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[svancouw]

I'm fairly new to DF, but doing pretty well on my third fortress. I'm up to 86 dwarves, and am making so much I can't trade it all away.

My difficulty is that I'm in an area that is fairly rich in platinum nuggets, but except for a single statue I am not able to build anything made of platinum. The game always says that there are no platinum bars.

Is there any way to make platinum bars? I can't find this info on the wiki, this forum or the 'net. I tried both freeing the nuggets from platinum ore only use, and re-reserving it, but no luck either way. I can't smelt or forge platinum bars.

Thanks!

[Rusty Mcloon]

I'm also a newbie, too, but maybe I can help.  Do you have the platinum in stockpiles?  Maybe that's the problem.

[GreyMario]

Not the problem.

You need to smelt the platinum nuggets first. Build a smelter using [w]-[e]-.

[svancouw]

Thanks for the tip, but I've got two smelters running almost full time. I've inspected them multiple times to see if I've just missed the command to smelt the platinum.

I feel stupid having to ask this, but what commands do you issue to create the platinum bars at the smelter?

[GreyMario]

Smelt Native platinum ore

[svancouw]

I'll have to double check when I get home tonight (forgot to turn the pc on this morning so I can't get to it remotely), but I would have sworn that wasn't in the list of options.

I'll report back in a few hours.

[Name Lips]

The next question is: Do you have FUEL for your smelter?

You need to have processed some charcoal or coke. These are used to power your smelter - and your metalworker's workshops, glass furnace, and so on.

You get charcoal by building a wood burning furnace and queuing up a "make charcoal" job. You get one charcoal per unit of wood. It takes a lot of wood to get a real metalworking economy going.

You make coke by finding Bituminous Coal or Lignite veins while mining. You then need at least one unit of charcoal to get the process going, and then you can process each unit of coal or lignite into THREE units of coke.

Processing coal or lignite takes fuel (coke or charcoal), but making charcoal from wood doesn't.

The option to smelt ore will NOT show up in your smelter until you have fuel available to use.

You can also use magma to power your smelters, but that's a bit trickier.

[GreyMario]

quote:Originally posted by Name Lips:
<STRONG>The next question is: Do you have FUEL for your smelter?

You need to have processed some charcoal or coke. These are used to power your smelter - and your metalworker's workshops, glass furnace, and so on.

You get charcoal by building a wood burning furnace and queuing up a "make charcoal" job. You get one charcoal per unit of wood. It takes a lot of wood to get a real metalworking economy going.

You make coke by finding Bituminous Coal or Lignite veins while mining. You then need at least one unit of charcoal to get the process going, and then you can process each unit of coal or lignite into THREE units of coke.

Processing coal or lignite takes fuel (coke or charcoal), but making charcoal from wood doesn't.

The option to smelt ore will NOT show up in your smelter until you have fuel available to use.

You can also use magma to power your smelters, but that's a bit trickier.</STRONG>

Wrong. Lignite produces only two coke.

Also, did you even read his problem? He has two smelters going full time.

[svancouw]

OK, I've had a chance to look again at my smelter, and below is a screenshot of the options I have available, none of which is "smelt native platinum ore":
www.vancocomputing.net/DF/smelter.JPG

According to my inventory, I have 50 nuggets and 96 charcoal stockpiled. So far I only use charcoal as fuel, as I've only found a limited amount of Bituminous Coal or Lignite.

Any suggestions? I do appreciate your help.

[GreyMario]

Are they forbidden?

[svancouw]

That definitely rang a bell. I forbid the platinum nuggets from being picked up to concentrate on other tasks earlier in the game, and completely forgot about it. I reclaimed them so they should start moving them into my fortress.

Thanks for bringing that up. I can't believe I had forgotten I had done that. Here I was thinking "bug" when it was probably user error  

I'll let you know if it works.
---
"If all sensible solutions fail, the problem is likely somewhere between the keyboard and the chair."

[svancouw]

Yep, that did it. I now have the option to smelt Native Platinum Ore.

I'll make myself sit in the corner and face the wall for 30 minutes.

Thank you!