Working on a small (population 50) fort whose main purpose is to generate masterwork and artifact steel equipment for adventurers. So far I've got about 500 steel and a Legendary + 5 Armorsmith, and I've been training all my dwarves in Weaponsmithing as well to increase my chances of a strange mood making steel weapons. With my luck, though, they'll make a bunch of steel hammers. I had
blue stuff in my last fort, and with it, through numerous strange moods, they created two grates, two floodgates (in a row), and a hammer
. Too many metalcrafters!
I've never done this before, but I'm producing all the steel entirely with coke and charcoal - I didn't gen this world with reduced height (I like the magma sea about 50 levels down), and I don't feel like digging 150 levels down to magma. I wasn't even planning on opening up any caverns, but a strange mood foundered on a lack of silk and then my chief medical dwarf, who's also my best miner, got another strange mood requiring silk. I dug down, revealing cave the first, got some giant cave spider silk, strip-mined the trees, installed a bridge, and closed off the cave again in time to avoid the two forgotten beasts that showed up shortly afterwards, both with poisonous abilities (vapor and bite, respectively). No thanks! I don't plan on opening the bridge again, although I might when the fort crumbles to its end (or to CAUSE the fort to crumble), just to give future adventurers a bit of risk as they go exploring for equipment.
So far I've got a small amount of masterwork steel armor and an artifact steel shield, equipped by Illuvatar, my original (starting seven) hammerguard. This world genned without goblins, though, so there hasn't been much cause to use it yet. Once I finish training everyone in Weaponsmith, I'm going to start pumping out the masterwork armor.
This is probably the last version I'll be able to mine thousands of iron ore (4 magnetite cores dug out so far) and convert it into steel without magma, since Toady has rejiggered minerals for 0.31.19. I assume mineral density will be midway between 40d and 0.31 levels so far, but I'm not holding my breath. It should be Fun, regardless.