One thing that was not addressed. OP asked about the ways to make glass. There are three types of "glass" materials, which are hardcoded into the game, but the material properties have been extracted from the game data--those are the numbers on the wiki.
Green glass is the simplest glass to make. To create it, you need to take a glassable item to the glass furnace, and provide fuel if it is not a heated magma furnace. "Glassable" in this case refers to what can be called a sandbag, a bag of sand, a sand-containing bag, or what the game often calls them, "sand-bearing item." Essentially, it is a bag filled with an inorganic material bearing the [SOIL_SAND] token. In Vanilla DF, there are five such materials: Sand (of the generic variety, referred to as SAND_TAN in the raws and simply 'sand' in game), Yellow Sand, Black Sand, Red Sand, and White Sand. ANY OTHER MATERIAL WITH THE WORD "SAND" IN IT WILL NOT WORK. To actually get the sand, you need an empty bag. Locate a tile of sand. It must not be "solid", meaning a dwarf must be able to stand in it. Define an activity zone over it and mark it for sand collection. Then issue the "Collect Sand" job from a glass furnace. When it is taken, a dwarf with the item hauling labor will run over, grab an empty bag, run over to the topleftmost tile of a defined sand collection activity zone (and ONLY this tile, resulting in dogpiling dwarves if you have multiple furnaces set to collect sand simultaneously--there is no way to disable this behavior afaik), work for a while, and fill the bag with sand. They drop the bag where it is, I believe, but it'll get taken to the stockpile eventually. They're stocked in Finished Goods piles, that have Sandbags enabled. Incidentally, this process is the same for collecting clay, except it works on [SOIL_CLAY] materials, does not require a bag (and drops a boulder of clay instead), and the collection is issued from a (magma) kiln instead.
Note that you will never actually see glass in the raw form you would expect. "Raw green glass" is actually considered an uncut gem, I believe. You cannot make any items out of it, you MUST have sandbags. There are a myriad of jobs at a glass furnace to create glass items, categorized by type of glass. These all require raw sand, and not raw glass. If you want to build constructions out of glass, you must create blocks. Trap components are near the bottom of the list. It's debatable which is "best", as they're specialized for certain circumstances. Do note, however, that if the weapon trap does not cause a blow which is instantly fatal, reported as "striking down" the target, it will not jam. I don't know the exact rate of jamming on killing blows, but this is what prevents jamming entirely, not, as was once believed, artifact quality.
If you want more valuable glass items, go to the Clear Glass section of the furnace. These jobs are identical to those in the Green Glass section, with the following exceptions: they will output items made of Clear Glass, which is the dull cyan color usually restricted to spore trees (or Lay Pewter, if you actually make that stuff); they are more valuable (MATERIAL_VALUE 5 as opposed to green glass's MATERIAL_VALUE 2); and they cannot be made simply out of sand. In order to make clear glass, you need both a sandbag, and a bar of pearlash. Pearlash is made from wood, eventually. You must construct a wood furnace, and make Ash (NOT CHARCOAL) at the furnace; this requires a dwarf with wood burning and a log of wood to burn. Then, build an ashery, which takes blocks (of any material), a bucket, and a barrel. Have a dwarf with potash making (yes, that damn skill) turn the ash into Potash, and then turn the Potash into Pearlash. Finally, have the glass maker produce something pretty and deadly out of it.
The final option is Crystal Glass. While it is absurdly valuable (MATERIAL_VALUE 10), it is the most difficult to make. You do not need sand... rather, you must have a bar of Pearlash, and a raw material with the CRYSTAL_GLASSABLE token in its definitions. In Vanilla DF, the only such material is the gem known as Rock Crystal, hence the name. Any map can potentially have them, as they have frequency 100 and environment ALL_STONE, but as there are so many different gem types and other such material inclusions, they are rare enough to frustrate any would-be mood makers. Woe unto the overseer whose moody glasssmith demands crystal glass. Note that you CANNOT use rock crystals which have been cut at a jeweler's workshop, so make sure that if you have any, your gem cutters keep their filthy mits off it. Other than that, same process, take the gem and the pearlash to the workshop, make crystal glass deathtraps. Crystal glass, oddly enough, is actually white, unlike Clear glass (which is what you'd likely expect.)
As far as weapon trap components themselves.... there are three basic types. Spear type weapons, axe-type weapons, and mace-type weapons. Of the spear type, there are two varieties--the menacing spike and the enormous corkscrew. As all trap components deal edge-type damage, the main difference between them is that while the menacing spike has only a tenth of the contact area that the enormous corkscrew boasts (meaning the damage is focused onto the entry point more, amplifying the power of the attack), the penetration depth is only slightly over half. These weapons are great against organic beings with organs that you can puncture--use spikes for smaller foes, like goblins, and load the corkscrews in the hallway designed for things like dragons and other very large creatures, where penetration depth is important. These weapons, in addition to usage in traditional "weapon traps", can be installed as upright spears/spikes, which you can link to a mechanical trigger (lever or pressure plate) and operate remotely. They will automatically damage an enemy that falls atop them, but otherwise will fail to do anything unless they are being "triggered" (lever pulled) while a foe is occupying the square. However... if you trigger the trap, it will injure ANYTHING. Friend or foe. Without loyalty cascade (I think). As you know, a corkscrew is also required in the construction of a screw pump, and while glass items will be annihilated if they are magma flooded, any glass items "built" as furniture are generally safe, as the material does have a melting point of 13,600 degrees urist, well above magma's temperature.
Axe-type weapons come in two flavors also--the giant axe blade and the serrated disk. The serrated disk is widely considered to be strictly superior to the axe blade, as it deals three attacks instead of just one. However, it has a massive contact area--which is great for edged attacks, but if an armored foe (or something like a bronze colossus) is hit, and the weapon is not sharp enough to cut through, it will be converted to blunt damage. Since glass has a terrible edge, if you're making these weapons, stick to the giant axe blade, though a steel serrated disk will create ludicrous gibs of almost anything. Best for killing those nasty inorganic creatures, or anything that you SHOULD subject to a cage trap but for some reason refuse to. Keep them the hell away from zombies, though.... ESPECIALLY in an evil biome.
The final weapon type, mace-type, has only one lone occupant. The Spiked Ball, infamous for having a ludicrous value multiplier and being easy to mass produce for the purposes of buying out caravans, has a rather unique purpose. It, too, deals three attacks... but while they are indeed edge attacks, they have a ludicrously tiny penetration depth, and are almost guaranteed to be explicitly non-lethal. If they hit any armor, it's incredibly likely the damage will undergo blunt type conversion, and the tiny contact area is great for this. Spiked balls are best for zombies, as you'll almost never sever body parts with them, and they tend to collapse if you just hit them enough. In fact, anything organic will probably pass out after getting hit with enough balls, and since they do penetrate if they hit flesh and not metal, you're likely to cause them to bleed out--a death that does not cause jamming, even if they bleed out right on top of the spiked ball.
So tl;dr version, collect sand in bags to make glass, and type of trap depends on what you're facing.
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Topic: Best glass weapons? What materials needed for glass? (Read 3249 times)