Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[greenskye]

I recently discovered the joys of dfprospector, but I'm struggling to interpret some of the output. When I'm looking for iron I'm not sure how much I should be looking for to guarantee I have enough to play "normally" (enough to deck out a few dwarves in steel). Some values seemed so small that I might not be able to find said iron (without using dfreveal).

A couple of 4x4 (mineral scarcity = 100) embarks I found had roughly ~2-4k iron and ~25k copper. The embarks were between 60-80 z levels high. I ultimately chose to abandon these settlements because I felt that finding said 2k iron would be very difficult among all of those z levels.

What type of numbers should I be looking for in order to find iron relatively easily?

[Hyndis]

Remember that you can import metal from the caravans, and you can also "import" metal from hostile civilizations.

[Gearheart]

Anything above 2000 iron ore should be enough. Just might take a little more effort to find it, but assuming you dig in the right layers, it wouldn't be too hard.

[greenskye]

Remember that you can import metal from the caravans, and you can also "import" metal from hostile civilizations.

I understand the alternatives. It isn't so much about getting enough iron as understanding the layout of stone that is described in dfprospector. Many people on the forums have posted their prospector results and I'm trying to match the numbers with how that plays out in the game.

Anything above 2000 iron ore should be enough. Just might take a little more effort to find it, but assuming you dig in the right layers, it wouldn't be too hard.

2000 still seems quite low to me. According to the wiki each embark tile is a 48x48 game area. Therefore a 4x4 embark contains 36,864 tiles per z level. If the map is 60 z levels high (about average for me on default values) that's 2,211,840 tiles to search. That means iron only represents 0.0009% of the available resources (minus some for magma/water/elevation changes). It seems as if finding it is more luck at that point than anything.

[wrajjt]

Slightly unrelated, but how do you make dfprospector work? I keep gettin an error message, "no process found..."

[greenskye]

Slightly unrelated, but how do you make dfprospector work? I keep gettin an error message, "no process found..."

did you update to 5.11? (recently posted, haven't downloaded it yet) In 5.10 I had to update the memory.xml file to get it to see DF.

[Reelyanoob]

Dig stairs down the middle of the map, carefully search all sedimentary stone levels for all 3 iron ores with exploratory N/S and E/W tunnels. Igneous_extrusive layers can contain red hematite veins too. Flux layers other than Marble are all sedimentary, so look for flux and iron should be there too.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Stone

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Sedimentary_layer
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Igneous_extrusive_layer

[JohnnyDigs]

Ya most of your searching will be done in the sedimentary layer which is always, i think, the first layers under the dirt.

[Sutremaine]

That means iron only represents 0.0009% of the available resources (minus some for magma/water/elevation changes). It seems as if finding it is more luck at that point than anything.

That would be the case if you were randomly picking places to put down exploratory shafts.

Start in the middle of a 48x48 embark tile and put a shaft down. Ignore gems and 'small cluster' stones. If you hit iron, great. If you hit a 'large cluster' stone that isn't magnetite, there is no iron in that 48x48 square on that level. If you hit nothing, there might or might not be a vein, but there will be no large cluster.

Might not be 100% right (it's just off the top of my head), but being smart will make that 0.0009% much easier to find.

[Khift]

That means iron only represents 0.0009% of the available resources (minus some for magma/water/elevation changes). It seems as if finding it is more luck at that point than anything.

That would be the case if you were randomly picking places to put down exploratory shafts.

Start in the middle of a 48x48 embark tile and put a shaft down. Ignore gems and 'small cluster' stones. If you hit iron, great. If you hit a 'large cluster' stone that isn't magnetite, there is no iron in that 48x48 square on that level. If you hit nothing, there might or might not be a vein, but there will be no large cluster.

Might not be 100% right (it's just off the top of my head), but being smart will make that 0.0009% much easier to find.

Iron can coexist with large cluster stone. You can have a very large quantity of different stones on one layer, it's just unlikely at normal mineral scarcity stones.

As for the OP's question, if you can FIND the Iron then 2,000 units is enough for military purposes. The trick is finding the iron. Do short exploratory mining tracts on each distinct layerstone you see -- once you find the iron, note the layerstone it's in and mine the living hell out of it.

[greenskye]

-snip-

That would be the case if you were randomly picking places to put down exploratory shafts.

Start in the middle of a 48x48 embark tile and put a shaft down. Ignore gems and 'small cluster' stones. If you hit iron, great. If you hit a 'large cluster' stone that isn't magnetite, there is no iron in that 48x48 square on that level. If you hit nothing, there might or might not be a vein, but there will be no large cluster.

Might not be 100% right (it's just off the top of my head), but being smart will make that 0.0009% much easier to find.

Ah. That would be my problem. I just explored randomly.

So a good idea might be to:

• Keep initial save
• Explore for iron
• Revert to clean save
• Design new fortress around where iron is
• ???
• !!FUN!!

[Khift]

-snip-

That would be the case if you were randomly picking places to put down exploratory shafts.

Start in the middle of a 48x48 embark tile and put a shaft down. Ignore gems and 'small cluster' stones. If you hit iron, great. If you hit a 'large cluster' stone that isn't magnetite, there is no iron in that 48x48 square on that level. If you hit nothing, there might or might not be a vein, but there will be no large cluster.

Might not be 100% right (it's just off the top of my head), but being smart will make that 0.0009% much easier to find.

Ah. That would be my problem. I just explored randomly.

So a good idea might be to:

• Keep initial save
• Explore for iron
• Revert to clean save
• Design new fortress around where iron is
• 
• !!FUN!!

Not really any need for that. Just once you've found where the iron is, you know it's decently concentrated in that layer so mine it out. It's fine to have mines, you know. You don't have to get all your resources from digging out the fortress.

[Nameless Archon]

So a good idea might be to:

• Keep initial save
• Explore for iron
• Revert to clean save
• Design new fortress around where iron is
• 
• !!FUN!!

If you're going to do steps 2-3-4, you might as well cut out step two and three and replace them with "use DFReveal and save much time". Save scumming is not significantly more or less exploity than just using reveal.

[greenskye]

-snip-

Not really any need for that. Just once you've found where the iron is, you know it's decently concentrated in that layer so mine it out. It's fine to have mines, you know. You don't have to get all your resources from digging out the fortress.

Oh I know. I'm just OCD about things. If I'm going to have a mine, it will be a proper mine. With proper angles. And other Proper aspects. Lol. I should really learn to control it, it tends to hamper my ability to get anything done in DF.

If you're going to do steps 2-3-4, you might as well cut out step two and three and replace them with "use DFReveal and save much time". Save scumming is not significantly more or less exploity than just using reveal.

I didn't want to use dfreveal due to reveal accidents, not because I thought it was exploit-y. I didn't want to end up with a permanently revealed map is all. I guess if I take the proper precautions I can spare myself those accidents though.

[JmzLost]

If you're going to do steps 2-3-4, you might as well cut out step two and three and replace them with "use DFReveal and save much time". Save scumming is not significantly more or less exploity than just using reveal.

I didn't want to use dfreveal due to reveal accidents, not because I thought it was exploit-y. I didn't want to end up with a permanently revealed map is all. I guess if I take the proper precautions I can spare myself those accidents though.

1. Set [INITIAL_SAVE:YES] in the d_init file.  It's right near the top of the file.
2. Embark.
3. Reveal - find iron
4. Unreveal - if there are any accidents, delete the region and copy "regionx-spr-y" to "regionx".  x is the region number, y is the start year

JMZ