UO Tinkering Skill Guide

Tinkering is Ultima Online's precision-crafting skill, using a set of tinker's tools to build small mechanical and household items from ingots, wood and gems. Its output is unusually varied: utensils and tools, clock and sextant assemblies, jewelry, and the trap and part pieces used by other systems. Tinkers also craft the tools that most other crafters depend on, which makes the skill a quiet backbone of the crafting economy.

Beyond everyday goods, tinkering reaches into more advanced content: gem-set magic jewelry, faction trap devices, and the mechanical golem pet, which is built with the tinker skill even though it does not appear on the standard tinker's tool menu.

Craft progressively harder items. Jewelry gives good gains mid/high. Recycle failures where possible.

Exceptional tinkered items gain the usual quality benefits and, where permitted, the maker's name. As with the other trades, each recipe lists whether it can be signed, keeps its material color, or needs a recipe. Useful reminders:

• Maker's Mark: exceptional items that allow it can be stamped with the crafter's name.
• Retains Color: applicable pieces keep the color of the ingots used.
• Requires Recipe: several magic-jewelry and specialty items require a learned recipe.
• Skill Required: the listed value is the minimum to attempt, not a promise of success.
• The golem, the game's original mechanical pet, uses tinkering but is not on the tool menu and is made separately.
• A tinkering talisman adds to effective skill and exceptional chance; plug its values into the calculator to see adjusted odds.

Because cheap utensils and parts start at zero skill and cost only a handful of ingots, tinkering is one of the fastest and most affordable trades to raise. The table below outlines the menu's categories and the skill span of each.

These near-zero-skill items are the classic, ingot-cheap way to begin tinkering: