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[SchDerGrosse]

Hello there.

Iam struggling in my very first fortess with setting up a metal industry.

So far the only weapon grade metal I found is platinum. I have set up a metalsmith forge but when I select make weapons from platinum, instead of "whole weapons" I can only make blades, hammer heads etc.

My question is, how do you transform them into a finished weapon? I have noticed that you can make weapon hilts in other workshops but have no idea how to assemble them from components.

What makes the situation weird is that for other metals (such as iron) you can select : "make an iron short sword" and bam you have a weapon ready to use.

thx

[Tenderroast]

platinum isnt really a weapons grade metal. The only thing its good for is a hammer. One thing you could do though, is make a job for say, in iron war hammer. have the job highlighted in the menu. Alt - A, it will let you change the material, and you can force platinum. Or gold. Or lead. (all 3 make EXCELLENT blunt weapons, but kinda suck for blade.)

The "weapon heads" are used by the great forge to make 2-handed weapons. You need to separately make a hilt, from either rock, wood, or metal, and i think bone, but not 100% sure on that.

[CptCrunchy]

I think that the weapon heads you're seeing are the ammunition types.  There are axe head throwers, hammer head slings, spring-loaded knife launchers etc.  Platinum isn't really weapons grade, since it's only decent for blunt weapons, so the metalsmiths forge menu only allows you to create ammo from it.  There are weapon heads used in the great forge, but those aren't created in the metalsmith's forge and are completely unrelated.

[SchDerGrosse]

Thank both of you for the answers.

(I have already searched through more or less 20-30 z levels and have yet to found any weapon grade metal. Funny thing is that I payed peculiar attention to embark at a location where both shallow and deep metals were present.

It is almost year 3 and my militia is equipped with leather armor and wooden training weapons.

Fun times ahead.  )

[Tarzanello]

Well, I'd suggest you research Alchemy and set up a couple of Alchemist's Lab (or Study, or whatever the name was). From there you can make Ironbone (which has the same properties of Iron) from ash and bones. Then, if you get some blood (made from extract blood job in the kitchen, you'll need some unrotten meat/corpse and a barrel) you can make Bloodsteel, always at the Alchemist's Thingy, which as you'll probably guess has the same properties as good old Steel. OR, you could always go for the praying route. Assuming you have flux that will net you a decent amount of steel, more than enough to equip your military.

[Meph]

Make gem weapons, they are awesome.

[Findulidas]

Make gem weapons, they are awesome.

I thought they were weak against metal armor?

[lcy03406]

Gem is almost as good as iron.

I prefer ironbark over ironbone. From ironbark you can extract real iron, and then make steel as usual, which trains your furnace operator and provides you the possibility to make mithril or volcanic in the future. Bloodsteel is a big mass outside dwarven tech tree.

[Tarzanello]

Gem is almost as good as iron.

I prefer ironbark over ironbone. From ironbark you can extract real iron, and then make steel as usual, which trains your furnace operator and provides you the possibility to make mithril or volcanic in the future. Bloodsteel is a big mass outside dwarven tech tree.

Actually, I agree. Sorry, been playing too much Orcs lately: ironbark is definitely the way to go. Also, I think you need some steel to build the metallurgist if I remember correctly, and moreover flux is generally way more common than blood. Just in case OP doesn't know you can convert ironbark in iron at the Herbalist's Lab.

[SchDerGrosse]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Iam literary swimming in gems but was afraid to use them to avoid the sharp increase in vortress value, accompanied by more hostiles.

I also have some ironbark.

Will give those a try!

[kamikazi1231]

I'd suggest get a few trade licenses and start selling the platinum for coins.  Then use the coins to buy weapons grade metal.  Platinum is worth a ton.

You could also get a few apostles of armok from the monastery, get them praying constantly for hard metal at the basic religious building, can't remember it's name exactly.  Altar of Armok?  Once they are legendary they will be producing a random metal bar every few seconds.  Made most of my last steel military this way when I had a gold heavy embark with not much else.

[Tenderroast]

Shrine of armok = chance for free stuff
Altar of armok = trade souls for a much higher chance of stuff (technically, its still freestuff, since the soul is just a biproduct of a kill)
Temple = sacrifice a dwarf for stuff
Volcanic temple = not sure, ive built them but have never used the reactions from them.

[SchDerGrosse]

Iam a complete newby dwarf fortress player and hasnt gotten to the finer points of the game (like religion etc.) yet. 

Doing my first fortress (well second because I started with the vanilla game, then learned about Masterwork) while having open a dozen wikipedia tabs, the bay forum and the "getting started with dwarf fortress" O'reilly book.

I wish the mod had an up to date and comprehensive manual.

But oh well. The harder you can figure out things, the mor FUN! you have. 

[kamikazi1231]

The game does come with a manual. It can be opened up in the settings program or directly from the masterwork directory. Comprehensive but sometimes a little out of date from the mods frequent updates. That settings program is a godsend. Has built in soundsense , therapist, and let's you change almost any feature of masterwork.

[jimboo]

There are also Quickguides in the later releases, player-compiled lists that are good enough Meph has incorporated them into the dl.  It’s great that folks take the time to answer questions here on the forum but most have been asked and answered repeatedly – maybe because the SMF search engine isn’t very good (others have pointed out that Google + searchterm is often better and that’s now a drop down option). 

This reminds me that we should all spend more time adding to the MW Wiki and then someday more of it will be like the Metals page, Smake’s chart that clearly shows the advantages of each gem, metal and glass for armor and weapons making.