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[Mimodo]

I'm in a rather interesting predicament here. My fortress minerals consist of Native Gold, Galena, a random assortment of gems, and both chalk and marble.

So, it's going to be a rather wealthy fortress, with a whole bunch of leather clad legendary hammer dwarves.

I know, it's not the best to have lightly armoured melee dwarves, but what can you do right? My civ is enemies with both elves and humans (YAY!)

I've also got a single spire of the good stuff, except I don't want to waste it on low quality goods. How can I train my armoursmith with minimal importables?

[StagnantSoul]

There's really nothing you can do... Try branch mining out to find some copper and cassiterite, or maybe random veins of hematite.

[Dwarf_Fever]

There are two tricks that could help you, which have a sort of synergy:

1. Melting metal objects does not give you a 1:1 return on your metal. This means you can make metal leggings and immediately melt the lot, which will give you 1.5 bars for every bar you invested into leggings. These bars can be turned back into leggings again, ad infinitum until you have as much metal as you require. It is a bit slow, and a bit of an exploit, but foolproof.

1a. For purpose of this, you do not want any masterwork armor pieces created, because melting them will cause tantrums. That leads to the next point:

2. The more dwarves that have armorsmithing as a skill, the more likely one is to get a strange mood with said skill and have it catapulted to legendary. To this effect, you want to get your entire fortress armor-smithing, preferably starting with useless dwarves that aren't essential for other industries. This ensures you don't quickly end up with unmeltable masterwork pieces, and also increases chances of a fast master smith a little bit.

Once you feel like you have close to enough metal, and you didn't get lucky with an armorsmith mood yet, pick your best armor smith so far. Check the melt page that I linked above, and start him working on the pieces you really want, which also give decent return on melting - save the ones that are a melting loss for last. Put him on repeat, and melt any non-masterwork pieces until you have as many of that part as you need. Hopefully by the time he gets to the "lossy" melt items he is making masterworks pretty consistently.

[Quartz_Mace]

You could import a little copper ore and start smithing leggings, melting them back down, then forging more. If I remember correctly, that will also increase the amount of copper you have. WARNING: do NOT attempt with adamantine! You will lose most of it! You'd actually be surprised by how easy it is to base your entire metal industry off of foreign metal with a few gold crafts to sell and some magma forges. You can also salvage all metal from human siegers. If you are careful, dropping them down a pit of death is a very useful solution. Just add a ton of wooden spikes at the bottom and they should die. Then you just harvest their metal. If you have flux, you can make their iron into steel. As far as armour quality, I don't think it matters very much unless it is masterwork. Any adamtine armour should be extremely protective.

EDIT: Also, if you want more adamantine, make minecarts out of them, then melt and repeat. It's a bit exploity though.

[TheDarkStar]

EDIT: Also, if you want more adamantine, make minecarts out of them, then melt and repeat. It's a bit exploity though.

Coins/bolts give you a lot more, but setting up a macro for the trading part is necessary to preserve your sanity.

[PDF urist master]

EDIT: Also, if you want more adamantine, make minecarts out of them, then melt and repeat. It's a bit exploity though.

Coins/bolts give you a lot more, but setting up a macro for the trading part is necessary to preserve your sanity.

they also don't train armorsmith.

[Quartz_Mace]

EDIT: Also, if you want more adamantine, make minecarts out of them, then melt and repeat. It's a bit exploity though.

Coins/bolts give you a lot more, but setting up a macro for the trading part is necessary to preserve your sanity.

Sanity?! This is DWARF FORTRESS!!!

[SixOfSpades]

An individual dwarf's preferences are also worthy of note. A metalsmith who likes a particular metal is more likely to produce higher-quality items when working with that metal, and if they get a Strange Mood (and you have smelted that type of metal in your fort before), they will absolutely insist on making their artifact out of that type of metal--nothing else will do (unless you use {forbidding} tricks to slip in something else). Similarly, a metalsmith who likes a specific type of weapon/armor is more likely to produce a higher-quality version of that type of item, and if they get a Strange Mood, their artifact will be that type of item.

So, if you want masterworks: Check your dwarves' preferences, and see who likes what metals. Candy is obviously best, but how soon can you get it? Find some guys who like the metals you can work with now. Correlate each individual dwarf's preferences, so you don't risk wasting a potentially very valuable mood on a useless artifact, like a silver breastplate. (Note: Making one "ridiculous" artifact ranged weapon, like a candy crossbow or featherwood blowgun, is actually quite advisable, as it's a great weapon to give to your Hammerer/Captain of the Guard. Never have to worry about beatings again, and they're still very effective against actual enemies.) If you have the dwarfpower (with the correct preferences), try to have a different smith for each weapon & piece of armor: One woman makes axes, another guy makes low boots, their neighbor makes mail shirts.

If you want good artifacts: Largely the same as above, but applied to a broader spectrum of dwarves, and looking more towards the future. If a dwarf likes a good military metal that you don't yet have in abundance, try to acquire just a little--usually, by importing steel or platinum. Keep that metal safely forbidden until you need it. Next, give each of your "chosen" a little bit of the appropriate metalsmith training, just enough to exceed any other moodable skills they may have, and then have them do non-mood things, like (almost) the entire Farming menu, for the rest of their life. And finally, wait.

[Mimodo]

Okay, so in conclusion, there's really no good way to do it without exploits, and I should just import what I can, and train what I can. In the mean time, Masterwork Silver Warhammers for everybody! Let's hope they can crush the enemy before they get a shot in

[Borge]

Make shields, Leggings are too exploity. I hope Toady fixes melting returns too, everything that's melted should give 90-100% return.

[StagnantSoul]

He has no way to make shields other than adamantine, so he'd be losing it.

[SixOfSpades]

Okay, so in conclusion, there's really no good way to do it without exploits

Not exactly. True, the "contents under pressure" trick of melting certain items to get back more than you put into them is clearly a bug/oversight, but being able to groom your dwarves to take advantage of a mood is not. (The best way to serve the will of Armok is to know the will of Armok!) Like all overseers who embark in an area almost entirely bereft of weapons-grade ores, you're just going to have to subsist on goblinite (or perhaps just humanite, in your case) until your smiths get sufficient experience and/or a mood or two. Have them forge full suits of armor, and melt down whatever you consider to be sub-par. The fact that chain leggings provide a positive return will be balanced out by the fact that other items don't, so you don't have to feel guilty for taking advantage of a bug.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Yeah, goblinite and caravan trade will be your next best source instead of the melt trick if you don't want to use it. As Six said above, just make full suits and melt those down instead, if you don't want to exploit the high returns of leggings. Cage traps are great, strip the goblins of the precious metal and dump them into a safe marksman training pit. Also, silver warhammers are quite effective... plus they train the same skill as marksdwarves use when bashing with their (hopefully) metal crossbows.

[Quietust]

EDIT: Also, if you want more adamantine, make minecarts out of them, then melt and repeat. It's a bit exploity though.

Actually, Toady fixed that in version 0.40.05 - they now require 6 wafers to make (as per the MATERIAL_SIZE - previously, they were getting the material size from the corresponding weapon index), and if you melt them down you're only going to get 1.8 wafers back.

[Girlinhat]

Here's what I'd do, preferably with magma forges because you'll be doing it a lot.
Set a single magma forge to melt items - remember that partial ingots are stored in the forge invisibly!
Set a series of forges, each working a different material into something that requires low amount of bars, like gauntlets or boots.
Set these forges to handle different skill levels of dwarf.  "No one higher than competent may use copper" and "No one less than competent may use iron".
Set dwarves in a burrow that doesn't include food, drink, or bed, but does include their workshop.

Here's why: You want to use the lesser and more plentiful materials to train on, and the higher materials for either more training, or actual armor use.  The burrow (the last time I was aware) keeps your dwarves inside, but not to the point of death.  They'll stay inside until dehydrating, and then leave the burrow to get a drink and come back.  Dwarves with problems work slower, so if they're hungry, thirsty, tired, and upset, they'll work very slowly.  In science I performed, dwarves gain attributes based on time spent on an action, not the number of actions or quality of action, so a dwarf working slowly on one item will produce more attribute gain than a dwarf who quickly completes an item.  I assume the same works with skill as it does with attribute.

Therefore, starve your metalsmiths for maximum gains.