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[TapeNoot]

Embarked on my first biome that has goblin access, weathered a siege and a few ambushes via the clever use of a carp-tonne of cage traps in the entrance.

However, a quick peek around with dfprospector revealed that I don't actually have any metal, and potentially, no magma safe rocks to build mechanisms.

However, the biome's a warm swamp, with a heck of a lot of trees, three rivers, a lake, but no aquifer.

My question is thus: What can I arm my military with? Less than 10 seconds in a danger room raised their stats to legendary, but all I've got is a little goblinite, and some elven junk to use. Bringing magma up to smelt or make obsidian with might be impossible in the worst case scenario.

[NecroRebel]

You can import 12 steel per year from the dwarven caravan (4 steel, 4 iron, 4 pig iron, 4 flux), more if your civilization has enough varieties of flux and iron ore. You can get similar amounts of bronze. Also, shield material doesn't appear to matter much, so you can save a bit of metal if you make those out of leather or wood.

Also, rather than melting goblin gear, use it. It's better than nothing.

You don't actually need magma-safe stones for pumping magma, though you do need magma-safe materials. Nether-caps, found on the third cavern layer, have been confirmed to be immune to magma's heat (they're naturally constantly frozen). Iron that goblins, dwarves, and occasionally humans bring can be used for magma pumps as well. Alternatively, build your forges and smelters down near the magma sea.

Use architectural traps, like retracting bridges over deep pits, dodger traps, or flooding traps to kill early goblins. Once they're coming, and dying, in force, you can get a reasonable supply of metal from them, at least enough to take out any stragglers.

[AutomataKittay]

If you have cave layer with water above the magma, you can make obsidian with just floodgates or doors and fistful of mechanisms. There're the stone short swords, you have plenty of wood to work with for it. It's not as good as iron ( or even copper, I think ) swords, but it'll do.

As for military without metal and trouble with obsidian? Make a lot of bone crossbows, lots of bone bolts, leather shield, bone and leather armors. Shield's the most important element, followed by boots to manage gunks that end up running over ground. Take advantage of being able to build fortification above-ground for kill alleys with crossbow squads and plentiful bone bolts.

THEN, you can refine the imported goblinite or caravan imports into proper armor and weapons 

[Psieye]

Glass is magma-safe. Buy sand, turn it into glass pumps. Mind, if all you need the magma for is smelting then this is completely unnecessary - just build your workshops down at the magma sea.

[nanomage]

Import solves all your problems easily. Import magma safe-rock, import steel, bronzes. Even if your civ has no metals at all itself, you still can have 4 steel, 4 of each bronze, 4-5 steel anvils and 4 pig iron each year. And load of metal items, which will be all made of these alloys. At first, you can wear goblin crap, but melt the excess items asap to make real armour.
You'll have enough armour for your soldiers in no time.
By the way, can it even be so that you have not a single magma-safe rock? did you check dfprocpector -b output against the list of magma-safe materials here^
 http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Magma-safe ?

[Jelle]

If you don't want to import the metal, my answer would be a wooden crossbows and an obsidian shortsword. I guess  your best bet for armor would be leather and bone.
Alternatively you could go looking for the blue stuff, if you don't mind the risk involved.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

You could also try taking the world-gen values for the location, halving/tweaking  the "mineral scarcity" value, and regenerating another world on the same seed, just with lower mineral scarcity.  You'll get the same site, just with more metals. 

[Neowulf]

Glass trap components can be quite devastating so automated base defense is really darn easy with just sand and a couple stone. Spikes are best IMO, screws send parts flying, balls can be used to tenderize gobos so your weak military can get some kills in.

[nanomage]

Also, legendary +5 everything dwarves who tend to go out of the danger room don't really need much armour. An axe and a shield would suffice, and maybe a helmet.
I had a guy who wasn't even that good (he was just a migrant legendary dodger, and regularly traned to legendary swordsdwarf / talented shield user) eliminate entire squads of bowgoblins all on his own.

[Conan]

Glass trap components can be quite devastating so automated base defense is really darn easy with just sand and a couple stone. Spikes are best IMO, screws send parts flying, balls can be used to tenderize gobos so your weak military can get some kills in.

If you didn't notice, on the wiki it says that now glass isn't effective anymore since its always blunt, due to a glitch.


If I were you, I'd make the whole army marksdwarves and trap the goblins in a shooting gallery. Allows you to fully harvest goblinite without some running away.

[Neowulf]

Glass trap components can be quite devastating so automated base defense is really darn easy with just sand and a couple stone. Spikes are best IMO, screws send parts flying, balls can be used to tenderize gobos so your weak military can get some kills in.

If you didn't notice, on the wiki it says that now glass isn't effective anymore since its always blunt, due to a glitch.


If I were you, I'd make the whole army marksdwarves and trap the goblins in a shooting gallery. Allows you to fully harvest goblinite without some running away.

What?
You've tested this yourself then? Because I have, extensively, both when glass was finally fixed and again just last week.
I was even very dwarfy about it, and did !Science! using a sealed entrance system to funnel ambushers over trap groups. Though I really should just cage trap 100+ gobos and pit them into a testing environment individually.

Using exceptional/masterwork parts and mechanisms:
Spikes were the clear winner, most gobos never made it past their second trap and these tended to jam the least.
Discs came is a close second, more deadly that spikes due to severings, but jammed more often.
Screws were the most deadly on a single trap basis, expect 3-7 extra hauling jobs from all the severed limbs. Lost a dwarf to one during testing, passed out from a bolt to the head onto one, they found his head a half dozen tiles away against a wall.
Axe blades were below discs in deadlyness and jammed frequently.
Spiked balls were the least deadly of all. Every ambusher made it atleast 4 traps in before passing out from bluntforce trauma. Jammed pretty much every time it did kill something.

I have also watched many times as invading minotaurs and ettins have walked over a like of spine traps and sprayed blood everywhere. The first line generally sends them retreating until they regain their senses and try for a second run, while always kills them by the 3rd line.

[AutomataKittay]

Even bugged glass traps of earlier version ( it's been fixed by .20 or .22, wasn't it? ) are still useful for tiring out invaders and keeping them busy while pumping bolts down into them. At least that's my experience, and it's brutalizing against unarmored prisoners and wild critter.

[Africa]

My current fort has no metals except a healthy dose of gold. Flux either. I've basically been trading gold crafts for all the steel and bronze the caravan can bring every year. My weapons are all made of silver (for warhammers) or blue metal (axes and swords); I've managed to safely dig enough bluemetal to make plenty of those. That could be worth a shot.

[Friendstrange]

My current fort has nickel as the sole available ore what I do is designate EVERYTHING for melting in the magma smelters.
What you want to do is buy anvils as they will give you 1 bar of iron or steel each. And make sure you pay triple the price of anvils from caravans as they will wise up and bring much more next year.

And when talking to your liason you must ask for three things: 1. Bars (Steel, Iron and Pig Iron), 2. Anvils (Iron and Steel), 3. Ore (hematite, magnetite, etc.). Also rationalize your steel. You will be drowning in copper bars from all the goblinite so have all skilless peasants craft copper armor and weapons until dabbling (set workshop profile, etc) and should a mood hit them resctrict access to every metal except steel.

Im currently making many menacing steel spikes for a repeating spear trap to deal with a mass of FBs with necrotic breath attacks that have set up shop in the caverns. Dont waste steel on serrated discs, make a trap that will work even with trapavoid creatures.
An use steel only when your metalsmiths have gotten a modd that propelled them to legendary status.
Thats all the advice I can give you.

[Lagslayer]

In a pinch, you could give the dwarves wooden crossbows and bolts, but those are really sub-optimal. Another option that I would probably do, is use whatever mining picks you brought on embark and give them to your military. You have little reason to dig at this point anyways. If you require more military dwarves, then give them 2 wooden shields each for maximum defense, the strongest armor you can scrounge up (bone=shell>wood>leather). With 2 shields, I hear they will frequently shield bash, punch, kick, and bite, but not wrestle. And unless you are fighting something with fire attacks, wooden shields will provide great defense, but less bashing damage because the material is light.

You can replace/upgrade equipment as you get materials or goblinite. Don't forget to buy the wood armor off the elves. Also note that wooden caps count as clothing and wear out, but not helms or any other wooden armor.