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[kierkkadon]

So I've started probably a dozen fortresses over the last while, and each of them has had a flaw.

I never had the materials naturally present to make steel. And only rarely the materials to make iron.

I can't remember the last fortress that had an ore of iron, and certainly none that have had a source of coke. Maybe my first fortress, where I used a pre-built tutorial world and embark site. I've generated worlds with various levels of minerals, and started multiple embark sites with both Deep and Shallow metal tags, but I can't seem to find iron. Forum posts and wiki articles seem to talk about iron as if it's this ubiquitous metal that everybody has, but no matter how much exploratory mining I do I can never find it. Any suggestions? Bronze isn't exactly high-quality weapons tech.

[Verel]

As I said before I haven't really played it that much, However I do agree. I have yet to get anything for iron (other than trading from merchants) and it is a little odd. I have however found Gold which is nice (not so much for a weapon obviously)

[kierkkadon]

I get plenty of metals that are supposed to be scarce. I've had oodles of gold, silver, platinum, zinc, nickel, and others, but never anything more useful for weapon-making than bronze. Caravans never bring enough weapons and armor, plus I feel like it's more dwarfy to make them.

[Mlamlah]

I've... never actually had a problem with iron scarcity, granted that my current fortress only actually has iron and tin veins so far, however.

[kierkkadon]

Like the fortress I just started...there are three veins of gold on the surface. Gold, completely open and there. But I bet, no matter how deeply I dig, I won't find iron.

[WealthyRadish]

If you would like to view the minerals of an area before embarking, install DFhack and use the 'prospect all' command on the site. You can also decrease the mineral scarcity, either in advanced world gen or just by setting it to 'everywhere' in basic world gen. Keep in mind that low mineral scarcity will bork the site finder, causing it not to display flux stone.

If you have invaders, you should be getting enough goblinite to supply your military. A very useful resource indeed... there should be more than enough after a couple sieges to get basic iron/steel gear, and you can grind for quality stuff later. Traders are also a decent source, if you request ores and weapons/armor to melt down. Alternatively, if you're fine with exploit stuff, melting down and reforging various items will give a net profit of metal.

[Adequate Swimmer]

I got an exact same problem on my current embark. One solution is to mine as much gold as you can store to attract more goblinite. The other would be to have an extra forge that is mass producing gold crafts for resale.

[SauliusTheBlack]

No problem with Iron ore, nor silver or gold ore. Bituminous or lignite however...

[Urist McPenguinhead]

No problem with Iron ore, nor silver or gold ore. Bituminous or lignite however...

This. Hardly any of my embarks ever have lignite or bituminous coal.  I always seem to get huge veins of magnetite, though.

[DNK]

If you would like to view the minerals of an area before embarking, install DFhack and use the 'prospect all' command on the site. You can also decrease the mineral scarcity, either in advanced world gen or just by setting it to 'everywhere' in basic world gen. Keep in mind that low mineral scarcity will bork the site finder, causing it not to display flux stone.

This, basically. I always check embark sites for an iron ore and a coal source. Flux stones are less important, but you can check for those also. Even with mineral scarcity around 500, iron is not as common as one would expect. Iron ore regions are actually pretty limited ime, as are coal ones. Finding regions with both is pretty hard actually, though usually you get a flux from them (I think coal tends to occur in sedimentary layers which have solid flux availability usually, like limestone). Specific biomes/regions will have iron regularly in them, so finding a "hit" for iron and using the F1-4 keys can clue you in as to where to find more in neighboring tiles. Same for coal.

I'd love it if DFHack had some way to print out a map of tiles likely to have [ore/feature of choice]. How does it know how to prospect so accurately anyway?

I'm not sure, does mineral scarcity in world gen affect the frequency of occurrence of minerals per tile or the amount of minerals per tile that are already present? I set mine to ~850 and get quite a lot of veins, th

[kierkkadon]

You're right, I usually end up (after passively weathering a couple of ambushes) with a little goblinite to throw around, I just feel like this isn't dwarfy. Dunno, maybe I'm just picky.

And I had completely forgotten about prospect. Normally I just use dfhack for the "digv" command.

[daishi5]

Are you genning worlds with a lot of volcanoes? Iron is common in sedimentary layers, but volcanoes only appear in high volcanism areas which dont have sedimentary layers. So volcanoes and steel ingredients are often mutually exclusive.

[kierkkadon]

Are you genning worlds with a lot of volcanoes? Iron is common in sedimentary layers, but volcanoes only appear in high volcanism areas which dont have sedimentary layers. So volcanoes and steel ingredients are often mutually exclusive.

Not that I've ever noticed, no. I've embarked on several places with magma, but never volcanoes.

[Dunamisdeos]

I usually set minerals around 500, and look for "shallow metals" and "deep metals" when embarking.  note the plural in metals, its important.

I've had the opposite problem. I have veins of hematite, magnetite, and limonite in the same layer, and i'm not even at the first cavern layer yet. I have a 5x6 room with the walls made of nothing but unmined magenetite.

To me, coal isn't such a big deal, I just go to the surface and harvest it in its unrefined state (pristine, living wood) and process (murder with fire) it.

[walberg]

It may seem dumb to ask, but are you looking for "iron" or "iron nuggets" or "native iron" or something (like gold, platinum and some others show up as), or for hematite, magnetite, or limonite (the ores of iron in vanilla)? I have rarely not had any iron ores at all, even next to a volcano, as I usually try to embark on a location with 3 or more biomes overlapping.