right wood metal... suppose i decide i want to play elves pretend that i want to play elves at some point (if i get around to modding them to be playable) i guess i could have them somehow extract metal sort of stuff from wood but how would i make balence so that i can't just get steel rather then iron in a instant
If I remember right, the old
Elf Retreat mod had a system where you would take several logs (a dozen? I don't remember) to a workshop to turn them into a single "Copper Wood" log. This could be turned into weapons and armour equal to copper in quality. You could also take several copper wood logs to turn them into a single "Iron Wood" log. It's a bit simplistic, but it would have been a slow process.
But the mod is somewhat old, so I'm unsure how much would have to be fixed to make it compatible with the current version of DF.
A "wood" metal would probably be better, since the reactions for making armour and weapons will be added to the forge automatically, so you don't have to make any yourself. Just add a few "treating" processes and make it require several logs to pad out time. Maybe make different quality tiers require several lower tier bars to make.
One problem with playing as elves is that they will still get offended if you try to trade them wood.