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[FleshForge]

Contents of maps vary a lot, sedimentary layers vary in what they contain - sometimes they're only 4 or so levels deep and contain crud like talc instead of magnetite.  Sometimes they're 7 or 8 levels deep and contain all three flavors of iron, it's hard to predict.  Actually igneous extrusive maps (volcanic rock) tend to have a whole lot more iron, although [edit] NO coal of course (but yeah there's charcoal).

[Shoku]

Toady felt it was frustrating not being able to get any ore before going into the caverns and he evidently did his testing on regular regions rather than island regions where the caverns are more oft than not forty layers down. When the caverns really are just five or ten layers down the old frequency for veins would have definitely proved troublesome.

[rephikul]

change the chance of useful metal to spawn to 10-20% instead of 100%. Enjoy your microlines.

[slothen]

ahhh... what about the Fire Snakes?

don't build directly over the magma sea, dig into the side with a fortification, and bring the magma to where you want it.  Or channel down, build a grate, and use a pump to separate your forge area from the magma sea.

[Urist McTaverish]

ahhh... what about the Fire Snakes?

don't build directly over the magma sea, dig into the side with a fortification, and bring the magma to where you want it.  Or channel down, build a grate, and use a pump to separate your forge area from the magma sea.

What I do is I channel and place the impassable part of the forge or furnace over the hole.  No fire snakes or imps ever.

[Pukako]

Dig out a layer of tunnels below the forge area, dig out a pit below that near the magma tube, then smooth and fortify the tube, and let your mason run for it and get a (magma proof) floodgate in place while the pit fills up.  For extra style, have an existing floodgate with a lever.

Marvel at the legendary miners that run into the magma room just as the floodgate closes, stare as a kitten stops the floodgate being placed, or (my best effort) manage to tunnel the pit into your dining room without noticing.

I stick to coal now, as I think I've got it sorted - keep a buffer of around 200 charcoal at any given time.  The amount (and variety) of metals and coal does vary from site to site.  Iron and coal with no flux is not nice.  Flux and coal with no iron and all other permutations are also somewhat painful.  But sometimes it works...

[gtmattz]

What I do is I channel and place the impassable part of the forge or furnace over the hole.  No fire snakes or imps ever.

Fire snakes are vermin, and as such teleport around as opposed to move about like normal creatures...  What this means is that even if all your magma holes are plugged, you can still have a fire snake spawn in your coal stockpiles if they are in the wrong place...

[Jake]

TOO MUCH coal!? I haven't bothered with magma forges yet because I'm still learning the ropes of pumps and all that, so I mine out entire veins of the stuff and I STILL don't have enough of it. The veins, no matter how huge they are, only last so long. I can get maybe like 100 iron bars out of a vein, taking the cost of smelting coke from the coal into account. Hey, we're dorfs here. We need more iron than that, yo.

It's enough to kit out half a squad with full plate armour and a weapon, which isn't that bad, but playing without magma is a whole different set of challenges that require you to change your approach a bit.