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[Tehsapper]

Green glass. It's like having infinite money at your demand.
Even your 30k stone stockpile may end, resulting in 90k obsidian rock mugs and ~3,6m of dwarfbucks.
And steel is too good to waste for large serrated discs, you'd better use iron (or gold, because there are lots of it if it present)

[Loud Whispers]

Green glass. It's like having infinite money at your demand.

Some don't have access to magma :/

[Maklak]

Green glass. It's like having infinite money at your demand.

Some don't have access to magma :/

To me the problem with green glass is not access to magma, but distance from sand layers to magma layers. I have to either bring sand to the magma or magma to the sand. The former requires long trips, the latter a massive pump stack. I was never able to complete a magma pump stack before FPS death, and kiloprojects (mist generator over entire dining room is not a megaproject, but much work nonetheless) take up my workforce too.
That said, once you set it all up, glass items have their uses.

Food is basically free, since you produce it anyway. Just buy ingredients from caravans.

[zilpin]

Mostly because all those rocks are there. And we don't want them there. We want them gone.

Sure, we could dump them all in the lava. But if we craft them and trade them we slowly accumulate wealth as well. AND attract big sieges! Win-win.

And we still have all those steel discs lying around to make a hallway of death with.

This.

Use steel to make more weapons, armor, and traps.
If you have an enormous surplus, make steel roads for the caravan.
If you still have a surplus, build a steel tower with steel drawbridges, and steel mechanisms for your magma trap, which was filled using a steel pumpstack.

[loose nut]

I tend to buy out caravans with gem-encrusted large gems (though it depends what gems you have to work with). That, clothing with sewn images, and statues of things I don't care about like some human that got killed in year 5 by a roc.

[Mushroo]

Trading stone mugs is rookie (everyone knows stone is for MEGAPROJECTS).

It takes something like 300 craft stone mug jobs and 600 hauling jobs to equal 1 exceptional serrated steel disk.

Much more Dwarfy to have a dining hall full of idling stonecrafters and a legendary weaponcrafter who works 1 day a month and gets drunk the rest of the time.

Assuming this is a non-agricultural fort, of course. Lavish roasts > serrated disks.

[smeeprocket]

I was told, and have had success with, wooden spiked balls. Assuming you have a lot of wood.

I save the metal for weapon traps.

[Loud Whispers]

Lol... I have hell lot of wood...

...In the morning

[darkflagrance]

The problem I personally have with gems is that they are too sparse, too limited, and too randomly available to make a regular industry out of (i.e. one that I can put on repeat) and worse, the gem industry produces as a byproduct of gem mining thousands of waste boulders. I nonetheless have put my gem artisans to use in the past (and produced some very pretty statues as a result, but there is a psychological block in my mind that refuses to see a gem industry as sustainable in the long-run, and hence something worth devoting organizational effort to that could instead be used planning the development of a food or cloth industry.

[nenjin]

See, to me the gem industry is my emergency cash cow. Don't cut any gems for the first two years or so (unless you really need to) and then unleash your gem cutter. They'll be busy for at least two years getting through your initial stockpile. While the value isn't comparable to Masterwork Stone Crafts, if your industry isn't skilled up to that point, they make a good stand in for emergency trading.

Only downside is it adds a lot to your fortress value, if you're worried about invasions.

[FuzzyZergling]

That is also the question I want to know, people must have known about this before I wrote about it so why does everyone use stone crafts?

I don't make rock crafts.
No, what I use as trade goods is prepared meals.

They're pretty much infinitely sustainable, easily created, and your fort needs a food source anyway.

[darkflagrance]

That is also the question I want to know, people must have known about this before I wrote about it so why does everyone use stone crafts?

I don't make rock crafts.
No, what I use as trade goods is prepared meals.

They're pretty much infinitely sustainable, easily created, and your fort needs a food source anyway.

I must concur with FuzzyZergling. While many novice players may make use of stone crafts due to their promotion by many playing guides, advanced players, if they are willing to ignore the perception of exploitation that is associated with it, often make use of prepared meals.

[Loud Whispers]

Generally people only use stone crafts when they need to get rid of stone.

[Mushroo]

Prepared meals are only an "exploit" if you think of them as a single serving of food, like a sandwich or pizza. What they actually represent in-game is a 2-month supply of food for 1 dwarf. So a stack of syrup roast [50] is actually an entire month's food for a fortress of 100 dwarfs!

When you look at it that way, of course a stack of food is worth a lot more than a stone mug...

[kaijyuu]

Naw, I think I'll keep my 16500 prepared meals. Might need them for... something.



Lava dumping is what I do with all my "garbage." I'd love to trade it away, but that's a lot of work. As such I use incredibly high value junk (serrated disks) to raise my exported wealth.

I started a new fort recently and am sitting on ~2000 steel disks. Most are used by weapon traps, but hey. Surplus goes to caravans, encrusted with lead and zinc, 'cause I got nothing else to use those useless metals on.