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[weenog]

Wait... doesn't iron only ever appear in shallow stone layers?

No.  Two of the ores (magnetite and limonite) only make appearances in sedimentary layers, but one of the ores (hematite) can also be found in igneous extrusive layers.

[Lich180]

You place too much faith in steel, and haven't embraced the dwarven way of destroying your enemies with anything that happens to be lying around?

Bronze, glass, clay, stone boulders, XXPig Tail SockXX, the mountain itself... Reminds me of a certain Chuck Norris joke.

[0cu]

It's kind of annoying to find the right embark with iron veins. Thus, slay some goblins and male your own iron. Much more dwarfy and not a game of luck.

[jimboo]

Wait... doesn't iron only ever appear in shallow stone layers?

Iron ore can be found in a sedimentary soil layer although usually, it’s the first stone layer under the soil where you’ll want to start exploring.  I don’t DFHack as a rule, but this had me curious so I checked out three old fortresses as well as my current one (I like sedimentary embarks) and only ONE has traditional ore within the top layers, my present fort, one tiny vein of hematite in an otherwise 4x4 of sandy loam.  The next layer down is loaded with magnetite, limonite and bituminous coal so, my dwarves be happy.  The layer is 4z down and chert so technically it’s shallow metals, sedimentary. 

[Gaybarowner]

If you are not phased by "cheating" you can set all the ore types to smelt into iron by putting the right tag in

[detsuo04]

thanks so much for all the replies.  My main concern is really for the fact that all sedimentary layers are baron.  I didn't notice before because i was looking for iron but even when i set all ores to appear in sedimentary layers via raws editing it still has no metal.  Despite the shallow metals tag on the finder.   

as for killing with anything lying around... In adventure mode i once leveled my underwear to have vorpal.  i used it as a choking weapon.

i am now trying another bundle of dwarf fortress to see if something i may have done might have affected the glitch.

[Orange Wizard]

My main concern is really for the fact that all sedimentary layers are baron.

Do they make demands for clear glass windows in their offices?

...

sorry.

Try upping mineral occurrence. I know, it has almost certainly been said already, but I must insist.

[Boltgun]

If you are still stuck without iron, you can buy iron everything from caravans, even flutes and harps. You can even cheat by making stacks of iron bolts and melt those several times. Buy all the wood from elves too for fuel.

Then you can ask for magnetite or hematite from your caravan liaison, that'll be cheap pre mined iron for you. As long as you have fuel and flux stone, you can  make enough steel for a decent military. That won't be enough to make metal furniture, but you will live.

[krenshala]

I suspect something in the settings is preventing ore in sedimentary layers for the OP.  I've never had this problem, but only play Vanilla.

[Orange Wizard]

Wait... doesn't iron only ever appear in shallow stone layers?

No.  Two of the ores (magnetite and limonite) only make appearances in sedimentary layers, but one of the ores (hematite) can also be found in igneous extrusive layers.

And unless I'm mistaken, igneous EXtrusive layers form close to the surface.

[jellsprout]

There are goblins, aren't there? I don't see the problem.

If you don't have immediate access to iron, you can buy some iron stuff from the caravan and melt it down into bars. If you aren't above a little exploiting, you can then use this iron to mass produce leggings and giant axe blades and melt these down again. Greaves and giant axe blades take 1 bar of metal to make but give you 1.5 bars when melted down.
For none weapon-grade metals (or adamantine, which takes different amounts of wafers to produce stuff) you can do the same with coins. Making a coin stack takes one bar, melting them down gives you 1.1 bars. Or you can split these stacks through tantruming dwarves or traders and melt each individual coin for 0.1 bars, giving you 50 bars total per stack.

But still the easiest and least exploity way to get iron is by making trap corridors from glass weapons or making an archer squad with bone bolts and taking the metal from goblins by force.

[Hurkyl]

Warning: anecdotal evidence.

In your search for iron, try allowing sites with aquifers. I think every single one of my last several embarks on a site with aquifers has had iron -- and I've finally seen coal and lignite too.

My most recent fort is near the ocean front in a biome without an aquifer -- but surrounded by similar biomes that do have aquifers. On site, I see there is a limestone layer, which is presumably the difference between this biome and its neighbors. The limestone has coal, lignite, and magnetite.


(disclaimer: I've set minerals to frequent in simple world gen. Though I imagine that mainly just controls how many squares have shallow metals + flux, rather than whether such sites actually have iron)

[mobucks]

I found out that setting "z-levels above ground" to 1 in advanced world generation VASTLY increases the amount of sedimentary layers, because in my search I found a bug report (can't find it anymore) about how this setting affects sedimentary layers. If you know a bit about advanced world gen, you can create worlds that have a much MUCH higher probablilty for the "perfect embark", IE, Volcano next to flux/river/iron.

I was DF Hack Prospect All for days genning world after world that only ever had extremely small probability of finding coal/iron, most of the time it was gold/tetra/galena for metals, even at 400-1200 mineral scarcity. Then I found that bug report, and changed only the "z-levels above ground" setting on my preset, and BAM embark after embark had iron/flux, and I only ever DFProspect volcano/river/trees embarks. It's not 100%, but the difference is huge and noticable if you have been stuck eyes bleeding in front of the embark screen for hours with the default Z-AG at 15.

I made an account to share this info, hope it helps someone.

EDIT: Here is the bug report:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4654

[Sutremaine]

You don't necessarily get iron off other civs if your site or civ doesn't have any. The bright side of that is that the vast majority of the time you will have access to both steel and adamantine, and their best materials will be bronze and silver (but, silver pikes should not be underestimated. Nerve damage is a pain).

(disclaimer: I've set minerals to frequent in simple world gen. Though I imagine that mainly just controls how many squares have shallow metals + flux, rather than whether such sites actually have iron)

Flux isn't affected by mineral scarcity, as it's not a mineral but a layer.* Mineral scarcity controls the frequency of non-gem non-layer materials such as iron ore, cobaltite, and microcline. Lowering the mineral scarcity gives you more chance of iron, and also more chance of cobaltite, microcline, and anything else that isn't a layer stone or a gem type.

*Calcite is the one flux stone that is a mineral, but it only appears in flux layers. So it doesn't matter if your potentially calcite-bearing site has no minerals, as any site that could have calcite will have flux.

[jimboo]

I found out that setting "z-levels above ground" to 1 in advanced world generation VASTLY increases the amount of sedimentary layers (clip)

Now, THAT’s an interesting tip.  Someday when I have nothing better to do I’ll be curious as to how/why you ever set “z levels above ground” in the first place but …

I’m still waiting for someone to post on DFMA or DFFD “here’s your volcano in a temperate, savage biome/young world with brook, iron, some wood, four civs and flux suitable for v0.34.11” but until then, I’ll keep trying and use your bug.  It takes a long time to get magma to a reasonable level and then start the SDP du jour.  [Or maybe I just missed it; if someone knows of such a saved world, that’d be a nice link to post.]