Tunnels, rooms, and even up stairs exist on single z-levels. Mining is simply tunneling - you dig out the stuff of the level itself, and never touch the upper or lower boundary. With some actions, you remove just a layer, and with some you also pierce the boundary. But once pierced, creatures and items can move/fall through a boundary, and miasma and fluids can pass through as well. The barrier is invisible - you only see the different layers. where each line is the boundary between the level above and below it. You can think of the 'boundary' as the 'floor', but that's not perfectly accurate in all situations - but close enough to start.) You will never see a boundary, only see the effects when one is pierced, giving access, desired or undesired, between levels. (* The word 'boundary' is not an in-game term. These 'boundaries' are just that - boundaries - they have no thickness, dwarfs and items are never found there, and nothing ever happens there - but they act as barriers between adjacent layers.īoundaries are also referred to as 'floor tiles' (not to be confused with floors). There are effectively two parts to z-layers - the layer itself (the z-level where stuff happens, things exist and dwarfs work), and the boundary* between those layers/levels. This is useful for viewing the z-level near the map edge, which can't be centered on.

To move up and down, use often works (although it can be a bit unreliable with hills). The z-axis is believed to be in part of the game engine that calculates accuracy of weapons based on where dwarves are, how missiles fly, and other similar considerations. Thus, objects described with only two axes are two-dimensional, whilst objects with depth measured along the z-axis are three-dimensional. The z-axis, as you can see, is perpendicular to both the x-axis and the y-axis to create a 3D coordinate system, which is what Dwarf Fortress is based in.

Dwarf fortress 3d elevation