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[lanceleoghauni]

see, for as creative as the DF fandom is considered to be, the lack of a single material seems to be throwing you all for a bit of a loop.

Cope.

It's what we do.

[khearn]

My current fort has no metals at all. I specifically looked for no metals in the site finder. All of my metals come from trade, mostly with the goblins. I give them bone bolts, they give me iron mail shirts and iron helms. I feel like I'm getting the better deal, but they never seem to complain afterwards. *shrug*

I also buy up every metal item the other caravans show up with.

I also happened to end up in an embark that has no clay or sand, which was unexpected. It does add a bit to the challenge, but not too much. I haven't usually made too much glass or pottery. It has put a crimp in building animal powered watchtowers, since each one needs 4 windows. But I'm buying bags of sand from traders, so it's working out slowly.

This has been a very enjoyable fort so far. More than forts that had all the makings for steel visible on the surface. There was some FUN at the beginning, at one point I had to draft every civilian into two squads because by military had been wiped out and there was a goblin lasher running around on my second level down. My bookkeeper finally managed to finish the bostich off with an elephant bone bolt fired from a wooden crossbow. But now things have stabilized, I've got about 10 good melee dwarves with mostly steel gear, and ambushes are getting wiped out with no problems.

So don't get bent out of shape if you can't find iron. Dwarf up and work with what you've got. Adapt to your circumstances, don't insist on having everything handed to you on an iron platter. Every embark has magma, what more does a Dwarf need?

[SmileyMan]

see, for as creative as the DF fandom is considered to be, the lack of a single material seems to be throwing you all for a bit of a loop.

Cope.

It's what we do.

Absolutely.  I embarked where the site finder told me there were loads of metals.  There's a shedload of useless cobaltite and not-quite-so-useless galena.

So now I have an army equipped with silver maces (and one artifact lead warhammer), which must look awesome! Unfortunately, the main problem is not being able to make metal armour, but the high attrition rate has led to a couple of squads of really tough macedwarves clad in masterwork leather - Darwinism in action!

The key is to learn (or use the wiki) what works well with what you've got.  Silver makes great maces and terrible swords or spears, so that's what I now have.  They don't kill as fast, but they incapacitate quicker - the main problem being the delay while they finish off downed opponents.

Meanwhile, I have used the lead to train up master craftsdwarves, and they now churn out silver crafts that can buy out anything I might want.  The leatherworkers who have been constantly improving the armour supply likewise can produce dwarfbucks from skin.  I suppose I could buy some steel and make some armour, but I like the feel of my fortress - it was a real struggle staying alive during some of the early seiges and ambushed (the Granite Tombs, my burial level, has over 200 sarcophagi) and it would almost be dishonouring those dwarves to abandon our proud military tradition.

Plus, the gobbos die in such agony with the maces.  No quick lopped off head here - it's all fractured bones and smashed joints......

Edit: however, with no prisons set up, justice is quite nasty in my prison:

Code: [Select]

The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the left upper arm with his Togalallas, fracturing the bone through the x(giant cave spider silk cloak)x!
The captain of the guard bites The Engraver in the right foot, bruising the muscle through the x(pig tail fiber shoe)x!
The captain of the guard latches on firmly!
The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the left upper arm with his Togalallas, jamming the bone through the left shoulder's muscle and fracturing the left shoulder's bone!
The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the right upper leg with his Togalallas, chipping the bone through the x(giant cave spider silk cloak)x!
The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the left upper arm with his Togalallas, fracturing the bone through the x(giant cave spider silk cloak)x!
The captain of the guard kicks The Engraver in the upper front tooth with his left foot and the severed part sails off in an arc!
The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the right hand with his Togalallas, fracturing the bone through the x(deer leather right mitten)x!
The Engraver gives in to pain.
The captain of the guard bashes The Engraver in the head with his Togalallas, bruising the muscle, jamming the skull through the brain and tearing the brain!
The Togalallas has lodged firmly in the wound!
Bim Gusilshadmal, Engraver has been struck down.
I thought "jamming the bone through the left shoulder's muscle and fracturing the left shoulder's bone!" sounded particularly painful

[Noir]

So don't get bent out of shape if you can't find iron. Dwarf up and work with what you've got. Adapt to your circumstances, don't insist on having everything handed to you on an iron platter. Every embark has magma, what more does a Dwarf need?

Spoken like a real dwarf.
I admire the entirety of your post, but this bit particularly.

[Naz]

My latest embark has 0 iron whatsoever and I've only run into the tiniest bit of galena so far. So instead of complaining and abandoning you know what I did? I equipped my entire military with bone crossbows and any little bastard who thinks about threatening me is forced to reconsider via a pointed kitten femur in the throat. Also they get caught in cage traps and dropped off a 50z...let's go with "hospitality"...tower I built INSIDE my fort.

[flieroflight]

i pick what looks like agood site, river, no aquifier, surroundings+ biome dependent on what i feel like doing, and just stick with it. ive got lucky with an emark with coal and limonite ut sometimes i cant work with much.

[lanceleoghauni]

Weapons are unnecessary.

[werechicken]

The problem with increasing the amount of metals is that it inversely affects the amount of flux and just saying deal with it is hardly going to make this game more accessible to players who actually have social lives and don't have time to create an intricate death trap.

Incidentally iron is one of the most common metals on the planet and flux is pretty common in rl too. I can understand why toady reigned in metal abundance but this is a bit much.

At the moment your best bet is cage traps, which just feels lazy.

That being said toady has stated that he's planning on drastically changing how mining works, with large seems and such, so it may soon be easier to locate the metal you want.

[slapdash]

First time poster. Nice community here.

I've been playing for ~6 months and I have noticed the drop in Iron Ores, but I have solved it by embarking near warring races. I build my "moat" which is a 5x10 pit with a bridge over it that drops 10zs. Ambush/Siege occurs and I pull the lever dropping them to their deaths. I then flood the bottom of my moat with lava, then drain that to an evap. pool below. It then burns/melts everything except the iron then all I have to do is find a little flux stone which seems to be abundant.

Is it possible that I have just gotten lucky with my goblins? It seems it's rare that they don't make it to my "goblin iron extracting pit" without at least one iron item and my steel industry starts up in about 4 ambushes.

[Proxiee]

Indeed iron has taken a drop recently. However, set the minerals to 300, emabark on a 10x10 location, and scout out the iron via dwarf hack. Ctl alt del, Find your spot and enjoy it. Pre-generated worlds are great too. Or if that's too boring for you, just find a spot and deal with it. You don't really NEED iron or steel. Dwarfs have their fists to use.

[lanceleoghauni]

or bone, or stone, or traps of doom.

Make each fortress unique and well adapted to their environment instead of a constant re-run of the same Steel/Candy clad invincible militia of doom.

[Taranli Maren]

I have a related question.  My worldgen had default mineral settings, and I embarked on a spot that had shallow metal and deep metals.  I have dug down to the magma and found tetrahedrite up top, and tetrahedrite and cobaltite down low.  Does cobaltite count as an ore, or do I still have some other metal yet to discover?

Not that I am really complaining.  This embark has been quite Fun so far.

[ferok]

I don't believe cobaltite counts as a metal.  It does not have any metal-related tags in it's raws:

Code: [Select]

[INORGANIC:COBALTITE]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:cobaltite][DISPLAY_COLOR:1:7:1][TILE:156]
[ENVIRONMENT:IGNEOUS_ALL:VEIN:100]
[ENVIRONMENT:METAMORPHIC:VEIN:100]
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']
[SOLID_DENSITY:6295]
[IS_STONE]
As opposed to a metal which looks like this:

Code: [Select]

[INORGANIC:TETRAHEDRITE]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:tetrahedrite][DISPLAY_COLOR:0:7:1][TILE:156]
[ENVIRONMENT:ALL_STONE:VEIN:100]
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']
[METAL_ORE:COPPER:100]
[METAL_ORE:SILVER:20]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:3]
[IS_STONE]
[MELTING_POINT:11111]

[Lord Inquisitor]

I have
8270 Native silver (semi useless)
7264 tetrahedrite (copper armour?)
2204 cobaltite (useless)
1169 Native aluminium (also useless)
801 Raw adamantine (magna monsters)
16 Bismuthinite (so rare its useless)
and few thousand in jewels
200 odd underground wood.
solid layer of white sand and Clay Loam granite and basalt and cavern thats a big drop. and a river

Weapons avalibity is limited as no iron or thin. going to be interesing for now.

[_DivideByZero_]

The problem with increasing the amount of metals is that it inversely affects the amount of flux and just saying deal with it is hardly going to make this game more accessible to players who actually have social lives and don't have time to create an intricate death trap.

Incidentally iron is one of the most common metals on the planet and flux is pretty common in rl too. I can understand why toady reigned in metal abundance but this is a bit much.

At the moment your best bet is cage traps, which just feels lazy.

That being said toady has stated that he's planning on drastically changing how mining works, with large seems and such, so it may soon be easier to locate the metal you want.

That's not true at all. Metals are selected based on the types of rock present. Since all flux except calcite (which only occurs in flux) comes in layers, there is absolutely no way that iron can significantly reduce flux content of worlds.

The problem with iron is that people look for it specifically. When they don't find it (and there are countless other stone types) they complain about iron's rarity. In reality, iron still occurs where it does, it's just that when people find cobalt more often, they start to believe that iron is in fact rarer than before. In actuality, all stone is rarer, but they still occur in the same areas. In places where cobaltite would be abundant in 31.18, cobaltite now has a smaller chance of being abuntant. In places where iron used to occur, now it has the same chance not to occur.

@ferok
It counts as a mineral. Shallow metals actually refers to minerals, not just metals.

@all if you want more metals, simply set metal frequency up. It's not that hard to do.



I've personally given a use to cobaltite, cinnabar, etc. Cobalt is now a hard-to-make but very strong metal, better than iron (with real world strengths) but worse than steel. However, cobaltite is rarer and also produces deadly arsenic fumes upon smelting, which can poison dwarves neaby.