Q: Will you be expanding tinkered items? I would love to blast through Sinking Sands on a gnomish dirt bike with dual elemental capacitors WOO WOO And think about raising the level of our Cow Launcher I wanna pull new raid mobs with cattle

A: As the level cap continues to rise, all tradeskills can expect more recipes and items. Tinkerers can also expect a bit of upcoming live event fun, as well.

Well, I’ve been meaning to make Paxmar a tinker (she’s a very old-fashioned sort of gnome) and this reference has spurred me on – time to get it done.

Becoming a Tinker

The useful skills of a tinker are not just limited to gnomes anymore: almost anyone can learn the basics of tinkering!

Prerequisites:

• You must have achieved level 10 in your chosen Profession.
• You must have the Echoes of Faydwer expansion
• You must bring a few gold for the books/skills

Travel to Butcherblock (take the boat from Thundering Steppes dock or use the druid portal if you have been before) and speak to Karsh Cogsworth at 635,26,596 on the left side of the docks. He’ll ask you if you would like to learn to tinker and once you confirm, he will set you up as a Tinker

Speak to Corianda Cogsworth who is standing next to him. You’ll need to purchase six abilities:

• Contrapt
• Data Management
• Monkey With
• Overhaul
• Test Run
• Wing It

Once you scribe these, they will appear in your Knowledge Book under Tradeskills as well as in the combine window when you make a tinkered item.

Corianda also has your recipe books, known in the trade as blueprints. You’ll start with Apprentice Blueprints 0.001 but you may wish to purchase the rest of the books in advance to save needless travel to Faydwer. There is a new blueprint for every ten skill levels so the full set of Apprentice Blueprints will take you through to skill level 110 which is Tinkering level 21.

It is also possible to start tinkering in Greater Faydark. Speak to Ebnix Cogsworth in Kelethin at 418,89,240 to confirm you wish to become a tinker and purchase your skills and blueprints from the gnomes standing next to him.

Getting Started

Your next step will be to make sure you have plenty of raw material in order to make your items. The ingredients for the tinkered recipes are from rocks (both hard and soft) from the appropriate tier. Although all of the rock harvests are used, the primary item needed is loam as you will use multiples of these for every combine.

The first set of tinkering recipes require tin clusters, leaded loam, lead clusters and rough malachite.

For Tier 1 harvests, you will need to harvest in newbie adventure areas. These are the small zones directly outside of Qeynos and Freeport, the west side of Greater Faydark as well as the Gorowyn and Chykari islands of Timorous Deep. You can also harvest loam quickly and easily by creating an alt to harvest in the Qeynos/Freeport starter islands and leave the results in your shared bank.

If you are harvesting on a main character, you may wish to combine your harvesting with a trip to Mara to pick up the quest A Gathering Obsession which also requires you to harvest in T1 zones. Although the quest will use up some of your initial harvests, you can fulfill the rock and ore requirements of the quest quickly and then clear the other nodes for credit whilst collecting for the rest of your tinkering needs.

Once you have your raw materials, find a work bench in a comfortable location (you’ll be spending a lot of time there) and start creating your initial recipes. You may wish to set aside some bank space and a broker box in order to store the more useful items for future use and sale.

Note: unlike traditional recipes there are no reactions to counter. Your skills have the same set of effects as in standard tradeskills:

Contrapt - decreases success chance and increases durability
Data Management - decreases success chance and increases progress
Monkey With – decreases progress and increases durability
Wing It – decreases durability and increases progress
Overhaul – increases progress using your power
Test Run – increases durability using your power

You do not gain experience based on the quality of the item you are creating. For tinkered items, you can simply create everything to the crude level and then stop the combine and create the next one. This will use more resources (although not more loam, which tends to be the shortage).

The Simple Work Bench is a very good investment for a tinker as it only makes the item up to the crude level. Simple Work Benches can be purchased at the city merchant for 6,125 status points, 1 gold, 11 silver and 64 copper.

Every combine has a chance to give you a skill increase. 5 skill increases are the equivalent of a level. Thus, to move onto the Tier 2 tinkered items, you will need tinkering skill 50.

Be sure to check broker prices as you may be able to buy various rocks for a few copper each. Typically only the loam is expensive, specifically as a result of the tinkering usage. Check prices regularly, it can sometimes be worth skilling up at a lower tier until you require more raw material in order to save money or you may wish to jump to the next tier as fast as possible if the price of loam is lower. On most servers, the loam becomes cheaper in the higher tiers, with the possible exception of T6.

Pop by next week for Tinkering by Tier!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Our Red Shiny Collections for Tradeskillers guide has been updated to include these brand new collections, making for a total of eight collections available to tradeskillers.

The two new collections are both in Greater Faydark.

The Tradeskill: Faydwer Flowers collection is a set of six flowers which can be found around the nursery in Greater Faydark. This is the newbie area for Kelethin in the far north of the zone. Standard collection glowies do exist here but are not that common, so it can be beneficial to use a gnomish divining rod. There appear to be two red shinies up at any given time and they can range from the entrance to the nursery area to the beach. There are low level aggro mobs around the pond and the edges of the zone, so tradeskillers without adventure levels should take care.

The reward is a house item that will light up your home in the most enchanting way.

The Tradeskill: Tunare’s Glade Leaves is fairly self-explanatory for a change. You’ll be collecting six leaves in Tunare’s Glade, a small area on the south side of Greater Faydark – almost a direct vertical line down from the nursery. Finding sparklies here can be frustrating because of the curvature of the leaves and the vines covering the ground. Standard collection glowies are common here, making the Gnomish Divining Rod less useful unless you happen to be looking for the tier 2 grub and forest beetle collections as well. Mobs in this area are non-aggro so there is no danger to tradeskillers roaming the area as long as they remain within the glade.

The reward is a house item which makes artistic use of the leaves which you have collected.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Be sure to use our Lore and Legend list for the locations of the full set of Mastery Tomes.

Know Your Bixies

Originally this was one of the most difficult Lore and Legends to complete, with the quest starter buried deep in the Drafling Tower, a dungeon in Rivervale. Meanwhile, the dungeon no longer has a an access quest and the level cap has raised so that it’s possible to travel through the hive without danger from the mid-40s heroic bixies. The book is in the middle of the dungeon, in a secret panel of a bookcase high on the ledge of the room.

It is far simpler to travel to Greater Faydark and pick up your copy of Know Your Bixies there. You’ll find it in a building to the west of Crushbone Keep. When you enter the building, you’ll see a dwarf working on a forge. Further in the room is a wooden crate guarded by a level 19 Crushbone watchman which holds the book.

Greater Faydark is also home to low level bixies waiting for the slaughter. Head to the Valley of the Great Swarm where you’ll find large amounts of bixies ranging from level 6 to 8.

Travels in a Remote Corner of Faydark

Brownies are a new race in Faydark although players of the original Everquest will recall these as the sole provider of chocolate. The only known Brownie village is in Lesser Faydark.

The Mastery tome is at the Lower Grove station. It is tucked under the rear mat in the tent near the stable master. From Lower Grove, you should follow the path towards Greater Faydark to find the village of Panderpana in the north east corner of the zone. The brownies are in their low 50s and the village denizens are heroic but in the area underneath the ledge where the village is perched there is a population of non-heroic brownies in small groups.

Life Among the Goblins

The original copy of this tome is in Enchanted Lands, a tier 4 overland zone. The book is easy and relatively safe to pick up. If you follow the coast to the Great Guard you will find that here are convenient cubbyholes in the Wall for the guard to relax off shift. Chaplain Graveguzzle is warming at the stove of this one, where the book can be found in the far left bookshelf.

The new copy is in the Nursery area of Greater Faydark. You’ll find the book lying on a bookshelf behind the banker.

This area in Greater Faydark also contains the lowest level of goblin (around the lake, ranging from level 2 to 4) which you can wipe out quickly in order to collect your body parts.

Skeletons

Skeletons was written by one of my favourite authors in all of Norrath, a half-elf student named Trinni Mellosius. Trinni has a habit of driving her teachers to distraction with her essays and clearly she upset someone enough that the book was hidden in the haunted library of Stormhold, a second tier dungeon in Antonica.

If you have unlocked the backdoor of Stormhold previously, you can travel there rather than through the full dungeon to reach the library.

If you haven’t, then you’ll have to enter Stormhold from the main entrance. To get to the library, take the second door on the east side and follow the path around to get to the stairs at -143,5,-97 to get to the lower level. Continue on to the drained pool at 11,-24,-121 and click on the drain to zone through. The area is guarded by 23-24 heroic mobs.

Skeletons is a green book lying on the floor next to an overturned bookcase.

Fortunately, there is now an easy-to-reach copy in Kelethin, the treetop village in Greater Faydark. To find it, travel to the platform with the bank. On the north side of the platform there is a small building, the residence of Glavarius Marud. In his bookshelf you will find a copy of Skeletons.

Every starting area has its own infestation of skeletons, making this one of the easiest to complete.

If you picked up the Kelethin book, you can run straight over to the Greater Fay wizard spires near the Steamfont zone line, where you will find low level skeletons gathering.

Freeport residents may wish to travel to Wailing Caves, a dungeon found in the northeast of Commonlands.

If you live in Neriak, you surely already know that Darklight Woods is teeming with low level skeletons.

Qeynos residents should head for Caltorsis Ruins

Gorowyn residents should take the griffon to Mok’s Rent and head south towards the Ruins of Verelisk (the Bloodworks) where they will find many solo skeletons both inside and out of the ruins.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

New characters beginning in Greater Faydark will find that they start gameplay in the Nursery, which does not have a tradeskilling area at all. You will have to wait until you arrive at the platform city of Kelethin – a safe enough journey if you stick to the path – in order to get your basic teachings and to follow the tutorial. For tier one forages, harvest the nodes around the nursery and at the base of Kelethin. As you move further out, you will find the forages shifting to tier two.

Outside of Tunare’s Pages you will find a trainer and a tradeskill delegate to help you get started.

1. Speak to a Crafting Trainer who will give you level two and the level two book. The trainer also offers the essential recipe books for your class at a low cost.
2. Speak to a tradeskill delegate who will step you through a tutorial on crafting. This is a set of mini-quests which offer a substantial amount of tradeskill experience. Even if you know the tradeskilling process, it is worth going through the tutorial as it allows for incredibly fast leveling.
3. Return to the trainer at level 9 and level 19 to confirm your sub-class and tradeskill class.

Tunare’s Pages is located on the same platform as the Silver Leaf Inn. If you are not used to navigating around Kelethin, you may wish to ask a guard to help you find Ralika, which will give you a golden trail leading to the front door of the building.

Ralika Mekkila is a Crafting Trainer located right in front of Tunare’s Pages. She’s the one to get you started as an artisan as well as selling the essential books for every tradeskill up to level 50. She is also the person you need to speak to at levels 9 and 19 to choose your tradeskill specialization.

You can find her at 468,93,333.

Ikile Harmonia is a tradeskill delegate who will take you through the tutorial quests. These cover crafting from levels one through nine. The quests reward you with tradeskill experience as well as copies of your essential artisan books, saving you both time and money.

She is located at 471,93,346.

Amy Recolo (clearly a relative of Fidelia Recolo in North Qeynos, although nothing like as photogenic) is standing on the edge of the platform, southwest of Tunare’s Pages. She is a Tradeskill Career Counsellor who will be happy to reset your specialization for you if you would like to learn a new trade. This will revert you back to level 9 artisan and you will lose all specialised tradeskill recipes.

She is located at 473,93,356.

On the platform directly northeast of Joleena’s restaurant, you will find trainers required to learn the secondary tradeskills: transmuting and tinkering. Kelethin is the only starting village to offer these trainers; residents of other villages should visit Butcherblock docks in order to learn the secondary tradeskills.

You can only choose one secondary tradeskill: either tinkering or transmuting. Your secondary tradeskill level can not become your highest level, it will remain capped by which ever is highest of your tradeskill or adventure level.

Ebnix Cogsworth is a Master Tinkerer and if you can live with the fact that in modern Norrath tinkers are referred to as tinkerers, then this is the man to talk to. He will set you up to start tinkering as long as you have either a tradeskill or adventure level over level 10 and are not a transmuter.

You’ll find him at 420,89,240. Traditional gnomish nepotism still reigns and to purchase supplies you’ll have to deal with the other Cogsworths. You’ll find Professor Ebenezer Cogsworth IV, Tinkering Trainer, and Nixia Cogsworth, Tinkering Supplies, are standing next to Ebnix and happy to relieve you of your coin.

Noora Maki, Master Transmuter, is standing nearby for the masochistic dedicated crafters who wish to take up transmuting as a secondary tradeskill. She will get you started as long as you have either a tradeskill or adventure level over level 10 and are not a tinkerer. You can purchase your essential transmuting books from Sade Maki, standing to her left.

You’ll find both of them at 414,89,235, on the same platform as Whittier.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.