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[Lemunde]

Quite possibly one of the hardest professions to train because it requires so many bars of metal.  Right now I have plenty of iron to do whatever with but I'm not sure what to have him make.  I was thinking chains because they only require 1 bar but I have no place to put them.  I could build iron doors to replace all my stone doors but those require 3 bars.  Iron bins would be nice but they also require 3.  I don't think there's an easy solution here.  Any advice would be appreciated.

[SquirrelWizard]

remember you can always melt stuff down after you make it, just make sure you aren't melting any masterwork items or else you will tick off the dwarf (you can always trade those masterwork chains for more metal.)

[Hyndis]

Have him make iron blocks out of goblinite.

1 block takes 1 iron bar. You can also melt this down to reclaim about 1/3rd of the metal used to recycle it into new iron blocks.

Or if you want him to be productive while training and don't mind using much more iron, you can have him make bins or barrels which you don't melt down because they can be used to store more goblinite and/or booze.


Similar idea for the other professions.

For weaponsmithing make crossbow bolts, which can in turn be used to harvest more goblinite. 1 bar per 25 bolts.

Armorsmithing, just make shields or bucklers. 1 bar per shield/buckler, and they're easy to isolate and melt down in the stocks menu.

Metalcrafting you can use almost anything. Even decorating items counts for improving this skill and only requires 1 bar of metal. Just decorate everything in your fortress. You don't even need fuel to decorate objects.

[Lemunde]

Yeah, but that uses up fuel.  I'm in a forested area so I have an unlimited supply but it takes so long to replenish.  I'm thinking about forging metal blocks.  I don't think I can use them for anything but they're easy enough to store and they only require 1 bar.  Maybe I'll build a monument out of them or something.

[blue emu]

Go over your list of Dwarves, locate all the ones who have no moodable skill (such as a Farmer/Brewer/Cook), and have each of them make one chain... so that Blacksmith is the only moodable skill they've got. Then hope for a Strange Mood.

[Hyndis]

Yeah, but that uses up fuel.  I'm in a forested area so I have an unlimited supply but it takes so long to replenish.  I'm thinking about forging metal blocks.  I don't think I can use them for anything but they're easy enough to store and they only require 1 bar.  Maybe I'll build a monument out of them or something.

Are you an elf or something?! What good is a dwarven fortress without magma!?

[Talanic]

Aren't chains Metalcrafting?  I'm pretty sure they are...

If I recall correctly, I use buckets to train my blacksmiths.

[Lemunde]

Yeah, but that uses up fuel.  I'm in a forested area so I have an unlimited supply but it takes so long to replenish.  I'm thinking about forging metal blocks.  I don't think I can use them for anything but they're easy enough to store and they only require 1 bar.  Maybe I'll build a monument out of them or something.

Are you an elf or something?! What good is a dwarven fortress without magma!?

If I were an elf I wouldn't be burning half the forest so my dwarves could have platinum teeth.

[jayseesee]

He's a goblin then.  Knows he needs metal, but doesn't have the mettle to get it with magma.

[nenjin]

I take it you don't have an underground river? Could double (triple, quadruple...)

[Overspeculated]

Doors.
Your fortress NEVER has enough doors.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

There's a trick I saw on the wiki but didn't see confirmed, though it's a bit of an exploit. Have your blacksmith turn on architecture and build supports using metal bars. Then take down all the supports and rebuild them, over and over again. Should train him in architecture and blacksmithing both.

If you're not up for that, barrels are always useful, so are bins, and as mentioned decorating won't use fuel.

[JamPet]

On embark I always give a few dwarves 5 points in skills that are just hard to train like blacksmithing and siege engineering.  Then I start them off on something simple to train like no-skill stonecrafting and let them do that until I need the other skill, at which point I turn off their secondary skills and make them full-time smiths or whatever and they have a nice head-start towards masterworks.  And I always embark with the magma, most FPS (Fun-per-square!) of anything in the game

Of course, if you've already embarked, no help here.

[Caesar]

I like to generate 'hell' worlds.

Either heavily vulcanic or extremely cold, along with being almost 100% evil.

[Lemunde]

On embark I always give a few dwarves 5 points in skills that are just hard to train like blacksmithing and siege engineering.  Then I start them off on something simple to train like no-skill stonecrafting and let them do that until I need the other skill, at which point I turn off their secondary skills and make them full-time smiths or whatever and they have a nice head-start towards masterworks.  And I always embark with the magma, most FPS (Fun-per-square!) of anything in the game

Of course, if you've already embarked, no help here.

I actually did put a few points into blacksmithing on one dwarf but a metalsmith showed up later who was just as skilled so I'm using him.  I got him up to skilled making iron blocks.  It's going to be fun figuring out what to do with all of those.

I had a slight delay in production when a weaponsmith claimed the forge for his fey mood.  Got a nice fine pewter mace out of it though.  The damn thing's worth over 100k.