Not to risk being too familiar to Minecraft, but how will you handle digging underground? The biggest hurdle I see is that the people seem to be 2 squares tall, making it impossible for them to simply clear out a level of earth, they would have to make a hole at least 2 squares tall. But I like the idea of having to manage beams for support (similar to the scaffolding) and creating supply lines. I’m a Dwarf at heart so I’ll be spending plenty time searching for riches in the muck. I’ll also be wanting to make a module or two set underground.
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The scaffolding system you mentioned seems line something that would fit perfectly in this game. =)
Although Tom did mention that it might be awhile until they get underground working, this still seems like a rwally solid idea to me. When you find magma you then just call in the magma smith to clear it so you can keep digging.
I hope they get the chance to ship with mining, it’s a pretty important the second you need iron, and if there is going to be magical crafting than you’ll need a way to get at all the lovely gold and jewels in the deep. I like the idea of being able to place scaffolding wherever you want in order to scale a quarried area, I pretty much keep thinking of Temple of Doom, minus the child slave army.
Yeah, requiring underground supports and so forth would be a good way to differentiate this from Dwarf Fortress – after all, people aren’t as good at the digging as dwarves, so they have to go through the extra steps of support and so forth, makes a kind of sense.
I do hope they add in some degree of significant digging/mining though, for a few reasons.
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having to dig up metals adds another level of complexity to the process of equipping your army and so forth. Half the fun of a good DF game is setting up the steel making process, or realizing your site can make bronze if you import some tin, etc.
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Different stone types add lots of fun depth to the fortress building game, partly because you’re building in different colors (Ice block fortress!!) but especially in this game, where we’ll likely have destructible terrain and constructions, different stone types might have different material strengths and so forth.
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One of the really fun things about this genre is designing your fortress to fit the terrain – i.e, Helm’s Deep type fortresses where you use mountains and valleys and so forth and build your castle out of them. A certain amount of reshaping ability is necessary to make that kind of thing work, otherwise the randomized terrain will mess you up (“arg, that spot is almost perfect but there’s that rock outcropping there! My seige engines won’t fit!”)
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If they want to really get fancy with the harvest moon type side of the game, they could implement underground storage making food preserve longer.
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Underground would be awesome and hopefully they will be able to package it into the at ship or shortly after. I imagine a quick fix for the need of iron is to have “caves” with resources that you could send people in to mine and bring back resources. Sort of like any RTS out there. With the thought of extra planes, I feel they should be able to figure out underground since there is a large desire for it.
Gnomes in Gnomeria can’t dig as well as Dwarfs. But they still try anyways. I think we should have underground digging. Adds a lot more depth.
@Gibbtall i cant begin to explain how much i want underground being up from the get go (probably because im such a huge Dwarf Fortress fan), but! it seems undergorund will be a long run after the game will already be released as they have yet to even present it as a strech goal.
if i were to have and underground it would probably be similar to dwarf fortress, with Z lvls and the rest but im open to any new idea really that isn’t just digging a hole that vomits stone as resource
Underground would be extremely great 
Personally, I loved how Gnomoria handled it a little, with how they tied the ability to changed depth levels easily with just the mousewheel. Was very seamless in general to my opinion.
Admitedly that was in 2D graphics so I don’t know how 3D graphics would like having to deal with such.
my Q&A from the AMA:
Q) we know you want to have a solid “above ground” game experience before embarking underground, but do you have any plans or ideas for the direction you want to take when/if the time presents itself? to clarify, what will mining/digging look like to the player (will the terrain go translucent, will you have to change the Z level view to see whats going on, etc.)
A) When we get to it, we want the underground to be just as content-dense as the above ground. Above ground there’s stuff going on all the time: trees, flowers, critters hopping around, etc.
We want the underground to have a similar density, where you don’t have to dig very far before running into something interesting, even if it’s just some fluorescent plants in a subterranean cave or whatever.
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This is a pretty vague response, and doesn’t really give any indication that it will be available on release.
I would have thought that mining and resource gathering was quite a large aspect of the game (how do you get the iron/ minerals for your weapons etc…).
Will there be mining structures, mining pits, open cut mining and wells. Will we have geologists and fossickers etc…
Would love a little information on their ideas, hopes and the direction they are taking subterranean activities.
I have my fingers crossed something will pop up as a stretch goal as I love mining and resource management so for me it is important, I also love exploring caves.
Obviously it wont effect my final judgment on the game as I am already a backer based on the great stuff I’ve already seen, but to know my digging and cave exploration needs have been fulfilled would be nice.
I am also happy that they want to give it the attention it deserves and make it a rich experience unto itself.
Yeah, I’m still not really clear on what will be in and what won’t and when. I know they’ve said there will be destructible terrain and some degree of digging, and presumably there’s going to be stone and metal harvesting of some kind, but they’ve also said they won’t include detailed mining / underground “for a while.”
My hope is the next major stretch goal announced will be the underground and full detailed mining.
I can see them having “strip mining” as a placeholder. Like the ability to dig up dirt and stone will most likely come at release, this will allow people to dig out a hole in the ground for materials. Having veins of Iron or other metals poking up through the surface would show where materials exist below the ground. I understand that having things like minecarts, procedural cave systems and physics for overhanging rock and possible cave-ins would take a lot more work. I still think it should be more important than alternate plains though.
Perhaps the fact that there is no stretch goal for it yet is that they already fully intend on having it done, just right now they are building the game above ground. Once they have a fully working above ground game it’s much easier to add in below ground elements.
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@Gibbtall has it right I think; early ‘mining’ will be from surface deposits, and actually digging into the earth and tunneling will come later.
As a side thought, underground might come for basically for ‘free’ with the work on alternative planes; what’s the underground but an alternative plane you can access by digging?
-Will
that was my take as well… i dont recall if it was from the AMA, or elsewhere, but i recall hearing about surface materials, etc.
I like your thinking along the lines of cave -ins 
I am happy they are giving it the love it deserves and having surface deposits which indicate a deposit below ground is a nice start, along with what they said about caves and such.
Having it’s own flora and fauna would open up new crafting possibilities also.
Those glowy plants don’t taste so good, but saves on fuel when it comes to lighting.
I am 99% certain they will not release the game at all until they have all of the mechanics they want for a solid single-player game in place, underground included. I think the mistake being made here is that y’all are taking what they said to mean they aren’t gonna work on it until later, where as I am fairly certain they are just getting everything else set up first so that the mechanics are all there for the important things such as building and crafting and classes and events and such, and then will focus on the underground and all its splendor. And it will be splendid. I have no doubt that, while the guards are on patrol, keeping the farmers and crafters and builders all safe, a band of stalwart adventurers will be able to delve into that newly discovered cave to slay its foul, corrupted inhabitants, claim the treasure within, and make that much more safer.
Building on your cave adventurer idea. If you dig do deep to quickly you might uncover something that you won’t be able to beat. Or lets say that you have a cave system set up for mining or something, and then some underground goblins decide that you’ve come too close to their territory and digs i to your tunnel, scaring your workers and catching you off guard.
I think that would add something quite interesting to the game, you’d have to have guards either patrolling the mine or stationed close by the entrance ready to save the workers at a moments notice.
There was also the question of mining at kickstarter:
Will there be mining in the game? Can I build a fortress underground?
Eventually, yes! But we want to make sure that we have a great above-ground building experience first.
Last updated: Tuesday Apr 30, 2:49pm EDT
@frodo010595 i found your idea very great and hope that they will build something like this in the game 
So what about underground cities of the dwarves? I would love to build secret bases in the underground. And what about those mentioned problems that occur if you’re digging too deep (massive goblin / spider attacks? ; magma ?..)?
you could get rid of the magma using the magma smith. maybe you can use him to channel the magma out of the ground onto the surface and use it to make walls? therefore everything you find underground could be used. (habit of mine, use everything to your advantage, served me very well in lots of games)