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[elsporko]

Hey all. I just started Dwarf Fortress a few days ago. I'm following AfterActionReporter.com's dwarf fortress tutorial. I'm at the point where I'm making steel. I've made lots of charcoal and iron bars, and have limestone rocks and such all over my fortress, but the smelters don't give me an option to make Pig Iron. I can melt a metal object, smelt magnetite ore, and smelt native platinum ore.

I have charcoal and iron bars, so I just need a flux material, right? Do I have to specifically designate materials as flux, or does just having it around work? Like I said, almost all of the floors and walls are made of limestone, which should be a suitable flux material. How do I gather this material, or make it suitable to use as flux?

[Psieye]

Hmm, you've got everything you need and I assume you haven't mass-forbidden the limestone. Have you tried building a second smelter right next to the limestone (to guarantee no pathing problems)? What happens if you order the "make pig iron" job via the manager menu?

[elsporko]

Thanks for your reply. Also, if it helps, I'm using an older version of DF so that I can properly follow along with the tutorial, I'm using v0.28.181.40d.

I went into the job manager and searched for IRON, but there were no "Make pig iron" or anything of the sort. I searched PIG as well, and there were no possible jobs for it.

I destroyed the Smelter and built another one in the same place, no difference. The distance between the Smelter and the limestone the dwarf used to build the Smelter is only one space. Does it matter that my iron bars are on a different level? My stockpile for the iron bars is on a different level. Maybe they can't find the bars or something?

Edit: I placed a stockpile a few tiles away from my smelter. There's a few tiles of bars of iron loaded already, and the smelter still doesn't give me the option to make pig iron bars.

[Ricky]

one last guess, go to your O'rders and see if your dwarves ignore minerals, or anything realated

[elsporko]

Nope, it's set to: "Dwarves gather minerals" I'm guessing that since the dwarf was able to make the Smelter out of Limestone anyways, he shouldn't have any problems. It might be something awfully stupid that I'm doing.

[Funtimes]

Have you made any iron bars yet?
Smelt a few magnetite and try again.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Check [DF directory]\raw\objects\reaction_standard. It should have a reaction named MAKE_PIG_IRON_BARS. If not, you're screwed and I have no idea how it happened. If it does, your problem lies elsewhere - in 40d, the reactions will show up on the list if you have any of the reagents needed. Since it's not, either something happened to the raws or I'm stumped.

[SammyLiimex]

This happened o me in 40d before and I asked for help here, then played more and it magically fixed itself.

[elsporko]

I have this in that file:

[REACTION:PIG_IRON_MAKING]
[NAME:make pig iron bars]
[SMELTER]
[REAGENT:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:IRON]
[REAGENT:1:REACTION_CLASS:FLUX]
[REAGENT:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:COAL:NO_MATGLOSS]
[PRODUCT:100:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:PIG_IRON]
[FUEL]

So it's there. Not sure what happened. I can just go on to the rest of the tutorial, but I won't be able to truly protect my fortress with the traps in the tutorial. I've got all of these cages and mechanisms... but no steel to make it useful, haha. I'll keep playing, and see if it fixes itself or something. Thanks for all of your help, guys. Although, if anyone has a fix, I wouldn't mind

[breadbocks]

Just use iron and bronze you wuss.

[Epacsten]

Bronze or iron is fine for traps imho. I save steel for military weapons and armor.

[The_Kakaze]

Did you check the Z menu to be sure limestone isn't red?  Dwarves won't use stones that are marked red and by default like half of the stones are marked as forbidden.

[AtomicPaperclip]

Did you check the Z menu to be sure limestone isn't red?  Dwarves won't use stones that are marked red and by default like half of the stones are marked as forbidden.

That would be fine, since it's part of a reaction. Also, it is green, because he built the smelter with it.