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[jojojay]

when choosing an embark location, some areas are flagged as having shallow or deep metal or metals. if i understand this correctly, which i do not think i do, this means that areas that do not have these tags will have absoulutely no minable ores, and it will mean that areas with only the "deep metal" tag will have only one ore. this will also mean that areas without the "shallow metals" tag are extremely unlikely to have iron, as iron is fond in shallow sediments. is this true? if it is, it seems a bit unbalanced. if it is not , can somone explain the meaning to me?

[Dunamisdeos]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Site_finder

Here ya go. Looks like your hypothesis was accurate.

Also DF tries to simulate actual geological processes in placement location and frequency, so I would venture that it is more balanced than less. Iron ore is not actually everywhere, for instance.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, you can consider it a bit unbalanced if you consider more <something> a good thing. Some specifically aim for no metals, though, so YMMV.

Worth noting that iron is also sometimes found as hematite in igneous extrusive (shallow volcanic mineral area), though sedimentary layers are still most valuable on average.

[PatrikLundell]

It can also be noted that DF is sometimes incorrect when it comes to things it claims are present but which fail to show up. This is because the site finder seems to look at a geo biome structure when providing these estimates, but at the embark this can be truncated at the bottom (and soil at the top) because the stack of geographical layers are cut off at the magma sea, and the promised stuff would have been found deeper (soil is eroded due to high elevation at the other end, which can lead to missing sand/clay/aquifers).

Also, if you want to actually know what to expect to find at an embark you can use the DFHack "prospect all" command at your intended embark. Obviously, this may provide more info than some players want to get.

[Quietust]

I've done some analysis with DFHack and a disassembly, and it appears that metals count as "shallow" if they are within the first two stone layers, unless the biome is a Shallow Ocean (shows "little soil") or a Sand Desert, in which case it counts the first five stone layers as "shallow".

There do seem to be some glitches, though - I tried embarking on a desert that claimed to only have Deep Metals, but the very first stone layer (directly beneath the sand) contained veins of cassiterite.


Internally, it seems to count world_geo_biome.layer[0-5] as shallow and .layer[6+] as deep, and most biomes have 4 layers of soil (with Sand Deserts and Shallow Oceans being the exceptions, having only 1 Sand layer).

[Fleeting Frames]

Interesting. Well, cassiterite veins are only found in Granite (Igneous Intrusive). It shouldn't be relevant, though. Suggests that there's possibility of iron in deep metals site.

Tbh my headcanon has that and metamorphic as deep with igneous extrusive and sedimentary as shallow. I can explicitly confirm it as false, though - beyond your II example, I've also found embarks that started with metamorphic layers from the first rock. Don't recall if they had shallow metals - I never checked, and deleted the world after prospecting.

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, definitely interesting. It's odd that materials can appear when they "shouldn't", as so far I've only seen things disappear (this should not be taken to mean I think your observation is incorrect). I also suspect it's possible for expected metals to fail to appear if the layer has too many possible types of veins and too few available vein locations (such as e.g. a single Z deep layer with 4 vein materials specified in a single mid level tile embark).

A assume you also dismissed the alternative possible hypothesis of deep/shallow being dependent just on depth.

[Dunamisdeos]

I have seen magnetite quite deep indeed. Never hematite, and very rarely limonite.