After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
In Dwarf Fortress, aquifers are a scourge. They're layers of subterranean, water-bearing rock that continually, endlessly leak when breached by dwarven miners. They can be managed and even exploited with careful construction, but in my experience, their main utility is proving that—no matter how competent at Dwarf Fortress I might get—I'm only one overlooked, unsealed tile away from a disaster I'll only notice once the dwarves in that quarter are already neck-deep in floodwater.
I might struggle with the occasional unplanned water feature, but I'm apparently in good company. In an interview with PC Gamer at GDC 2025, Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams told me he's still terrorized by aquifers after building the game for more than two decades.
"I'm terrified of heavy aquifers," Adams said after I told him that, having been playing Dwarf Fortress since I was a junior in high school, I hoped to get over my aquifer fears before I'm 40. "I can do the light aquifer, but the heavy aquifer, they do all kinds of crazy stuff."
Light aquifers are frustrating if they go unattended, but heavy aquifers spill so much water that they can quickly become an existential threat for an unfortunate fort. If they're not handled delicately, you can find yourself in a losing war against a rising flood that only gets harder to fix as time goes on.
As Adams tells it, when he first implemented heavy aquifers, he wasn't even sure players could find a workaround.
"That was one of those ones where I was like, 'Just let them figure it out.' I didn't know if it was possible or not," Adams said. "And then, of course, they solve it within like, 45 minutes, and then disseminate the methods. And now I'm afraid to change it much."
Those methods include pumping away floodwater before building a retaining wall, constructing a tactical cave-in to drop a slab of material from above that can be safely mined through, and—for those seeking a more daring solution—channeling or pouring magma into the aquifer layer so it cools into obsidian barricades. You know, Dwarf Fortress stuff.
"The light aquifer is more my speed. I just put some walls up or whatever, and it's fine. Heavy aquifer, I left it for [sickos]," Adams said. "We should do some other ones, like one that's even slower, just so that you forget about it, right? And then you look at that portion of the fortress 40 minutes later and you're like, oh wait, I have a problem."
I chose not to divulge that this is already a scenario I'm very familiar with.
The heavy aquifer is an encapsulation of Adams' difficulty philosophy for Dwarf Fortress: Don't force players to confront its worst challenges, but leave the option for the masochists who want to.
"At the time, I was viewing aquifers as a hard block. That's why we pop up the warning to say, 'Don't even bother embarking here.' But you can if you want to," Adams said. "We were thinking more of above ground forts that wanted to have a big water supply or something.
"Of course, that turned into 'I can do anything with water that I please now, and also have a below-ground fort for it, and at high risk of drowning everybody at all times.' And that's cool. But yeah, no, we try to be reasonable."
What qualifies as reasonable for Dwarf Fortress, however, can be tricky for anyone familiar with anything like the dwarven atom smasher—especially if you don't consider yourself very good at your own videogame.
"Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames. Zach and I suck," Adams said, referring to his brother and Dwarf Fortress co-creator, Zach Adams. "I mean, I suck at every game that I play. So, you know, I can't really address high level strategies until I see someone do them."
Maybe I'll work on those high level strategies myself someday. For now, I'm content with keeping my dwarves fed and dry. I'll circle back around to magma-based public works in another decade or two.