v0.31 Talk:Ice

Death by ice

I had one of my dwarf walking through a shallow channel when suddenly winter came the froze solid the water into ice, killing the poor dwarf.

Was quite funny. --118.90.6.167 07:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Observations from a freezing biome.

Mined ice produces boulders of Ice which can be built with or dumped, they still cannot be added to stockpiles and will melt underground or if the overground temperature rises. Ice boulders melt into 'dirty ice', which is liable to be cleaned up by a bored dwarf, and then into 'stagnant water'. Stagnant water seems to act like blood smears and other psuedo liquids, it doesnt actually put water in the square, run or form pools. Neither 'dirty ice' nor 'stagnant water' will muddy a floor for farming. Anyone see any mistakes in this?

I sure do, my good fellow; I sure do. --Bronzebeard 06:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

As for temperate biome, mined ice produces 'water' item ≈ which can be cleaned.
BTW, brook behaves curiously on winter coming. I've got an edge of two biomes on my map and the brook is flowing from one to another. And on late Autumn first freezes the upstream part of the brook, then the downstream part does, on Spring downstream part melts first, then the upstream does. --Peregarrett 13:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like expected behavior to me. The colder tiles will freeze sooner and thaw later, regardless of the water source in question. --FunkyWaltDogg 13:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It looks funny, when a half of brook is frozen and the other half still flowing =)

Further experiment shows:

* Later, on early winter it is always ice.

* When it is an ice boulder • it can be used as other stone, for example a wall can be build of it.

* When it is an ice pile ≈ it can be cleaned. Both items are described as 'ice'.

--Peregarrett 14:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this as well in a temperate climate with a brook. The transitions happen at consistent dates in the calender, obviously with water being liquid first, then patchily turning to ice, and the mined ice being anything from stagnant water, through dirty ice to ice (appearing as rocks) depending on the date and position on the map. Channelling the stuff creates 'glacial slopes', and any water that's flowed under the lip of the surrounding land (due to winter mining at the edges of the ponds/brooks when the water froze in previous winters) tends not to freeze up the following winter, at least at my current location, which can be a pain in the arse as it creates an 'entombing' hazard for the miners if they need to get access again and release too much of it at once and get caught in the quickly freezing flow. I can't wait for some sort of dwarven thermometer to be announced so that we can dot them around the locale and chart things a little more accurately. Could even have a 'noble' buzzing around with chalk and slate, doing the job for you.

Even though mined ice is treated as stone for purposes of construction I have had no luck getting any workshops to use it as such (ice furniture/blocks/crafts). Also making ice workshops works fine for me, i even have a working ice magma glass furnace. I have 2 magma glass furnaces, 1 melts quickly after construction the other doesn't, the one that doesn't melt is in a part of my map which is in a freezing glacier biome, the other in merely a 'cold' biome, the melting persists even when it's winter and temperature in that biome is subzero. --MLegion 16:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Personal observations as of 31.11: Ice stones can be designated to be picked up but won't be. Dwarfs just ignore it, even though they'll bring other dumped items to the garbage zone. I cannot do anything with ice. (This is rather irritating for me, because the ice.just.won't.melt.).

As of 31.12 I can mark ice chunks for dumping and it works normally. --FleshForge 10:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I get the impression you just can't farm at all in an ice map unless you are fortunate enough (!) to have water somewhere on the map that is practical to get to. That's a real shame! --FleshForge 04:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It turns out this is actually not all that hard, if you have large amounts and Z-levels of ice terrain type on your map: forum link --FleshForge 10:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

You CAN build workshops out of ice

Currently this page states that you cannot build workshops out of ice. I embarked on a glacier and immediately built a carpenter's workshop out of ice on the surface to churn out beds while the other dorfs dug down. It never did melt, though I deconstructed it for aesthetics.

Ditto, I just built my carpenters workshop out of ice. It was the first material in the list and I hit it by accident and left it to see, it works just fine.

Sculpted Ice Floors

It seems odd to me, If you Engrave Smoothed Ice Walls you get the standard Quality levels. I have never seen a single tile with a quality level indicator. Stone floor tiles can have them, but Ice floors don't seem to get any. Bug?

Alright, Some more experimentation made it clear that They have quality levels, they just don't get labelled. how strange.

Unstable Ice Constructions

I was lucky enough to embark on a map with a natural water fall, and what better trap, I thought, than to be able to reroute the brook through my entrance tunnel and push invading nasties over the waterfall and off the map. I was using drawbridges to control water flow I built one out of ice, ice being the most convenient material at the time, attached it to a mechanism and pulled the lever. Come the spring my drawbridge melted. I have not had the same experience with my ice walls.