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[WarRoot]

I'm planning to forge some proper armour for my soldiers, and as I'm not swimming in military quality metal, my questions is:
Does proper armour improve my dwarves survivability, against forgotten beasts, compared to let's say, a bone and leather outfit?

Bonus question #1:
How does an artifact bone battleaxe compare, to a masterwork copper?

Bonus question #2:
Do dwarves refuse to equip artifacts, unless forcibly assigned to them?

[zubb2]

I have heard many times that bone and leather is crap compared to at least copper no matter what the bone and leather is in regaurds to quality.

Leather and bone is better than clothes, just.

Helmets and sheilds may be the best armor, but it depends.

A wooden sheild will stop attacks as well as a steel, but wood will burn I beleive.

Same for the weapons, masterwork copper is better than lesser material artifact.

High skill trumps all but the absolute best.

Webs= Dead mele dwarves in nice addy armor.

Deadly gas and dust will kill as if they were naked if it is actualy "deadly" dust, it could just make the dwarfs nauseous.

Thats some of the junk I learned by lurking.

[Garath]

bonus question 2: yes

Alright, armor vs forgotten beasts... well, it depends. Good armor will definately protect against bites, stings and such. Stomps and other 'blunt' attacks are another thing. When a creature a few times bigger than an elephant (but without the padded feet) stomps on your leg, armor is not going to help much. It was one of the reasons why web spitting FB are so annoying. An immobile dwarf gets automatically headshot, which against a FB stomping means dead, but Giant Cave spiders sometimes happily munch on an immobile dwarf head covered with a steel helmet for ages without getting through with their bite. Any clothing or armor will protect body parts from infections by dust or blood syndromes and such, though some things can't be covered (I think, can't tell them 'hold your breath' either)

[WarRoot]

I have heard many times that bone and leather is crap compared to at least copper no matter what the bone and leather is in regaurds to quality.

Leather and bone is better than clothes, just.

Helmets and sheilds may be the best armor, but it depends.

A wooden sheild will stop attacks as well as a steel, but wood will burn I beleive.

Same for the weapons, masterwork copper is better than lesser material artifact.

High skill trumps all but the absolute best.

Webs= Dead mele dwarves in nice addy armor.

Deadly gas and dust will kill as if they were naked if it is actualy "deadly" dust, it could just make the dwarfs nauseous.

Thats some of the junk I learned by lurking.

I know that leather and bone is crap, I've heard that they are not much better, compared to clothes , it's just that they weigh less (I think) than metal armour, and if metal armour won't protect my dwarves, against forgotten beasts, then I'm better off with faster dwarves.

I always give my dwarves a shield, that's the easiest and best you can get, early on, I seem to remember that wooden shields won't burn, when blocking fire, but I will keep an eye on that.

Shame about the bone axe, reading Garath's post, I wanted to give it to an axedwarf that likes reindeer bone, but I don't even have one, might still give it to my vampire once she serves her sentence, and before I lock her in for eternity.

bonus question 2: yes

Alright, armor vs forgotten beasts... well, it depends. Good armor will definately protect against bites, stings and such. Stomps and other 'blunt' attacks are another thing. When a creature a few times bigger than an elephant (but without the padded feet) stomps on your leg, armor is not going to help much. It was one of the reasons why web spitting FB are so annoying. An immobile dwarf gets automatically headshot, which against a FB stomping means dead, but Giant Cave spiders sometimes happily munch on an immobile dwarf head covered with a steel helmet for ages without getting through with their bite. Any clothing or armor will protect body parts from infections by dust or blood syndromes and such, though some things can't be covered (I think, can't tell them 'hold your breath' either)

Even a copper helm can protect a dwarf's head from a Giant Cave spider bite, but when another dwarf got a bite from a forgotten beast, its head just flew off, so that's why I'm asking, if iron or steel helm can protect a dwarf's little head, as I'm not sure, they are worth the resources there, they might serve better on the ground forces facing goblins.
Eyes and lips, definitely can't be covered, I had my run in with forgotten beast syndromes, so I'm mentally prepared for the worst, though I wasn't sure if they just ignored armour, or spread from uncovered body parts, I guess that doesn't make much difference, except for civilians running trough forgotten beast extract.

[Garath]

that last bit is why a lot of people were excited that civilians put shoes on again after their first pair rots off. Forts were often doomed because dwarfs were running barefoot through syndrome inducing stuff. Now that they put boots on again it's generally non lethal again. Gloves might be useful too.

[Repseki]

Depending on what the FB is made of, Iron or Steel should help quite a bit. It likely wont make anyone completely safe, but as long as they have been training a while and have decent armor user skill it shouldn't really slow them down any either.

It's not only bites or scratches you need to consider, but also getting kicked into walls, off cliffs, or just skidding along the ground. Metal armor will help with those, maybe not completely, but more than if they were wearing nothing.

Just be prepared to deal with the different FBs according to their material and abilities. Anything comes along that will utterly vaporize your military and fort without getting a scratch, drop the ceiling on it.

[Niyazov]

if you really only have copper, a squad of marksdwarves in very light armor (maybe just leather/bone + copper helmets) might be your best bet for fighting fbs. almost nothing can deflect a copper bolt. metal helmets are critical even if the metal is lousy because the AI targets the head pretty much exclusively when attacking an unconscious enemy and an undeflected FB headshot will almost always kill.

try to avoid making copper armor since it's both weak and heavy, and your soldiers will still get attached to it, which can cause problems down the line when you want to replace it with something better.

exception: if you don't mind the speed hit, a shield made from a heavy metal (copper is the heaviest shield metal) will make your dwarves' shield bashes much more effective. if your dwarves get an injury to their weapon hand during combat they seem to preferentially use their other hand, which means a shield bash.

if all you have is copper, try digging down for granite, which contains cassiterite and bismuthinite for bronze/bismuth bronze. granite seems to occur on most maps. as a bonus, it may also contain galena and silver for bashing weapons and silver bolts.

[WarRoot]

Depending on what the FB is made of, Iron or Steel should help quite a bit. It likely wont make anyone completely safe, but as long as they have been training a while and have decent armor user skill it shouldn't really slow them down any either.

It's not only bites or scratches you need to consider, but also getting kicked into walls, off cliffs, or just skidding along the ground. Metal armor will help with those, maybe not completely, but more than if they were wearing nothing.

Just be prepared to deal with the different FBs according to their material and abilities. Anything comes along that will utterly vaporize your military and fort without getting a scratch, drop the ceiling on it.

Well the problem is, that they don't have decent armour user skill, the bulk of my military consists of useless dwarves drafted in, to act as a semi-expendable defense, they only have decent weapon skills, and I'm lazy to set up 2-3 sized squads for training, especially as they could die any moment  a forgotten beast comes along with some uber syndrome.

I'm in the caverns so, the ceiling dropping is going to be problematic too, with the multiple routes, and open spaces to my fort, but I will try to create some, just in case.

if you really only have copper, a squad of marksdwarves in very light armor (maybe just leather/bone + copper helmets) might be your best bet for fighting fbs. almost nothing can deflect a copper bolt. metal helmets are critical even if the metal is lousy because the AI targets the head pretty much exclusively when attacking an unconscious enemy and an undeflected FB headshot will almost always kill.

try to avoid making copper armor since it's both weak and heavy, and your soldiers will still get attached to it, which can cause problems down the line when you want to replace it with something better.

exception: if you don't mind the speed hit, a shield made from a heavy metal (copper is the heaviest shield metal) will make your dwarves' shield bashes much more effective. if your dwarves get an injury to their weapon hand during combat they seem to preferentially use their other hand, which means a shield bash.

if all you have is copper, try digging down for granite, which contains cassiterite and bismuthinite for bronze/bismuth bronze. granite seems to occur on most maps. as a bonus, it may also contain galena and silver for bashing weapons and silver bolts.

I have two squads full of marksdwarves, and some others in the various ragtag squads, I also have silver (because of tetrahedrite), so I have some dedicated hammer- and macedwarves.

Are you sure they get attached to armour? I only got weapon and shield attachments, one no quality copper warhammer has even become a named artifact :\
I don't know how effective shield bashes are, so I just let my dwarves choose what they want from the wooden and copper ones.

I mined out a big chunk of my granite layers, but I couldn't find  cassiterite, I only got black opals. Right now I'm trying to import them from the dwarf caravan, along with limonite, but they don't bring much, and I'm melting down what the goblins bring.

[smjjames]

Also, if it's a FB made of fire or a firespitting one (or both in the case of a fire based FB, such as the blob made of flame FB I had) and it's not moving from the spot where it is, just use a cavein because I had that situation and lost some dwarves due to them not actually targeting the FB for some reason or other.

I'm not sure if it's possible to have varying degrees of FB extract exposure because while several of my swordsdwarves got hit with the drowsyness, only two of them actually came down with the next stage, spinal cord tissue rot. Though I guess there was another that didn't display the rot for some reason because 3 of them died from the same syndrome at the same time.

There was another FB whose extract was basically an anesthetic, it made creatures exposed to it numb, then drowsy for a while and then wake up, though still numb. I wasn't sure if it was the kind of sleep that dwarves would wake back up from, so I didn't want to expose my dwarves to that, so I baited it and killed with marksdwarves.

[WarRoot]

I haven't experienced that yet. Only had a snow FB, who hid in the water, but a crossbowdwarf took care of it.

What I have experienced, is that most FBs don't put up much fight, they get one or two attacks, which will miss or get dodged, compared to the multitude of dwarves hitting them, the latest FB I got was just trying to run through my horde of dwarves without fighting back, that's sad, wimpy hippy FBs don't make for epic battles

[Sutremaine]

Even if soldiers did get attached to armour, it'd only be a problem if you were upgrading from crappy copper to masterpiece copper.

Armour tends to do less well against FBs because an FB is big enough to brute force its way past armour protection -- having an attack converted to blunt isn't much help when you're getting hit by something the size of a truck.

[Hans Lemurson]

Whether their heart gets torn open by a tusk (unarmored) or a fragment of broken rib (armored), your dwarf is still just as dead.

[WarRoot]

Also, if it's a FB made of fire or a firespitting one (or both in the case of a fire based FB, such as the blob made of flame FB I had) and it's not moving from the spot where it is, just use a cavein because I had that situation and lost some dwarves due to them not actually targeting the FB for some reason or other.

Got a fire blob, who was just sitting content in a pit, burning it up, but had no problem with dwarves targeting it, a dwarf shot a bolt in it and it died.

After that got a flying firespitting insect, it was scary because it headed towards my farm area, but luckily a marksdwarf and my militia captain axedwarf intercepted it, sacrificing their lives to bleed out the beast, and I was wondering.

Does metal armor protect against fire?
They were wearing all leather and bones, except with a copper helm and gauntlets. (Okay the militia captain had an artifact left shell gauntlet.)
Their leather armor and bone leggings caught fire in the fight, and I noticed on my axedwarf, that the injuries showed up on the upper body, lower body, head, and toes and fingers, lips. I guess there is no protection for the extremities, but could some metal mailshirt and leggings have protected them a bit more?

[Sutremaine]

Yes, but once their fingers and toes are affected they'll either catch fire (which spreads) or bleed out from the melted fat in their fingers or toes.

Metal armour protects against fire, but armour doesn't fully cover the flammable parts of a dwarf.

[WarRoot]

So it just slows down the process, but they can't be saved by doctors?