"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
– Thomas Edison
Tinkering allows you to make locks, keys, various crafting tools (shovels, pickaxes, tongs, hammers, sewing kits, etc.), set traps on chests and boxes, make jewels, golems, bolas and colored items.
This is an easy skill to raise up to 65, so don't bother starting off with 50. Keep that for another harder skill. There's no real miracle recipe there. Just keep at it. Avoid trying to make items that require too many ingots, it's a waste of resources. I also find that tinkering with wood is a waste of resources as well, not to mention how heavy boards are. So just stick with ingots: they're lighter, easy to gather and at least, what you'll make will be useful and easy to resell.
| Skill |
Item to Make |
| 0% |
Buy Skill from NPC Tinker |
| 30% |
Butcher's knifes |
| 55% |
Lockpicks (shovels occasionally) |
| 58% |
Lockpicks, copy keys* |
| 90% |
Heater stands |
*You can buy blank keys (or make them yourself) from the provisioner and use them to make copies of a functioning key. Not only will you gain from that but you can also sell them back to the provisioner who will recycle them into blanks you can buy back.
The good thing though about shovels is if you have a miner, you can provide him with shovels and your tailor with sewing kits, but as shovels require 4 ingots per, you will quickly deplete your reserves if you work tinkering solely with those. So stick with the lockpicks unless you have needs of shovels. At one ingot per lockpick, 1.5k-2k ingots will be more than enough to see you through a full hour of training .
Note that at lower levels, you will gain tinkering when trying to make lockable items (chests, boxes, crates, armoires) with your carpentry skill.
Special Items
Bolas
A tinker with 70+ can build bolas with using 3 pieces of leather and 4 bola balls. Bolas are used to knock your opponent off his mount. It's also the only way for tamers to get the ridgebacks (in the Old Lands since in they roam free in Ilshenar). If you kill the mounted savages without knocking them off first, the ridgeback will disappear upon their owner's death.
Golems
A tinker with 80+ skills can build his own golem using 1 clockwork device, 5 gears, 50 iron ingots, 50 bronze ingots and 1 power crystal. Have all the items in your bag and double click the clockwork device to create your golem. Unlike other pets, they never lose loyalty nor need feeding. However, when a golem sustains damage, so does his owner. First, it's your mana that will be depleted for each blow your golem sustains. Once you run out of mana, your HP will start going down. To heal your golem during combat, you will need tinkering skills and to have ingots (instead of bandaids) in your bag.
GM made golems are more powerful than non-GM made ones. You can create a maximum of 5 golems per day, and just like other pets, they can be stabled. Also, just like any weapon, your golem will need to be repaired from time to time. Otherwise, even at full HP, your golem could collapse through lack of maintenance.
Colored Jewels and House Decorations
Only GM tinkers can make the colored items. All you need is to use ingots of the color you wish the items to be. Unlike glassblowing and stone crafting, you do not need to read any books to be able to make those items.
