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[rufio]

Does it do anything?  Can you blow things up?  Given that this is DF, and that the view immediately snaps to the newly-discovered saltpeter in a microcline-esque way, I would expect that you could, but the wiki has nothing on it.

[sproingie]

DF has no gunpowder as a deliberate design choice.  Saltpeter has other uses, such as a fertilizer and a preservative, but so far it's just another rock.  Nice of the game to draw your attention to it, eh?  At least the next version will let you turn that off.

[Retro]

DF's view snaps to any new non-layer stone that you dig out. Sometimes it may seem to fail to, but that's because the far edge is already exposed somewhere you can't see it. We all joke about the frequency of striking microcline (and orthoclase and alunite and etc. etc. etc.) but you'll get this for basically every large pocket, vein, and cluster of stones you hit for the first time. You're going to get familiar with it, trust me.

Saltpeter specifically has no special uses aside from its yellow colour, as seen here.

[Head Hunter]

 They need to use it in their food and water so they lose the need to breed. Same for their animals and pets.

 Hmmm... I wonder the effects of a river running through a saltpeter vein... if civilizations downstream would just die out from lack of sex. lol

[sunshaker]

No use yet, but you could use a reaction to turn saltpeter and sylvite into potash (and it would be justified at DF tech levels).

[sproingie]

The bit about saltpeter inhibiting sex drive is an old wives tale.  If stockpiled food ever needed preservatives, rock salt and saltpeter would be good candidates.  I'm not sure if anything but potash can be used to fertilize fields or if that's changeable in the raws.  Fertilizing fields is too much of a bother anyway, since you can only do it with mud farming.

[rufio]

We all joke about the frequency of striking microcline (and orthoclase and alunite and etc. etc. etc.) but you'll get this for basically every large pocket, vein, and cluster of stones you hit for the first time. You're going to get familiar with it, trust me.

Oh, I had a fort with annoying amounts of microcline in it before.  This one seems to be entirely free of it, though.  I do get the same message for mica, gypsum and calcite on this map, but not nearly as frequently.  I seem to remember getting notifications about kaolinite too at some point, but I haven't found any more since my fort got big enough for it to be annoying.

I guess it's just less memorable when the stone you strike isn't bright turquoise, or isn't an element of gunpowder.

I guess it wouldn't really be fair to give dwarves gunpowder without also giving the to the goblins, though, and then you wouldn't get axedwarves cleaving goblins in two and sending their lower bodies flying all the way across the mountain.  I was mostly thinking about using it for traps, though, or mining a whole lot of rock at once.

At least the next version will let you turn that off.

Really?  Awesome.