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[Zenebatos]

Hello all,

Newbie here. Been playing DF on/off for 2 years now. I've got most of the starting game down, but I'm still working on mechanics like cave-ins, pumps, liquids, and armies/training. That being said, I've never really managed to get past the 1st 1/3 of the game due to not being able to find/smelt iron/steel in any of my games thus far, leaving me extremely vulnerable to any sort of attack by invading armies or megabeasts. I decided to look into exploratory mining patterns to try and put down a strategy for my next couple of forts. That's when I found the following:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Exploratory_mining#Mountain_Top_Removal_Excavation

Can anyone explain to me what this does and why it's useful? From what I understand, this method requires you to designate "up-down stairs on the entire area to excavate, on every z-level", so you're essentially designating your dwarves to dig up/down stairs on every single tile in the mountain... If that's the case, what difference/advantage does this have from simply designating dwarves to mine the mountain bare the normal way(i.e. Labor Percent)?

Also, at the end it says: "all goodies from an entire mountain can be collected", does this mean that unmined stone that falls with the cave-in mechanic will turn into it's item counterpart?

Thanks for the help!

[vanatteveldt]

If you assign everything to be mined, you are left with a hollowed out mountain and have to haul everything down. The 'mountain top removal' technique is to actually remove the whole mountain. A naive way to do this would be to channel the whole thing, but you would need to designate that layer by layer to prevent cave-ins, and even that is not safe if there are mined out parts in the mountain.

After you've caved-in the whole mountain, all the stone and ores are at the bottom, and the whole mountain is gone. This has minimal labour saving (less hauling), but normally you don't really need to get all the rock from a  mountain (when is the last time you had a rock shortage?), so this is mostly useful for aesthetics or megaprojects.

[Garath]

finding iron and flux is mostly dependent on your site. If it isn't there you can do as much exploratory mining as you wish, but you won't find it.

So how to find iron?
if you want you can use dfhack before embarking to make an estimate on the minerals. Think of it like a prospector going first to check if it's a good site. He won't be able to tell you exactly what's there, but can tell you he found traces of gold/iron ores/copper.

Help this along by learning what likely sites are. Most iron is in sedimentary layers, deposits from rivers, lakes and seas, so search near those. Mountains tend to be low on iron.

What if I still can't find any?
Copper will be fine initially, just try to stay out of melee. Marksdorfs shooting bronze bolts will kill nearly everything. Use some traps to take out other nasties (not FB/titans) untill you have a nice hoard of iron stuff. You can also buy every iron scrap you can get your grubby hands on from the caravans. Melt everything down. That includes the goblinite. Goblinite is almost always without added quality, so your own armor and weapon smiths (weapon smiths trained on making bolts&trap components - find something cheap to train armor smiths on with copper) can almost certainly do a better job. Melt down anything that isn't up to standards and try again.

Order iron holding rocks from the caravans. They're dirt cheap and give 4 bars!

[Lich180]

Copper is good enough for starting out with, but masterwork copper gear with legendary melee fighters is mire than enough in vanilla. Sure, it's not as strong or sharp as iron, bronze or steel, but since you really don't run into full iron-wearing enemies in vanilla copper is fine.

[Zenebatos]

Thanks for the feedback! As I thought earlier, the technique is just to make things easier.

Regarding Iron/Steel, I mostly make use of the "Search for a site" function to find a site with minerals, though it sounds like I should be using dfhack as well. I'll play around with it in my next embark.

[Getix Kain]

Thanks for the feedback! As I thought earlier, the technique is just to make things easier.

Regarding Iron/Steel, I mostly make use of the "Search for a site" function to find a site with minerals, though it sounds like I should be using dfhack as well. I'll play around with it in my next embark.

Goblinite is a really nice source of almost every kind of metal.
Copper, iron and sometimes even steel.

Just remember to reclaim also Goblin clothing, since they can be used by your dwarves and can cover up any cloth shortage (for a while).

[bmaczero]

I've heard it said that bronze is actually "better" than iron in the current version (though of course steel is the best normal material).

[Garath]

goblins never bring steel.

A matter to note is that the sitefinder at your pre-embark screen sometimes borks up. With low mineral scarcity it sometimes won't display flux for example, and it can not guarantee weapon grade metals. If you want to be sure something is there, you need to use dfhack.I tend to just embark and work with what's there. On the other hand, since I like embarking on multiple soil layers I have a bigger chance at finding sediments and thus iron (compared to 1 z-lvl soil).

[blue emu]

I've heard it said that bronze is actually "better" than iron in the current version (though of course steel is the best normal material).

Bronze was better than Iron in real life. The advantage in moving to an Iron-based military economy was that Iron ores were literally dozens of times more common than Tin ores (required for Bronze)... so you could equip a military force dozens of times larger, with weapons and armor that were almost as good as Bronze equipment.

If you are short of Steel (for instance, if it is only available from Caravans and Goblinite), give preference to using it for edged weapons (Axes) and Helmets. The rest of your Armor can be made of inferior materials, while Silver is very nearly as good as Steel for blunt weapons and for Crossbow Bolts.

[Getix Kain]

goblins never bring steel.

I am sure I have never produced or bought Steel Crossbows (and they were also light gray in the stock list).

Are you sure that Goblin/Sieges do not bring Steel Weapons?

[Garath]

in the vanilla game, only dwarfs know how to make steel. The crossbows may have been left by dead dwarf caravan guards or the like

[ShadowHammer]

goblins never bring steel.

I am sure I have never produced or bought Steel Crossbows (and they were also light gray in the stock list).

Are you sure that Goblin/Sieges do not bring Steel Weapons?

If a hunter migrates to your fort, they bring with them a random crossbow, and due to the dangerous  nature of hunting, they are quite likely to die and leave behind the crossbow.

[Gwen]

I actually have a mountain I wish to move. Two questions about this method though:
1. If I'm reading this right, the constructions (up/down stair) will be demo'd due to the fall, yes?
2. What about squares that can't be designated as up/down stairs? Wouldn't you have a layer of topsoil or something due to the highest Z levels not being designateable for up/down stairs?

[Chevaleresse]

I've heard it said that bronze is actually "better" than iron in the current version (though of course steel is the best normal material).

Bronze was better than Iron in real life. The advantage in moving to an Iron-based military economy was that Iron ores were literally dozens of times more common than Tin ores (required for Bronze)... so you could equip a military force dozens of times larger, with weapons and armor that were almost as good as Bronze equipment.

If you are short of Steel (for instance, if it is only available from Caravans and Goblinite), give preference to using it for edged weapons (Axes) and Helmets. The rest of your Armor can be made of inferior materials, while Silver is very nearly as good as Steel for blunt weapons and for Crossbow Bolts.

Iron was lighter and held an edge better, iirc.

[Getix Kain]

goblins never bring steel.

I am sure I have never produced or bought Steel Crossbows (and they were also light gray in the stock list).

Are you sure that Goblin/Sieges do not bring Steel Weapons?

If a hunter migrates to your fort, they bring with them a random crossbow, and due to the dangerous  nature of hunting, they are quite likely to die and leave behind the crossbow.

Could be.

Thanks, did not think about this option.