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[ioi101]

Turns out my embark has no iron, and hence steel is very hard to get. However, many advanced systems require steel on top of other materials. So what are my options?

Trees in herbalist : I assume these will work, but it's slow

Trade gold coins for iron in trader

Convert bismuth to iron with alchemy

Anything else?

[Innocent Dave]

Don't forget you can order crates of steel bars from caravans.  They're expensive, though.

[kamikazi1231]

Go for a religious fort.  Get a few dwarves as priests/nuns or higher and set their only labor as praying.  Then have them constantly pray for hard metals at the altar of armok.  Maybe have some pray for soft metals then sell those metals for gold coins to buy whatever you want.  When caravans come buy up all the hearts they bring with them, you can specifically sacrifice those for higher reward chance for random things.  Once they are legendary they will produce a bar of some metal every few seconds with how fast they pray.

Also you can sacrifice armor pieces for a chance to get bloody armor of armok, which I'm pretty sure is damn good.  Just churn out a ton of copper armor pieces to train up an armorsmith.  Then use the Temple of Armok to sacrifice that type on repeat.  It's important to use alt+a and select the material type copper though, or when you get a bloody armor of armok it will be immediately sacrificed.  I'm not exactly sure how it holds up to steel.

[ioi101]

I'm not too worried about armor/weapons as such, there's plenty of cobalt and other metals. I'm more worried about steel as a required part of other things.

Those are both excellent suggestions though, I'll try that

[palu]

You can make irobbone and bloodsteel at the alchemist.

[blapnk]

Ironbone at least can be used engrave iron runes on weapons and armor in place of true iron. I don't know about any other reactions though

Metalgrade trees in the herbalist might be slow but with good farmers and fertilizer there's probably a way to get a large pay-off.

Praying as mentioned is good. I'm pretty sure the bloody material is better than volcanic when it comes to edged damage from what I can read of the raws so it might come in use with my next suggestion:

Fighting Iron/Steel/Mithril colossuses in the coliseum. No changlings or books of summoning required anymore. Butchering them at the slaughter house nets you a whole bunch of bars, way more than what's needed for the statue reagent. Mithril can be reduced back to Steel/Silver at the metallurgist.

And of course there's goblinite which features a lot more rusty iron. You'll need a crucible to remove the rust though.

[arbarbonif]

You can order hematite bearing stone, iron bars, steel bars, pig iron bars, crates of steel bars and crates of iron bars from caravans.

[Frostea]

Religious fort is a good idea. They churn out almost all sorts of materials with a simple Shrine of Armok alone, and they do it pretty fast with legendary skills. I would put my usual trio of furnace operators on prayer duties if I was forced to embark on a location with no iron.