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[The_Final_Stand]

As per title.

After a few dorf years of exploratory mining, and finding nothing but worthless gems, I caved and got DFHack to prospect my land. After learning that prospect doesn't work well without revealing the whole map, and then revealing said map, I discover that there is no ore whatsoever. None. Not even Tetrahedrite, which the wiki claims "appears everywhere".

Alright, there is some ore, hidden in a nice large unrevealed patch, but I'm guessing that's bluemetal since it's so far down, and in a tall spire shape, and I'd much rather not tick off the clowns. Or reward my dorfs with such awesome weapons until they've proved themselves, which is unlikely to happen until they get weapons made of a more dangerous material than wood. And that's not going to help my hammersquad anyway.

CLearly, my only recourse is ordering metal en masse from the caravans, or goblinite. But the former takes forever to obtain in any real quantity, and the latter, again, requires that my dorfs have something more dangerous than an +ash training axe+.

No, a masterwork training axe does not count.

Help?

[Garath]

First of all, in your embark, did you have shallow metals and deep metals? If you had those both, yes, then there is a 99%chance you'll have tetrahedrite.

Some stones register as metals, because they are basically ores, but the dwarfs do not have the technology to extract them. The ones that come to mind are cinnabar and cobaltite.
To me it sounds like you didn't get a good embark site.

also, dfhack has "prospect all", no need to reveal.

[quarague]

use leather or bone armor and crossbows, wooden/bone bolts are not that good against targets wearing metal armor but perfectly fine against almost everything else. Also use traps (do you have glass?) to aquire goblinite.

[Chocolatemilkgod]

Personally, I'd just build a ton of either glass weapon traps (Menacing glass spikes if you have sand) or cage traps. Get tons of goblinite and then your ore problem is solved. If you want, after you have enough bars of metal, you can deconstruct your traps and then rely on your now fully equipped military.

[enizer]

you could make a mad dash for cavern layer 3, and then wall it back up, and wait for blood thorn trees to appear, for wood that's twice as heavy as your standard wood..

but i dont think those still compare to metal very favorably

[slothen]

you can collect goblinite without having ore for weapons, you just need to get a bit creative with your traps.  Until you have enough goblinite to melt down, you can use it directly for arming your dwarves.  Imported weapons and armor from caravans can be quite effective (weapon traps or equipped on military), even if its no-quality.

[The_Final_Stand]

I have clay, but no sand beyond that which I order from caravans.

So, basically, the answer is cagetrap spam?

[miauw62]

Personally, I'd just build a ton of either glass weapon traps (Menacing glass spikes if you have sand) or cage traps. Get tons of goblinite and then your ore problem is solved. If you want, after you have enough bars of metal, you can deconstruct your traps and then rely on your now fully equipped military.

Add crossbows to this and you got your solution.
Hell, some people may even want the save, just so they can check this out.

[Loud Whispers]

Personally I'd just go with full fortress military, salvaging weapons and armour when possible. One of my most thriving fortresses to date was one with no metals or trees at all. Not even in caverns. So it can be done without traps ^_^

[Leafsnail]

Make lots of rock crafts then buy ALL iron/ steel things from the caravan.  There should be enough there to get a few dwarves equipped.

[Loud Whispers]

Don't caravans leaving with loads of your stuff contribute to FPS death?

[Leafsnail]

While they're on the screen, maybe.  Pretty sure the results said that selling your items clears them though.