Couple of tiny questions..
1. I have access to atleast 100 tiles worth of adamantium which I can safely mine out, thought about making weapons for me dwarves. Axes and swords are the way to go? Statues to pretty up my dining room which currently is sadly just 10 tables and chairs in a soil room.. They deserve better.
2. Over 500 gold nuggets/gold bars are enjoying their stay at my fortress and I figured I could put em to some use, anything fun to make out of them? Statue garden? I want to make gold barrels and bins!
3. How effective are bone arrows in combat? If goblins armored with iron or steel come into fire of my 30 newbie marksdwarves will they die or will they laugh at my dwarves and my fortress?
4. How tall drop is required to kill goblins/humans/elves/kobolds in general?
5. Can I change my max dwarf cap mid game if I exit game and all that without save corrupting? Pretty sure I remember you can but figured to ask anyways.
6. What is roughly the highest value artifact can get? Few hours ago I received topaz scepter covered with cow bone/random gem/aluminum worth 140k. During 6~ forts I've made which lasted 6 years or longer this is most valuable one I've seen, usually they're 10k. Sad dwarfpanda.
In order;
1. Adamantine is best used for swords and spears, and maybe axes. Never for maces, never for warhammers. It used to be that materials got simple multipliers for damage based on material, but now the simulation has far more variables. Adamantine is a very light weight material, and thus makes a very poor blunt force weapon. However, it's more valuable than anything. Feel free to plate the walls with it to improve room quality.
2. Gold is mainly good for satisfying the noble's demands for luxurious rooms and tombs. They'll demand higher quality bedrooms, offices, and tombs the more important they are in rank, lowest being your expedition leader, highest being the King. If a noble is not satisfied with his or her rooms, he will make more demands for pointless objects that you probably can't manufacture, like Rose Gold Goblets, and make more trade embargoes. The alternative solution to this is to just use the gold for whatever you want, and solve the noble problem with creative application of Magma.
3. Bone arrows are not affective in combat against anything with half-decent armor. Unless your dwarfs get extremely lucky shots, don't expect bone bolts to penetrate iron plate mail reliably. Any metal will do fine, though, as should Ironwood. I'm kind of sketchy on the details of the simulation as far as how bolts and arrows work right now, but I do believe the weight and strength of the bolt's material should affect whether it penetrates armor or not.
4. That's a pretty good question. I've experimented with this before on several peasant dwarfs/cheese makers in an overpopulated fortress, and I think I remember finding a drop of four or five floors is usually enough to leave most of the victims at least crawling around with multiple fractures in their legs, if not killing them outright. Use more to be sure.
5. I seem to remember being able to do this, but don't hold me to it. Your population should still continue to grow through natural births no matter what limit you set however.
6. I honestly have no idea what the upper limit of value is. I think there is an upper limit of value based on the base material used, but if you for example have an artifact adamantine statue encrusted with gold and diamonds, the value can get absurdly high.
Then again, maybe a cap was set in place by Toady for balance reasons in the more recent versions, I don't know for sure.