Furthest first cavern layer you've ever encountered?

[Zedrin]

What's the farthest you've had to dig down to find a cavern? In my current fort, I'm trying to figure out if I just managed to somehow miss a cavern or if it's really this low, cause the first cavern I found wasn't til -106. (I've had plenty of megabeasts pass through it though.)

I'm playing on a coastal biome so I wonder if the sea floor pushed the caverns down by a good deal.

EDIT: so after learning how to identify the cavern differences, I can confirm that my first cavern layer was at -106. All 3 layers came in rapid succession. Apparently ocean/beach biomes can make cavern generation weird.

[jlaflair]

If your first cavern is -106 below the surface, yes, you missed one. Probably two. This assumes you didn't mess with any settings and that you didn't choose island instead of region world type at construction (island type can have caverns further down).

First cavern level is usually hit like ten levels below the surface or so. It *is* possible to dig right past without cracking into it, so I'd go back up and try some exploratory tunnels.

[Zedrin]

Originally posted by jlaflair:

If your first cavern is -106 below the surface, yes, you missed one. Probably two. This assumes you didn't mess with any settings and that you didn't choose island instead of region world type at construction (island type can have caverns further down).

First cavern level is usually hit like ten levels below the surface or so. It *is* possible to dig right past without cracking into it, so I'd go back up and try some exploratory tunnels.

Well at the very least, I'm hopin to find a magma sea so I can start some magma forging, so hopefully I'm closer than I thought lol.

I've been gradually exploring earlier levels here and there, just no success so far.

[jlaflair]

Originally posted by Zedrin:

Originally posted by jlaflair:

If your first cavern is -106 below the surface, yes, you missed one. Probably two. This assumes you didn't mess with any settings and that you didn't choose island instead of region world type at construction (island type can have caverns further down).

First cavern level is usually hit like ten levels below the surface or so. It *is* possible to dig right past without cracking into it, so I'd go back up and try some exploratory tunnels.

Well at the very least, I'm hopin to find a magma sea so I can start some magma forging, so hopefully I'm closer than I thought lol.

I've been gradually exploring earlier levels here and there, just no success so far.

Somewhere between -10 and -15, give or take, you really should hit that first cavern. I'd go back to that general region and dig some tunnels around on the same Z-level to see if you crack anything open. Nice thing is the cavern layers usually connect, so just opening one wall can reveal large areas on the map.

[Itharus]

That's useful to know... my current fortress starts at 45. I... guess I have some more digging to do...

[High Lord Denix]

Originally posted by Itharus:

That's useful to know... my current fortress starts at 45. I... guess I have some more digging to do...

The first cavern layer will be 10-20 levels below whatever your "surface elevation" is, I dont know how the game calculates it for embarks with wildly different elevations but if you're on relatively flat ground its move obvious.

[suejak]

Yeah I didn't find my first one til -100 either. Had the magma sea in it.

[Helios]

Originally posted by Zedrin:

Originally posted by jlaflair:

If your first cavern is -106 below the surface, yes, you missed one. Probably two. This assumes you didn't mess with any settings and that you didn't choose island instead of region world type at construction (island type can have caverns further down).

First cavern level is usually hit like ten levels below the surface or so. It *is* possible to dig right past without cracking into it, so I'd go back up and try some exploratory tunnels.

Well at the very least, I'm hopin to find a magma sea so I can start some magma forging, so hopefully I'm closer than I thought lol.

I've been gradually exploring earlier levels here and there, just no success so far.

you can find single magma tiles inside obsidian/diamond pockets just choose the pick for digging and search inside your cavern layers for warm places.

[Erei]

Originally posted by suejak:

Yeah I didn't find my first one til -100 either. Had the magma sea in it.

Might have been the 3rd layer ? Mine is literally 1z level above magma sea.

[LastChime]

bout -80

[suejak]

Originally posted by Erei:

Originally posted by suejak:

Yeah I didn't find my first one til -100 either. Had the magma sea in it.

Might have been the 3rd layer ? Mine is literally 1z level above magma sea.

Update on this - it was actually the first cavern layer at -100. The 2nd and 3rd layers were a short ways underneath it, meaning all of them were adjacent to the magma sea in the west. Really weird.

[Zedrin]

Originally posted by suejak:

Originally posted by Erei:

Might have been the 3rd layer ? Mine is literally 1z level above magma sea.

Update on this - it was actually the first cavern layer at -100. The 2nd and 3rd layers were a short ways underneath it, meaning all of them were adjacent to the magma sea in the west. Really weird.

I actually was just gonna come back here and report the same. Now that I know how to actually identify what cavern layer I'm on, I can see that all 3 layers are closely stacked together.

It seems to be a weird and rare occurence.

[Savok]

Yeah my experience with coastal areas is the caverns are a silly amount of floors down too. I expect you're right and it is the ocean. It's putting the caverns under the deepest part of the 16x16 ocean plate you're on.

[Entrappedmind]

What size world and embark are you guys who found the first cavern so deep using? On my last two forts using a pocket world and 2x2 embark, I've had almost identical results - First cavern in the mid -100's, with the second and third sandwiched right below it and the magma sea soon thereafter. Also, despite the biomes being vastly different (one a decently-wooded hilly plains sort of deal and the second a desert), neither one contained sedimentary layers. Long story short, I'm wondering if either the world or embark size is influencing the worldgen, pushing the caverns lower to give more digging/building room. The sedimentary layer thing I ran into is likely just bad luck/fun.

[High Lord Denix]

Originally posted by Entrappedmind:

What size world and embark are you guys who found the first cavern so deep using? On my last two forts using a pocket world and 2x2 embark, I've had almost identical results - First cavern in the mid -100's, with the second and third sandwiched right below it and the magma sea soon thereafter. Also, despite the biomes being vastly different (one a decently-wooded hilly plains sort of deal and the second a desert), neither one contained sedimentary layers. Long story short, I'm wondering if either the world or embark size is influencing the worldgen, pushing the caverns lower to give more digging/building room. The sedimentary layer thing I ran into is likely just bad luck/fun.

World size or embark size has nothing to do with it, anything that will influence how deep the first layer is outside of embark location is set at world gen using the "Z Levels Above Layer X" setting.

[Dogma]

My deepest first layer was at -62 and layer 2 and 3 were just right under it (-85 being lvl 3) guess i missed an early layer? I tried my best to dig on different spots but i found nothing earlier