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[Szkeptik]

So I decided to do a challenge fort, that is going really neat and extremely FUN. (Especially when the war cave dragons make it through the drawbridge)

So I founded FrostWall. A fortress on the belly of the world, at the foothills of the Humble Horns, deep in the realms of the infinite winter. No trees, no grazing lands, no loose soil, no water or ice. At first I was almost destroyed by a group of wolverine men, then not long after a Yeti walked into my main hall, but still, I managed to fight my way through and survived. Now my fort is 6 years old, has over 200 inhabitants and I just breached the second cavern layer where I found a really nice and convenient magma tube (YAY).

The main problem is, that I still couldn't find any weapons grade ore. I finally managed to start mining galena after I took the first cavern layer from the forgotten beast who lived under the lake in there, so at least I'm good for bludgeoning weapons and bolts, but still nothing to make armor from, so I'm melting down anything I can buy from caravans. But by now I'm almost always under siege, so caravans will reach me less and less frequently.

So I'm curious. Is there any hope of finding some useful ore if I keep digging further down? It seems like the stone layers and ores change when I reach a cavern layer. Is this a common thing or is that just my luck? I found Cassiterite, so now even copper would make me happy. Just so I can start a non-leather based military already.

[Em3rgency]

Nice surprise about this shorter form. Can you tell us what it is you are talking/writing about?
Has any info. about this shorter form been posted before (and i just missed it)?

... what?

To answer Szkeptik, it very much depends on what you saw on the embark screen. If you had shallow ore(s) marked, you'll find ore(s) in the layers before the caverns. If you had deep ore(s), you'll find them after the caverns. This is a generalization though.

If your embark only has the one biome and you had shallow ore (not ores), means you already found it, the galena, and there is no reason to expect any other kind of ore to be in those layers.

For your problem... there's always the candy...

[Rydel]

If you're under siege a lot, there's a good chance you could strike a goblinite vein.

[Szkeptik]

To answer Szkeptik, it very much depends on what you saw on the embark screen. If you had shallow ore(s) marked, you'll find ore(s) in the layers before the caverns. If you had deep ore(s), you'll find them after the caverns. This is a generalization though.

If your embark only has the one biome and you had shallow ore (not ores), means you already found it, the galena, and there is no reason to expect any other kind of ore to be in those layers.

For your problem... there's always the candy...

Thanks for the reply. I had Spharelite (zinc) on the surface and a little gold. Then when I breached the first cavern I found Galena. Then when I breached the second Cavern, I found Cassiterite. But neither galena nor cassiterite existed above the cavern I found them in. So do the caverns serve as the borders between different layers? And so is there a chance of actually finding iron or something further down?

[Tamsyn]

Different types of ores are found in different types of layer stones, or different categories of layer stone. For example, limonite is found only in sedimentary layers. The ores themselves aren't "refreshed" in different layers, but rather the layer stone itself changes at certain points, which changes what ores can appear in that layer. See the table in http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Ore and also maybe http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Exploratory_mining

The cavern levels aren't affecting the stone layers directly, the stone layers are just changing naturally due to the increasing depth in general. Even if you removed caverns, the stone layers would still act the same way, as I understand it. In real life this is due to the increase in temperature and pressure as you go deeper into the crust towards the mantle.

[slothen]

Congratulations on your successful frozen mountainhome!

To your question about ore:  I'm no expert on geology (or DF geology for that matter), but I would say there is definitely a chance you'll find some new layers that could have ore down at the very bottom.  Your best bet will be to breach the third cavern layer and get a peek at the magma sea, and that should expose it if there is any.  Digging exploratory tunnels down to the magma sea is pretty easy, a lot of people do it in their first year.

Other alternatives.  Galena certainly beats nothing.  However I would look to goblinite for additional iron, bronze, copper, and silver.  I've used this as my main copper/iron source before and it actually works pretty well with some clever stockpile management.  You can make a weapons/armor stockpile that only accepts no-quality, non-steel weapons/armor, and when gobbos are dead, mass dump, then mass melt designation, which will overwrite the dump designation, then unforbid items from the stocks menu.  Its fuel intensive if you don't have magma industries setup, but not prohibitively so.

Other notes: on a freezing biome with no soil, getting a quick tree farm up is a bit harder since you'll be required to dig out stone layers and flood them, but with no trees, no metal, and apparently not yet any magma, I think a tree farm is your only option if you don't have one.  Caravans are pretty good about bringing logs, but don't bring enough to support a large metal industry, much less one that has to melt down items.

With minecarts and improved stockpiles, getting goblinite down to the magma, or getting the magma up to the surface is a bit easier.  So a melting-based metal industry is more reasonable to operate than ever before.

With your fort being metal-challenged, I assume you've come up with some cool ways to take down masses of gobbos.  One trap design I've always wanted to try on a all-freezing map would be a variant of the degrinchinator (if you haven't heard of it look it up).


EDIT:  If you have cassiterite then you can convert your goblinite copper into bronze pretty easily.

[Szkeptik]

With your fort being metal-challenged, I assume you've come up with some cool ways to take down masses of gobbos.  One trap design I've always wanted to try on a all-freezing map would be a variant of the degrinchinator (if you haven't heard of it look it up).

I built a large wall and created a courtyard that houses my trade depot. There are marksdwarves patrolling on the wall all the time. Silver bolts make quick work of any siegers who come too close. I'm thinking about adding siege engines now that I have silver for ballista heads.

The moat with drawbridge makes all the difference, keeping away unwanted folk, though it has failed me before with the aforementioned war cave dragon fiasco. Four of them got through before I could raise the bridge and seven of my warriors lost their lives fighting in the courtyard. All the meat was a good prize for it though. And the heroic dead are now resting in their masterwork zinc sarcophagi in the "Hall of Slayers".

[slothen]

just a heads up, ballistae are crap, even with the perfect setup, legendary operators, and masterwork everything.  You'll have more fun making a freezing trap, or at least a drowning trap.