How do i get rid of course iron? I found old info that i should use a finishing forge but apparently that is removed? Im clueless here. How is coarse iron compared to normal iron and why is it built into the mod? Also what metal is the best before candy? What should i make my armour out of? It adds so many metals that damn im clueless what i should use
A more in-depth answer:
1.9.X:
Copper, silver, bronze: Nothing changed, vanilla metals.
Iron: When you smelt the ore, you get coarse iron. You can use the crucible to make iron from that. You can cold hammer it in the crucible if you don't have fuel. Very ineffective, you waste a lot of ore this way, but could be useful if you have no coal and no trees to burn.
Steel: Maybe nothing changed, though it seems a bit more powerful. Maybe everything else is weaker somewhat?
Cobalt: Should be about the same level as iron. Needs the arc furnace and bags to grind to powder first, then smelted into bars in the same building.
Wolfram: Heavy metal, good for blunt weapons. Same arc furnace process.
Mithril: A good bit better than steel for edged weapons, but it is light, so not good for blunt. Awesome for armor. Same arc furnace process. It's good stuff, but you won1t find veins, only small clusters, so think twice before using it. Or order from merchants, every civilization has access to it.
Welded mithril/wolfram: aforementioned metals on steroids, made in the metallurgist.
Slade: You can make slade boulders at the great magma forge by using two stone blocks, then grind that to powder in the arc furnace, then smelt that into bars. Absolutely best for blunt weapons, it's VERY heavy, so think twice before you craft armor out of it - it will be very strong, but slows your dwarfs down very much. It's several times heavier than anything else in the game.
Volcanic: steel+silver+slade+obsidian, and needs magma. As you can see, it's a bitch to create, but it's absolutely worth it. By numbers, it's half as good as adamantine, and that makes it several levels above anything else. It's also heavy, so blunt weapons are a possibility, though I prefer slade for that. Volcanic axes and swords are unstoppable, and unlike candy, it's possible to mass-produce. Armor is superb, but a bit on the heavy side - high level armor users do best in volcanic armor. Deals more damage against frost giants. My personal favorite.
Bifrost: Dropped by frost giants. If you have a chance to get it, use it, it's almost as good as volcanic. Deals more damage against frost giants.
Slademantine: Slade+adamantine. Redundant now, don't bother. Roughly the same as volcanic.
Adamantine: The usual epicness.
When you get the blueprints from the caravans, you can build these:
Weaponry: Make silver/golden runes in the craftdwarf's workshop, and craft runic weapons here. Runic weapons, especially from good material and of masterwork quality are unstoppable. A runic masterwork volcanic greataxe cuts through armies like butter.
Armory: Forge full sets of armor in one reaction, or assemble plated armor. For that, you need to make armor plates here, and when that1s done, add them to a piece of armor. The final product will have the material of the ARMOR, it doesn't matter what you use for the plates, so welded mithril armor+copper plates=welded mithril plated armor.
MDF2 alpha
Iron comes directly from ore again. No more coarse iron.
Mithril now forms veins. BUT there is a separate building for it called mithril furnace. For now, it's available right from the start, in the final version, it will need a blueprint you have to get from the elves.
No more
slade and
slademantine.
Volcanic needs mithril bars instead of silver.
Oh and the new metals are EXTREMELY valuable. It's almost an exploit to sell two-handed weapons made of anything above steel, since you can buy half of the caravan with a single masterwork weapon.