40d:Make your own weapons

Cheaper axes and/or picks

Steel axes normally cost 300 points each. Instead of spending that much on them, you can make yourself iron or copper axes by bringing the resources needed instead, and having one dwarf make them for you. For comparison, 1 anvil and 2 steel axes costs 1600 points. No anvil and 5 steel axes costs 1500 points. However, the resources required to make 18 iron axes cost 1489 points, or 55 copper axes for 1498 points.

Replace the axes and anvil with:

• 1 Anvil (1000 points) (I'm only mentioning it here because you CANNOT do this without it, unless you're willing to not have axes until traders sell you an anvil)
• For iron: N magnetite/limonite/hematite stones (24 points each)
• For copper: N copper nuggets (6 points each)
• Optionally, a matching amount of cassiterite, which combines with copper to make bronze (6 points each)
• N-1 bituminous coal (3 points each)
• 3 fire-safe rocks to construct the necessary buildings (9 points)
• If you are travelling to an area likely to have copper or iron ores, you can bring a pick (20 points) and no ore or rocks to save even more points

To make your weapons: Build a wood burner, a smelter, and a metalsmith's forge. Dissassemble your wagon to collect its wood, then burn the logs in the wood burner to get three charcoal. Smelt the coal in the smelter. Then smelt your ores, which will use one fuel per piece of ore. Lastly, you can make the weapons in the metalsmith's forge, using one iron bar and one fuel each. (See http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=11&t=001191 for more details)

Crossbows

The quality of a crossbow's construction affects your marksdwarfs' accuracy, but the material it is made out of only affects the damage it does when the crossbow is used as a melee weapon (usually when the marksdwarf is out of bolts or otherwise in trouble). It's therefore not of great importance exactly what they're made out of initially.

Crossbows can be made quite cheaply from wood (3 points each) or from bone (left over from whatever fish you've brought along as starting food - turtle is a popular choice, for 2 points each). A bowyer's workshop is needed to make bone or wood crossbows and the crossbow-making skill is used.

If you don't want to spend skill points on crossbow-making for your initial dwarves, a copper crossbow is almost as cheap (6 points for copper nuggets + 3 points for bituminous coal) but is manufactured in a metalsmith's forge and has its quality determined by the maker's metalsmithing skill.