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[intently]

First off, everyone on here has been very helpful!

Second... I got an anvil very early on the in game, but there's no way to use it without charcoal and coke!  I could use wood to make charcoal, but I need all my wood for beds, barrels, and bins.  So, I'm looking for some coke in the mountain, but so far haven't found anything.  I'm past the chasm already, and no coke.

So, am I missing something?  Do people use metal before they get to magma?

[Jifodus]

I've done it.  Yeah, you certainly need to balance between beds/barrels/bins/charcoal.  Try mining up and down from your main hallway past the chasm, you'll eventually encounter coal and iron.  You could also be very unlucky and have only a little coal.

[Sappho]

Yeah the system for metalsmithing is diffucult and I'm not a huge fan of it, but that's the way it is.  You can use up your wood for charcoal, or try to use coke as much as possible.  Thing is, you have to use fuel to make fuel: you need 1 unit of either charcoal or coke in order to make coke out of butiminous coal (which is what you mine out).  Or you can use magma, but then you have to deal with magma monsters.

You should note that once you have reached the magma in your fortress, if a dwarf goes into a strange mood and wants a forge they will not be satisfied with a regular one and will stand around doing nothing until you build a magma forge, which means finding not only coal but iron as well to make steel.  I've lost a lot of good metalsmiths because they went moody and I just didn't have the resources to build a magma forge.

I swear, though, although the game is an Alpha and has problems galore, it's totally worth it, and the new version (coming soon) will be even better!  So don't give up!  

[Eagle of Fire]

Basically, unless you have tons and tons of wood to spare (which is very rare unless you're playing a successfull fortress with a huge tree farm), you're far better off using magma workshops than using charcoal to power everything up.

Usually, all you need is one steel bar and you'll be set to work with a magma smelter. Once this is done, you'll never have power problem with smelthing or blacksmithing.  

[nerdpride]

quote:Originally posted by Sappho:
<STRONG>Yeah the system for metalsmithing is diffucult and I'm not a huge fan of it, but that's the way it is.  You can use up your wood for charcoal, or try to use coke as much as possible.  Thing is, you have to use fuel to make fuel: you need 1 unit of either charcoal or coke in order to make coke out of butiminous coal (which is what you mine out).  Or you can use magma, but then you have to deal with magma monsters.</STRONG>

Magma monsters can be dealt with if you set up the workshops on one of the little "forks" branching from the magma river.  It can be troublesome to find one, and sometimes when you do find it you had already mined enough that fortifications can't be placed exactly where you would've wanted them (tempting the use of two particular utilities) but the area is very rich with the kinds of resources that a proper dwarven fortress needs.

A bunch of marksdwarves on either side of the fork, behind fortifications whenever possible should do the trick.  Put archery targets in the barracks so the shooters don't have to go anywhere to train.  Siege with the properly skilled operators would make things even more interesting.  Of course, maybe only a maximum of 5 workshops could be built, but that's the cost of the defenses gained--not too likely that your legendary smith will get fireballed when set-up like that!

Just be wary of creating too much wealth before traps and a sufficient military is trained up--it would be very frustrating to be interrupted by a siege of 50 goblins and maybe 20 ratmen from the chasm because you went happy with the stone crafting so you could trade for 50 horses or something.

[utunnels]

Minerals are quite different between maps.
My previous fortress had so plenty copper ore(even at the entrance), my dwarves could swim in copper. Bad thing was, I could hardly find a wall with no ore in it. But I used quite a long time to find coal and iron.