Thanks, always nice to hear.
I agree with how the missing floors came to be. It's just insanely...weird. And breaks a bunch of crap, which is annoying.
And, yes. That IS a ton of goblinite. Keep in mind only the iron survives in the magma. Bronze/Copper/etc. can only be collected from the OMG mine-cart run itself. And there's still plenty of it. There's... well... not much I can do with all that tin. Currently I'm using it to build up blacksmithing with doors and stuff, but... um... yeaaaaahhhh... And I thought the cassiterite was copper at first, brain fart. We dug a bunch.
You CAN go through SMR, but it costs 1 dwarf / level. I'm pretty confident as to exactly where the spire is, and my next episode will have me prepping for that eventually.
You're right about the 5/7 pocket. I was just being overly anal about doing it without mistakes. Drunken Dwarves are painful to keep straight. Just had a broken spine from a minecart that got let go while being guided.
I've tried to figure out the item, but honestly, there's just too much constantly going on. Unless and until Toady or someone with DFHack puts together something to let us go directly to these items, I give up unless it's obvious (wheelbarrow between burrows is a usual culprit).
2 real years later in August, the endgame is definitely coming. Almost there.