3) It sounds like your civilization doesn't have any iron at all, so they'll never bring you an anvil. Better pray for an anvil in the human caravan or you are truly SOL. With no anvil, you can't make anything out of metal (except bars). You'd be limited to just what you can buy from caravans or collect from invaders. That would be a challenging fort, and maybe not what you want if you're just beginning.
You are a silly person. April Fool's Day does not apply when giving advice.
Actually, I was being an ignorant person. :-/ Although I don't deny being a silly person, I do deny my advice having anything to do with April Fool's Day. I had forgotten that Dwarves always have steel. Although I've had embarks where I could get steel anvils and not iron anvils. I'm not sure how that works. "Aye, laddie, we can make steel, but we dinna have any iron. So we modded a reaction that lets us to make pig iron from pigs, and another 'un that lets us make steel from two bars of pig iron. It nae be kosher, but it lets us make steel anvils!"
But someone else suggested that he probably didn't see anvils available for his embark because he didn't have enough points, which I guess is the real reason. Although I thought you always started out with an anvil by default, so how could it be that he didn't have enough points? I've had embarks where I started out with a steel anvil, which is 300 points and doesn't leave you with many points to spend, compared to having a 100 point iron anvil.
He'd have had to give back his default steel or iron anvil and then spend a bunch of points before he wouldn't have enough points to see any anvils. So now I'm not so sure that's why he didn't have any anvils available at embark. So
do Dwarves
really always have steel available?
Metalgear, did the Dwarven caravan have
any steel or iron items at all?
Keith