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[Casp]

It's been several months since I last played to any real degree. Since I began again, I have made four fortresses. Not one of them has had any iron at all. Tetrahedrite, coal, gold, platinum... but no iron.

So did I miss something?

[tommy521]

Well, it depends on where you made them. I get tons and tons of magnetite so I think you are embarking in the wrong areas.

[Geen]

Yeah, most of the flat plains areas I've embarked in have a crapload of magnetite, but elsewhere it is rare.

[Casp]

Mutliple shallow metals, multiple deep metals, high drainage... used to be iron heaven.

[Mrhappyface]

Try looking at your embark parameters. If not, try checking your worldgen parameters. If not either, then its just bad luck. My first few forts were overflowing with magnetite and limonite, but recently, I've just had bad luck and have to scrounge for hematite.

[King DZA]

The main thing I've learned about iron in my time within the realm of Dwarf Fortress is this:

You either have absolutely none of it whatsoever, or you have so much that you could use it to make everything in your fortress for the next couple decades. As far as I know, there is no middle ground.

[Casp]

This is actually getting genuinely aggravating. When the first ambush comes, I am invariably slaughtered to a dwarf. I have zero weapons material; not even copper. This type of losing isn't fun. I just feel like I got cheated by constant bad luck.

[tommy521]

Also check your mineral scarcity settings, if you are using advanced world gen parameters lower is more! If you are embarking on mountains you are less likely to get magnetite and other masses of iron as far as I know.

[DrKillPatient]

I use 500 scarcity, which turns out sites with a lot of metals (and more importantly, metal variation). I definitely agree with what DZA said:

The main thing I've learned about iron in my time within the realm of Dwarf Fortress is this:

You either have absolutely none of it whatsoever, or you have so much that you could use it to make everything in your fortress for the next couple decades. As far as I know, there is no middle ground.

My current embark has limonite running through veins of hematite inside clusters of magnetite on a limestone layer. Just a few squares over, there's no iron at all. I generally embark and mine around a little to make sure that a site has an interesting collection of metals before settling there.

[krenshala]

I picked "frequent" in world gen (not using advanced ... barely enough time for DF, let alone enough to play with the specific numbers for the settings ) and can usually find some iron on the surface, no problem.  I typically embark on a hills/forest border (so, 2+ biomes) and usually find at least some iron.  My last two forts I haven't, but I'm keeping this one going because I've got native gold, platinum and tin, and have been buying most anything reasonably priced made of copper/iron that the human/dwarven merchants bring.  I've gotten to a dozen bronze weapons, and one or two of iron at this point (though I have about 25 dwarves to kit out right now).

I must admit, I'm hoping for the platinum hammer or mace artifact.

[Neyvn]

The thing I am getting tired of is not the lack of Iron but the Abundance of those useless "Ores" such as Cobaltite as for the Embark area, it counts as a Shallow Metal. I entered a Map which had Multiple Shallow metals and all it was was Cobaltite and Cinnabar... Thats it... ALL Veins were those two...

[vonFaust]

You're not looking for ore actually called "iron," right?

[Sutremaine]

I wish there were separate settings for scarcity and variety. At one end of the scale you get a ton of everything, and at the other you get a modest amount of something that might not even be an ore by DF's standards.

Even with the uneven distribution of iron ores they're probably not that much rarer to encounter, though civ access is a lot more hit and miss (rather like bituminous coal always was). It's just that it used to be possible to memorise which stones contained iron ores, and so sites that didn't contain those stones were often dismissed with barely a thought.

[Garath]

i have multiple metals.... tetrahydrite (sorry for misspell) and gold. so that comes down to gold, silver and copper... not the best combination. Copper armor, silver weapons and a lot of gold

[vonFaust]

i have multiple metals.... tetrahydrite (sorry for misspell) and gold. so that comes down to gold, silver and copper... not the best combination. Copper armor, silver weapons and a lot of gold

Silver is bad for edged weapons.