Crafting water on level 2?

[Griffon_Stonebeard]

So I've made it to the second world and have progressed enough to where I need water for continued crafting. The crafting menu says you can melt the snow to gather water but i've got no idea how to accomplish that. I'm guessing its an easy drag and drop or someyhing but I've tred it all. If it's available at a later tech level that's a bit of a bummer as I don't want to keep robbing water from my underground lake.

[ehyder]

Detailed instructions in the pinned FAQ.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

Combine snow into ice block and put ice block in the underworld, it will melt. Better used in a stone block area.

[Qutsemnie]

Dig snow when you see it. Place snow like you do any block (earth for example). Snow melts if it is underground below a certain line.

To automate you can dig a big whole into the earth and when the snow falls in it will melt on its own if it drops beyond a certain depth.


For example cover your underground lake with foreground snow blocks. It will fill from that.

[Father Ribs]

I've tried to deep pit method but it doesn't seem to work for me.

What works for me, is build a 3-space wide, 1-deep pit lined with stone. It has to be built below the "horizen line" (if you can see air when you delete both layers of earth, you need to dig deeper). Manually place snow blocks for the back layer of the 3 spaces of the pit interior so that when you drop 3 snow blocks in the pit, you just have to click on it, rather than click and acknowlege. Within a few seconds the snow will melt. Build it close to your stockpile and you can have three dwarves fill and drain the pit within a reasonable amount of time.

However, if you're a good explorer, you can use this for emergency tech levelling only and for larger quantities of water just look for and drain underground pools. It's a trade-off with losing fish, but once you're growing grain fish is less useful IMO.

[Thaxlsyssilyaan]

Use Ice instead of snow, much more efficient. Ice give more water.

[Father Ribs]

Nice, thanks for the tip.

[Griffon_Stonebeard]

Thanks for the tips, both methods seem to work pretty well.

[Evernight]

I usually build a horiontal row of ladders across the top of my stone pit and get the dwarves to place the ice above each ladder block, which then melts and falls through the ladder into the pit. It just means I can melt ice faster, without the dwaves messing around in the water.. they don't have time for that! :P