A How To Guide to Tinkering

This is in no way meant to be a read this and you will know all there is to know about tinkering, it is simply meant to be something that may shed some light over an issue which many feel is confusing and complicated.

What is Worth Tinkering…

Lets start at the start, finding an item worthy of tinkering.

The first thing to think about (save the actual stats of the item) is what the items workmanship (wk) is.

A good thumb rule to remember is that any item can only be tinkered a maximum of 10 times, no matter how low a wk it has, and it has been calculated out that with a maxed out tinkerer (w/o the use of any of the new tinkering rares, or with the skill specialized with an augumentation gem), 14 – the items workmanship = how many tinks you can do.

Of course, not everyone has access to a maxed out tinkerer, my own preference is that I do not bother with any item above wk 6 or possibly 7, unless it has an extremely good quality, as for example a very useful major spell.

So lets say that you now have found a few items that you want to tinker up.

The next step is to find the salvage that you need to tinker these items.

What Salvage to Get…

You get salvage by using an ust on different items, the bags can be of 6 different colors:

• Purple bags are for Armor Tinkering.
• Green bags are for Item Tinkering.
• Blue bags are Magic Item Tinkering.
• Red bags are for Weapon Tinkering.
• Minty green bags do not belong to any salvaging skill and when used will not count as a tinker.
• Brown bags are currently not used for anything.

Here follows a list of what salvage can be used for what, sorted by the skill needed to use it, feel free to skim thru it until you actually need to know what you need to find.

Armor Tinkering:

• Yellow Topaz* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to imbue the target with a +1 bonus to Missile Defense.
• Zircon* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to imbue the target with a +1 bonus to Magic Defense.
• Peridot* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to imbue the target with a +1 bonus to Melee Defense.
• Alabaster - Apply this material to treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against piercing by 0.2
• Armoredillo Hide - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against acid by 0.4
• Ceramic - Apply this material to treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against fire by 0.4
• Bronze - Apply this material to treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against slashing by 0.2
• Reedshark Hide - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against lightning by 0.4
• Marble - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against bludgeoning by 0.2
• Steel - Apply this material to treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's armor level by 20
• Wool - Apply this material to a treasure-generated armor to increase the armor's protection against cold by 0.4

Item Tinkering:

• Copper - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a Missile Defense activation requirement to change that requirement into an appropriate Melee Defense requirement
• Ebony - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a heritage activation requirement to change that activation requirement to Gharu'ndim.
• Gold - Apply this material to a treasure-generated item to raise the item's value by 25%
• Linen - Apply this material to a treasure-generated item to reduce the item's burden by 25%
• Moonstone - Apply this material to a treasure-generated item to increase its maximum mana by 250
• Pine - Apply this material to treasure-generated armor to reduce the item's value by 25%
• Porcelain - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a heritage activation requirement to change that activation requirement to Sho
• Satin - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a heritage activation requirement to change that activation requirement to Viamontian.
• Silk - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with an allegiance rank activation requirement to remove the rank requirement. In exchange, the item will gain an Arcane Lore difficulty equal to its Spellcraft
• Silver - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a Melee Defense activation requirement to change that requirement into an appropriate Missile Defense requirement
• Teak - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated item with a heritage activation requirement to change that activation requirement to Aluvian.

Magic Item Tinkering:

• Fire Opal* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or caster to imbue the target with Crippling Blow (criticals do more damage)
• Black Opal* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or caster to imbue the target with Critical Strike (criticals happen more often)
• Sunstone* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or caster to imbue the target with Armor Rending (weapon ignores some portion of opponents armor)
• Opal - Apply this material to a treasure-generated magic caster to increase the item's mana conversion bonus by 1%
• Carnelian* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Strength. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Bloodstone* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Endurance. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Smoky Quartz* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Coordination. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Rose Quartz* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Quickness. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Agate* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Focus. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Lapis Lazuli* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Self. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Red Jade* - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Health Gain. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Citrine* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Stamina Gain. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Lavender Jade* - Apply this material to a magical, treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Minor Mana Gain. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Hematite* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Warrior's Vitality. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Malachite* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Warrior's Vigor. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Azurite* - Apply this material to a piece of magical treasure-generated jewelry to imbue the target with Wizard's Intellect. This will also raise the Arcane Lore difficulty and the Spellcraft of the piece by 25.
• Green Garnet - Apply this material to a treasure-generated magic caster that has an elemental damage bonus in order to increase the elemental damage bonus by 1% vs. monsters and 0.25% vs players.
  

Weapon Tinkering:

• Aquamarine* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Cold Rending
• Black Garnet* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Pierce Rending
• Emerald* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Acid Rending
• Imperial Topaz* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Slash Rending
• Jet* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Lightning Rending
• Red Garnet* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Fire Rending
• White Sapphire* - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon or magic-casting implement to imbue the target with Bludgeon Rending
• Brass - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon to increase the weapon's melee defense bonus by 1%
• Granite - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon to improve the weapon's variance by 20%
• Iron - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon to increase the weapon's damage by 1
• Mahogony - Apply this material to a treasure-generated missile weapon to increase the weapon's damage modifier by 4%
• Oak - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon to decrease the weapon's speed by 50
• Velvet - Apply this material to a treasure-generated weapon to increase the weapon's attack skill bonus by 1%
   
  None skill based salvage:
• Ivory - Apply this material to one of a set of specific quest items in order to unattune it from your soul. Note that this action will also cause it to only be wieldable by you.
• Leather - Apply this material to a treasure-generated item in order to render that item Retained

*This is what is called an Imbue, any imbue only ever has a max chance of 33 % to succed (or 38% if the tinkerer has used an augumentation gem to gain those extra 5 %).

How do I Get the Salvage I Need…

Besides the tinkering skills, another skill plays a vital role in the whole process leading up to a tinkered item, and that is Salvaging.

So now we go out hunting for items that we can salvage. The amount of salvage we get out of an item is based on:

     A. Your salvaging skill (or at times one of your tinkering skills, depending on it's skill)
     B. The workmanship of the items you wish to salvage.

To get salvage you simply double click on your ust and place the item(s) you wish to salvage into the ust, there is also an option you can choose to check or uncheck that allows you to salvage different types of items at the same time, it will automatically group the salvage into the different salvage bags.

Note: A full bag is 100 units, when usting, if you have items enough for 120 units, and you salvage them all at the same time, it will still only combine it to a full 100 unit bag. And hence you will have lost 20 units. So beware of that.

Now what is important to remember is that when you tinker something, not only is the level of the tinkerer’s skill and the workmanship of the item you want to tinker what matters, but the workmanship of the salvage also factors in.

I have already mentioned that if you wish to use one of the imbue salvage, there is only ever a max 33% chance of succes, and if you for example have a wk 7 item and a wk 6 salvage bag, the skill needed to get that 33 % is 520. Hence when it comes to imbue salvage, the wk matters less becouse you will most likely never be faced with wanting to imbue any item of wk 7 or higher.

But when you take salvage which you may use as a seventh or eight tinkering, you will need a high wk on the salvage.

Therefore it is a good rule to divide your salvage into different bags. For example all items with wk <6 go together, all items wk 6 and 7 go together, and items of wk 8, 9 and 10 all go into their seperate bags.

This is of course only a preference of mine, but I have found that doing it like that means I have salvage for the first couple of easy low skilled tinkerings, the middle ones and also for the last really hard ones.

Doing the Tinkering…

Ok so lets now imagine that we have gathered all the salvage we need and we have the items we wish to tinker, what we need now is a character with the tinkering skills we need.

There are 4 different tinkering skills:

• Armor Tinkering - (Focus + Endurance)/2
• Item Tinkering - (Focus + Coordination)/2
• Magic Item Tinkering - Focus
• Weapon Tinkering - (Focus + Strength)/2

Now I am going to use a few example items and a few suggested ways to tinker them.

To help me find out what to do, what wk salvage I will need to use and such I use this great online tinkering calculator: http://www.code-poets.org/tinkering.html

*Note: Often when the calculator tells you that you have a 99,?? Chance of success, your ingame check box will tell you 100%.

So yes, it does happen that you do blow up items even tho the check box tells you that you should have a 100% chance of success.

We want to tinker:

A pair of amuli leggings  wk 7, major strength, missile defence and arcane lore req.
A covenant breastplate wk 5
A bow, wk 6 with electrical attack bonus
A sword, wk 4, cold damage
A wand with very high value, wk 3

Now those amuli leggings, we want of course to put as much steel (raises armor level) on them as possible, the thing is tho, you want to be able to use that major strength spell, and you don’t have missile defence. So what we need to start with is changing that missile def to a defence you do have, melee.

For that we will use a bag of copper, wk 6.
Our tinkerer buffs up her Item Tinkering, it ends up at 566.
Now the % we get with a wk 7 item, wk 6 salvage and a skill of 566 on a first tinkering attempt is 100%, so no problem there. The tinkerer does the tinkering and voila, your leggings now have a melee defence req instead of a missile def.
Now we want to put as much steel on as we can.
Our tinkerer has 570 in Armor Tinkering.
Second attempt of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 5 salvage is 100%.
Third attempt of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 5 salvage is 100%.
Fourth attempt of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 5 salvage is 100%
Fifth attempt of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 5 salvage is 98%
Now myself, I wouldn’t go with that, I would start using those higher wk salvage bags.
Fifth attempt of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 7 salvage is 100%
Sixth attept of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 7 salvage is 93%
That really wont do.
Sixth attept of tinkering, wk 7 item, wk 10 salvage is 97%
Well now, this is again a question of preference, myself I wouldn’t try that with a major item, I would wait untill I can find a tinkerer with high enough skill to put those last couple of bags of steel on my leggings safely.

Next item is a covenant breastplate, wk 5.
The first thing you need to know about covenant is that you can not tinker up the AL, that means steel doesn’t work here. What you do want to tinker with covenant is the stats against the different damage types. Now the bp already has quite good stats again slash, bludge, frost and fire, but against pierce, electric and acid it is poor. For that we need, alabaster, armoredillo hide and reedshark hide.
But before that we also want to try and imbue the bp with a +1 melee defence bonus and for that we need peridot.
Now we already know our tinkerers Armor Tinkering skill is 570 and with a wk 5 item, she gets the 33% with a wk 2 bag of peridot even.
Of course, as we all know, imbues more often than not blows up, but just for the sake of it all, we are gonna go yay and say that this one sticks.
So now we start with tinkering up the poor stats.
With a skill of 570, our tinkerer can do the second to fifth tinkering attempts with any type of wk on our prefered salvage.
Sixth attempt, wk 5 item, wk 6 salvage is 100%
Seventh attempt, wk 5 item, wk 8 salvage is 100%
Eight attempt, wk 5 item, wk 8 salvage gives only 97% tho, wk 9 salvage gives 98% and wk 19 gives 99%.
So here again you make the decision if you wanna play the odds and try and get in the last tinkering attempts, or if you want to wait until you get a tinkerer with higher skill to change the odds to more in your favor.

The next item is our wk 6 bow with electrical attack bonus. Here we of course want to imbue the bow with jet.
Our weapon tinkerer has a skill of 547, to get the 33% chance you will need a bag of wk 5 or higher.
Again we assume that the tinkering is successful, and we now look to further improving our bow.
When it comes to missile weapons the most used salvage is mahogny which increases the weapon's damage modifier with 4%. Other than that you might choose to improve the melee def bonus on the weapon with brass.
For this bow we are choosing to simply use mahogny.
Here on the second, third and fourth attempt you can use salvage wk 3 and higher
On the fifth attempt you will need wk 6 or higher.
On the sixth attempt, with the skill of 547, you get a 99% with a wk 10 salvage.

Moving to the next item, our cold damage sword with wk 4.
We already have a cold rendered sword, so lets go with a Armor Rendering instead, that’s sunstone and is a Magic Item Tinkering imbue salvage.
Our tinkerer has a skill of 591, and if you have followed what has been said before, you already know that with that amount of skill, and with the chance of success not being above 33% on a imbue, the wk of the sunstone doesn’t matter one bit.
Ok so now we got a Cold AR sword, we want to both raise the damage and lessen the gap between the low end damage and the high end damage and for that we need  iron and granite.
Our tinkerer has a skill of 547 in Weapon Tinkering so we can count on maybe 5 or possible 6 safe tinkerings with salvage with wk around 5-7.
On a norm, granite is harder to get and as such you usually have a easier time getting low wk iron, so we start with putting 4 bags of iron with wk 5 on it with a 100% chance.
The two next tinks we do with granite, wk 6 and 7 also getting 100%.
After this we start to get lower than 99% chance with the salvage we have, so we would have to get higher wk salvage and a tinkerer with a bit higher skill to tinker the sword up higher safely.

Our last item is our wand with very high value, wk 3, which we of course want to turn into a Death Item.
The tinkerer has a skill of 566 in Item Tinkering, which with the help of our calculator tells us that as long as we have a few bags of wk 9 gold for the last 3 tinkerings, we wont have any problems tinkering this wand 10 times.

Now, with every item you tinker you should add leather, this allows you not to worry about salvaging or selling a fully tinkered weapon or so.

I hope you have found this useful, as I said at the start, it is not meant to be a step by step walkthru, only something that hopefully has left you with a stronger knowledge of why your patron tells you to pick up all those steel items or maybe what is worth picking up or what you maybe don’t really need to bother with.