Is there a difference between sterling silver and normal silver?

[Sir Darles Charwin]

I'm trying to mint sterling silver coins and I have a lot of silver bars, but the forge keeps saying it needs sterling silver.

[Fel]

Sterling silver is an alloy of 3 silver bars and 1 copper bar, made in a smelter (or magma smelter), can't be made from ores directly.

Sterling silver is slightly lighter in colour and it has a material value a bit lower than silver (8 instead of 10) but equal to the 3 silver and 1 copper needed to make it.

It is not very useful unless a dwarf really likes the material in particular or if you want to make a bit more valuable things out of your silver by throwing some copper into it.

[Valsalan]

Sterling silver has a very pretty texture that is fairly close to that of marble and makes for great decorations.

As for your coin minting, if the task says it needs a specific material (like sterling silver) than it needs that exact material and not some other form of it (i.e. if you want to mint bronze coins you need bronze bars not black bronze bars nor bismuth bronze bars, but bronze bars).

Here's the full list of all metals currently in the game and what they are made of:

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Metal

[Sir Darles Charwin]

Originally posted by Fel:

Sterling silver is an alloy of 3 silver bars and 1 copper bar, made in a smelter (or magma smelter), can't be made from ores directly.

Sterling silver is slightly lighter in colour and it has a material value a bit lower than silver (8 instead of 10) but equal to the 3 silver and 1 copper needed to make it.

It is not very useful unless a dwarf really likes the material in particular or if you want to make a bit more valuable things out of your silver by throwing some copper into it.

Thank you!