The art of Tinkering is a expansive one indeed. Players brand new to Ultima Online might not want to pick Tinkering for a crafting skill. If you’re more familiar with the game and looking for a crafting skill with lots of variety, this is the one for you.

Most tools needed in any craft can be found here. It is the tinkers all important job to supply the other crafters with the tools for their trades. Any crafter might want to take just a little bit of skill in Tinkering for this very reason. The wonderful yet underused toolkits can also be found here. Toolkits are a great way to have all the tools you need, without carrying each and every one of them.

Many, more complicated items will require parts to craft them. Parts includes things like springs, hinges, and gears. Any decent tinker will have a bag full of these around at all times.

In here you’ll find the many different blades needed to craft. The knife being the most important. Always, always have a couple spare knives tucked away somewhere! Very important. Some other blades include throwing knives and drawknife used in Bowcraft.

The name ‘Extras’ is a bit of a understatement. This menu holds most of the important aspects of Tinkering. The following is some information on those aspects.

Tinkers make armor known as scalemail. Scalemail is made from cured hides and scales. Scales can either be gotten from carving certain creatures, or by taking ingots and making scales using the Blacksmithy skill.

The majority of devices one can create are traps and locks. There are others, such as clocks, wrist watches, and sextants.

There are dozens of traps. Poison, spikes, saws, and explosive to name a few. In order to set a trap, you must have the Traps skill. Most traps require quite a bit of materials to make, and they do not stack.

Locks, probably the most important aspect of Tinkering. Everybody needs good locks to keep the thieves away from their stuff. There are 9 different locks, numbered in order as lock 10, lock 20, lock 30, all the way up to lock 90. These numbers indicate the complexity of the lock. The higher the number, the harder the lock is to pick. Most people will want the very best, lock 90, for their doors and containers. If someone orders the lower locks, beware, someone may be investing in their lockpicking skill!

See the Carpentry section for information on how to install a lock.

Jewelry, when properly priced, can be very popular. There are two different kinds of jewelry: metal and beaded. Metal jewelry are made with different ingots gotten from Mining. Beaded jewelry are made from beads which are also gotten from Mining. There are all sorts of jewelry available: crowns, necklaces, bracelets, and rings.

If it weren’t for lighting, we’d all be walking around in the dark, bumping into things. Here, we find such items like wall torches, candleabras, and lamp posts. Any of the candleabras require candles to make, which are created via Alchemy. Wall torches need torches, made with Woodworking. Lamp posts need oil (made with Alchemy) and glass panes (Mining).

Scores of other items are craftable with Tinkering. Several of these are: keys, key rings, books, pots, glasses, some containers, and whips.

The more important material for tinkering would be metal ingots. The common iron ingot will work for most tools, but you may also wish to have a varity of different ingots for jewelry. See the Mining guide for a list of all the available metals and their colors.

After creating your tinker, you’ll notice that you have the tinkers tools in your pack. The very first thing you should do is buy or make at least a couple spare sets of tinkers tools. Since it takes tinkers tools to make tinkers tools, you will be quite helpless should yours break and you only have one set. It is very important that you keep a few spares at all times.

For tinkers to be successful, you will absolutely want to have the Mining skill. Carpentry is also a very good for locksmiths.