last cases, there would be a floor between your miner and the fluid.

If the damp stone is due to an aquifer, empty tiles next to damp stone will fill with water, either slowly with a light aquifer, or quickly.

The announcements can be changed to add recentering and pausing, either in the settings, or by editing announcements.txt.

Both the announcement and the designation cancellations occur when the designated tiles are revealed, so they can be prevented by revealing the tiles in advance using the tiletypes DFHack tool. This may reduce fun if it reveals water or magma that you did not know was there, so use responsibly.