BASIC MAGMA GUIDE + Lava Forge / Smelter Setup DWARF FORTRESS

[@mechanikate]

Still works in April 2024. Used this tutorial on 2 separate saves now, it works great! thanks so much

[@Biwso]

If you want to have a lever linked to a bridge submerged in lava, don’t forget that the mechanisms needs to be lava safe as well.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Yes! I forgot to mention and it's really important =)

[@eepopgames2741]

Is there a good way to specify which mechanism is to be used when linking? Beyond wild things like moving all non magma safe mechanisms in to a locked room or such.

[@Ic0nGaming]

@@eepopgames2741 The easiest way is to use up all mechanisms if any of non magma safe material are available and then produce only magma safe ones for a while. If you only have magma safe mechanisms they can only grab magma safe mechanisms. And once the magma constructions are done you can leave them unspecified again. Or generally make them magma safe just because. These are the laziest - albeit effective - solutions I could mock up from my mind =)

[@Argosh]

@@eepopgames2741 use the k menu to forbid all non magma safe mechanisms. They're grouped by material in there.

[@303Thatoneguy]

@@Ic0nGamingsimple solutions are usually the best anyway

[@Dtyn8]

I was literally just about to look for this! Thank you!

[@HansLemurson]

No exploit is needed for the safe tapping of Magma. Just have your miner stand in a magma-safe door while they channel the obsidian wall in front of them. Taking out tiles on 2 Z-levels delays the magma flow just enough that the miner can slam the door shut and leave. What I do is I dig out my magma-plumbing on Z0, then build the tapping door on Z+1 so that the channelling opens up the flow to the plumbing below. Make sure you lock the Magma-Door, though! Preferably wall it off. (I had a incident where a Magma Crab casually strolled in through the door, causing a minor magma flood on my forge level that melted all of my copper bars and tetrahedrite ore, and I lost a blacksmith-in-training (fish dissector with strong kinesthetic sense who liked breastplates) who dodged the Crab's fireball and landed in the spilled magma)

[@Ic0nGaming]

Wow, that's a real neat workaround to the exploity method! I just linked the door on the same Z-Level with a Lever after the tapping and then you can open it remotely. But since you clear 2 tiles at once, your method opens several new options that I find helpful. Thanks for sharing, don't be too surprised if your method shows up in future magma tutorials, cause I personally only use exploity game methods if no other way is available. And your method feels way more "inside the rules", even if that's a very subjective thing for everybody. It's a Sandbox game and everybody should decide for him/herself if they wanna Impulse Ramp down to the Circus or just use regular Dwarven Engineering. Right now I'm doing lots of magma science in that very fortress shown in the tutorial and loving it.

[@pixelpusher220]

Would this work on multi tile wide channels? Still awesome but seems like it might only work when you have one wide.

[@HansLemurson]

@@pixelpusher220 You can have it feed a multi-wide channel, but I'm not sure if you can safely channel into two wall sections at once. I recommend using this "magma tap" to fill up a reservoir you've designed yourself so that you can deliver magma at higher rates than what dribbles through a 1x2 hole.

[@MrTerrakotta]

Nice. I prefer to pump my lava through fortification and seal the opening when i finish. This way I'm perfectly sure nothing will kill my legendary armorsmith... Other than vampires, werechinchilas, berserk children or overzealous barmans i guess...

[@bojanstefanovic2517]

August 2024 still works. The very important part is to lock the fire immune door so that the dwarf really does mine it from the tunnel below. Amazing guide

[@mildlyderanged]

Great guide, just used this in my own volcano fortress and it works perfectly!

[@HansLemurson]

Handling magma is a very hot topic!

[@billyray9925]

Instead of a gate to keep out the fire dwelling critters you can pre smooth the wall tile and then carve fortifications where you would put the gate, if that works out better for the job. Fortifications have holes for magma flow, but keep out the imps etc. Faster than a gate and requires no materials

[@Ic0nGaming]

Very good advice!

[@billyray9925]

@@Ic0nGaming I've just discovered that if you do this, once the tile reaches 7/7 magma creatures can pass through sometimes. Still has its uses in temporary setups I guess.

[@RyanJosepher]

Exactly what I was looking for. Ty

[@AnalystPrime]

Thing to remember about all workshops is they have tiles that creatures can pass through and tiles that are inaccessible so if you make a 3x3 room and the only doorway happens to be blocked by the furnace then dwarves cannot go in or out of that room. Aside from the occasional pathfinding issues this is very important for magma powered workshops because if the hole in the floor is not covered by one of those inaccessible tiles the dwarf working there is in danger of falling into magma, getting attacked by magma carps and, even worse, losing items by accidentally dropping them in magma. Note the blocked parts are in different locations in different workshops, better remember to check the wiki and design which magma workshop goes where before digging any holes in the floor...

[@MultiTsunamiX]

I thought they removed that for the premium edition

[@AnalystPrime]

@@MultiTsunamiX Huh, looks like the dwarf does walk thorough the smelter at 11:53. So is there now a floor over the hole or can creatures still fall into magma?

[@DanielCoffey67]

In the Steam version, magma forges are fully passable by dwarfs, creatures and vermin. Critters can come up easily and if you have allowed access to the pool of magma below, so can crabs and FBs. Dwarfs forced to dodge can fall through the hole into the magma too. Goodbye Legendary Weaponsmith!

[@AnalystPrime]

@@DanielCoffey67 Yea, that sounds like a bug, not a feature. Needs to at least put a grate over the hole, but IIRC items can still pass through that.

[@Toomanian]

Got suggested this after accidentally releasing lava across half my island, causing a massive forest fire that burned down like 75% of the trees and killed all of my livestock. Weirdly my dwarves are pretty happy. I sent them to my underground burrows during the fire and they seem to like it in there more than the surface.

[@Caminante-blanco]

Thanks for a great tutorial!

[@Augustus087]

Thank you! I thought the tile that needed magma was the center tile on top, where the "fire" for the forge was displayed. Appreciate your showing me this without needing to set up mine carts, etc!

[@Ic0nGaming]

No probs =) Always love to remind everybody that every problem has tons of solutions within the game, so there's a lot of fun finding variants and personal add ons =)

[@Calzou]

Thanks a lot for all your videos, it's helping me a lot! great job!

[@Ic0nGaming]

Very happy to hear that! Dwarf Fortress is such a wonderful game and I'm happy for everybody I can bring aboard. Cause it certainly has one of the hardest learning curves I've ever seen ^^ Strike The Earth!

[@DanBeLiving]

Thanks ! works in March 2024!

[@falknfurter]

Great stuff again from you! This is easily the best introduction into working with Magma. Now I just have to find an easy way to bring some Magma from the deepest levels up to my fortress. :)

[@JackdotC]

So for some rough math to back up your rough math, if a 2 block wide chanel can cover 3x20 tiles in a layer of magma we can kinda figure out how it works. 3x20=60. Each tile can have 7 layers of liquid on it, and 60/7 is 8.5714 ish. If we assume the system rounds down then we can look at the magma source. You open 2 squares, and they are surrounded by 6 squares, bringing us to the total 8 squares from the equation. So without doing any of my own testing, it apears a maga inlet channel has enough magma to fill 1 hole, times by the number of tiles that surround it. Meaning a tile with only 1 connection to another maga cell would provide 2 full tiles worth, or 7x2 with only 1 layer of magma each. Might be a good way for people to control the flow of magma, or atleast dig a big enough hole to not cause an overflow

[@nickjohnson410]

I learned stuff Thanks Love the vids

[@happytraveler6933]

Great job.

[@welcomeblack]

> Tells us we'll learn how to place a magma forge > Places a magma smelter instead My face when ...

[@Huzai9]

I thought I found a magma pipe in the first cavern and it appeared to be a one 7/7 zed level deep pool not connected to the magma sea.

[@chrisseymour2848]

Does smoothing walls and floors make magma flow faster?

[@HansLemurson]

Not as far as I know. In my 13 years of playing, I've never heard of anything like that. If there is an effect, it's not obvious enough to notice, but I don't think the fluid mechanics take anything like that into account. Remember that Ramps let dwarves walk up to the next Z-level, but somehow occupy no volume. You could have fun testing, though. It can be fun to set up little experimental projects like that. Remember: A negative Result is still a Result!

[@chrisseymour2848]

@@HansLemurson thanks for the info, this is only my second fort ever, I have made a magma tap to pour onto invaders at my gate, was just wondering if it would flow faster and catch more enemies, so to speak.

[@Ic0nGaming]

2nd fort and already dropping lava on your enemies? You learn fast, young Urist! =)

[@cadunkus]

Turns out lava can pass through doors on the diagonal if you have an L shaped hallway and the door to stop the lava is at the curve, maybe move it 1 space. Whoops.

[@secfeed6987]

why go to the trouble to feed the magma out into another chamber, can't you just channel straight over the top of the main magma pool?

[@Ic0nGaming]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It really depends on the terrain. And generally there's plenty of solutions for one problem in this game, very true.

[@secfeed6987]

@@Ic0nGaming ok thanks, just asking as its the first time I am doing it, thought maybe there is a reason not to.

[@Ic0nGaming]

@@secfeed6987 No probs! If you have the feeling you can improve something you see/read in DF, always try to! Every experienced player is happy about every experiment conducted, as there is just so much to discover. But maybe you want to save first, sometimes things look easier than they are :D

[@destroff2exciter]

This did not work for me unfortunately.

[@TopShelfMontana]

yeah don't use exploits like that... cheesy. Glad you don't care but I do.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Well sacrificing one miner to the volcano is way more immersive indeed =) And this is just one method, feel free to work with the magma just like you feel cool with it. I'm waiting for these things to get ironed out in the upcoming patches.

[@MrTerrakotta]

Well... Miner looking dumbly at slowly flowing lava till it reaches him is also kind of cheesy, so that's one exploit i have no problem using.

[@Ic0nGaming]

@@MrTerrakotta Overall I try to rely on exploits as kind of a last measure. But in this scenario I haven't found any other way except for offering one dorf to the lava god which also kinda sucks.