v0.31:Raw adamantine

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Raw Adamantine

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Uses
Ore of adamantine Masonry Stone crafting Construction
Location
The depths
Properties
Magma proof Material value 250

The ore of adamantine is absurdly valuable, and can be processed into one of the most valuable material in the game, both in monetary worth and utility. Its discovery is both a boon and a bane; it has a massive value even unrefined, and weapons and armor made from it are very likely among the best possible. Its high melting point means you can easily use it to build magma-safe mechanisms and floodgates, but this is not recommended due to its scarcity and value in other items.

Raw adamantine has a Material Multiplier of x250. For a comparison to other mined materials, generic stone has a MM of x1, obsidian x3, native silver x 10, and native gold x30. Processed adamantine "metal" has a multiplier of x300, the highest in the game of any material.

Adamantine is so valuable, both in price and usefulness, that a special message pops up when your miners discover the first vein of it.

Location

Every map can contain adamantine, regardless of the location. Very small maps can lack adamantine veins, usually however multiple veins are present (~1 per 4 embark squares). If an adamantine veins is located in an embark square, it will be in the center of this square.

Veins and Mining

A profile view of an adamantine vein travelling through solid rock, an underground cavern, and a magma sea. For more detail and resolution click the thumbnail.

Raw adamantine veins, in contrast to usual ore veins, span z-levels nearly exactly straight upwards, and are thicker than many gem clusters; this and the fact that the lower half of an adamantine vein is hollow give veins a tube-like feel. Single z-level clusters can also be found in the walls of the magma sea. Adamantine veins can span from 5 to 30-40 z-levels, sometimes even significantly more. Despite being impossibly strong, a simple copper pick works fine for mining it out, and the top half of a vein is full of raw adamantine ripe for the diggin'. Just make sure you don't dig too deep...

This article or section contains minor spoilers. You may want to avoid reading it.

One serious downside to mining veins of raw adamantine is that digging into the hollow section will eventually lead to a certain spoiler, triggering dangerously large amounts of fun which can and usually will wipe out even a mature, heavily defended fortress. On the bright side, the location of all adamantine veins will be revealed at this time.

Adamantine can be found in vertical pillars in the Template:L. This makes mining difficult, as one must either drain the area around the pillar to mine the pillar fully, or in cases of thicker pillars, mine out only the interior without breaching the exterior layer (and thus flooding the interior with magma).

(end spoilers)

Storage

Raw Adamantine is stored in stone stockpiles with "Raw Adamantine" enabled in that stockpile's 'other stone' category.

However once strands are extracted, they are stored in a cloth pile. It is unfortunately impossible to directly segregate adamantine from plant fiber and silk cloth, because all cloth apparently counts as non-plant/animal products as far as the game is concerned, and adamantine does not appear as a thread/cloth type in the cloth custom stockpile menu. To create a stockpile for adamantine strands designate a cloth stockpile set to accept no types of thread or cloth and tell this stockpile to take from all other cloth stockpiles.