How do I find a river in Dwarf Fortress?
I am playing vanilla Dwarf Fortress and although I have selected an area to have a river, I can't seem to find it. I am ~30 floors deep into the cavern now and there was only a couple tiny murky pools of water, but no river. How do I find it? Do I need to actually strike it with one of my dwarfs when mining? Do I just need to be on the same level as the river to be notified of its existence?
Best Answer
As far as I know, rivers are on 'ground' level, most of the time. So it has to be visible without digging. Are you sure you selected the right area while embarking?
EDIT: I think you used the search while embarking and were looking for regions with a river in it. These rivers are visible on the region map. If you moved the embark area in such a way, the river isn't covered anymore, then there is no river on the playfield.
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How do you get water in Dwarf Fortress?
A screw pump or a U-bend made of stairs can be used to desalinate water. Dwarves will drink water from a well over salt water, give it to sick dwarves and use it to clean wounds. Even if you do not designate the well as a water source (which is unnecessary anyway), the dwarves will still use it.What makes a river a river?
A river is a ribbon-like body of water that flows downhill from the force of gravity. A river can be wide and deep, or shallow enough for a person to wade across. A flowing body of water that is smaller than a river is called a stream, creek, or brook.How do you build a dam in Dwarf Fortress?
The easiest and quickest method of dam manufacture is only possible if your map freezes during winter. Simply dig out a thin section of channels across the river and build a wall out of floodgates, blocking the path of the water.How do I get rid of water in Dwarf Fortress?
Re: How do I remove water from tiles? You can dig another reservoir, then connect the two with a channel, or dig another reservoir and use a screw pump to transfer the water. (Assuming that you want to keep the water. If you don't, you can just let it runn out over the ground.Dwarf Fortress for New Players ~ 06 Finding your start location
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Answer 2
Rivers are visible as blue lines on the world map and regional map when you are selecting your embark point. When you use the arrow keys to position the cursor on a river on the regional map, you will see a more detailed view of the river on the local map (left-hand side of screen) and the name of the river (right-hand side of the screen.) Brooks don't show up on the regional map, only the local map, but they will be named as well.
What may have happened when you selected your embark destination is that you chose a region with a river running through it, but you didn't move the 3x3 or 4x4 embark square on the local map. If a river, stream or brook doesn't run through one of the embark squares, you won't have water flowing through your embark area. It will basically be off-map after you embark. Use the umkh keys to change the position your embark area on the local map before embarking.
Another possibility is that the river is there, but just not in the area you are looking at, especially if you've been building your fortress near the center of the map. You may have to use k and the arrow/shift-arrow keys to move all the way to each edge of the map when viewing the surface z-level to find the river. Depending on where you positioned your embark area, you might only have a couple river tiles way over in one corner of your map, which may be easy to miss.
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