Reference

Tools

Every gathering and crafting skill needs a tool, and the tool you are holding decides how far that skill can climb. This is the whole ladder in one place: what each tier trains you to, what it adds while you use it, and how long it lasts before it breaks.

What each tier trains you to

The cap is a hard ceiling on GAIN, not on use — an Iron pickaxe keeps mining perfectly well at 75, it just stops teaching you anything. The skill bonus is added on top of your real skill when the game checks what you can find or craft. What a pickaxe, hatchet, fishing pole or skinning knife can actually take is a separate ceiling: one tier past its own material and nothing richer, whatever your skill — Dull Copper in the Reach column means Dull Copper Ore, Dullwood, Dullfish or Dull Leather. Anything richer it finds gets away, and your journal names what it was; a tier bump from gear or a boss's hide still counts, even past the reach, as long as the find itself was not already out of reach. The two Uses columns are separate ladders: a pickaxe, hatchet or fishing pole spends a use every gather tick and a skinning knife one on every kill, so they get far more than a crafting tool that spends one per item made. A tool made Well-Made, Superior or Mastercrafted by a Hallmark crafter holds +5%/+10%/+15% more uses than either column says.

Tier	Trains you to	Reach — pickaxe, hatchet, pole, knife	Skill bonus	Uses — pickaxe, hatchet, pole, knife	Uses — crafting tools
Iron	75	Up to Dull Copper	—	500	100
Dull Copper	85	Up to Shadow Iron	—	600	130
Shadow Iron	85	Up to Copper	—	750	160
Copper	85	Up to Bronze	—	800	200
Bronze	85	Up to Golden	+2	800	250
Golden	90	Up to Agapite	+3	1,000	320
Agapite	95	Up to Verite	+4	1,250	400
Verite	100 — no ceiling	Up to Valorite	+5	1,500	500
Valorite	100 — no ceiling	Up to Blackrock	+10	2,000	650
Blackrock	100 — no ceiling	Up to Blackrock	+12	2,500	800

⛏️

Iron stops teaching at 75. The next four tiers all stop at 85, so upgrading within them buys you charges and nothing else — the cap only moves again at Golden. Only Verite, Valorite and Blackrock will take you all the way to 100.

🌋

Blackrock Ore, Blackwood, Blackfish and Black Leather need 110 effective skill — your own skill plus the bonus of the tool in your hand and any band — and raw skill stops at 100, so on skill alone no Grandmaster ever finds them. Only a Valorite or Blackrock pickaxe, hatchet, pole or skinning knife reaches that far, and its +10 or +12 carries a Grandmaster the rest of the way on its own. Working them afterwards runs the other way: smelting, carving, cooking, scribing and sewing them, and every recipe made from them, ask raw Grandmaster skill (100), and a tool's bonus only improves your odds there — it never opens the door.

Which tool serves which skill

Every one of these is a Tinkering recipe, and every skill listed refuses to start without its tool made active.

Tool	Skill it serves	Ingots	Boards
Pickaxe	Mining	5	4
Hatchet	Lumberjacking	3	4
Fishing Pole	Fishing	1	8
Skinning Knife	Camping	2	—
Blacksmith Hammer	Blacksmithing	4	2
Carpenter's Saw	Carpentry	3	2
Tinker's Tools	Tinkering	3	—
Mortar and Pestle	Alchemy	1	—
Tailor's Kit	Tailoring	2	—
Writer's Quill	Inscription	1	1

If you have nothing at all

The Provisioner gives away: Pickaxe, Hatchet, Carpenter's Saw, Tinker's Tools
How often: One of each every 60 minutes
They last: 35 uses, whichever tool it is
They behave as: An Iron tool exactly — same 75 cap, same reach, no penalty

🔨

A worn tool can be DISMANTLED from its right-click menu for part of its own materials back — half its original cost at full durability, tapering to nothing as it nears its last use. Dismantling a nearly-broken tool returns nothing, so do it early or not at all. "Dismantle All" does the same to every copy of that tool in your pack, one per second.

♻️

The same menu also RECYCLES the things a tool makes. "Recycle" arms a cursor and melts the one backpack item you click; "Recycle All" sweeps every eligible item that tool's skill made, one per second. Either way you get back 30% of what it cost to craft, rounded to the nearest whole unit — so anything built from a single unit is worth nothing back. It costs the tool no charges at all. Offered by the 4 crafting tools whose skills make gear: the Blacksmith Hammer, Carpenter's Saw, Tinker's Tools and Tailor's Kit.

🛡️

A Recycle All sweep deliberately leaves things alone: anything equipped, anything magical or not yet identified, anything you have Locked, any tool currently set active, and Tinker's Tools themselves — which would otherwise be a Tinkering sweep melting down the one item you need in hand to make any tool at all. Targeting a single item with the cursor overrides the magic and active-tool guards, because picking that exact icon out is the confirmation a sweep cannot ask for.

The skills this decides

Mining Lumberjacking Fishing Camping Blacksmithing Carpentry Tinkering Alchemy Tailoring Inscription