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[Faeryx]

So I have now dug down 34 zlevels including cavern layers and have not found anything except tetrahedrite and galena. I am beginning to worry that I might not find any useful metal. I am assuming this is a bug or something, but if not what exactly am I supposed to do?

[Sphalerite]

It happens.  Metal is scarce in the current version and many sites don't have the right ores to make steel or even bronze.

You can trade crafts for metal from trade caravans, but the amount you can get each year is very limited.

You can hold of sieges indefinitely with stone walls and drawbridges.  Once you understand how mechanism and pumps work you can build elaborate mechanical deathtraps to kill off invaders without even needing much of a military.

[Fredd]

Anvils can be your friend when melted down. Its a little pricey trade for getting a steel/iron bar when its melted down of course.. Trade for ores,bars, flux if necessary. Dwarves can use goblin armor if you want to stoop that low. It just adds a extra challenge, so just start creating crafts to trade. Trading with the humans for metal armor/cages/weapons can help for meltable purposes

[daggaz]

not sure if obvious or not, but..

in world creation, toggle metal abundance upwards (frequent seems to work nicely), and in the embark screen, make sure you pick sites that have both shallow and deep metalS, in PLURAL.  So far, ive not had a hard time finding a newby friendly site, and usually i will restart or die horribly before I even get around to training my metalsmiths up to legendary.

[Faeryx]

I did turn up the frequency to the maximum and I made sure I chose a sight with both shallow and deep metals. In any case, I'm sure I'll be fine caravans will just have to be my friend.

[Mushroo]

Magma smelter, goblinite, anvils.

[Drawde]

When choosing a site remember to check each biome in the site.  Sometimes that 4x4 site with shallow and deep metals has multiple biomes, and the first one shown is simply one square of the 16.

Also, huge caverns can eat up the metals.  All that empty space may have been ore before it was removed to make the cavern.

[Faeryx]

That really stinks because my caverns are HUGE. I have never seen ones so big before, one level takes up almost an entire zlevel. The thing is though that there aren't even trace amounts of any other ore in the cavern walls. Just galena and tetrahedrite, that is all I have found period.

[Drawde]

Technically galena and tatrahedrite ARE plural, since it's more than one type of ore.

Also, the deep metals may be way down there near the bottom of the magma sea.

[Garath]

it happens. I'm the lucky exploiter of a fort sitting currently on top of a galena, tetrahedrite, casserite and native silver mine

At least my blunt weapons will rock

[Sphalerite]

Cassiterite yields tin, tetrahedrite yields copper.  With those you can make bronze.  Bronze isn't as good as steel, but it's decent for edged weapons and armor.  And you can make blunt weapons from silver, of course.

[proxn_punkd]

Galena and tetrahedrite both yield silver when smelted in large quantities, which is decent for blunt weapons. (1 bar silver per 2 galena OR 5 tetrahedrite, I believe) They're mainly the ores of lead and copper-- copper can be made into weapons or armor, but they're not very good. Lead can't be made into weapons or armor outside of a strange mood (and is soft enough to be worthless for such), but you can always train a metalcrafter on it, and if you have enough galena and tetrahedrite to have lots of leftover silver, a high-end metalcrafter working with silver could probably give you enough income to buy iron (for steel) and tin (for bronze).

Goblin attackers can also be a nice source of iron, cheekily called "goblinite" in some circles. Give them a nice trap gauntlet to run, maybe a "dodge-me" trap over a 10-z pit lined with menacing copper spikes, so they explode into greasy goblin gibs on impact and leave the lovely iron bits for your dwarves to collect at leisure.

[Garath]

ah yeah, not cassirite, garnierite

[Faeryx]

Galena and tetrahedrite both yield silver when smelted in large quantities, which is decent for blunt weapons. (1 bar silver per 2 galena OR 5 tetrahedrite, I believe) They're mainly the ores of lead and copper-- copper can be made into weapons or armor, but they're not very good. Lead can't be made into weapons or armor outside of a strange mood (and is soft enough to be worthless for such), but you can always train a metalcrafter on it, and if you have enough galena and tetrahedrite to have lots of leftover silver, a high-end metalcrafter working with silver could probably give you enough income to buy iron (for steel) and tin (for bronze).

Goblin attackers can also be a nice source of iron, cheekily called "goblinite" in some circles. Give them a nice trap gauntlet to run, maybe a "dodge-me" trap over a 10-z pit lined with menacing copper spikes, so they explode into greasy goblin gibs on impact and leave the lovely iron bits for your dwarves to collect at leisure.

Sounds like a solid plan.

[Jacob/Lee]

If you have flux and can own goblins (drowning traps, magma, whatever) then you can melt down the iron shit they drop and forge steel. If you go this way, magma is very good because it torches everything but the iron.