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[Bluehotdog5]

I decided to try embarking on the northern edge of the map where there's nothing but ice. For some reason. Anyway, I came to the realization that I don't know how to make coal without trees. I dug like 45 or so layers down, and discovered a huge cave, so I dug down to the magma pit and set up there. It seems like it shouldn't bee that difficult to to make charcoal when your right next to a large pit of lava.

Btw, is is possible to live entirely underground, and never go back up, except for traders and migrants?

[Lieutenant_Crow]

You should be able to use underground trees to produce charcoal, and yes, its very possible to produce a self-sustaining underground base.

[PDF urist master]

you can also try to find bituminous coal or lignite, but those only occur in sedimentary layers. also you need one charcoal to get started.

[Hurkyl]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question... but do you know that (unless you are making pig iron bars or steel bars) you don't need charcoal at all if you have magma?

[Mr. Palau]

you can also try to find bituminous coal or lignite, but those only occur in sedimentary layers. also you need one charcoal to get started.

He has access to magma so the initial bar of fuel is unnecessary.

[ChuckWeiss]

you can also try to find bituminous coal or lignite, but those only occur in sedimentary layers. also you need one charcoal to get started.

He has access to magma so the initial bar of fuel is unnecessary.

He has access to magma, so the subsequent bar of fuel is unnecessary.

'Sept in steel of course.

[Supernerd]

You can probably request some fuel from the Dwarven caravan provided that dwarves are not extinct in your world, and that can be used to produce more fuel.

[Scruiser]

Use wood furnace and make charcoal with wood.  For future forts, consider bringing a few pieces of bituminous coal.  They are only cost 3 points a piece and they each yield 9 coal when smelted. 
    I have made a self sustaining fort before with no traders and migrants.  It lasted several years.  I just left the migrants outside to die.  I didn't make any kind of traps (in retrospect I wish I had) so they took really long for them to starve to death and go berserk.  From the wiki, I knew they should stop coming once enough dwarves had died at my fort.  Apparently however having a low population and high wealth will attract more anyway.  Every time one batch of migrants died off, another would come  because of the lowered population.  Eventually I dropped a pick from my tower so with with good mining and burrows I could get the migrants to kill themselves off faster.  This just made the new waves spawn more frequently so I started allowing them to live by foraging off the terrain and then planting the seeds from the foraging.  Eventually one of them got a fell mood so I dropped the materials from my tower and they made an artifact.  I figured with some tricky burrows I could let just the artifact maker and the artifact in, but all the migrant trash pathed in to my fort despite the burrows.  I abandoned in disgust.  I was having difficulty making enough slabs to keep off the ghosts anyway.  And wow that story turned dark just answering a simple question. 
    Anyway to answer your question all it took was a few irrigated farms and some pets and I had plenty of food for my entire fort (of only 20 or so).  With a small but continuous production of leather and cloth you can keep them all clothed too.  If you want to get fancy dig an aqueduct from a stream and with the right combination of floodgates and depressurization tricks (diagonal connections)  you can have underground fishing, and plenty of water for wells/mist generators/water reactors.

[Veskulios]

Use wood furnace and make charcoal with wood.  For future forts, consider bringing a few pieces of bituminous coal.  They are only cost 3 points a piece and they each yield 9 coal when smelted. 
    I have made a self sustaining fort before with no traders and migrants.  It lasted several years.  I just left the migrants outside to die.  I didn't make any kind of traps (in retrospect I wish I had) so they took really long for them to starve to death and go berserk.  From the wiki, I knew they should stop coming once enough dwarves had died at my fort.  Apparently however having a low population and high wealth will attract more anyway.  Every time one batch of migrants died off, another would come  because of the lowered population.  Eventually I dropped a pick from my tower so with with good mining and burrows I could get the migrants to kill themselves off faster.  This just made the new waves spawn more frequently so I started allowing them to live by foraging off the terrain and then planting the seeds from the foraging.  Eventually one of them got a fell mood so I dropped the materials from my tower and they made an artifact.  I figured with some tricky burrows I could let just the artifact maker and the artifact in, but all the migrant trash pathed in to my fort despite the burrows.  I abandoned in disgust.  I was having difficulty making enough slabs to keep off the ghosts anyway.  And wow that story turned dark just answering a simple question. 
    Anyway to answer your question all it took was a few irrigated farms and some pets and I had plenty of food for my entire fort (of only 20 or so).  With a small but continuous production of leather and cloth you can keep them all clothed too.  If you want to get fancy dig an aqueduct from a stream and with the right combination of floodgates and depressurization tricks (diagonal connections)  you can have underground fishing, and plenty of water for wells/mist generators/water reactors.

Read the title, he has no wood.

To OP: Some traders usually sell wood, try your luck there?

[Larix]

I decided to try embarking on the northern edge of the map where there's nothing but ice. For some reason. Anyway, I came to the realization that I don't know how to make coal without trees. I dug like 45 or so layers down, and discovered a huge cave, so I dug down to the magma pit and set up there. It seems like it shouldn't bee that difficult to to make charcoal when your right next to a large pit of lava.

Except the critical thing in making charcoal is not heat but having some kind of fixated carbon on hand. In a freezing location, the most realistic sources of wood are trade and cavern trees - all those big coloured growths in the caverns (if you're lucky, you can have sterile caverns, too) can be cut down and used as wood.

Btw, is is possible to live entirely underground, and never go back up, except for traders and migrants?

It's entirely possible to shut off completely and do without traders and migrants as well. That kind of breaks normal game behaviour though - the standard d_init settings keep sending migrants, traders and goblin hordes to a completely shut-off fort, to mill around and die on top of an ever-growing heap of corpses in the middle of nowhere.

If you want to play a hermit fort, i'd strongly recommend to set the POPULATION_CAP to something very low (between four and ten) and switch INVADERS off. They don't contribute to the actual challenge of such a game but instead just introduce the artificial difficulty of making memorials for dead dwarfs and draining your FPS by piling up tons of unasked-for garbage on the surface.

[Bluehotdog5]

So it basically sounds like I'll either have to find an underground tree, or just wait until a caravan comes. You sure there's no way to make coal with magma?

Oh, I have another question as well. So far, it seems that 100 is ground level, I'm at about 65 where the magma is (that would be 35 layers underground, not 45 like I said initially). What is at level 1? Also do large caverns like this often have monsters in them?

EDIT: I just realized I can use wood from my disassembled wagon.

[Quietust]

Oh, I have another question as well. So far, it seems that 100 is ground level, I'm at about 65 where the magma is (that would be 35 layers underground, not 45 like I said initially). What is at level 1? Also do large caverns like this often have monsters in them?

There's nothing special about level 1 - it's just 99 Z-levels below 100. Also, level 100 is sea level, not ground level.

All 3 cavern layers have monsters in them, but the topmost one tends to be a bit less dangerous.

[Flarp]

Oh, I have another question as well. So far, it seems that 100 is ground level, I'm at about 65 where the magma is (that would be 35 layers underground, not 45 like I said initially). What is at level 1? Also do large caverns like this often have monsters in them?

There's nothing special about level 1 - it's just 99 Z-levels below 100. Also, level 100 is sea level, not ground level.

All 3 cavern layers have monsters in them, but the topmost one tends to be a bit less dangerous.

From the first layer, you can expect to get some small trogg raids (which are problematic only if you haven't really set up a military/defense system yet) along with the occasional helmet snake (dangerous for their bite), blind cave ogre (dangerous because of their size), or giant cave spider (really dangerous for their bite). You also open yourself up to forgotten beasts, which is a whole bucket of !!FUN!!. You might run into hostile animal people tribes, too.

In general, you want to have a good healthcare system up and running, because syndromes will ruin your life if you don't.

[MonkeyHead]

So many replies and nobody has mentioned tha the Elves just love to sell get murdered bringing you wood in large quantities? Bay12, I am dissapoint.

[BillyTheKid]

I pose a scientific question: Can we use elfes instead of wood to fuel our furnaces?