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v0.34:Swimmer
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| Job Title | Peasant | |
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| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Drowning
Swimmers can move in water without drowning.
Dabbling or untrained swimmers will start drowning immediately upon contact with deep water (7/7 depth), and require a ramp or stairway to get out. If neither are accessible, they're done for. Fortunately every shallow body of water has ramps.
Novice swimmers are able to get out of water safely without needing a ramp or stairway, but they will start drowning if stunned. Once that happens it can be difficult to get them out, as they lose the ability to exit anywhere and behave just like an untrained or dabbling swimmer. Namely, they start drowning. Everyone is stunned by falling into water rather than entering it calmly, which is what normally happens when they aren't entering it of their own free will.
Adequate swimmers do not panic and start drowning in that situation, even when attacked, so training to this level is highly recommended. Higher levels only increase the speed when swimming, with a legendary swimmer being faster than he would be while running.
Learning/Teaching swimming
A dwarf in the water will gain the ability to swim very fast - sadly not fast enough to prevent death from drowning. While water with a depth of 7/7 is deadly for non-swimmers, 6/7 or less will not harm any dwarf. So you can use water from 4/7 to 6/7 safely to teach your little ones how to swim. The speed of learning is independent of the depth, but water with a depth less of than 4/7 is not deep enough to make a dwarf swim, and therefore learn anything.
Training your little ones just requires a place of constantly or temporarily 4-6/7 water. Military orders or making rooms a meeting hall will not entice dwarves into the water, so you may need to prevent them from leaving an area (locked door, etc.) and then fill the area with the required amount of water, or dump them in from above using a retracting bridge.
Swimming, since it involves no activity, can be potentially useful to train physically handicapped dwarves, whose conditions might go away or become manageable with an attribute boost to strength, endurance, willpower etc.
A fully automated method to train idlers is to use water flowing over a 1-z drop, with a 1-wide meeting zone at the top of the ledge, and a swimming pool at the bottom. Idlers will go to the meeting zone, be swept over the side into the pool and swim to the ramp, and repeat this for as long as they are idle. The meeting zone must have a low enough rate of flow that it has unsubmerged tiles, so dwarves voluntarily move into it. This can be accomplished with tricks like restricting flow through diagonal passages (see Pressure for details).
Diagram of the 'fully automated' configuration described above: .... - (pool continues as desired) ║≈≈≈≈║ - depth 4-6 swimming pool on Z-1 ║+++▲║ - dropoff / entrance ramp from above ║~~~~║ - meeting hall, depth 0-3 ╚╗%╔═╝ ║%║ - screw pump (S->N) ║.║ - limited pump source (e.g. depth ~4-per-tick tile on Z-1) ╚═╝ Not pictured: exit from the swimming pool, preferably close to the entrance ramp to minimize delays in training.
Adventure Mode
In adventurer mode, as a novice swimmer, by moving carefully (alt+direction) into open space above water and selecting the option to move below (such as West/Below), then you can swim about without getting stunned and starting to drown. To get out, alt-move carefully against a shoreline and select the option to move above.
Swimmers can also dive and rise through the z-axis by pressing > and < respectively. Note that air-breathers will be unable to breathe without air in the tile above them, and without returning to the surface will eventually drown. (Sadly, there's no oxygen meter as of yet, so you'll never know when they're about to expire. Don't linger too long.)
In adventure mode, water preference can be switched between "when possible" and "necessary" by pressing m.
If the temperature (press P) is "freezing" or if it is "cold" and close to sundown, the water may freeze while you are swimming, which instantly kills you and leaves your frozen corpse encased in ice and a valuable find for archeologists.
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