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[Vaporo]

So, as far as I can tell my current fort is the last remaining site of my civilization. I haven't received any migrants for the last five-ish years, and even the dwarven caravans seem to have stopped. I'm ok with this. I have 53 dwarves remaining and can seal my fort off from the rest of the world at the flip of a switch. However, receiving no new migrants has had another side effect: Soon, every one of my non-military dwarves will have created an artifact, and when that finally happens I will receive no more artifacts until my fortress gets some more children.

So, I wanted to make one of these last few artifacts count. I was going to make a PLATINUM WAR HAMMER. First, I identified a dwarf who had not yet made an artifact:

Perfect. No artifact-worthy skills, so training her in weaponsmithing will guarantee me some sort of weapon. Next step: training.

I drop her in a pit with a magma forge, some food and water, and a bunch of steel and order her to make war hammers on repeat. I discovered a while running this fort that moody dwarves seem to have a preference towards items that they've been making a lot of recently. While I was training my armorsmiths by making chain leggings, I got some artifact adamantine chain leggings. While I was training weaponsmiths with battleaxes, I got two artifact adamantine axes. So I'm hoping that having her make war hammers will give her a preference towards war hammers.

After a while, this happened:

I made a save, forbade the steel, checked her requested materials, dumped them in the pit... and nothing. She refused to budge. Why? She had everything she needed? Frustrated, I opened up her forge room to the rest of the fort. Immediately, she made a beeline for the adamantine stocks. I let her go, and soon she had made... an adamantine short sword. Certainly not bad, but I already have two artifact adamantine battle axes, an artifact adamantine spear, and an artifact adamantine pick. Plus, I have no swordsdwarves to wield it. So, time to reload the save.

I tried several ways, but no matter what I could not get her to accept platinum as her main material. Interestingly, I even dumped some adamantine into the pit, but she even ignored that. She seemed to have selected a specific adamantine wafer as her base material.

Eventually, I reloaded a save from before her mood started. This time, after she had made enough hammers to become a legendary weaponsmith, I forbade every piece of metal in the fort except platinum. Eventually, she went into a mood again, and this time she went straight for the platinum I had dumped in her hole. Success! I dumped in the rest of her requested ingredients and made a save. She accepted them all without any issue. Soon she had made... A platinum battleaxe.

sigh

Well, it's progress at least. I reloaded the save I made right after she gathered her materials. This time she made... A platinum spear. Third time was the charm, though. Soon...




Yes! I immediately assigned it to my militia commander and called it a day.

Summary of what I learned here:

Most of the information on the wiki about artifact creation is correct, but with a few caveats. Secondary, "decorative" materials are fluid and can be manually selected after the mood starts. However, the first "primary" material is selected as soon as the mood begins regardless of whether the dwarf can actually path to a sample of that material, and may even select a specific item as the primary material. You can only guarantee that a specific material be selected by forbidding every other eligible material in the fortress before the mood begins.

Whoops. Apparently I missed the bit about adamantine wafers.

[Loci]

Most of the information on the wiki about artifact creation is correct, but with a few caveats.

The wiki page on strange moods is *quite* comprehensive... For instance, you claim:

the first "primary" material is selected as soon as the mood begins regardless of whether the dwarf can actually path to a sample of that material, and may even select a specific item as the primary material. You can only guarantee that a specific material be selected by forbidding every other eligible material in the fortress before the mood begins.

However, the wiki precisely describes how metalworkers choose their primary material:

Metalworkers will demand adamantine wafers if any are available (unforbidden). If not, they will demand a preferred metal if you have smelted any bars of it - fey moods will state this outright, while for secretive moods and possessions you will need to check the dwarf's preferences to see which metal they like. Otherwise, they will select any available metal(s).

So while you can forbid everything except platinum, it isn't necessary (nor is it sufficient). What is necessary is forbidding all your adamantine wafers and not having smelted any bars of the metalworker's preferred metal (if any). If your metalworker likes tin and you have smelted tin, he will not accept platinum even if it is the only metal bar on site.

[Vaporo]

Whoops. All right, I guess I missed that part, then.

[anonymous14z]

Give the warhammer a test-run, I'm eager to see how powerful it is (since it's arguably one of the most powerful weapons available)