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[Shootandrun]

Three days ago, i started a fortress. It was the perfect place too build a colony: water, trees, peaceful surroundings.. It got a "Hot" biome, but its ok, there is a brook near the entrance. Hot biome + brook = no freezing and no water problems!

But after some time, i begun to dig my fortress deep enought to get minerals, and gems, and every thing necessary but... There is only one metal in all the places i digged. Silver.

Silver! What can i do with silver? No armors, no recipes for others good minerals, my only viable weapon in metal is an hammer if i only have silver.
I don't want to send dwarves to battle with leather armors, woodens shields and silver hammer. I have dwarfs, not humans! A dwarf that dont have badass weapon AND badass armor is not a dwarf!

I have tried to do some "traps walls", but i need a military, at least for fighting elephants (yes, i have elephants, and the bastards never go attack my fortress to get trapped by my cages! They just come every 30/40 mins to attack my wood cutters and fisherdwarfs!)

What can i do with this? Have you already heard of a map that have no other metals than silver? Can i find others metals if i dig enought?

[Christes]

I find it hard to believe that you only have silver.  There is a lot of space to dig around in the latest version.

[Cotes]

I've heard it's possible to not have any iron and I've had a couple maps where there is no gold, but only silver? I really doubt that. Maybe with some really weird world gen.

Dig more, breach a cavern or two...

[FleshForge]

Never seen a map yet with no iron whatsoever.

[GuudeSpelur]

Breach the caverns.  If that's all silver, then resign yourself to making some sort of silver-only megaproject.  Like a giant mirror or something, like I'm doing now.

[Hyndis]

My current fortress is just a huge silver mine. Thousands upon thousands of silver, along with some gold, tin, lead, and a tiny bit of copper, but no iron at all.

I just import what I need. The annual goblinite caravans supply plenty of iron.

[MoonLightBird]

Import what you need, make silver crafts and trade for good shit....like kitten biscuits!

[Shootandrun]

I am doing exploratory mining anytime. I have covered a soooo great space... But all the caverns i found were cheap. I have in my stockpiles native silver, mica, alexandrite, balck zircon, granite, and many wierd names stones that i will never use... But no others metals than silver. The only thing i designed in the world gen was the region size.

I -of course- import some metals, but its really "poor". I think caravans give me only ten metals ores or so in a year.
I dont know what to do with this fortress. Its all good, i have every thing that i wnat, except metals. Should i "Have fun" and leave it? I'm not experienced enought to do a megaproject with silver...

[FleshForge]

It's a sandbox game, are you having fun with that map?  That's pretty much the only important thing.

[MoonLightBird]

Block out the sky with the silver....then crush everything with with! Who said it does not make a good weapon?

[Foehamster]

Breach the deepest depths and install a staircase there, then abandon(if you're lucky it won't be necessary to abandon the site manually) and play some adventure mode.

[Shootandrun]

Block out the sky with the silver....then crush everything with with! Who said it does not make a good weapon?

Lol... Orbital defense system silver version? Naaa. I said i only got silver. But i did'nt said i have so much. Maybe, fourty units? For hundreds of digged tiles? I'll never finish that system. I'm gonna leave that good'ol fortress, and of course having fun destroying it. I think im gonna go dig a giant room and lock them inside. After that, i will look at them starving and getting berserk.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Set up a smelter and see what jobs are available. Make some charcoal/dig for magma if you need fuel.

[nbonaparte]

I got a similar embark the other day. I even used dfprospector. plenty of silver, some gold, and a lot of sphalerite. but absolutely no iron ore.

[Khift]

Never seen a map yet with no iron whatsoever.

It's pretty easy to have a map with no iron. I've had it happen twice. Both times before I knew what all the stone layers meant, though.

To the OP: Is your only layer stone granite? If so, you should have plenty of cassiterite. Keep digging for tetrahedrite -- every stone layer can contain tetrahedrite, without exception. Mix cassiterite with tetrahedrite to get bronze, a very respectable metal. It's not steel, but it'll do. Additionally, optimize your goblinite harvesting operations and melt the precious iron from it for use in a limited steel industry. It wont' be great, but it'll eventually provide enough to arm your military dwarves with steel armor and weapons.

Having poor layer stones sucks. It's something that really should be looked at in the long term. The fact that most weapons grade metals only appear in very limited arrays of stones just does not lend itself to good gameplay. At the very least every map should have access to iron and flux stone, even if just a limited amount.