Dwarf Fortress: unable to dig because of damp stone?
I created a fortress, all was going well, had a first floor set up, and I went to dig down. only... across the entire map all it would say is the job was canceled because the stone was damp. did I screw something up?
Best Answer
It seems like you picked an embark site with an aquifier. These are blocks which produce an endless stream of water to adjacent blocks when those blocks are dug out. This makes aquifier layers almost impossible to dig through. Your miners will automatically cancel their dig order when discovering aquifier blocks, but you can order them to dig again on an already discovered block when you are sure you want to remove it.
When you haven't invested too much time in your fortress yet, I would recommend you to start a new one and this time watch out to pick an embark site without an aquifier.
When you still want to keep your fortress, you could try to break through the aquifier with some advanced dwarfen trickery. This is quite hard to do, but not impossible. Still, I would only recommend this to advanced players who already have some experience with how to handle water.
One method is the cave-in method. Dig out a block of stone above the aquifier, at least 3 layers high and at least 5x5 wide. Then let it cave in on the aquifier layer. The falling down rocks will replace the aquifier blocks and turn them into normal blocks which you can then dig through. Unfortunately this only works with natural soil, not constructed walls. So it is unavailable when the aquifier layer is not far enough below ground.
Another method is the pump method. Use screw pumps to pump out the water faster than it can flow in, allowing you to drive back the aquifier and seal it off with constructed walls.
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How do you dig damp stone in Dwarf Fortress?
You will only know if you are near the surface and find the damp stone below a known murky pool: The safest thing to do is back off several tiles, mine up a z-level then approach the location again. Rinse and repeat until you emerge above the surface of the magma/water.How do I avoid damp stone Dwarf Fortress?
Just make sure you construct walls anywhere where water seems to be leaking in, and don't try digging any rooms immediately below the aquifer. Go down a couple more z levels, otherwise you'll get water dripping in through the ceiling.How do you get past an aquifer in Dwarf Fortress?
In Dwarf Fortress, press 'k' to bring up the cursor, and move the cursor to the position you want the top left tile of your shaft to be. In DFHack, type "run". The aquifer will be removed in a 4x4 square below and to the right of your cursor. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every aquifer layer you have.How do you dig a pit in Dwarf Fortress?
Re: The safest way to dig a deep pitDwarf Fortress Timegranite Part 2: Damp Stone Located
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