Favorite Building Materials?

[IANcel]

Newbeard here, (hope that doesn't sound cringe I love this game) only been playing DF for like a month now. Wanted to know what some of your favorite materials were for building your fortress, or if you had a favorite wood and stone combo, or whatevs. Also want to know some tips for making my fortress... prettier. Right now I seem to be struggling with deciding overall layout on the layers and it leads to erratic building without much sense of consistency. Is it okay if that's my thing though? Sometimes it looks nice. Agh I love this game!

[Karabeep]

love jet block walls.... but hate that its such a pain in the ass to get dwarfs to just use jet rocks

[Pogey-Bait]

Diorite,

[ptor]

Once I've passed the initial phase, I try to go consistent palette-wise for different areas and workshop types (did someone say glass glass furnace?) and of course that leaves you open to pixel-graphics floors -- what dwarf doesn't like a giant DF logo as floor for the main hall?
Clay is obviously a great material when you want a lot of stuff "in the right colour", e.g. my entrance watchtower when it's available

[IANcel]

Origineel geplaatst door Jaiim:

Objectively speaking, the best building materials to use are Clay, Glass, and Obsidian, since all three are infinite resources. Clay and Sand can be gathered infinitely from a single tile. The downside is that you need to actually make the blocks in workshops to build with them. Obsidian can be made just by digging a two z-level deep pit, pumping magma into the bottom, and flooding the level above it with water. Obsidian is the most valuable stone (outside of metal ores), and it's magma-safe, so it has a lot of useful applications. It can also be used to make basic weapons for embarks without metals.

Can I make sandstone blocks or do I have to find that myself? I just found some black sand and black sandstone sounds really cool.

[ptor]

Origineel geplaatst door IANcel:

Can I make sandstone blocks or do I have to find that myself? I just found some black sand and black sandstone sounds really cool.

AFAICT you can only "make * blocks", which requires coal or magma, which are green, white, or crystal, and only green does not require extra steps, no matter the sand colour