Dwarf Fortress - Quick Tutorial - Light Aquifers

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Dwarf Fortress - Quick Tutorial - Light Aquifers
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[@Argonova]

This video is essential since the Steam Release. A lot of old players like me are used to the Starter Pack (Lazy Newb Pack) that disables aquifers entirely. So even though we have a pretty good idea what we are doing with the rest of the game, we have no experience of how to properly deal with these things.

[@leoleo1035]

Very true! However, a kind soul already created a mod that removes them ;)

[@evilbob840]

LNP has an OPTION to disable aquifers completely... Take it as a challenge to yourself to learn how to get through them. Light ones are easy (as shown here), but even heavy ones are mostly just time consuming once you figure them out.

[@tranhuy6038]

The steam version do have workshop mods no?

[@evilbob840]

@@tranhuy6038 Yes, and there is already a mod to get rid of all aquifers.

[@CrizzyEyes]

Getting through the old aquifers is not dissimilar to this, you just need to find the layer, dig a hole going all the way to the surface, wait until winter. The water will freeze. Dig through the ice blocks and build walls like you see here. If you're in a warm biome, then I have no idea.

[@Check_001]

It was probably worth mentioning that aquifer tiles are able to drip in not only from adjacent tiles on the same layer but also from upper layer if to dig right beneath it

[@BigDaddyWes]

5:01He literally did mention it.

[@Check_001]

@@BigDaddyWes well, meh. Very unnoticeable catch if you ask me

[@JohnSmith-js5oz]

He talks about "channeling up into them", i.e. breaking through the ceiling. If you're saying that just digging a layer underneath without breaking the ceiling will result in a drip then that's good to know!

[@thedrunkmonk8386]

This helps. I'm playing with light aquifers for the first time and its several layers deep. I've been controlling it but couldnt figure out why it wasnt evaporating in a spot.

[@wu1ming9shi]

@@thedrunkmonk8386 I've been thinking of trying to weaponize it in some way tbh.

[@connordarvall8482]

Wish this came out yesterday. That's when I was wrestling with a light aquifer. I stuck up brick walls as a random guess and I noticed that there was no water dribbling down, so I assumed it worked. It is far more painful to patch up an aquifer when you're also teaching yourself how to use ramps. Will be drilling in for that sweet freshwater though. I'm building an island fortress and there's not much you can do with seawater.

[@KesSharann]

Just pump the sea water into a constructed wall/floor cistern. As long as salt water hasn't touched the inside of the cistern you're good.

[@a_wild_Kirillian]

You can desalinate water using a screwpump or a U-bend made of stairs

[@mattkomlofske8912]

Dude this just changed the whole game for me. I now realize what I've been missing by not taking advantage of light aquifers. It's like an easy, safe, water source!! Thanks!!

[@JacobLaJoie-ft4wj]

the mechanical nuance and unbridled destruction wrought by aquifers made me fall in love with this game

[@space_program]

Thank you for making these tutorials. They help me advance in the game quite well and make improvements on my fort. You're an AMAZING explainer! Strike the Earth!

[@BlindiRL]

Glad to help!

[@grayaj23]

This made it make sense. Thanks! I encountered a problem the first time I followed your instrux -- If I build out the 12 wall sections around the just-dug damp stairs, it often leaves two corners unbuilt, which become inaccessible when the adjacent wall sections get built. This eventually leaks water. This time I built the 4 corners first, then built the other 8 wall sections and that worked perfectly.

[@link_team3855]

can use priorities to assist with that

[@fang_xianfu]

You actually don't need to replace the corners because the water doesn't come out of aquifer tiles diagonally.

[@DimosasQuest]

I always loved embarking on heavy aquafers. And use some Dwarven "Magic" to collapse a large portion of mountain into the aquafer and dig through that to bypass it.

[@mrbadger7395]

This Tutorial just opened up so much of the map for me! Thank you! Keep up the great work these videos rock!

[@brningpyre]

Your vids are so helpful, omg. Thank you so much. I especially appreciate that they're bite-sized, and modular. I can just learn something and apply it in different ways to my own forts.

[@davidbrinnen]

Very helpful. I have been watching your long form play as a tutorial and trying to keep place, however, having these little snippets for specific topics saves hunting through the longer videos. Thanks.

[@pavojus]

Started following your channel since DF steam came out and hands down you have got the best content for us DF newbies! I would have probably dropped the game if not for your tutorials as this game is so deep and complex and I simply didnt know what I didn't know. Each video helps me understand and enjoy the game even more, thank you for your hard work. Can't tell you how happy I am to see your channel grow so quickly in the last week!

[@seflo4627]

Thank you for being short yet informative with this. Saved me such a headache. Best guide out there!

[@PTSatoru]

Always wanted to learn DF, bought it for the Steam release, and these tutorials are a godsend as I try to dig (heh) into this game. Thank you for these concise, logical explanations! I would love to see more. Strike the earth!

[@ripsterhipster5948]

i love how these are short, informative, and paced perfectly. ty

[@jamessteele7010]

That was so much easier than I was thinking it was going to be. Nice videos, dude.

[@Barbell_Neptune]

love the quick tutorials, keep it up!

[@gammavector79]

Thank you so much for making these short/single topic tutorials! They're incredibly helpful. A lot of "beginner tutorials" are very general and cover basically the same four or five topics, while totally ignoring the stuff I'm actually looking for help with (and the title/description usually doesn't even tell me what topics they're going to address, which makes it even harder to find what I'm looking for). The wiki is great, don't get me wrong, but it's still really nice to be able to watch a video of someone doing it in the new version. Much easier (for me, at least) to grasp what's going on.

[@lechking941]

the wiki also just needs time to be changed to fit the steam ed into its details because there is a lot of changes

[@gregathol]

I was JUST going to look for how to deal with aquifers. Love the content and the streams man!

[@CrossFortune]

Thank you so much for all of your tutorial videos Dwarf fortress is a game I have observed for over a decade but always been too intimidated to try myself until this year thanks in part to these videos and the new* steam version of the game.

[@MrDaAsif]

Thank you!!!! I had to deal with an aquifier following your beginner's tutorial :)

[@NealTV8]

Thanks for these tutorials Blind, as a Steam player and who never played DF and played tons of RimWorld. Your videos are helping me out! I had struggled with this on my first DF stream over on Twitch.

[@specbotnah5755]

Wow, thank you for this tip Blind. Much appreciated. I wasn't sure how to ask for a solution to this issue during one of your streams, and I am glad that you had the gumption to make a video for all of us new dwarf's. Long may this newfound audience last!

[@bungus87]

You've found a great niche, man! These little key bits of info are presented very concisely, much easier to digest than the slew of hour+ tutorials out there. Thanks for helping teach the new wave of DF players :)

[@ZubriQue]

Very useful! I was afraid of them my entire life lol. Now I love them, thanks.

[@AzelTheDemon]

ty ty so so much! I've been wanting to build around light aquifers more often!

[@Ken-M]

Great video, always wanted to play DF and now with the UI game and tutorials like these i'm loving learning the game, thanks and please make more tutorials/guides!

[@overcast80]

This just helped me so much. I struggled for 3 hours last night trying to dig around aquifers

[@iculas]

I am so glad you're doing these. thank you.

[@unbannablebob395]

Thanks so much for this bro! Most of my fortresses have been abandoned so early on due to dealing with light aquifers. I could never get down to stone!

[@Kitczat]

Thanks for the Tutorials. Definitely helping out learning about this game. Keep it going champ!

[@Miss_Distress]

I’m a long time Rimworld player and always meant to get into DF. Super happy to discover there’s a steam version. That, and your tutorials make it very approachable. Thank you!

[@relytz7]

Great timing, I just hit my first and was wondering what to do!

[@TommyLikeTom]

that's pretty cool. I didn't know you could do this, so in my fort I just dug around it. Worked pretty well

[@LockeRobsta]

These videos are such a goddamn treat and super helpful!

[@DocBirkin1]

This was really helpful, thanks for the succinct explanation!

[@RyanLackey]

These have been great tutorials for a new (steam) player. Thanks for producing them.

[@xTHExDONx]

As a new person to DF you are killing it, its really helped me get past all the confusion.

[@TooLazyToFail]

These are all very helpful, thank you!

[@Goob1234]

Quick and to the point, nice video keep it up

[@LeonardoDavincha-oz7gt]

I made a fortress in the midst of an aquifer that lasted 40 dwarve years. But the second generation refused to grow on the surroundings and now its a gem within my map. Made mad visits on it with a couple caravans.

[@battlemode]

Great stuff! Thank you

[@simonhebert4089]

Love this video!! Very "to the point" doesn't waste any time (minus the dwarves being a tad slow LOL understandable) Thank you for sharing these tips! I'll be sure to watch more of your stuff, you're fun to listen to :P

[@GameStormerGX]

That is such a simple solution to a frustrating problem. I tried watching tutorials from other people on this topic, but it's kinda hard as a new player to look at ASCII and then look at graphics and try and figure out what's what. Although, I am starting to see the benefits of using ASCII, especially on the world map. Things just tend to be more visible when they are made out of simple shapes.

[@bloganc]

Great video, just made the same setup.

[@Ariel-us8ni]

Thanks for the tutorials. I'm really grateful.

[@JustinBullf3ndot]

Absolutely enjoyed these concise, tight tutorials for very specifics aspects of the game. Please keep making them! DF isn't all that intuitive, and I realize part of the charm is the "jank" (as some would call) in doing otherwise benign things. Without a guide such as yourself I'd be frustrated and likely quit. The Steam version is so new there isn't much wiki guides out there that apply to its particular UX. Would love to see semi-quick series at some point of "good" starter designs of entrances or "good" layouts for decent efficiency. One example would be mining -> smelting -> production -> staging for trade.

[@jimstanley_49]

This may have been fixed in more recent updates, but, take care when constructing your walls. If your corner spaces are blocked orthogonally (from the top, bottom, and sides) the dwarfs will suspend the construction for being unable to reach. Technically, they _can_ build diagonally, but only if there is an available orthogonal space they could have stood on. If you are lucky enough to have a light aquifer in stone layers, you can save some building materials by smoothing the damp stone walls.

[@BlindiRL]

Yeah that's been a thing in the game for 10 years at least

[@Barbarossa19]

Thanks Blind, for the tutorials. This makes coming back to DF with the Windows UI much easier and more fun. Cheers

[@DenixiusDK]

It's super useful. Thanks!

[@thejuiceweasel]

Fantasic tutorial, really helped me diversify my embark picks. I'm glad aquifers exist, because, well, they exist in real life, but man, can it be a headache if you don't know how to manage them.

[@clayppl69]

Thanks man. I appreciate these videos, the short, topic specific ones for beginners. I know the majority of beginner things I'd like to think but things like aquifers always daunted me and I would simply dig the other way for fear of drowning my dwarves. Now I know just dig stairs into them and put up walls. Also didn't know you could channel down and have fresh water! Can you fish from these aquifer pools if you dig a big enough channel?

[@CAMSLAYER13]

Fish are non-renewable so a pond you make will never have fish to start with

[@GG_SpaceGhost]

Thank you so much for this video!

[@unst3rblich399]

Such good information to have and will make my 134th attempt at starting a semi-successful outpost quite a bit more promising.

[@noosebrother]

as i run into them every time i dig down this is helpful. it takes a long (game time) time to go down.

[@drewkimball9346]

Thank you for the tutorial. I know I shouldn't struggle with it as much as I do but I would be interested in seeing a tutorial on how to do the indoor river or other idea from digging underneath and up into the aquifer. I would also love a tutorial about finding magma and channeling it for use.

[@Ensiferum888]

Man this is awesome, thank you so much for your help. This is one of my favorite games of all time but I have paralysis because I have no idea how to deal with most things. I love watching your let's play but your educational videos are top notch. I might start my first fortress ever with an aquifer.

[@Ensiferum888]

Eh no that was a terrible idea, I tried a new game with light aquifer and it makes the game unplayable.. I'm at level -50 and there's friggin aquifers everywhere.

[@BlindiRL]

-50?! Damn thats a deep one. Last fort I played on with one it was 8 layers deep.

[@Ensiferum888]

@@BlindiRL I feel like 8 would be very manageable! 😆 at least now I know how to stop them!

[@sarganis2576]

I believe you can smooth the walls (if the wall type allows) instead of digging around and building new walls.

[@pcppbadminton]

I don't think you can smooth loam/sand/clay walls. Only stone. Unless that changed with the Steam update too, I haven't thought to try it yet.

[@JudgeNicodemus]

@@pcppbadminton nope. Still can't smooth soil walls. Tried it.

[@dopwop553]

This is what I did, I walled of the soil layer and smoothed 6 or so stone layers.

[@andrew_cunningham]

Of course this video is recommended to me exactly one day after I start my first fort and immediately had to convert the Grand Spiral Staircase into a bricked-up horror basement filled with water and bloated corpses.

[@pichinpichi]

Wow, those light Aquifers are easy. I remember playing back when there were only heavy Aquifers and embarking in wild cold tundra where were two layers of Aquifers. Punching thru was hell. Dwarfs were pretty unhappy because there was not any rock accessible unless under Aquifer. I have lost three from starting seven dwarfs from drowning. Later I dug out all Aquifer from the map as revenge.

[@PrettyGarbo]

Very helpful thank you for the vid

[@bobmechobob]

You have saved me. I don't think you understand how fucked my current fort was because I embarked on a very deep soil and light aquifer because my world is so cold that my animals were dying of dehydration in the winter and for some reason "Some soil" was meaning "I will give you 3 tiles of soil, take it or leave it" but I have been dealing with 0 stone for days and burning out so hard because I can't make anything due to limited wood reserves. Truly a godsend.

[@yomama211]

not having a lot of luck with the aquifiers :(. Thanks for the vid i guess i'll get there. for now head wrecked every time ive like 7 or 8 levels will try it again later :)

[@danillazarev6318]

Thanks, man! That is so clever, thanks again!

[@uidsea]

Man I definitely didn't retire a fort because of an aquifer yesterday. Nice tutorial!

[@VampiroGaming]

Awesome guide, here is my sub :)

[@justincoombs9048]

Thank you. It's been a while since I played and I would have been dropping concentric stone rings on the light aquafer for no reason.

[@tsavolrae9994]

thanks Blind. I am new and just knew from the last couple years watching your vids to avoid the water. Now not so scary.

[@gingy45]

Thanks for this. It seems like there aquifers everywhere nice to settle so I resolved to figure out how to deal with them instead of avoiding them

[@BlindiRL]

They are a bit nuts in this patch..

[@gingy45]

@@BlindiRL if by a bit nuts you mean "literally everywhere" then yea I get what you mean

[@banditgolum9027]

That really helped thanks !

[@CSKelran]

Gratz on 20k

[@BlindiRL]

🎉

[@Sevntimes]

Another great video

[@Esgaro]

Thanks man. This is a good video.

[@whitegorilla1368]

yesterday i was experimenting with an quifer and realised you can just do walls on the cardinal directions and it works

[@dopwop553]

was wondering the same thing, thanks!

[@UltimatePerfection]

Glad to see you are celebrating the Dwarfcember with DF content just like I did for every day of this month.

[@sauceinmyface9302]

I decided to try out a light aquifer after watching this video. It was right in that aquifers were pretty easy to seal up. If you smooth the stone, I believe it also makes it stop leaking water. The issue was that my light aquifer wasn't 1 zlevel. It was at least 25 zlevels. I immediately ended that fort when I hit a cavern flooded with water and with more light aquifer under it. Never again.

[@Pwipel]

Thank you for your video

[@estherc3618]

thank you!

[@sjwarialaw8155]

I manage to dig into the aquifer layer with stairs, but then I give the mining orders around the stairs but my miners just do nothing, no error of any kind appears, they just get a "No Job" status.

[@luisgiraldo8848]

Commenting since you are so helpful!

[@SweetMattieG]

This is so easy now. I've spent all night trying to relearn how to make a plug. The kind where you cause a cave collapse by digging one square or collapsing a mechanism with a lever. This is so much easier. SO. much easier.

[@barfoom]

thanks again, Blind!!

[@UllricLex]

Very helpful. How many levels can a aquifer have in total? Is there a maximum? And is there a difference on a coast maybe?

[@weeeeee831]

you can also smooth the damp wall to stop it from leaking

[@NibbleMeTwice]

Unfortunately, that only works if the wall is made of some kind of stone. Dwarves can't smooth soil.

[@mr.h1661]

Very instructive! O_O Tyty!

[@Mantis_Toboggan_TrashMan]

I dug down deep and hit what you may call a lava aquifer. My coward dwarfs tried not digging into it but I wasn't having any of that. Needless to say those dwarfs burned to death.

[@EmbersDawn117]

My Aquirfer is just on every level of my map towards the center of the map so its been a real pain when it comes to digging. Ive kinda used it to make a water room that fills slowly and then I use it to Irrigate other rooms. is there a better method to mining it out or do you have to mine it out over and over?

[@Voeluspa45]

The best thing about aquifers is that you can completely avoid them on the embark screen.

[@Nyst2]

Few things compare to the sense of accomplishment felt when you finally breach through a 2 level deep heavy aquifer underneath a desert with no rocks and no trees.

[@dadtier564]

Ask and ye shall receive, asked yesterday and you delivered! You are the man!

[@stevenhowie762]

very informative. could u mabe do a condensed video on how to handle/uses of a heavy aquifer? its hard to find videos explaining the uses/ how to properly deal with them and most videos about them are full videos about a specific fortress thanks again

[@yourseatatthetable]

I'd learned out to cope with them in the older, non Steam versions of the game by simply mining out space around a stairwell and walling it in. It doesn't seem to work for me in Steam

[@civosborne]

As a New Yorker I appreciate the speed at which you talk. On some people's videos I have to put playback speed at 1.5 or 1.75 to have them keep up

[@xombiemike]

IMPORTANT! If your dwarves refuse to dig stairwells down you might find that you have stairs that are not connected with up/downstairs. To fix this you need to construct stairs ONE COLUMN AT A TIME. I have a bug where I was doing what this video shows, but with a 1x3 vs Blind's 2x2. When the dwarves hit the damp area and stop, somehow it doesn't complete the up/downstairs, and worse if you try to construct stairs with a 1x3 pattern over two layers for some reason it doesn't work.

[@1ferrozoica]

Thank you! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I was having to build dozens of descending stairs until I found a space with no water 😂

[@MoondropValley]

I wish I watched this earlier. Did a whole tunnel system trying to find a spot to dig down before building a wall out of frustration

[@Lordodragonss]

You can also POLISH damp walls - they will no longer produce water od sides

[@damiens4601]

Thx, I thought aquifers where like rivers and lakes undeground... this is very helpfull

[@Oroberus]

Wanted to do this a bit more efficient and just went through 4 layers of an aquifer before securing the walls ... guess what, now I got a nice Mist-Staircase leading down to pond because the water raised too high too quickly to mine the walls away and therefor create space for the water to dicipate xD I'd be actually VERY interested in seeing some black-magic-fuckery with heavy aquifers :D Back in Legacy I've not used LNP to turn them off but just never settled on them, went for the caves right away and build my fortress just above them

[@cdm1972]

This gives me the courage to embark on a light aquifer.

[@hubble5755]

Here's an annoying bit about aquifers that I learned today: I had an aquifer that was about ten z-levels deep. That's already annoying enough to dig through, but it also means that I can't build my fortress in these ten layers. Below the aquifer, I constantly digged into caverns. There was simply no proper digging space for me to build a proper, well-planned fortress in. I hope I was just incredibly unlucky, because that was frustrating to deal with.

[@kalaksed]

If you pick a site that has 2+ biomes on the map there is a decent chance the aquifer is only in one of those biomes, which helps quite a lot Just know that near the surface especially there are likely to be all kinds of differences in the sand/dirt/stone layers, which can affect those with most types of ocd I tend to find embarks with 2-3 biomes on them just to get all kinds of plant and animal variety, esp when mods start piling in. I personally love finding the rainbow unicorn of embarks, with savage + good + evil biomes crossing paths. Esp if evil is not reanimating or necrotic rain/fog...