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[Derakon]

This is something that occurred to me while reading a thread on attracting sieges. What's the fastest way to accumulate wealth? For example:

 * Dwarven syrup roasts require a skilled grower and a skilled cook. They also require a growing season, so if you need wealth immediately they're a poor choice (however, once you've started a large farm plot going, you can get lots of sweet pods -- up to 200 stacks -- three seasons out of four). Maximum value for one syrup roast involves four stacks of 11 sweet pods each for a stack size of 220, giving a value per stack of 184800, if I did my math right. Also instant diabetes for any dwarf consuming the stuff, but that's a minor detail. Here, the advantage is that each item produced has a huge quality, and there's relatively little hauling involved. But you need to make certain that hauling happens pronto -- losing a hundred thousand dwarfbucks to rot would be painful.
 * Making mug crafts turns one rock into three craft goods worth up to 120 * material modifier each. For obsidian, this could make 1040 wealth for each rock. You need a skilled stonecrafter for this, and lots of haulers to keep his workshop clear. Here, the advantage is that you get three items per job, and the items can be compactly stored.
 * Mechanisms have a higher base value that most other items; a no-quality mechanism made from junk rock is worth 60. A masterpiece obsidian mechanism is thus worth 2160 (36 times the base value). This is faster than stonecrafts and requires fewer hauling jobs, but you can only store one mechanism per tile and they're heavy, making them somewhat poor trade goods.

And so on. Other major industries for trade: weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, anvilsmithing, clothmaking, decorating goods (to convert imported stuff into fortress-made stuff). Setting up a captive breeding program for rare and valuable creatures? What's the most valuable breedable creature (in material terms), anyway?

If you're going to dedicate your entire fortress to the task of producing wealth, what's the best way? Which jobs are worth pursuing, and which should be ignored? How many dwarves should be dedicated haulers? How does this change if your goal is the most wealth in one month? In three? In a year?

[Lord_Shadow]

I find smoothing, then engraving you entire fortress adds massive wealth to your fortress and only takes about a year, if you have 2 or 3 engravers (if you start with smoothing they will most likely be legendary by the time they start smoothing).

[Martin]

Cooking. GCS harvesting, if you are so endowed, and straight-out tapping the HFS.

Quality matter for most of those things. If your map permits it, I will note that fire snake extraction is very easy to start (flasks, traps, some meat) and turns out items valued at 520-600 a pop and requires no skills.  It's not sustainable since you'll empty the map at some point but for an early economy, it's a pretty good one.

Long term sustainable it's cooking. Just can't be beat.

[Albedo]

Steel Plate mail is worth 3000 x quality. That's 1000/bar (x quality!), and that's pretty good if you have the ingredients.

High-value ore statues are counted twice - once for the statue, and again when you place it as furniture - with platinum/aluminum, that's another 2k x quality.

Probably doesn't compare to a milk/milk/milk/milk roast, but it's how I do it. Can usually get about 1/4 M by 1st caravan, couple/few by 2nd, and I know I'm not trying.

[FlexibleDogma]

Does encrusting ammo still work?  That is, when you decorate ammo each bit gets the full value modifier?  It's cheating, but if you're just doing it to bring in the sieges I can't imagine who would complain.

Metal value * 25 (bolts) * quality + (10 * decoration value * quality)*25₁  ... + (10 * decoration value * quality)*25_n = tons

[Heliman]

Hacking my smelters to pop out adamantine wafers like rabbits.

[Derakon]

Okay, so barring cheating, what's the fastest way to obtain wealth if you only have one month to work? Let's say that you have access to magma (already set up so you can safely make workshops), water, sand, etc. but no adamantine.

[Martin]

Okay, so barring cheating, what's the fastest way to obtain wealth if you only have one month to work? Let's say that you have access to magma (already set up so you can safely make workshops), water, sand, etc. but no adamantine.

One consideration, without modding and with what you can reasonably bring with you, it would be liquid fire. There is no quality modifier anywhere in the production chain, so skills only speed things up.

You need leather for bags and an axe for wood. I don't know if you can embark with traps but that or just logs would speed things up. And a shitton of cheap meat/fish. As soon as you embark you need to get a marksdwarf set up - make a crossbow and wood bolts and set him to clear the pipe of imps. Set one dwarf to cut trees. Set one to make traps. Set one to make leather bags and then collect sand. Set one to make glass vials (3 per bag, so they come fast). As traps get made, set them near the pipe, bait them with meat, and set the last dwarf to extract liquid fire. I had around 80 traps total and set them all at once. The trappers would run around and bait traps, build and deconstruct them, so you'll want every dwarf doing this once enough flasks and traps get made.

Liquid fire is 500 per vial, plus the value of the vial. You can get 20 vials per bin, for a value of 10,000 and change per bin. I think I got 200-300 fire snakes before they ran out, so that's 100K-150K right there. You can get it up and running within a few days and probably get that value in about a season, depending on how far away sand, trees are, etc.

The downside to the task is that it's fairly labor intensive, so only 7 dwarves without agility will hold it back, but some skill points can be invested to get things moving a bit faster. As soon as possible, I'd move skills over to growing/cooking since that's the better sustainable skill.

It's possible that gathering/growing/cooking would be faster if you invested skill points well. Key would be to getting plants gathered/planted/milled as fast as possible so the cook was busy nonstop for that month and starting from proficient skills.

[eerr]

can we get a per-dwarf estimate on labor?

I recomend masterwork aluminum/plat mechanisms at 14.4k a pop
masterwork aluminum/plat statues at 12k a pop

1 masterwork meal, consisting of 20 dragon tallow, 10 dragon meat, 20 hydra meat, 10 hydra tallow
at over 100k(it's hard to calc exact values)!

superior meals of 9 unicorn meat and 5 tallow, diluted with 10 flour and  6 plump helmets
over 7k a pop

with the size of dwarven syrup harvests, just substitute syrup for everything but plump helmets.
for more than 7k a pop

a particularly valuble artifact- 400k, not tradeable.

engraved metal/gem floors, maximum 40*12*10?? 4,800k max, nice and cheap resources(assuming you've dug alot already)

stone, with a legendary miner, at 3 per pop: 180 per minute?



rock shortswords: 240 for exceptional, 360 for masterful.
rock mugs of magnetite:  masterwork makes 1,200, and up to 3.
(never realized rock crafts were more valuble than shortswords before)

studding spare platinum for 4,800 max, gem studding for 7,200 max, bones for 120 max, a large creatures worth of bolts studded might give 2x to 4x the value.

a goblin seige gives about 200 value per item average, assuming a large number of iron items, times 7 per goblin. for 1400 per goblin in a siege. siege of 60 goblins fully killed giving 84k.

all dwarves in a fortress can crank out stone crafts, but the hauling tasks are immense.

[CobaltKobold]

Metal value * 25 (bolts) * quality + (10 * decoration value * quality)*25₁  ... + (10 * decoration value * quality)*25_n = tons

Metal bolts aren't the best- but then, it's not easy to get the monsters with huge stacks of bones required for beating it.

...say, I wonder if the "get more materials" trick works for cooking a la artifact moods.