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[evilman222]

One of my dwarves forged a legendary gold spear. I doubt it can hold an edge, but roughly what weapon metal would this be equivalent to? I might give it to one of my officers just cuz.

[deknegt]

Not sure, but expect it to be on the very low end of the scale. Around Iron or worse than that.

But since it's legendary it has the x3 quality bonus. So maybe it's a nice gimmick to give to one of your guys to try and survive against whatever threat might appear.
You can also always put it in a weapon trap and bling the gobbos to death.

[Girlinhat]

Gold is flatly not a weapon material.  It's worse than a silver spear, which is REALLY not a weapon material despite being on the vanilla forging list.

Really, dwarves have their weapons very well understood.  If it's not on the vanilla crafting list, it's because it doesn't work very well (exceptions being lead and platinum hammers).  The best use for this is to construct a weapon trap, place it inside, and boost the value of a room.

[Patchy]

A gold spear would only serve as a blunt weapon since it doesn't have much of an edge. And while it has the same contact area as a mace, it has only half the velocity modifier.

I'd personally just throw it in a trap somewhere where it can be admired a lot, such as the dining hall.

[coldmonkey]

A gold spear is execution chamber material.

[evilman222]

Alright, thanks all. Probably putting it on display in the entrance.

[Sutremaine]

You can give it to a dwarf who's already badass. Against goblins, you'll hit an unarmoured part eventually, and against FBs you can fight in melee the spear's poor performance against armour will be irrelevant. Should you be at war with the elves, a gold spear is probably better than wooden armour and will do a nice job poking holes in the elven mounts.

[Garath]

adn you should do that because it'd be cool and dorfy. If only you could get gold, silver or other valuable armor to match and a golden shield for the ultimate sparkle.

[evilman222]

You can give it to a dwarf who's already badass. Against goblins, you'll hit an unarmoured part eventually, and against FBs you can fight in melee the spear's poor performance against armour will be irrelevant. Should you be at war with the elves, a gold spear is probably better than wooden armour and will do a nice job poking holes in the elven mounts.

May very well do that instead. I have a speardwarf who is legendary in almost every combat skill (and farming. I have no clue how that happened) that ill give it to. If he can rack up nearly  25 kills with his old iron spear, then he'll kick ass with this.

[MetalRocks]

Gold is flatly not a weapon material.  It's worse than a silver spear, which is REALLY not a weapon material despite being on the vanilla forging list.

Really, dwarves have their weapons very well understood.  If it's not on the vanilla crafting list, it's because it doesn't work very well (exceptions being lead and platinum hammers).  The best use for this is to construct a weapon trap, place it inside, and boost the value of a room.

Wouldn't be a gold warhammer almost as good as a platinum one? they are about the same density and as far as I understand it for blunt weapons the most important attribute of the material is a high solid_density:
Gold: [SOLID_DENSITY:19320]
Platinum: [SOLID_DENSITY:21400]

and by the way: does anybody know wich attributes are important for edge and piercing weapons?

[Putnam]

Shear values.

Piercing weapons don't exist; there are only EDGE and BLUNT weapons.

[MetalRocks]

Test results show material is not relevant for blunt weapons (adamantine not tested). Density doesnt seem to be an advantage for iron or heavier metals. So a gold warhammer is ok.

[Larix]

I tested 10vs10 squad battles of dwarfs with identical equipment apart from the hammers (silver vs. steel). The different materials performed pretty much the same when taking unarmoured dwarfs, but when the squads were entirely equipped with metal armour, silver would win with huge margins, never less than 7 survivors, usually all ten (while the the opposing squad was completely wiped every time).

I only ran a few tests like this, but it really seems that higher density helps a lot in getting an effective hit through metal armour. To really do the protective work, the armour must cover all body parts, though - boots and gauntlets must be present in pairs, leg cover and arm cover (through mail shirts, with added breastplates for better upper body protection) must be provided. Any uncovered or only leather-armoured body part throws a combatant wide open to attacks on the unprotected limb: i ran some silver vs. better metal axe tests, and the silver axes performed reasonably well - until i gave everybody a second gauntlet, after which silver started tanking horribly.

[Putnam]

Squad battles don't really show results well.

[Larix]

My experiences may be largely anecdotal, but i think they suggest pretty clearly that comparing weapon materials is not too meaningful when the opponents are insufficiently armoured. Weapon material makes a great difference when facing mostly or entirely metal-armoured opponents, but against incomplete or non-metal armour the differences in performance are small enough to get drowned in the noise of the various arena combat weirdnesses. In fact, insufficient armour can make weapons entirely meaningless - when head and upper body are well-protected but hands and arms aren't, opponents will survive the fight for quite a while but will usually lose hold of their weapon and fight unarmed for most of the battle.

And considering a large number of pitched battles in fort mode _are_ squad battles, i'm not sure if modelling them through solo encounters is that useful if there's a large discrepancy between arena solo and squad combat.