Tinkering

Every other skill in the game needs something from this table. Charges rise with the material tier.

A better tool is not just more charges — it lifts the skill ceiling it will train you to, adds a bonus to the skill it serves, and lets a pickaxe, hatchet, pole or skinning knife take richer materials. A tool that comes off your bench Well-Made, Superior or Mastercrafted holds +5%/+10%/+15% more charges than the column says. See the Tools page for the full picture.

The tier a tool is made from is gated on Tinkering itself, on top of whatever the recipe asks.

Five yard pieces found only by working this skill. Any work at the skill can turn one up — every swing or craft, success or failure, and the hours you put in while logged out as well. Each stands in your yard or your house, carries its own story on its tooltip, and trades like any other item.

Piece	Its story
Clockwork Sentinel	A brass watchman the height of a child, riveted, jointed, and wound by a key in its back. Once an hour it takes three steps forward, three steps back, and salutes nobody in particular. The tinker who built it left no notes on how to stop it, and by now nobody quite dares to try.
The Unpickable Lock	A padlock the size of a strongbox, built to settle a wager with a lockpicker from Buccaneer's Den. She worked at it for nine years, and the tinker died before she gave up. It has no key. It never had one. That, the lockpicker said when she finally found out, was cheating.
Tinker's Whirligig	A windmill on a post, geared to a little painted feller who saws at the same log whenever the breeze picks up. He has been sawing it for forty years and the log is still whole. The tinker called it a lesson in patience. His wife called it a lesson in finishing things.
The Almost-Perpetual Engine	Wheels, weights, a pendulum and a small brass bell, all turning with nothing to turn them. It is a perpetual motion engine in every respect but one: about once a year it stops, and somebody has to give it a push. Scholars at the Lycaeum have spent ten years studying the push.
The Colossal Music Box	A music box grown well past the point of reason, with a brass drum as long as a forearm and a crank that takes both hands. It knows one tune, a Skara Brae lullaby. Wound for a sleepless child it works within a verse; wound for a sleepless grown-up, within two.