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[Insomnia Array]

I suppose this question has been asked a billion of times, but...

What should I do if I want a metal industry, and the location I have embarked on doesn't have either fuel (lignite or bituminous coal) or any kind of iron ore... I'm kind of confused, and I would greatly appreciate if someone gave me a bit of advice.

[rephikul]

Burn trees / tap magma for fuel
Make copper weapon traps and "mine" invaders for iron.

[guitarxe]

Just iron ore? Or no ores at all? It's unlikely to have absolutely no ore anywhere on your embark.
But regardless, you can always order ores from caravan, and metal bars, but also anything made from metal. So, weapons, armour (these are expensive), but also useless junk like toys and tools made from metal. All that can get melted in your forges to get recycled metal (of course you get a pretty small amount of metal this way compared to just smelting ore).

Then you can always collect armour/weapons from dead goblins (or other civs) and smelt them, too.

[Garath]

tetrahedrite also gives silver, which is good for blunt weapons. Galena also gives silver, and, well, so does native silver obviously.

If you do have copper, you can order tin and make bronze bars. While not as good as steel, bronze works quite well.

As mentioned before, goblins will often have metal weapons and armor. This is often called "goblinite" and elaborate traps have been made over time to harvest this precious resource without letting any of it escape.

Honestly, some of my most succesful fortresses had no iron, or no flux, or neither. Pit traps, other traps and, yes, elaborate ways to sepperate enemies from their lifes and posessions

If it comes to traps, glass serrated blades and wooden spiked balls are still good enough to soften the enemy for your less-well-equiped military.

[Tai_MT]

Go to furnaces.  Get a Wood Furnace.  Now turn your wood into Charcoal.  You can use this for smelting.  Be sure to enable "Wood Burning" on a Dwarf to get them to do the job.

In maps with no ore, I tend to rely on caravans or goblins for it.  If a caravan loves you (you send them away with FAR MORE than they actually earned) they will bring a TON of an item for you.  I've had caravans bring upwards of 70 steel bars to me after four years of "great trading" with them, and requesting NOTHING BUT the steel bars.

Doing this, for me anyway, was far more reliable than trying to find Flux and taking the time to make the junk myself.  It might even work for you!

And yeah, melting down goblinite is highly effective.  I prefer cage traps and then taking everything a goblin owns.  I then place the goblins in the "training hall" and let the dwarves bash on them to gain experience.  Plus, the silk stuff the Goblins can bring (undamaged!) will fetch upwards of 1k dwarfbucks.

[guitarxe]

And if you have no trees, dig down and tap the magma sea. But beware of the dangers.

[Zaroua]

Step 1: Trap male and female Jabberer.

Step 2: Tame male and female Jabberer

Step 3:

Step 4: Goblinite!


This method also works for other cave dwellers that reproduce such as Bears and Crocodiles.


Alternative methods: lotsa traps + glass industry, z-level drops, bone industry + marksdwarf legions, magma traps and just slowly trading for tin/iron/steel/flux with your caravan and the humans.

[Loud Whispers]

Turn entire fortress into a functioning professional military.