Welcome to our Dwarf Fortress Magma Piston guide. This guide will show you everything you need for Magma Piston. We know that there are people who have a hard time finishing the Dwarf Fortress game. If you are one of those who find it difficult to finish the game, let’s take you to our Dwarf Fortress guide.
Dwarf Fortress Magma Piston
This guide teaches you to:
- Finding the right spot using Dwarven Sonar
- Induce multi floor cave-in (to channel multiple floors very fast)
- Magma Tapping (breaking into the magma sea to get a source of magma for magma reservoir)
- Using portable drain ( For draining magma )
- Using Supports to drop the piston ( massive pillar of rock, 120 blocks high )
- Using water to reload the piston
Dwarven Sonar
We would mention before hand that the dwarven sonar is an exploit
Now, how to do it? it is mentioned as follows :
- Go to build -> farming -> farm plot
- Drag and drop a square at any plot that is suitable for farming, but make sure to only select the starter tile and not the placement click.
- Now drag a big square, do not end the placement, max size plot, now scroll to lower tiles
- When you drag the mouse wheel and go below, the places where farm plot is place-able is visible
- underground in undiscovered regions, where there is farm plot, there is a cavern
- I have shown a gif of how to do it below, it shows what is written here applied, in full.
- We have discovered 3 caverns in the mentioned manner.
- Where ever there is a cavern, it is visible by a different manner in placement pop-up
- Now when you discover the caverns, note the levels where you discover them and dig carefully.
- Cancel the placement option
Here is the big Gif, I have cropped the empty frames in the GIf. The relevant frames are kept in here.
Making a Portable Drain
A portable drain is a mine-cart dumping infinite amounts of water in a wall .
A quick TL;DR
- Make a track stop dumping into wall
- Place (Magma-safe material for magma) mine-cart on it with empty conditions/give or take stockpiles/
- Make sure the set-up is made one floor below the region to be drained
- one can place a pump, pumping fluid in to the mine-cart but then that needs automation
1. What you need is:
- A mine-cart -> Material depends on what you intend it for.
- A proper track stop – that – dumps – in to – a – wall, (maximum friction )
2. This is my portable magma drain design:
Water -> Any mine-cart
Magma -> Magma-safe material for cart
The location of the drain is important.
I usually channel a room and make it 1-Z level low, so the entire magma goes to the cart and drains
up, leaving the upper floor totally empty when needed.
This will clear it up.
3. Now we set the IRON drain dump stop:
4. Now we set the drain dump mine-cart
Go to set mine-cart hauling routes, add a new route, then look at the index described below:
Now we do this:
- Set track stop to the Iron track stop we made
- Set an IRON mine-cart to the stop
- delete every single conditions and leave it empty
- We do not want any conditions in it, we do not want it to take or give from any stockpile, nor do we want it to take any specific item. So we leave the below tab empty, except for the names
- So I will re-cap this :
- Add new track stop,
- Click on iron track stop and name it
- Click on add mine-cart and add iron mine-cart
- Name the track-stop if you will
- Remove all conditions
- Let the items to be placed in be empty
- That should do it
5. Now if the dumping into a wall and mine-cart with all empty and normal placement is there then it will work absolutely fine. There is only one way to test, fill it up with water or magma, it will drain the floors above its current floors, it will drain up to only 6/7 of the floor it is placed on. So the reason for its one floor lower placement. It is very important that you don’t place the dump on the same floor as your desired draining floor.
Magma Tapping – Dwarf Fortress Magma Piston
Magma Tapping has various methods, I will try to depict a very simple method:
But before hand, there is a section in-game.
- Under Labour Tab
- Go to Stone use
This list gives you the list of magma safe materials, so in my case, I had a lot of dolomite, so I selected ( Allow dolomite to be used in normal stone jobs ). So I could make some magma safe grates and stuff. Another good idea is to use iron for all these magma operations.
So this is an approximate list of materials you’d want ready before going for magma pump
- Iron Pipe Section X 1
- Iron Blocks X 4 or 8
- Enormous Iron Cork-Screw X 1
- Iron Flood Gate X 2
- Iron Grates X 1
- Iron Mechanisms X as per need, because later on, we are going to need these a lot
- Iron Mine-cart
- A Portable Drain ( I will teach this )
This is what you are looking forward to
This is my Pump :
This is magma below the Pump, the tile of magma has been channelled.
Place the pump such that it is one tile ahead of the tile it is sucking from and place the direction of pumping carefully. We place the iron bars so that creatures don’t come from underneath the magma into the fortress. The materials are made of iron so that the pump doesn’t burn. The Door is placed as a precaution in case things don’t work out as intended.
This is the concept of the pump with things mentioned.
This is how it is intended to work, don’t mind the burning trash, it just shows how non-fire proof materials melt to magma, whereas the pump, operator, grate, door and bars are safe, even the floodgate is safe and sound.
Now you know how to do it hopefully, good luck with the tapping. Some tips, when you hit warm rock, be exceptionally careful with it. Dig little little upwards and sideways to discover from what z level the warm rocks start, above that layer will be the pump. Also, better to have all materials ready before a magma man pays a visit through the hole you made in the magma sea. Yes, that will be the best I can explain it to you my dear reader.
Cave-in organising and executing
This is how a multi-floor cave-in is organised.
This image explains the concept of the video as to how to do it, and all.
We dig out the piston but the floors… 100 or perhaps 120.. 120 floor channelling? nah dude… This is a better alternative, a 100 or 120 floor digging itself takes an in-game year or so. So what we do is, above all these floors, make a support. on this support is a 5×5 square floor. This 5×5 square has a 3×3 hole in the centre. Attach the support to a lever, when all 100 or 120 floors are dug out, you just make sure all dwarves and creatures are away from these floors or it is instant death. So when you pull the lever, this 5×5 drops exactly on similar 5×5 floors supporting the piston. Every single floor below is destroyed. But the oiston is intact. Why? because it is supported by a support. So all that is left here is the piston alone, clean and beautiful. Now in our case, why is a piston shown? Why is this example describing a piston? Why a piston in a cave in? Because, that video shows the magma piston that is to be used in our guide and that video is a great example of how to clean multiple floors. Yes, even TwistedLogicgaming destroyed an entire island with a floor collapse. So now enough chit chat, lets go to a small summary.
What have we learnt so far and why?
We have learnt
- To find the caverns to suitably dig for the piston.
- To cause a massive cave-in to dig the circumference of the magma piston.
- To carefully pump magma in a designated place.
- And then to drain it very effectively.
Further content will be updated soon.
