Volcanos/lava biomes

[Enjoyment_2]

I like it. There's probably more important stuff that should be worked on before the devs try to add a whole new biome though.

well, that's kinda perfect example of "IDEA W/O WCGW (What can go wrong?)" - just imagine to discover a giant lava lake on you l4 mine). What a good immersion would it bring to gameplay - the neighbourghs around you already mined to l5 and dig precious ores and you stuck on l3 forever, because of this dump luck.
And is you really want to make it w/o hurting ppl potentially, take a look here (there are already a plenty of ideas implemented)
tl;dr immersion shoudn't be over gameplay.

Dump water on the lava, turn it into obsidian. Or go dig a minehole somewhere that isn't likely to be above a lake of lava. Or maybe the devs could add a fancy magical lava resistant type of wood to build lava knarrs.

Maybe you know the secret how to "dump water" (or do anything else) on layer below before getting there? Have you ever mined on lower levels before typing it? Getting to l8 mine is already a pain with 7 loading screens and you suggest me to go walk for a while on every level to reach another minehole, just because I was upredictably unlucky with settling here, and because of the "nice immersion we have"?

[MrPunchers]

Can my 5000 con hearthling swim in lava and take butt burn wound for it

[vatas]

Somewhat related, ended up using a small ore hauler (and bigger ship indierectly when I didn't have the smaller one to use later) when EVE Online decided to have event that made hostile NPCs invade previously safe spacelanes.

In Haven, closest equivalent that's already been implemented is probably the ocean. While neat in theory and somewhat in practice, it can be argued that the completely new biome wasn't that fleshed out and we could've used improved sailing system before them. It did add some issues too, in early game you couldn't move between continents at all (other than with Rafts that hilariously didn't take ocean damage at all) and later they blocked Charter Stones, which was arguably a interesting experiment (that resulted in jorbtar enabling Charter Stone travel across oceans)

All in all, volcanoes and underground lava would be neat but you need to think about how they affect other game stuff and preferably make sure they have content of their own attached to them to justify their existence.

[MagicManICT]

I know I was vague in my original post, and that was purposeful. I had some specifics for the idea in mind, but I wasn't sure on what exactly I was thinking, and didn't want to put anything down that might detract from brainstorming.

I think we can say a couple of things that it definitely shouldn't be:

A lava ocean
Very large lava lakes

These would cause more headaches than they'd be worth for players. Also, that much magma would make the area so hot human life couldn't be present for more than a few minutes at a time. (I know this has been a part of fantasy and myth, even science fiction, but really...)

Yes, I definitely think that if anything like this is added, it should have some distinct flavor in the game, not just adding color to the landscape underground (which is all the current cave biomes do).

[Archiplex]

In general, I would like to see more naturally 'hazardous' biome types, both above ground and underground. Things that don't roam very far past the biome should spawn regularly in it (territorial beasts that deaggro if it runs outside of the biome for too long, for example).

A volcanic biome would be neat, as long as it is something you can work around for the situation of one being under your base or something (Although frankly, at that point I'd just suggest people build a minehole elsewhere). As mentioned, I think gems and ores should occur in higher frequency and quality in such places, as long as the risk of mining there is higher (Caveins now just cause lava spills which might deal large, permanent scar wounds, 'special' version of boreworms, cave slimes and even bats spawn in high frequency causing mining expeditions to require multiple people to carry out safely. Troll dungeons.)

I like the idea a lot, basically. I just think being more specific with your idea would be better.

[Vigilance]

Getting to l8 mine is already a pain with 7 loading screens and you suggest me to go walk for a while on every level to reach another minehole, just because I was upredictably unlucky with settling here, and because of the "nice immersion we have"?

Are you telling me you've been lucky enough to every world not run in to a lake/river on your next minehole?

Wow, how fortunate for you.

I've never understood why people value walking in a straight line down as much as you do. When I had to consider "ease of access" to lower levels for my poor lazy villagers it was the worst feeling as opposed to ACTUALLY prospecting for a good spot for the next minehole.

(also since im probably never gonna look at this post again, to counter your rebuttal "THE SMALL LAKE ONLY MADE ME PUT MY MINEHOLE 15 TILES AWAY" do you really think they'd implement lava lakes that are multiple minimaps large like come on why would they do that theres no precedent for it)