Uses for lead?

[Raxo]

apparently i made a ton while trying to smelt ores and stuff for iron but idk what to make of them, any suggestions?

[Leiflen]

Leads pretty heavy. Should make a great mace. Not sure if the game considers it a weapon grade metal tho

[Raxo]

dont think you can make weapons out of it, buuuuuuuut considering its a very heavy material maybe i can create minecarts (if i can learn and understand the system) and make a minecart trap of some sorts

[sonix2003]

You can make furniture items out of lead. Also large trap components or corksrews. You can always use any kind of metal to craft stuff and increase related metal crafting skills. Then you can melt the items and reuse the bars until you reached legendary. Some items even have an increased yield when melting items. Check the DF wiki: "melt item"

[AlP]

Originally posted by Leiflen:

Should make a great mace.

There's no such thing. Maces are terrible.

[Fel]

I second the furnitures and other similar things, it has a decent value (especially compared to rocks) so you can get better stuff from it.
If you have too much of it, consider using it for floors or walls, either directly as bars or by making blocks first (1 for 1 and not 4 like with rocks or logs sadly) since they don't have the same texture

You can also make Lay pewter (alloy) with tin, copper and lead but there are better alloys with tin and copper (without lead).
Lay pewter has a fairly nice very light grey color for those that like to build a bit more visually pleasing things.

If you melt items, don't melt masterwork quality or whoever made that item will get a bad thought from it, for every item (same with destroying or being stolen them but selling is fine).

Minecarts tend to be deadly regardless of material and lead is only somewhat dense with gold, rose gold and platinum being much denser (but also much more valuable and usually in lesser amounts).
It depends on how many you want to use as battering rams against enemies.
Also note that minecarts can be very deadly to your own forces, being the biggest downside (or not?) of minecarts used as direct weapons.

[[DKS] Killaim]

I like to make mugs out of them and sell them all.

[LaChouette]

Originally posted by DKS Killaim:

I like to make mugs out of them and sell them all.

Ah, yes, the "kill all the elves through years of lead poisoning" strategy.

[Oxy]

leadtoys for the elves

[harlequin_corps]

Vertical/horizontal bars, flooring, cages if you want them to be melted by magma, sarcophagi, doors, furniture. non magma safe blocks.

[Grimbot]

It's very dense, and dense materials hurt more when you fall on them. My last fort had a pit with a ten level drop onto a lead statue of the god of death.

[malthenielsen]

If you use it for floors, it causes more damage to hit the floor.

[♡︎Odessa]

The people suggesting to use it as weapons sort of have the right idea. Sadly you can't make a lead mace or warhammer, silver being the best option for those, but if you make spiked ball traps I am fairly sure they rely on density for their damage. Alternatively if you are afraid of dragons or trolls, lead is the same strength as steel when it comes to bridges and chains. Also if you ever get an artifact mace of lead it's great.

Also the heavier minecarts are great if you want to go orcs must die with your base defense (by that I mean having them zip around and slam into them). Since it's cheap it's great for teaching metal crafters.

My old favorite use for it was lay pewter because it used to have a bright cyan color in game. But with the steam release it's more realistic in color. Lay Pewter needs tin, copper, and lead. So if you don't need bronze it's a great option as the material value of lay pewter is higher than the materials combined.

Considering you have a lot of iron, if you find tin and copper then you can just make lay pewter.

[Raxo]

Originally posted by ♡︎Odessa:

The people suggesting to use it as weapons sort of have the right idea. Sadly you can't make a lead mace or warhammer, silver being the best option for those, but if you make spiked ball traps I am fairly sure they rely on density for their damage. Alternatively if you are afraid of dragons or trolls, lead is the same strength as steel when it comes to bridges and chains. Also if you ever get an artifact mace of lead it's great.

Also the heavier minecarts are great if you want to go orcs must die with your base defense (by that I mean having them zip around and slam into them). Since it's cheap it's great for teaching metal crafters.

My old favorite use for it was lay pewter because it used to have a bright cyan color in game. But with the steam release it's more realistic in color. Lay Pewter needs tin, copper, and lead. So if you don't need bronze it's a great option as the material value of lay pewter is higher than the materials combined.

Considering you have a lot of iron, if you find tin and copper then you can just make lay pewter.

sweet dude thanks for the suggestions i'll get on it (researching)

[Rick]

Originally posted by Raxo:

apparently i made a ton while trying to smelt ores and stuff for iron but idk what to make of them, any suggestions?

My favorite use of massive quantities of lead is rings and bracelets. Heavy lead crafts will slow your dwarfs down for a bit, but will make them insanely strong. Theoretically, a single dwarf can wear 220 rings, 11 on each finger/toe, and an unlimited number of bracelets. If your military Dwarfs equip some heavy lead Jewelry and train with it on, they will hit insanely hard, and become a lot harder to kill because muscle counts as a natural armor.

With any luck, or by trading for more lead bars, you'll flood your civilization with heavy bling and watch as they become freaks. The max size of a Dwarf is supposed to be 60,000 cm^3. But a Dwarf blessed with the natural steroidal power of 220 lead rings will go beyond that limit and push over 64,000 cm^3 genetic freaks that would put Arnold Schwarzenurist to shame.

It has also been theorized that Strength is affected by genetics, and that genetics is affected by Strength. If shredded dwarfs have babies, those babies will be more naturally shredded, and you will skew the average above the 60,000 cm^3 mark, as those muscle babies have their own children some day. Citation[www.bay12games.com]