Bay 12 Games Forum

From what I've seen in the Wiki, hematite ore is what I need to get iron. But in all my fortresses, I have never found this one...

Where should I look? between chasm and lava?

I'm up to lava, but you need steel for magma furnaces, right? I've yet to find iron ore...  

My Broker issued a mandate for 3 "drums". I understand this to mean some instruments, but I never found a command to queue jobs for "drums", only "instruments". Am I supposed to make up lots of instruments, and hope some of them turn up as drums?

In all my games so far, I have never found coal. Where can I expect to? (I haven't looked much beyond the chasm, if that's where it's normally found)

I find that my attempts at farming from the outside river tend to fail too often, most likely due to my not understanding the subtleties of floodgates (my last try, the channel was flooded without a floodgate, so I installed just one and managed to flood the room, but next year the part of the channel inside the cliff dried up, and I never managed to flood that room again).

On advantage of the underground river is, you get a flood for free when you find it, so you don't even need floodgates for your first farm - the naturally flooded area tends to be large enough for my farming power in the first year. So you have your whole winter to set up a real floodable room, and why not do it by the river then?

Also, can you flood from the outside when the river is still frozen? In cold areas, this might make a difference since the river is frozen early in spring, while the underground river is not.

One minor problem I've run into is this: when planning my farms near the underground river, I tend to dig too far and open the way to the river, making my whole farm plot naturally floodable.

OK, so maybe I should leave some more space to be safe, but isn't there a better way? Do you guys only dig one space at a time, detecting the river?

I also tried putting a support pillar, hoping it would be uncrossable, but I think my dwarves cross them, so that probably means water can too.

I always seem to not have enough wood. I never build something of wood if I have a substitute with stone, yet with beds, bins, and the like, I never have enough wood to start making charcoal.

I've read that one can get wood from the tower caps that grow underground, but mine seem to remain "young", and don't seem to be fellable. Should I wait longer?

So, is there some secret tech to wood? Should I have some dwarves who only have woodcutting as their activities?

OK, then what determines fortress value? I have more than 50 dwarves, with one doing crafts basically full time; whatever the caravans bring, I can easily trade for - but then, the last caravan had exactly zero items to trade (they went back with a few gifts; I hope they don't simply decide that the dwarves at the outpost are lunatics that trade goods for nothing).

I mean, I have a nice decorated room with attached dining room and study for the next noble who comes along...