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[Dwarfotaur]

Have obsidian short swords been nerfed? In my day they were as strong as steel swords.

I remember them being strong too which is why I asked.

If you check the dfwiki article on Obsidian, they were still as strong as steel in 40d. Seems since 2010/2012 that they've been nerfed.

[Owlbread]

Have obsidian short swords been nerfed? In my day they were as strong as steel swords.

I remember them being strong too which is why I asked.

If you check the dfwiki article on Obsidian, they were still as strong as steel in 40d. Seems since 2010/2012 that they've been nerfed.

Ah, I see. That's quite disappointing.

[Sutremaine]

Goes without saying to buy/melt nearly anything iron the human/dorf caravans bring, anvils are pretty cheap to buy, trap components tend to be really expensive. When you have enough of the other things, then you can waste copper on bolts or trap components. Coppers not great for them but by this time its more about quantity and wearing enemies down.

Make your own copper or silver serrated discs, and sell those to the caravan. Or spam them with copper shields, since it's your armourer that's Legendary. Once you have the trap components you can either melt them down, or install them yourself. Good mechanisms will help with that, and they're not too bad as a trade good if you're filling wagon space with excess junk.

Since you have silver ore in the form of tetrahedrite and are sitting on a volcano, you could also make electrum from ore and make goblets for trading. That'll train your metalcrafter up pretty quickly too.

[Alastar]

Silver and copper make perfectly good bolts and hammers. Copper spears aren't ideal, but good enough - stabs with copper weapons can often defeat iron armour (slashes tend to fail).


Full copper armour is better than one may think.
Against projectiles, any shield and skill in its use is what matters.
Copper will do against most animal attacks; if not chances are steel wouldn't help much either.
Nothing really helps against blunt weapons and very pointy stabs (daggers, morningstars).
Copper armour is good enough against iron and bronze slashing weapons (not invincible, but good enough that other things will be the main concern. The important bit is to not leave limbs exposed.).
Defence against non-extreme stabs is where we could really use a better armour material.

[Dwarfotaur]

Defence against non-extreme stabs is where we could really use a better armour material.

Kevlar vests ?

[Mishrak]

Copper armor is fine enough, especially if you use a danger room to get some skills up.  Use the silver from tetrahedrite to make war hammers which is quite nearly the best material for them (short of steel).  That will work exceptionally well against the undead since you're near a necro tower.  Copper is enough for bolts too.

Make crafts and trade them for as much iron as you can, melt down stuff you won't use (and consequently get more bars) so you can get more anvils.  If you really wanted to, you could get enough iron to make a few iron leggings (i think that's the most efficient one), melt them down and have an infinite supply of iron by repeating this process.  It's an exploit, but it there's nonetheless.

[Lich180]

Once you get a small supply of steel or candy, you can either make bolts and a bolt separator, or war axe / giant axe blades and melt those-you get more than 100% of what went into them back.

Bit exploity, but its a feature, not a bug, right?

The wiki has more info on the Melt page, would link it but I'm on my phone at the moment.

[nbp]

I wouldn't bother with a military until you can get bronze at least.  Set up a trap-based defense mechanism for the time being.  Crank out as many expensive items as you can.  Get a magma smelter and forge set up, and crank out silver giant axe blades.  Melt down all of them that aren't masterworks.  Your fortress value goes through the roof, huge hordes of goblins come, fall into your spike trap pit, get caught in your drowning chamber, get sprayed with magma, shot with minecart-launched boulders of water, or even something as simple as cage trapped or pumped full of silver crossbow bolts.  Eventually you'll have a small mountain of captured iron goblin caps, daggers, etc.  Melt these all down.  Now you've got yourself material for a military.

[Loud Whispers]

I wouldn't bother with a military until you can get bronze at least.

I've started my militaries before there was any metal equipment. You'll want to keep your Dwarves training; it's possible to train marksdwarves without firing a single bolt for example - if you have good teachers. To do that, you'll have to train good teachers.
Copper is completely viable for military, it's metal. Layer that armour and clad your Dwarves head to toe with it - your Dwarves should be able to take on most threats. Expect and prepare for weaker untrained Dwarves to die though; copper is still inferior to most metals (which the gobbys will like to show you) and is heavier than steel. Dwarves with low armour user skill will be slower than those with better, meaning I'd suggest you make a military larger than what you're used to if you plan on having a long term copper army, or else have a rigorous training regime.

[Triaxx2]

Stack your combat for the moment. Build a marksdwarf bulwark, so they'll shoot at and thin the Goblin herds. Then have the Goblins go through 1-tile wide halls to spread them out for your armored dwarves. If the walls should be fortifications for the marksdwarves to shoot at them, so much the better.

Normally I'd recommend softening them up with serrated glass discs, but with a necro at hand it's a bad idea. On the same vein though you'll need a method of dealing with goblin bits. So either an atom smasher, or dig for magma.

[Cobbler89]

As another poster mentioned, if you prefer exploits over hacks (and aren't averse to both), you can use melting to multiply any iron you get from the goblins or steel you get from your civilization's trade caravan. (Off-topic, but will the game ever let you trade with both your own dwarven civ and other dwarven civs? Like, any nearby civ can send a caravan as often or inoften as they wish and the seasonal thing just determines when the race prefers to travel? And you could have one dwarf caravan meet you at one trade depot and another at the other? If there's already a suggestion page with all this, please point me to it.)

According to the wiki on melting items, for every two (of the same metal) giant axe blades or leggings you melt you will get three bars. Since you can make either from a single bar, just get one bar of steel from your civ if you can or one bar of iron from either them or melting down goblinite, and then put some manual labor into the metal growth industry. ;^)

[Tirion]

Nitpick: aren't maces better than hammers in this version?

[C27]

I believe maces are better against unarmored targets, hammers against armored ones. Also, silver is better against unarmored targets and steel against armored ones (testing seems to indicate that the hardness of steel is more important for transferring force through armor instead of deflecting off than density is.)
So the two bludgeoning weapons to go for would be silver maces against monsters and steel hammers against soldiers -- though that steel might be more efficiently utilized in spear, sword, or axe form.

[Naros]

Defence against non-extreme stabs is where we could really use a better armour material.

Kevlar vests ?

Kevlar defends against stabbing about as well as a leather coat does; not very well at all.


I used to obsess about getting steel, and even about having all my artefact weapons be cotton candy, and I still do a little bit, but I severely underestimated the usefulness of Goblinite, and even the effectiveness of having your military wear the stuff the goblins used before they died, while you focus on smithing the missing pieces of armour.

Sure, later on you'll melt down that crappy quality iron breastplate, and turn the metal into a Masterwork Steel Breastplate, but early on, it's surprisingly effective to just use the goblins' crummy gear.

[nbp]

As another poster mentioned, if you prefer exploits over hacks (and aren't averse to both), you can use melting to multiply any iron you get from the goblins or steel you get from your civilization's trade caravan. (Off-topic, but will the game ever let you trade with both your own dwarven civ and other dwarven civs? Like, any nearby civ can send a caravan as often or inoften as they wish and the seasonal thing just determines when the race prefers to travel? And you could have one dwarf caravan meet you at one trade depot and another at the other? If there's already a suggestion page with all this, please point me to it.)

According to the wiki on melting items, for every two (of the same metal) giant axe blades or leggings you melt you will get three bars. Since you can make either from a single bar, just get one bar of steel from your civ if you can or one bar of iron from either them or melting down goblinite, and then put some manual labor into the metal growth industry. ;^)

This is also a good way to train most of your unskilled dwarves up to a few levels of weaponsmith.  Set a magma forge to only allow dwarves with no to very low skill in weaponsmith, and have it repeat giant steel axe blades.  Enable weaponsmithing for every dwarf who doesn't already have a moodable skill.  Periodically melt down all of the giant steel axe blades.

Result - tons of steel, and a whole lot of artifact weapons.  Probably half of my artifacts are weapons, using this technique.  By top squad of axedwarves and marksdwarves both have more than half of their members outfitted with artifact weapons.