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[Theifofdreams]

Okay, so I'm pretty new to dwarf fortress.. I've heard about it for awhile, and finally got around to trying it.
I'm now on my second fortress after my first had an excess of fun due to flooding after a poorly executed attempt to irrigate underground.
I picked out a good embark locale with some clay, no aquifer, some stone and shallow metal.
I've since dug out a basic fortress, and have begun expansive mining in the hopes of finding metal, or underground water sources.
10 Z levels down and I've come up with plenty of stone and some gems.. but the only metal I've dug up is Native Gold.
There's alot of it, too. Probably 1/8th of all my excavations below the 1st Z level has been of native gold (I'd post a screenshot of the stockpiles of gold nuggets, but my computer doesn't cooperate with me when i try to take screen captures of DF.) but not a single lump of copper, tin, or iron to be seen, let alone other metals.
I'm reasonably certain this isn't normal, though, so I'm wondering what you all think I should do.

[RAKninja]

in the past days of lurking, i have heard of more than one person with only gold to be found in their embark area.  personally, i've encountered native silver, copper, and platnum, galena, and tetrahedrite, but nothing else.  i've only had the luck of finding coal once.

my current fort has quite a bit of tetrahedrite, so i've had pretty much all the copper and most of the silver i could want, but i am lacking in everything else mineral.  you can do what i do to get iron and steel, trade to caravans.  i buy everything usable or meltable from every caravan.  last caravan from the mountainhome was actually pretty much only things i need, amazingly enough. 

for good trade fodder, i recommend starting a cloth industry, as you can use elves to get the cloth you need till you have farms (and farmhands) enough to produce your own.

disclaimer:  i'm still fairly new at this myself.... my current fort is the first of mine to make it (almost) ten years.

[Organum]

Looks like the place you embarked on just doesn't have those metals. If you're willing to generate a world using the advanced generator and mess around with the world gen parameters, there's a setting that allows you to decide how rare you want mineral veins and other such nice things to be.

As for what you can do for now, if poking around a little more doesn't yield any other metals, I suggest you set up a metalworking industry and get to making some gold crafts. You can use that to trade for some equipment from the caravans, and with some military set up you'll be able to just murder whoever attacks you and steal their stuff. Don't like what that nets you? Melt it down, and reshape it in the image of what you desire!

If engaging in military nonsense sounds too risky, you can always set up cage traps around the entrance to your fort. Unless whoever's coming to get you is a kobold, they'll be caught and you can then steal their stuff. Don't like that, melt it down, nurture god complex, etc., etc.

A more cheatery solution is to modify the reaction raws for your regional save. These can by following this path: (df folder)\data\save\region(whatever number this is for you)\raw\objects. The file you want to manipulate is reaction_smelter. You can modify any existing reaction and it'll start working the way you change it, but you can't add any new ones. Anyway, pick a relatively useless reaction (I personally go for billon, because what the heck is that?), remove the reagent line, and change the XXX in this part [PRODUCT:100:2:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:XXX] to whatever you want it to spit out. To find a list of what metals are available, look for inorganic_metal in the same folder. The specifics in this method assume you're using unmodded DF, but even if you aren't the concept is the same.

If any of this was helpful, I'm glad I could help. If you'd like some further explanation, feel free to ask. Gotta stave of sleep somehow, amirite?

[Theifofdreams]

Yeah, I've got farms aplenty... The reason for my previous fortress poorly planned fun was because Urist Mcaverage was starving and apparently the fortress had gone long enough to run out of food.
And I can probably make gold cages as well as whatever else... I'm up to my eyeballs in it, pretty much. At least, I'll do that until I can loot the bodies of whatever gets caught in the cages and get an effective military. As for the kobolds... I think my first modding task will be removing their [TRAP_AVOID] tag. Oh, what fun I shall have.
Thanks for the suggestions though. I'll keep it in mind.

[Organum]

Haha, you're less new than I thought. I keep forgetting that new for this game isn't like new for most games. Most games don't require all newbies to peruse the wiki before they know what they're looking at. >_>;

[Theifofdreams]

Hah. Yeah, I hit the wiki during my first one when I realised that I had no idea how to do anything after digging rooms out.
And before that, I'd browsed through the TVtropes page (and links) in all their glory.

But hey, even with the wiki on your side, there's still plenty of fun to be had on the learning curve.
Like having tame rabbits try to maul your dwarves because you forgot to designate a grazing area.

[Organum]

I started playing back in 40d and played for one tragic fort before leaving it for months. I sent an unarmed hunter out after some unicorns, and I couldn't tell if the game worked like simcity, or, hm, a-single-tile-is-a-single-tile. It's a pretty difficult game.

[AutomataKittay]

For the op, use gold to make trade products to sell to caravans to get metal. You can enable the ore for stoneworking through {z} and stone section! If you're worried about military, leather armor and boots, bone armor pieces and leather or wood shield will do the job, if you're going with wood or bone crossbow. Always use bone bolts, though, wood bolts are too weak!

Otherwise, just take advantage of caravans and play as usual, half the fun is in making do with what you can find

[Theifofdreams]

Thanks, Kittay. I checked what I could do with the ore at the wiki earlier, when I realized I was coming up golden.
I still haven't made an actual military ever, so that's a good tip. As soon as my cats breed again, I'll get on that leather armor and boots... I'll save the bones for bolts, too. (So glad I brought cats.)

[AutomataKittay]

Thanks, Kittay. I checked what I could do with the ore at the wiki earlier, when I realized I was coming up golden.
I still haven't made an actual military ever, so that's a good tip. As soon as my cats breed again, I'll get on that leather armor and boots... I'll save the bones for bolts, too. (So glad I brought cats.)

Dogs are better for that, cats gets adopted and turns unbutcherable eventually if there're any dwarves that likes cats! I've had experience running crossbow squads on no-metal maps, it's harder than a 'proper' military but it works against sieges if you have good fortification system up

[Theifofdreams]

Yeah, in regards to that, dogs are better then cats.
However, the cats were cheaper at the embark. I also brought a pair of rabbits, just to see.
Now I don't have any rabbits, so it's up to the cats until someone brings me a pair of dogs.

[JoshBrickstien]

Turkeys are the best animal on embark. Seriously. So. Many. Eggs. And Fat birds.

[Theifofdreams]

Turkeys are the best animal on embark. Seriously. So. Many. Eggs. And Fat birds.

Thanks for the tip. I'll switch my basic embark loadout from cats to turkeys, keeping only a tom around in case of vermin.

[RAKninja]

Yeah, I've got farms aplenty... The reason for my previous fortress poorly planned fun was because Urist Mcaverage was starving and apparently the fortress had gone long enough to run out of food.
And I can probably make gold cages as well as whatever else... I'm up to my eyeballs in it, pretty much. At least, I'll do that until I can loot the bodies of whatever gets caught in the cages and get an effective military. As for the kobolds... I think my first modding task will be removing their [TRAP_AVOID] tag. Oh, what fun I shall have.
Thanks for the suggestions though. I'll keep it in mind.

i started with a pair of dogs just for kobolds (which i did the standard mod to keep them alive through worldgen, about as far as i'm willing to mod the vanilla game at this point).  they paid for themselves in less than a year.  i'm swimming in war dogs, and a good 5-6 of them have earned names killing kobolds and snatches, and sometimes even gobbo siegers.  they make decent anti-sieger shock troops, softening up and causing pain to the enemy so that my military have a much easier time of it.  they've reduce casualties from an estimated 80% of my conscripts (i'm no fan of the danger room just yet, i like doing itthe hard way) to 10% or less.  last two sieges, i've lost only a total of 6 dwarves, from goblin formations that would normally cream my mainly "novice" skill military. 

i keep a war dog pasture in front of my primary entrance, made out of an entire generation of my fort's dogs.  i have a breeder pair hanging out in the alpaca pasture (i have indoor pastures, enemies would have to breach many traps and most, if not all, of my military to get to them), and a cage for the pups.  upon maturity, i release the new dog from the pup cage, train it to be a war dog, and let it wander where it will.  when my foes wipe out my front pasture, i just send the next generation of war dogs to take their place.

[gomwon]

I noticed you picked an embark spot with "Shallow metal" not "Shallow metals".

Just "Metal" means it is only 1 type of metal, and yours seems to be gold.