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[vjek]

I was searching around and found a thread on a similar topic, but my question is regarding gold, specifically.  As you can't use it to make weapons, trap components or armor, what's the most valuable single bar item that can be made?  I have several thousand gold nuggets in this region and I'm trying to increase the value of my fort to encourage sieges and the like.

Anyone know?  Making Gold crafts produce 1-3 items worth 1200-3600 each.   Is there something better than that?

[Tevish Szat]

Statues have the best base value, I'm pretty sure.

[geail]

Not counting artifacts, I believe tevish is correct

[GreatWyrmGold]

Goblets are made in sets of 3 with a base value of 10 each (before material and quality modifiers). This makes them better.

[vjek]

Hm, but the best I can get out of a gold statue is 9000, and it takes 3 bars, so that's 3k per. 
It's true, it's guaranteed, but the potential of the craft x3 is 10800 if all three items are 3600 each, and that's from one bar... 
I guess I could make 10 crafts and see how it averages out, comparatively.  I figured someone would have calculated this long ago! heheh.

Ah ha, goblets.. I will check them out!

[Moonshadow101]

Nothing uses 3 bars. This has been broken forever.

[Grumbledwarfskin]

Yeah, because it's bugged, you get much more value from statues than crafts, and you get both happiness and cool statues documenting your best/worstbest moments.

On the other hand, you could still produce a lot of value in crafts, brag about how you're "not exploiting bugs" (except when you make armor), not cheer anybody up with the wealth you create, and have more tantrums to go with your sieges.

Pretty dwarfy either way: gold statues of cheese, vermin, and goblins striking down dwarves, or tantrum spirals.

[Tevish Szat]

I wish I got cheese statues.  instead I get a masterwork solid gold statue of my duchess... embracing... what I assume to be a spouse-converter night creature.  She later had the metalsmith jailed for violating a production mandate and no one brought him water, resulting in an ex-metalsmith.  I guess she's still touchy about that lost-her-lover thing.  Final score: Aristocracy 1 - Satire 0

[Ubiq]

If you have nuggets, why bother smelting them?

Native Gold items have the exact same value as items made from gold bars so all you are doing is adding an additional step that doesn't increase value. Beyond that, leaving them as nuggets means that you can make mechanisms out of them, which have a base value of 30 rather than a statue's base of 25. The only metals you can make mechanisms out of are copper (which has the same value as a stone mechanism made out of copper ore), adamantine (250x for stone vs 300x for metal, though it's more cost effective to use one ore rather than three wafers), iron (worth slightly more than a mechanism made out of ore), bronze, bismuth bronze, and steel (no stone counterparts for any of those)

So a no quality Native Gold mechanism is worth 900 while a mastercraft one is worth 10800. A gold statue is going to range from 750 to 9000.

[Dsarker]

If you have nuggets, why bother smelting them?

Native Gold items have the exact same value as items made from gold bars so all you are doing is adding an additional step that doesn't increase value. Beyond that, leaving them as nuggets means that you can make mechanisms out of them, which have a base value of 30 rather than a statue's base of 25. The only metals you can make mechanisms out of are copper (which has the same value as a stone mechanism made out of copper ore), adamantine (250x for stone vs 300x for metal, though it's more cost effective to use one ore rather than three wafers), iron (worth slightly more than a mechanism made out of ore), bronze, bismuth bronze, and steel (no stone counterparts for any of those)

So a no quality Native Gold mechanism is worth 900 while a mastercraft one is worth 10800. A gold statue is going to range from 750 to 9000.

AND they still build happiness when you use them in traps.

[Girlinhat]

A display stand mod would help a lot.  Display those crafts to increase room value and (I think) cause "has admired" thoughts.  That said, the highest value single item is a statue, and the highest per-bar value is goblets because they're produced in triplicate.  When bar costs are fixed, then goblets will certainly take value, as 1 bar produces 3 goblets, while 3 bars produce 1 furniture.

NINJA: I make gold bars and statues because they can be melted.  Melt the ≡Gold Statue≡ and make a ☼Gold Statue☼ instead.  Easy training for metalsmith as well, gets to re-use the same bars for multiple training tasks.

[Varnifane]

If you have nuggets, why bother smelting them?

Native Gold items have the exact same value as items made from gold bars so all you are doing is adding an additional step that doesn't increase value. Beyond that, leaving them as nuggets means that you can make mechanisms out of them, which have a base value of 30 rather than a statue's base of 25. The only metals you can make mechanisms out of are copper (which has the same value as a stone mechanism made out of copper ore), adamantine (250x for stone vs 300x for metal, though it's more cost effective to use one ore rather than three wafers), iron (worth slightly more than a mechanism made out of ore), bronze, bismuth bronze, and steel (no stone counterparts for any of those)

So a no quality Native Gold mechanism is worth 900 while a mastercraft one is worth 10800. A gold statue is going to range from 750 to 9000.

This and this and this

[Grumbledwarfskin]

Even legendary +5 will get you more exceptional than masterwork mechanisms, so I think you have to ask the question, how much gold does a statue give you when you melt it, and how much value would you get from exceptionals?

I'm guessing the amount is high, since it's supposed to consume three bars to produce one. If it's like a cage, which gives you a full bar when you melt it, then you can guarantee that all of your gold will eventually go into masterwork statues, whereas with mechanisms, you'll lose value to the failures.

I'm not sure the game even lets you melt a native gold mechanism, but if it does, it certainly won't be a full bar return.

I just realized I was wrong about statues always beating crafts, but I think the higher recyclability of statues will likely also make statues beat crafts in value, eventually, despite the theoretically higher value of three masterwork crafts than one masterwork statue, since recycling the non-masterwork crafts will lose more gold.

For the amount of dwarf labor invested, mechanisms are probably better return, but for the material invested, I think it's likely to be statues...and dwarf labor is fairly cheap.

[Girlinhat]

Gold isn't plentiful, or it shouldn't be.  If you're playing on a super-rich embark then all bets are off, but if you're doing it normal and importing metals, to the point that you're buying and melting gold crafts, then statues will net you more in terms of masterpieces.  Currently, a statue takes 1 bar, and melts into 1 bar, allowing for infinite re-melting until you hit all masterwork.  Native gold furniture cannot be melted, and masterworks occur roughly 26% of the time (there's a complex formula for it, but that's the end result) at L+5 skill.  So, you can take 10 blocks of native gold and produce ~3 masterwork gold mechanisms and 7 regular (☼32,400☼ +  ≡31,500≡ = 63,900☼) or you can take 10 gold bars and eventually produce 10 masterwork gold statues (90,000☼) with sufficient remelting.  If you've got magma, then you're training your blacksmith for free and getting a higher return.  You'd need to get like 7 masterpiece mechanisms in a row to get the same return, and that's simply not going to happen.

By similar contrast, if you're making goblets and you metalcrafter (not blacksmith) is L+5 then you should produce like 8 masterworks and 22 exceptionals, accounting for (☼28,800☼ + ≡33,000≡ = 61,800☼) which is roughly equivalent to your expected mechanism returns.

And for fun, if you don't re-melt the statues, then you should net (☼27,000☼ + ≡26,250≡ = 53,250☼) which is expectedly less than mechanism or goblet output (goblets have an effective value of 30 per bar), but let's be real, we've all got magma or spare trees.

Ergo: if magma, sell statues.  If you need a good mechanic and somehow have no spare stone, train him on gold.  If you have a metalcrafter and some metal to spare, do goblets.

Of course, in the end I value cloth crafts.  A master weave, master dye, master constructed craft get you like 780☼ x3 because cloth crafts come in threes.  That's some 11,000☼-ish profit from a stack of 5 pig tails and 5 dimple cups, assuming 26% masterpiece rate, and you can produce those in insanely large bulk numbers with infinite renewability.  (actually, it's less than 11k, because full masterwork cloth crafts occur something like 1.7% of the time, but eh, you get the idea).

[Varnifane]

Of course, in the end I value cloth crafts.  A master weave, master dye, master constructed craft get you like 780☼ x3 because cloth crafts come in threes.  That's some 11,000☼-ish profit from a stack of 5 pig tails and 5 dimple cups, assuming 26% masterpiece rate, and you can produce those in insanely large bulk numbers with infinite renewability.  (actually, it's less than 11k, because full masterwork cloth crafts occur something like 1.7% of the time, but eh, you get the idea).

How do you set up your textile industry? How many dwarves, workshops, etc.?