Gnomoria (graphical DF-Less-Lite-Than-Towns-Like)

I had a great kingdom going -- I had ditches on most of the border so I could keep enemies out and open a hole in a wall to let friendlies in. I was gathering armor from goblins that had died of thirst when a mant army rushed through the opening and killed every living thing in the kingdom of Daggerportal. I had just gotten blunderbusses too!

Those mants are HADCORE. You can keep their numbers down by stockpiling as little food as you can get away with - their numbers are based on the amount you have stockpiled.

There's no use for dirt yet, and no there's no way to pick up things from a specific area unless you make someplace inaccessible by walling it off.

And yeah, the selection for wall digging is different than for everything else. It was changed because wall digging has the distinction of having to highlight blocks that you either can't see, or you can only see the tops of them, that's why the selection for it focuses on your mouse pointer on the top of the block, and not the floor.

It's actually less annoying this way compared to how it was.

Does anyone else just make a whole shit-ton of statues, place them in open land, and declare it the Great Hall so that in the 1st summer you get a ton of gnomads? It's my gnomes ad campaign to get immigrants. "We're so rich we just put statues EVERYWHERE!" Little do they know statues are the only thing my kingdom has an abundance of -- well besides rocks. We got rocks coming out our ears.

e: inserted PROOF

Forgot to answer this. Quality of sleeping environment has the most effect on your gnomes. I'm not exactly sure what the quality of a dining environment gives. Better food keeps them fed longer, which is good, but I'm assuming there is some boost to health or happiness if your gnomes use a dining hall to eat instead of standing out in the grass next to a crate munching on apples. Exactly which metric is affected by that, I'm not sure.

Dude, it's like a Terracotta Army.... of gnomes. You've invented Wonders of the World for Gnomoria! Tell Rob, new game mechanic STAT.

This is a cute idea but once those gnomads come, you need to get rid of those statues quicksharp - your kingdom wealth also determines the quality and quantity of attackers you get, so this is a great way to get yourself swarmed by steel-bearing ogres.

I've long since given up fighting enemies the traditional way, especially with the new enemies. I have a ditch lining two borders and two plateaus on the other sides that effectively wall me in. Whenever gnomads or traders come I build a little bridge and promptly destroy it. I loot the starved to death goblins for armor and weapons until I have guns -- then I shoot them from across the ditch (still working on this strategy -- I don't think I have a confirmed kill doing it yet). I also, when wealthy enough, line the other side of the ditch -- the wild side -- with traps.

Kinda bummed...my saved game file won't load anymore. I know it's alpha so I can't complain, so I'll guess I'll wait until beta to play again.

Well I think I've played this well over 40 hours in the last week or two but I think I've almost reached my limit. There's just a few too many things still needing to be resolved.

Priority doesn't work the way I would expect. I can set a particular stockpile or area to be priority 1 and there's still people set as haulers collecting random crap.

Hospitals are very glitchy. I frequently have to remove the designation and immediately set it again in order to get my doctors to suddenly spring into action.

Enemies are too hard as you progress. It's extremely difficult to balance producing food with producing tough gnomes.

There needs to be a way to lock doors and tell certain gnomes to never pass them or something or tell them to "stay inside" ala DF. It's just too easy for people to travel halfway across the map for some random item and then get slaughtered by a honey badger.

[EDIT]

Forgot to mention insane pathfinding craziness. Sometimes my gnomes head in totally ridiculous directions when their destination is essentially right in front of them. Now, having attempted to implement a very basic A* pathfinding algorithm myself and finding it difficult after so many years of "enterprise software development", I get that these things are not easy, but the pathfinding here is pretty rough.

This game is amazing, don't get me wrong, but there are enough annoyances to make it a little frustrating.

Priority got me a little at the beginning as well, expecting it to be the same as DF. The following entry from the wiki helped me understand it better, not least because I mucked up all my professions due to my understanding of priorities,

So far the only enemies that are causing me a real problem are the Mants, but my last kingdom managed to barely deal with the first large wave, before dying to starvation (I got distracted managing the war against the Mants). My current plan is to rush engineering to get working mechanical walls and windmills then set up an airlock arrangement so my soldiers can deal with Mants piecemeal, rather than all at once. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the info about priority.

I think the design issue here is that the situation is very fluid. I may set up some construction jobs and then suffer an attack at which point all of that instantly becomes meaningless and I need my bandage making operation and doctoring to move into full swing.

What I would like to happen at that point is to be able to click on something and say "this thing here is the absolute #1 priority period"

That includes tasks like heal patient or even build this wall that's going to prevent everybody from running headlong into a colony of mants :)

Anyway, I love even thinking about this game more than playing some other games and I really think that by the end this stuff will all work more smoothly

So I picked this up in the IndieGameStand.com sale awhile ago with all the Geneforge games. I was hankering for some sandbox joy, so I loaded it up late last week. It took me all damn weekend and lots of Youtube viewing to figure out WTF was going on, but I'm finally at a point after my 10th restart or so where I'm comfortable with what my gnomes are doing and how the development is progressing.

One thing I can't figure out, how do you build a well? My settlement is near water, and I read that you can build a well and solve all your drink needs, but I see no option to do anything of the sort on any menu.

It's under Build->Workshop->Food/Drink->Well:



You have to place it above some standing water, which will probably look a bit weird:



but you can build floor around it afterwards.

New Patch!

v0.8.20.1
Fixed
Crash when changing items in a build menu

v0.8.20
Fixed
Crash when switching tabs in the Butcher Shop UI
Crash loading jobs in rare cases
Gnomes sometimes trying to butcher and stock a corpse, resulting in a crash
Rare crash when typing in a drop down box
Crash when loading a game with a corpse that is about to rise as a zombie
Crash when loading with an active refuel steam engine job
Crash on startup when Windows Media Player is not installed. This is a temporary fix and in the meantime, no audio will play when WMP is not installed
Mant worker spawns varying much more than intended for medium ranges of Kingdom Worth. This was on average causing more mants to spawn than should
Some memory leaks causing UI to get progressively slower
Trying to attack enemies that can't be reached. Ranged attackers will still attack if the target is within range and line of sight
Butcher Shop queueing a job for something unreachable
Gnomes accepting a Fell Tree job from a Grove when they don't have an axe and no axe is available
Items sometimes simultaneously being held and in a crate
Gnomes not using the closest dormitory or dining room when applicable
Hospital jobs not cancelling properly causing gnomes to wait in hospital beds forever
Steam engines not burning fuel properly and displaying an incorrect fuel amount
Over zealous squad members assisting the squad leader while training

They are regular as rain with these weekly patches, aren't they? Awesome.

It's actually all made by just the one guy, but his work ethic is pretty impressive, yeah.

In the situation of being attacked, gnomes won't do much if they're seeing a fight in front of their eyes. That kinda stuff just has to happen earlier (stocking bandages and whatnot)

Don't depend on a well to solve your drinking needs, it doesn't even come close to gnomes drinking beer and wine in terms of satiating their need.

Thanks Meserach and Pogo.

I played a lot more last night. Built the well, which was only for temporary use (I was down to around 50 wine and was worried I might run out) and will now be an emergency backup plan. I've got two strawberry farms and an apple grove all feeding into a stockpile next to my distillery, so my great hall is well stocked with apple and strawberry wine now.

As I've progressed I've figured out stockpiles (how to limit them to particular items and how to maximize storage with containers) and am now pretty efficient. I've got little container stockpiles for raw mateirals next to all my workshops, and rooms nearby each with a separate stockpile for the finished products (like planks, bolts, blocks and bars). This has made producing goods like beds, tables, more containers, etc. very quick and easy. I've got a massive sprawl of private quarters for my gnomes now, as well as a decent sized great hall (tables and chairs only for now) with food/drink crates/barrels all along the walls. Last night I was reorganizing the outside areas, taking clippings from the nearby bunchs of trees, then felling them, then replanting in more orderly groves. It's pretty cool when everything is working well and you issue an order to cut clippings, fell tress and plant and a mass of gnomes pours out of the fortress to see to it immediately! This game is pretty addictive so far, and I haven't even reached the point where I'm mining anything other than basalt and some coal and producing the most basic neccessities.

Disaster! I found lapis, emeralds and copper along with lots of coal in an area spanning -7 to about -12. I sent miners down to clear tunnels and build stairs and thought things were looking good, but apparently the pathing on miners sucks big time. Despite having built a nice network of stairs that seemed fully naigatable, my miners died of thirst while aimlessly wandering around in the tunnels they'd carved previously. They simply couldn't seem to find a path back upstairs, even though a clear one existed and they were not currently tasked to do anything (thus should have hightailed it back to the Great Hall for some well deserved apple wine).

I guess I'm going to have to be extra careful to dig large open areas with multiple stairs up/down at each level. Sucks to lose good miners just when I discovered ores and gems.

SlainteMhath, that's odd. I haven't had problems like that with stairs before. I typically have just the one main stairway down to my mining levels. Are you sure the stairs you built were definitely connected and led back to the surface? It can get confusing with multiple Z-levels.

I haven't seen that either but it's possible that the problem is related to the mining that you're doing after you build the stairs. You might be messing up the route back.

I tend to create a single stairwell and then I leave it alone and mine in spurs away from the stairs.

Having said that the pathfinding is pretty terrible sometimes

You fear to go into those mines. The gnomes, they delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness... a terrible thirst that could not be slaked. At least not by mortal means.

I read somewhere that the caverns have some non-traversable terrain or something? I'm not too sure. You have to micromanage a bit and figure out what openings you have in caverns. Rather than dealing with trying to map the cavern with your brain, I would just shut the route off entirely and dig around the caverns to get to exposed ore that you see.

If you mine into a big cavern and want to keep things civil, try building floors over any pits, and remove ramps from the whole cavern level so nobody climbs upward into god-knows-what areas.

I had to abandon that game as when I attempted to dig down without connecting to the caverns I ended up with a new spot near some stairs that gnomes just seemed to stick to for no explainable reason. The weird part was that some gnomes would pass through on their way to wherever, while others would freeze in place on this one square. I tried mining several blocks around it, replacing the floor of the square in question, and all that worked, but gnomes still would "stick" there. Once I had about 10 gnomes stuck there I knew my game was screwed at that point.

I started over and got a much better seed world anyway, one with lots of marble, coal and copper in the first few layers. I do have a couple of new issues though:

1) Do creatures spawn at the edge of the map? I tried ringing my "base" area by removing all ramps and building a couple of walls to seal it off so nothing from outside can get into my open air areas. However on small part does border the edge of the world, and it seems like badgers and lizards will spawn there and suddenly appear in my cultivated area. Should I simply build a wall along the border with the edge of the world to stop this from happening or do creatures like that spawn in open areas even when they are sealed off from the rest of the map?

2) I'm not really understanding the military aspect of the game. I have created a squad and assigned gnomes. They attacked a goblin that appeared while on a foraging trip outside the compound, and while they killed it, some gnomes were injured. I built a hospital, and two of the injured went there and are taking up the beds. Another of the injured gnomes in the squad is just hanging around the great hall, he doesn't seem to want to go the the hospital despite bing injured in both arms and both legs. There also doesn't seem to be a gnome in the hospital attending to the injured. Should there be? What is the best startegy for military organization, especially early when you have little equipment?

Hospital tasks are part of a profession, you have to assign someone to caretaking and whatever else the other doctoring thing is.

MILITARY STRATEGY
For SlainteMhath

HOW ENEMIES SPAWN

Enemies chiefly spawn in two ways:

• from the edges of the map on the surface (i.e. areas exposed to daylight), at any time, unavoidably (goblins, ogres, mants, I think animals do as well)
• underground (skeletons, zombies, golems, beetles) , from tiles that:
  • have not been mined out recently (i.e. they're either natural caverns or you mined them out more than 2 days ago)
  • have their natural floor (if you replace the floor with a worked one that isn't soil or rough stone, enemies will not spawn on that tile)
  • are not well lit (you can bind a key to an overlay that will show you where poorly lit areas are, but anything more than about 8-10 squares from a torch that isn't in daylight is a problem)
  • from which paths to gnomes can be found (so they won't spawn if they can't get at gnomes from their spawn location)

Given this, you can avoid monsters underground through careful mining and judicious torch and/or floor (re)placement. Be very careful about opening up pathways into large natural caverns. Surface incursions are unavoidable, but you can enclose you gnomes in walls to funnel them into a chokepoint.

CHOKEPOINTS

Enemies cannot climb up walls, they must use slopes or stairs. They also will not deliberately fall down a sheer cliff. Given this, you can build a wall and ensure any ramps are removed from the outside of it, but leave just one place where things can come in and out. You can build doors on this chokepoint if you like, although invaders can and will knock these down.

Funnelling foes in this way is a very good idea. I usually do it during the first Spring, because monsters don;t seem to spawn in the first Spring at all. (except wild animals, which only attack in approached very closely). You can make you wall out of whatever, but soil is probably most abundant and easiest to egt hold of. You can just reshape the terrain around you, just make sure to remove any slopes that you grant access to your walls from outside.

Place your main force of professional fighters at the doorway. The most efficient strategy is to simply place their training area right next to it, so that when attacks come they can simply break off from training and go and fight. Or you can just specify a guard area and assign a squad to that, in which case they'll hang out there waiting for attackers.

SQUADS

The military system is composed of squads of one to five gnomes.

Any and all gnomes can serve in a squad whatever their profession, but they will not attend to tasks while on duty, and (unless the Militia perk is selected for their position in the squad) they will not do tasks off duty either. As such I find it is best to have two kinds of squads: full time soldiers (who do literally nothing else but train, eat, drink, sleep and fight) and militia (who take the Militia perk and do whatever their normal jobs are most of the time).

The Military screen is a bit confusing. It's best tackled one tab at a time in reverse order.

The Uniform tab controls what the gnome sin you squad will wear and wield. You can create and name as many different kinds of uniform as you like. Early on I typically define two uniforms:



So the "Naked and Crazy" uniform is consists of nothing - this'll be used for gnomes in the militia, because armor is too scarce in the early going to waste on part timers.

The "Sword and Board" uniform makes use of the three pieces of arms and armor you start with, a copper sword, a copper helmet and a copper breastplate. THis will be used for professional military.

Next we look at the Positions tab:



Like with uniforms, we can define and name as many positions as we like. They're meant to define roles in the squad - each position has a uniform (a set of weapons and armor, which you've just defined), a perk (a particular set of bonuses to their skills appropriate to the role you want them to play in your squad) and a set of standing orders (the four check boxes).

Early on you'll want to use:

1. the perks "Disarm" for any positions that are for professional soldiers with weapons, switching to "Guard" when they have shields. Name this position "Swordsgnome" or something similar, and give it the uniform with armor and weapons you defined earlier.
2. Unarmed professional soldiers should use "Way of the Gnome". Name this position "Kung Fu" or something similar, and give it the naked uniform.
3. For your militia, you have to use the "Militia" perk to ensure they still do their regular jobs. Give it the naked uniform too. Call this position "Militaman" or something.

For the check boxes, I would always recommend checking "Retreat if bleeding" for all positions, which tells gnomes that are bleeding to retreat in search of bandages to staunch their wounds. Without checking this, gnomes will keep fighting when bleeding and as such may well bleed out and die. "Maintain distance" is for ranged troops, ignore it to start with. "Pursue lost targets" is rarely a good idea - you care about defending your gnomes, not chasing after kills. "Assist Squad Leader" I don't use because it seems to cause gnomes to do weird things.

Now look at the Formations tab:



A Formation is composed of five Positions (one which is the "leader", and four others). You can imagine in the future how this system would let you, say, have a sword wiedling leader backed up by two axe-weilding gnomes and two gnomes with crossbows. You also get to select a squad perk, which is a bonus for the whole squad. To start with, though, you'll want:

1. A "Professional Squad" formation, composed of you "Swordsgnome" as the leader and four "Kung Fu" positions for the rest. Order this squad to defend gnomes and perform attack orders (the check boxes). This will be our squad of full time soldiers who do nothing else. Pick the perk "The Best Defence" for them, switching to "Shield Wall" when you have some shields.
2. A "Emergency Militia" formation, composed of five "Militaman" positions. Set this formation to only "perform attack orders". This means they'll only attack if you directly order them to (by clicking on an enemy and selecting "Attack"). This will be our formation for our part-time fighters, the militia. It doesn;t matter what perk you pick for them, but I guess "Keep Your Eyes Open" is the only one they'd really extract any benefit from.

Finally the Squads tab:



Make two squads to start with. Do this at the start of summer Year 1, when you first bunch of new gnomads arrive, since that's when you will start to need defenders.

The first one is your professionals. Give them your "Professional Squad" formation. Assign the gnome you have with the highest Sword skill you can find to the first position. Find four other gnomes with high combat skills ( one of Axe, Sword, Hammer above 15, and then decent (10+) Dodge, Shield and Armor) and out those in the other four positions. Build a training grounds next to your chokepoint, and/or a guard area, and assign these guys to it. That's all they will do forever (besides sleep drink and eat).

The second squad should have the "Emergency Militia" formation. Pick five gnomes that aren't in the other squad and have a highish skill in Dodge and one of Fighting or Brawling. This will be you militia. They will do their regular jobs nearly all of the time, but will respond if you issue an attack order. Call them up if you are concerned your main squad won't be enough.

As you start to get more weapons and armor (either taking them off dead goblins or making your own), you'll need to update the positions in your professional squad. Make sure to create uniforms which permit the new positions to use weapons appropriate to the gnome's skills. I recommend one handed weapons (sword, hand axe, hammer) paired with shields instead of two handed ones (warhammer, claymore, battleaxe), even if the gnome doesn't have much shield skill (they will learn through training).

ARMS AND ARMOR

Your first priority is to make full sets of bronze armor and bronze weapons for your professional squad of five. That's five bronze helmets and bronze breastplates, ten bronze pauldrons, bracers, boots and gauntlets, and then five bronze weapons (hand axe, hammer, sword) appropriate to their skills. Shields are less important - you can probably make do with copper ones you scavenge off dead goblins. Make shields last.

Bronze is made from copper and tin. You find copper only about 10 levels or so down, but tin doesn't start till a bit later. I recommend mining around levels -17 to -19 or thereabouts. Mine around a bit and see if you hit tin. If you don;t after a while, go another level down. Try to keep areas well lit by placing torches (made at the carpenter from planks and coal).


If you aren't mining enough coal, the Furnace workshop can make coal for you out of logs. Build a Forge (probably several) and order copper and tin bars made, and then bronze bars made from those bars. Then build an Armorer and order the bronze armor you need, and once that's done, a Weaponsmith and the weapons.

Don't waste copper making copper weapons. Bronze is much better and you'll waste the copper needed to make bronze. In any case you'll scavenge usable copper weapons (way more than you could ever use) and some copper armor off of attacking goblins.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BANDAGES
More for SlainteMhath

While this is all being set up, make a stockpile for bandage (and only bandages) near you chokepoint and your professional squad, and order at least 50 bandages made at the Tailor. Gnomes will use these if injured and bleeding, and gnomes with Medic profession ticked will also use them to heal gnomes in your hospital. They will prevent avoidable gnome deaths, especially so the close they are to where any combat happens.

Meserach, you are the patron saint of gnomes.

SlainteMhath, if you like the building and mining mechanics enough, you could also wall off the map with a one block buffer between the interior and the end of the map. this allows you to see incoming enemies as they arrive as well as allows new gnomads to arrive (and promptly get slaughtered by the goblins and such on the border unless you have subdivided the exterior of the the map) to come in to being. once you have this done (3 days in game?) you can focus one a stable agricultural base to feed your gnomes and hopefully attract more gnomads.

what about military? well, the enemies you attract are on the outside of your wall. they can't wreak havoc but they desperately want to so they don't leave the walls and eventually die of dehydration. these invaders will start wearing armor and carrying bricks of bronze/iron/steel depending on your kingdom worth and will leave this loot on the ground indefinitely when they die. so when they are dead open the wall, collect loot, arm gnomes, rebuild wall, send gnomes to training. repeat until every soldier has steel armor.

Do you have the latest update?

I was having a lot of trouble with crashes but the recent update fixed them for me

It's really aggravating when that happens though definitely

:(

On the Gnomoria forums I think there's a dropbox for crashing game saves. Rob will take those saves and figure out what's causing a crash, which is why so many crashing saved games bugs have been fixed in updates in the past couple of weeks, because he does actually narrow it down to some of the most miniscule shit (like that steam engine crash, or butchering crashes).

Meserach's military post could be a Wiki tutorial, good stuff.

Current map I am working on did not hit any reliable tin till level 23... I have 17-21 mined out completely. I ran into way to much silver on level 13 or 14 (thought it was Tin at first) and that has completely wrecked my want to start off slow with the economy. I was able to buy out the merchant that showed up, but still don't have enough bronze to fully outfit by military. I have started running into bronze welding goblins and had one ogre that fortunately got eaten by a bear on the way into my fort. I am using Malacite for all my engineering, which I think is a good use for it currently.

I'm not understanding mining out entire levels. I use tunnels about 5 blocks apart to find ore veins. Queuing up an entire level for digging is a long freaking work order.

I'm in the same boat with my current game. I'm down to level 25 and haven't seen any tin at all. I have plenty of silver and malachite, but not one bit of tin. I don't typically "mine out" all of the levels simply because that takes forever and a day, but substantial excavations on levels 21 and 23 have yielded nice finds of copper, silver and malachite, but not one bit of tin. Needless to say, the monsters are getting pretty tough at this point - the last invasion included a troll - because my base is getting pretty wealthy. Without the ability to improve our armor and weapons, I may have to resort to walling outselves in until we can find the materials to upgrade.

One thing I don't much like are the monster spawns in the mines. Torch/light management is becoming a royal pain in the ass. I have a feeling that the darkness will spawn things like gollems and we'd have no chance against those. How do you guys handle the torch management to keep monsters from spawning in your mines?

Mine out the levels in a logical fashion. I put torches at intersections. I lay floor over open caverns and remove ramps, or just wall off the tunnel to the cavern.

I find the caverns a bit too "natural" honestly. They look to me like something that would have formed through water dripping for thousands of years when what I would prefer is "extruded fantasy cave product.TM"

This game, holy shit, so addicting! I had 4 days off this weekend (Thur-Sun) and planned to play some Guild Wars 2, maybe one of the Steam games I bought off Amazon this weekend, and fiddle with my gnomes for a bit. I ended up spending every single gaming second (which granted, was only about 6 hours over 4 days) on Gnomoria.

Thanks Meserach for the tutorial. I now have a squad of gnomes training at the training grounds (which I placed in perfect position to intercept anything that comes through my compound's front gate when it's not sealed off with a wall). I decided to wall myself in, with a large outdoor area within my walls for tree groves, pastures and farms, including a well and a dump for corpses and body parts. Goblins and other critters now spawn and I occasionally spot them outside the walls, but they wander aimlessly and die of thirst while my gnomes laugh and work away. I did screw up once early on and forget to open a hole in the wall on the first day of a new season and had several Gnomads spawn outside the walls with nowhere to go. I dispatched my pair of warriors (only had the two at that point) to assist them, but lost a couple to the thirsty goblins before my warriors were able to tip the balance and escort the Gnomads back to the compound. On the bright side I also collected a ton of copper weapons during the exchange, so know my squad of 5 guardians is well equipped and easily handles any goblins who try to gate crash when it's time for merchants and more Gnomads.

I've been really lucky in that right under the level I'm using for my living, crafting and storage space I found a couple of really nice copper veins, plenty of coal and a few sapphires. No tin yet, but I've been trading for it off the merchants. I'm using the torches to light stairways and intersections, and I seal off any tunnels that didn't pan out with stone so that nothing spawns there (or even if it did it couldn't get out). Should I worry about replacing the floor or bright lighting on the level where my gnomes live/work (basically -2)? It doesn't seem like anything ever spawns there.

Now that I have a self-sufficient food and drink supply as well as a constant influx of all three wood types and cotton I'm looking at expanding the mining operation so I can better outfit my defenders. I built an armory first since I seem to have plenty of scavenged weapons but little in the way of armor. What else should I be doing? What use are jewelers and engineers? I assume jewelry simply increases the overall worth of your settlement and is nice for trading to the merchant? What sorts of things can engineers/tinkers make?

Get tinkering going. You will be glad you did. You'll eventually see crossbows, traps and even firearms.

Torch placement IS super tedious. Fortunately it is an issue the developer is particularly sensitive to; there's a whole massive thread on the official Gnomoria forum about it and he is kicking around a series of solutions. We'll see what gets implemented next, although the current versiosn do have a couple of changes which have at least changed the problem somewhat, such as the fact monsters don't spawn on newly mined out tiles for two days. This does theoretically mean you can mine out an area then simply seal it up once you've found all the usable metals

I do them in a grid pattern with precisely 16 tiles between each one, that seems to be the most efficient possible placement (although obviously if you don't mine the whole thing out flat you'll have to deal with walls creating shadows, which means more torches and/or deviating from the strict grid.

Can't you 'cheat' by selecting 'build stairs down' and then moving the mouse all over the floor and see where it turns red? That 's what I do anyway. If anyone wanders by and asks me what I am doing i simply reply 'mining'.