v0.34:Double-slit method

QuantumMenace has developed a method how to drill through an aquifer of an unknown depth commonly known as the double-slit method. This is a newbie-friendly and detailed tutorial based on Quantum's original forum post.

Even in this newbie-friendly tutorial it won't harm if you first train this on an embark which you don't intend to play after you've made it through the aquifer. Therefore I suggest you take this embark setup:

Suggested embark setup

• 1 Proficient Miner
• 3 Proficient Masons
• 1 Proficient Carpenter
• 1 Proficient Woodcutter
• 1 Proficient Mechanic

sell the anvil to buy:

• 30+ stones (you will need 16 pieces of building material per aquifer level)
• 4 logs (to build a carpenter's workshop and a pump)

Make sure you have at least:

• 1 (battle) axe
• 1 pick

to cut down trees and mine

Procedure

Preparation

Using your logs of wood, you

1. Build a carpenter's workshop

Your carpenter will use this workshop to craft all the parts necessary to build a pump, i.e.:

2. a block
3. an enormous corkscrew
4. a pipe section

5. Dig a 2×2 staircase until you reach the aquifer layer.

Digging through the aquifer

Your last non-aquifer layer

Your first aquifer layer

1. Make yourself an access to the aquifer layer:

1. Channel out one tile at each side of your staircase like this.	2. This is how the aquifer level looks now.
3. Build a floor replacing the stairs between the channels	4. Build a pump there, pumping from the west (make sure one of your dwarves has the architecture labor enabled).

2. Make sure you have at least one dwarf with the pump operating labor enabled. Start pumping the water from one side to another. And build walls around the first quadrant.

1. Designate these two tiles to be dug	2. First build the wall on the south (expect a lot of cancellation spam)
3. Then the wall on the north	4. Then these two walls (build them one by one)

3. Deconstruct the water pump, build it facing the other direction and start pumping again. Build walls around the second quadrant accordingly.

1. Start with the southern one

2. Proceed until you achieve this

4. Deconstruct the pump and the floor tiles in your non-aquifer layer and construct an up/down staircase there instead.

1. Pump and floor deconstructed

2. Stairs built

5. The procedure for building walls in the third quadrant differs slightly from what you have been building until now.

1. Dig a channel to the left and right and build a water pump between them (e.g. pumping from the east) and start pumping	2. Don't dig under your stairs. Instead, build a wall in place of the south-eastern channel tile.
3. Proceed walling off the the third quadrant	4. Until it looks like this. You mustn't dig the wall under the stairs.

6. Now for the last quadrant. Deconstruct the pump and build it to pump to the opposite direction. It will spill some water on its level while pumping, but it isn't dangerous.

1. Designate these two aquifer walls to be dug.	2. Proceed with the northern wall.
3. Then bulid these other three walls.	4. Deconstruct the pump and the floors and construct Up/Down stairs there.

7. We will now deal with the last piece of aquifer.

1. Deconstruct the wall marked with the "C" to gain access to the last aquifer tile. Aquifers don't leak diagonally, so we are safe here.	2. Mine the last piece of the aquifer on this level.
3. It will produce 7 units of water wetting the ground a bit.	4. Dig downstairs to check whether there is another aquifer layer below.
5. Construct up/down stairs on top of the downstairs to have an access to this level once the ramps are removed.	6. Deconstruct the redundant walls.

8. Level done

Enjoy your first secured aquifer layer.

If you see there is another aquifer layer below, you repeat the steps in sections 1-7. To dig through one layer of aquifer this way will take you 2 or 3 months in-game time.

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