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[Chezzik]

I'm a rather new player, and these questions may not have definite answers.  Opinions are what I'm looking for.

My dwarf count has now grown to 17, from 2 sets of migrants.  I've had a trade depot for a long time, but haven't seen traders yet.  I think I've seen the seasons change 3 times.  It's currently autumn.  Is this normal?

I embarked with 2 miners and 2 pick axes, and feel as if I definitely need a 3rd.  I think I need metal to build one.  At level 9, I finally got out of the rock salt layer, and hit granite.  At level 10, I started digging out in all 4 directions, but still haven't hit metal.  Should I go lower?

I haven't seen Goblins yet.  Should I be preparing for them, or should I prioritize getting metal first?

[i2amroy]

1)Your first traders generally arrive near the end of the first autumn, so yes.
2)The wiki has a great page on exploratory mining. If you aren't above a little danger though, breaching the cavern levels is a great way to reveal large amounts of stone very fast.
3)Depending on how much you trade goblins won't show up until your second or third year usually. I recommend that by that point you either have some trained dwarves or some traps (preferably both) to help defend you from them.

[Chezzik]

#1 and #3 answered those questions perfectly.  Thanks!

The branch mining link is very valuable.  After considering the patterns there, I'll probably use the "Diagonal 5" method.

But it still doesn't really answer my question.  Is 10 levels deep about right to start looking for my first metal?  Or, should I go down deeper (20, 30, 60?) before starting to branch mine?

How many miners should I have right now, if the total size of my community is 17?  Should I even be trying to find metal now, or should I just buy a 3rd pickaxe from the traders when they finally arrive?

[NecroRebel]

The first metal can be at the top level (if it's stone), or it might be dozens of z-levels deep. Do you remember on embark whether it said you had shallow metal(s)? If so, you're likely to have some metal in the first layers.

Rock salt is a sedimentary layer, and so can (but doesn't always) have any of the iron ores. Dig around in that; it's likely to be more profitable than granite. Hematite, Limonite, and (especially) Magnetite are what you want to find. Magnetite forms in large clusters, so if you strike a single block of that you're likely to have several hundred more nearby.

[Azated]

Two miners is usually enough for most fortresses. Depending on how much mining you do, you can get more miners whenever you feel like it.

As for your mining; some maps can be thousands of levels deep. Just keep digging and you're bound to hit some metal.

[Chezzik]

Do you remember on embark whether it said you had shallow metal(s)? If so, you're likely to have some metal in the first layers.

Unfortunately, I don't remember.  I had some trouble with the world generation and embarking, so by the time I finally got it to work, I had pretty much forgotten what I ended up with as my final embark location.  I think I saw shallow metals at the first location suggested, but when I tried embarking, it gave me some other warning.  I eventually made a different world, and got an embark location with no warnings, so I just took it.

Two miners is usually enough for most fortresses. Depending on how much mining you do, you can get more miners whenever you feel like it.

As for your mining; some maps can be thousands of levels deep. Just keep digging and you're bound to hit some metal.

I'm probably just too impatient then.  It seems that I can't expand farming without more digging.  I can't improve the dining hall or bedrooms without more digging.  The areas I set up for workshops are too small, so I need more digging.  Pretty much everything I try doing is waiting on digging, and I know that I'll be spending a lot more time digging once I really need good metals.  So, I just assumed that 2 were not enough.

[NecroRebel]

It's always better to dig things out too big than too small. Extra stockpile space can't hurt, and transporting materials is a dwarf labor, and dwarf labor is cheap and plentiful. So, in the future, try to dig out more space than you think you'll need. I usually expect to need about 30-35 workshops all told, since I tend not to have duplicates aside from stills, but I still dig out space for closer to 40 just so that if I decide on a major project, I can build more workshops in the extra spaces.

You'll probably become more patient as you become more experienced, or at least you'll learn how to set your miners on expanding the fort when you don't need it and then ignoring them while you do other things. Planning ahead isn't necessary for this, since you can expand the fort even when you have no real idea what you're going to put in the expansion. If there's already space dug out that's not assigned to any task and you want to start a new industry or something, well, there's your new industry's place!

[Nameless Archon]

It's only tangentially related to your current predicament, but for future embarks, consider embarking with only metals, stone, and anvil and logs, and crafting your picks on site. You'll be able to bring a lot more metal than you can bring picks, and you can use the excess metal for axes or armor, or simply use the extra embark points for more goodies.

For exploratory mining, your best bet is to check the wiki for what the layers are and see what metals can occur in those layers. For instance, The page on Granite lists only ores of tin and silver, so it's only mediocre for weaponizing purposes. (Though, silver's better than nothing.) If nothing else, you can always continue further down.

Do you recall what you set your mineral scarcity settings to?

[khearn]

Two miners is usually enough for most fortresses. Depending on how much mining you do, you can get more miners whenever you feel like it.

As for your mining; some maps can be thousands of levels deep. Just keep digging and you're bound to hit some metal.

Thousands??? I've never seen much more than a hundred. I suppose one could use advanced worldgen params to get more, but I have never heard of an unmodded world thousands of levels deep.

Since it's mid-autumn, you should have the first dwarven caravan in a week or two, so you can buy one from them quicker than you can find ore, mine it, smelt it, run out of charcoal while smelting, cut more trees, make more charcoal, and forge the pick.

But you'll still want to get that metal industry going before long to make armor for your troops. So doing some exploratory mining is still a good idea. First off, make a few rock hatch covers. Then send a stairway down as deep as you can. You can designate a stairway quickly by doing 'd' 'i', then put your mouse pointer at the place you want the stairs and press and hold the left button down. While holding the mouse button, press and hold '>'. As you move downward through the levels, the up/down stairs will get designated for each one. You can go ahead and designate until it won't go any deeper, but I usually just go down 50 or so levels because I usually hit a cavern before then and I don't like having to go back and undesignate dozens of levels to clean up. Then let a miner start digging until you hit a cavern. When you do, assuming you hit the top of a cavern. dig a tile sideways and build a floor hatch on the bottom of the stairs to seal it up. Once the hatch gets built, select it with 'q' and then hit 'l' to lock it. Now fliers can't come up from the cavern. If you happen to hit a cavern by grazing the side, you'll want to build walls to seal the stairway from the cavern. If you hit a cavern and can't continue straight down, just dig to the side until you can go down again. Eventually you'll hit semi-molten rock (SMR) or the magma sea. If you hit the magma sea, put another hatch cover in place for now to keep magma critters out.

At some point along this stairway you will very probably hit some sort of metal ore. If you hit caverns, you'll probably see ore veins in the cavern walls that will give you a good idea where to look. Digging down 100 levels doesn't take much longer than digging out a 10x10 room in rock. But it will give you a good view of what layers you have, and probably find some ore.

I usually start with 2 miners, and eventually add a couple more over time. If a migrant shows up with decent mining skill I'll definitely use him. Otherwise when I decide I need another I'll pick someone with no useful skills and give him the job. Then I turn off mining for my skilled miners and designate a large room in a soil layer to let the newbie get some experience. It sucks when you spot a nice gem and designate it for digging, and your rookie runs over and ends up botching the job and not leaving a gem behind because his skill is too low. So always find someplace to train them up where you don't care about getting stones/ore/gems from the digging. Soil is good because it goes quickly.

[i2amroy]

For exploratory mining, your best bet is to check the wiki for what the layers are and see what metals can occur in those layers. For instance, The page on Granite lists only ores of tin and silver, so it's only mediocre for weaponizing purposes. (Though, silver's better than nothing.) If nothing else, you can always continue further down.

Unless you are making hammers or some other type of blunt weapon of course, then silver is the very best thing to make them out of.

[proxn_punkd]

What mineral scarcity settings did you use for your world?

[Chezzik]

I usually expect to need about 30-35 workshops all told, since I tend not to have duplicates aside from stills, but I still dig out space for closer to 40 just so that if I decide on a major project, I can build more workshops in the extra spaces.

Well, my plan is to just make a number of circular floors, centered on the main shaft.  I put a large generic stockpile in the center that can hold almost anything needed on that floor, and just build workshops around the outside.  Currently, I have two other floors for offices, bedrooms, dining room, farms, etc, but I plan to eventually just have those hang off the edges of the large circular rooms.

It's only tangentially related to your current predicament, but for future embarks, consider embarking with only metals, stone, and anvil and logs, and crafting your picks on site.

That sounds like an awesome idea, but I think it can only work if you find clay.  I haven't really done any metal working yet, but I think the required workshops for it require fire-safe material, and I think that clay is the only such material that can be gathered without picks.

For exploratory mining, your best bet is to check the wiki for what the layers are and see what metals can occur in those layers. For instance, The page on Granite lists only ores of tin and silver, so it's only mediocre for weaponizing purposes. (Though, silver's better than nothing.) If nothing else, you can always continue further down.

Do you recall what you set your mineral scarcity settings to?

Well, I see that Granite also can have copper and bismuth, but I'm guessing that they aren't that great either.  I'll concentrate on the rock salt layers for now, as I see that they can have magnetite.

Unfortunately, I don't remember my settings. I've seen a ton of gems so far (morganite, and a few others), so hopefully they're not too scarce.

khearn, thanks for your suggestions. I'll definitely do that once I start looking for caverns.  I know nothing of "Rock Hatch Covers".  I assume that they are so that I can separate my miners, and give them separate jobs?

[i2amroy]

You can build rock hatch covers at the masons shop (I think the hotkey is capital H). They function basically the same as doors except they stop people from traveling up or down stairs instead of through doorways. And the reason that you want to put them on the staircase is so that if you get something !!FUN!! in the caverns (like giant cave swallows or something else that can fly) it won't fly right up your main staircase and start butchering dwarves.

[khearn]

It's only tangentially related to your current predicament, but for future embarks, consider embarking with only metals, stone, and anvil and logs, and crafting your picks on site.

That sounds like an awesome idea, but I think it can only work if you find clay.  I haven't really done any metal working yet, but I think the required workshops for it require fire-safe material, and I think that clay is the only such material that can be gathered without picks.

So embark with a few fire-safe stones as well. They're cheap. Plus, I understand that if you embark with enough weight you get extra draft animals to pull the wagon at no extra charge. I haven't tried it, but I've seen it reported by people I believe.

khearn, thanks for your suggestions. I'll definitely do that once I start looking for caverns.  I know nothing of "Rock Hatch Covers".  I assume that they are so that I can separate my miners, and give them separate jobs?

They are for building the floor hatches to seal off the bottom of your stairs when you hit the top of a cavern. They're made by your mason. Just queue up a few of them before you start digging the stairs down so they'll be available when you need them. The odds of finding something that can fly in the cavern early in the game are fairly low, so you are unlikely to have problems when you hit the cavern. But eventually you will probably end up with forgotten beasts (FBs) that can fly, so you really do want to seal them off. If you don't do it right away, you'll probably forget and end up with a FB in your stairway later on.

"Urist McHauler cancels store item in stockpile: Interrupted by forgotten beast"
oops

[Chezzik]

You can build rock hatch covers at the masons shop (I think the hotkey is capital H). They function basically the same as doors except they stop people from traveling up or down stairs instead of through doorways. And the reason that you want to put them on the staircase is so that if you get something !!FUN!! in the caverns (like giant cave swallows or something else that can fly) it won't fly right up your main staircase and start butchering dwarves.

Yep, I had only skimmed your post when I wrote that.  After re-reading more carefully, I see you explained that it was to stop aggressive creatures from coming up.  I think I'll heed Khearn's advice, and get in the habit of sealing off my expansion areas before going too deep.

But, it does remind that I could use either hatch covers or locked doors to force one of my miners to finish one job before moving on to the next.  This was frustrating me a lot last night.