bit of late post, but anything can be turned into a golem, having had a few straw or cotton golems

I use a Spiral Stairwell design within a 3x3 space to get my miners to safety. On every floor I start by mining stairs down to the level I'm approaching, followed by clearing out the 3x3 dirt/stone walls that lines up with the previous level, leaving the floor. I put a torch in the center of the stairwell, and I've never had trouble with it.

It's more cumbersome, but it's very easygoing on gnome travel, especially if you have some basic resource caches placed at the lower levels that might cause gnomes to risk starvation during the trip back up (especially if you're going down into the -80's.)

doesnt work with golems lol havent played in a while and forgot about the golems they rekt my colony other than that it twas one of the best guides ive seen for returners and newbs

I found it less time intensive to mine strips every 3rd block, looking almost inverse to yours. Where you have blocks I would have walkways, and keep a torch there. Where you have all mined out, I would have every third row mined, that way you can see every available mineral and only mine those when its something you want. To avoid any spawns, I would wall in the ends when finished.

DEAD WEIGHT
simple, just turn them off on the advanced setup screen when starting a new game. you can stop any mob from spawning through the startup screen

lol new to this game... all of my gnomes are currently being murdered by skeletons at the bottom of my mine since they refuse to block it up like i told them to...

Just read this guide... turns out the way i was mining was effectively begging to be slaughtered by skeletons...

thank you...

JUNKERJA you cant have golems spawning in your stockpiles its impossible

Could you add something about beetles?

i had a stone golem spawn at level 0 from stone in my stockpile the other day. Luckily I killwd him and lit the room up.

Punctuation, mothafucka, do you know it?