I embarked on a site that does not have a volcano. I have access to clay. so want to use a magma kiln to make clay crafts until I find coal.
those who perfer full vanilla game play, do not look at the spoiler below:
I use DFHack's "fastdwarf 1 1" command and all my dwarves have Legendary skills via editing the raw file (cheating), so hauling clay, crafts, or magma long distances is not a big issue.
I was thinking of using the magma sea to fuel the kiln. So I was considering bringing the magma up to the surface for the fuel + pampering tree hugging guests killing elves and goblins. Or would it be easier to use the kiln at the magma sea? I am asking this of anyone who has experience building pump stacks [for magma].
So is better to make kilns at magma sea level or at the surface?
11 Answer
There are glitches that allow you to bring a decent amount of magma to the surface without building mechanized Elevators. Basically you need to dig out a pillar from natural rocks all the way down to a lava pool. Then let this pillar crash down into the sea. For reasons only toady knows, the magma displaced below comes out on top of the pillar, where it can be siphoned away. This implies however, that there exists a stretch of rocks reaching down to lava without being interrupted by a cavern.
In dwarfspeak this is called a magma piston. There is a good guide to be found on the wiki pages:
The other options, Minecart tracks and/or pumps are way too much of an commitment to build just after the start. You will probably die from an invasion in the process.
It might be an option to build at magma sea level and using an automated minecart to transport items, and have the main site above.
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