Engineering

The toolmaker's monopoly

The craft is worked at the toolworks in the southwest corner of Eastbrook Square, home of Tinker Gizzel, Master of the Toolworks. Tiers 1 through 3 of every tool line are ordinary vendor stock; every rung above that comes off an engineer's bench, or out of the Drowned Litany's delve counter for Delve Marks behind its clears gates, and never out of any till for coin. The land lines stop at tier 5; the rod line climbs one further, to the tier 6 Clockreel.

On the ring it sits with the trial-and-error trades, next to Alchemy and Armorcrafting, giving it two pair identities: the Bombardier (Engineering and Alchemy, taken up before Gizzel himself) and the Gearwright (Armorcrafting and Engineering, named but not yet swearable). One warning still matters here: every rung of the tool ladder itself sits above the rare-tier ceiling that hobbies and undeclared crafters work under, so ladder work only moves the skill for a crafter whose majors include Engineering, which today means the Bombardier. The bench is no longer closed to everyone else, though: Gizzel now starts anyone at skill 0 with the Cogwheel Blank and the Bronze Hoe, both free of any fee, and teaches the Copperlens Ocular at 25 for the ordinary tier fee, so an unattuned or hobby engineer can raise the skill through its early rungs; a craft left dormant behind another identity still gains only from the two skill-0 lessons. Anyone can still build the land tools; an unattuned crafter just learns nothing from doing those, and two of the three rod recipes ask for Gizzel's teaching besides, the tier 6 rung coming off a schematic instead.

Reagents and prior tools

Every land tool recipe consumes the tool one tier below it plus a FINE material, and that pairing is the whole land ladder: four Fine Iron Ore and a Skysilver Mining Pick become the Osmium Mining Pick, then two Glyphsteel Bars, two Fine Osmium Ore and that osmium pick become the Glyphsteel Mining Pick. The axe and sickle lines mirror the fine-plus-prior-tool shape with Fine Ashwood and Fine Highpine Logs, Fine Goldleaf and Fine Sunpetal Herbs, though their tier 5 rungs ask no Glyphsteel Bars: the pick is the one line that gets dearer at the top. The three rod recipes break the pattern on purpose: the Stormreel takes four Sunglint Koi and a Silverstream rod, the Tidewrought two Koi, eight Raw Slatefin Carp and that Stormreel, and the Clockreel two Koi, ten Raw Hollowgill Sturgeon and that Tidewrought, so the top of the angler's ladder is paid for on the water rather than at a vein.

A fine material is not sold anywhere and does not drop from an ordinary harvest: you get it by working one of a zone's full-grade veins with a tool ranked above the material itself, which in practice means the tool one rung below the one you are trying to build (the easier veins a zone keeps for travellers yield the plain material whatever you swing). That is deliberate. On the craft route, a tier 5 tool comes from actually swinging the tier 4 one, not from a shopping trip; the Delve Marks counter is the one way around it. The single exception is the Glyphsteel Bar, refined and vendor-only, 1 silver 60 copper a bar from Quartermaster Bree in Highwatch or from Gizzel's own counter, so the Glyphsteel Mining Pick alone carries a fixed coin floor built into its cost.

The tool ladder

Every rung of the tool ladder is bound to the toolworks station (the crafted hoes the toolmaker also teaches have their own note on the gathering page, and his two starter lessons are the pair named above). The six land-tool recipes are known automatically, no trainer fee ever: the tier 4 pick, axe, and sickle at skill 75, and the tier 5 versions at skill 125, the cap tier itself. Skill requirements never gate a craft here, they only shape skill gain, so you can build a tier 5 tool the day you hold its reagents and its tier 4 predecessor. Two of the three crafted rods are the taught exception: Gizzel teaches the Stormreel at skill 75 for 4 gold and the Tidewrought at skill 125 for 16 gold, each the moment your tier in the craft reaches its own. The tier 6 Clockreel is the third, and no trainer quotes it a fee at all: its schematic sits on the Heroic Quartermaster's counter and teaches the recipe outright.

Every finished tool is rare or epic quality and comes out signed, so your name rides the zones on other players' toolbelts. Engineering also holds up half of one combination recipe: the Elixir of the Bear, brewed by an attuned Bombardier with both Engineering and Alchemy at 25.

How crafting works

Open the crafting window (default key T) and every recipe you know is listed with what it needs and what you have on hand. Station-bound recipes ask you to stand within 20 yards of the right station in town, field recipes craft anywhere, and Enchanting's breaking and enchanting need no station at all (only its three trainer recipes are station work, at the toolworks). There is no failure roll: a craft with the materials in hand always succeeds.

Two small frictions keep the economy honest. Every successful craft pays a fee of 2 copper per point of the item's stat budget, and every craft-family action takes real cast time (field crafts near two seconds, harder ladder crafts longer, and disenchant, enchant, salvage, and tool recharge each about a second and a half). Materials, the gold fee, stations, and skill ceilings do the rest; nothing scolds you for working too quickly.

Recipes

Every recipe of the craft: its exact skill requirement and materials, where it is learned and for what fee, and the three skill values where its gain fades to half, a quarter, and nothing.

Skill gain

Every recipe in the window wears its gain state in the classic colors: orange means full gain, yellow half, green a quarter, gray nothing. The boundaries are exact, every 25 skill is a tier, and a recipe fades one color for each tier it falls below yours.

Because gains are deterministic (a full-gain craft always moves you exactly one point), you can plan a whole climb from the list: work a rung while it is orange, train the next rung as it turns yellow, and never spend materials on a gray craft expecting progress. At the cap of 125 the number stops, but the recipes, the masterwork chance, and the profits keep working.

Masterworks

Every successful craft is exactly what the recipe promises, and sometimes a little more: a masterwork finishes the same piece one quality tier finer, with the bonus stats baked in at craft time. It is add-only, never a downgrade. Ordinary crafting follows its existing gear ladder; the raid-funded Crucible collections are a separate alternative at the current raid tier.

The apex Masterwrought crafts are the one exception, and they pay the same proc a different way. An apex piece already sits at the top of its ladder, so there is no finer tier to finish it in; a masterwork there hands the piece over one rank into Perfecting instead, a free first rank on the four-rank walk the Professions page describes. Nothing is baked into the stats, and the chance and its gates are the ones below.

The chance is published, not mystical: 3% base, plus 1% per tier your skill sits above the recipe, plus 2% when any signed reagent goes in, plus 3% once you are specialized, with higher-tier materials adding 1 to 2% more, all capped at 15%. Only a piece with real stats can improve, so statless commons, tools, and consumables never proc; a dormant craft never produces one, and a hobby craft cannot masterwork past its rare ceiling.

Fine work carries its maker. Rare and better outputs are signed, every copy (Crafted by; gathered materials carry Gathered by), a masterwork is always signed whatever its quality. A signature is provenance, not a lock: signed goods trade, mail, and list on the World Market freely.

Training

Trainer recipes come from the resident masters, taught at their stations. The rule is one line: a master teaches a recipe once your tier in the craft has reached the recipe's own tier, and nothing else gates it, not your level, not your archetype. The gear and consumable ladders run their rungs at skill 0, 25, and 50, and every craft adds one 75-rung intermediate above them, taught at its station (Enchanting's is the Lucent Reagent, beside its two charm recipes on the 25 rung); Engineering's two rod lessons continue its ladder at 75 and 125, so a fresh rung opens as your tiers climb.

Fees are one-time and flat by rung: the starting rung is free, the skill 25 rung costs 25s a recipe, the skill 50 rung 1g 0s, and the 75 and 125 rungs above them carry their own fees, listed beside each recipe in the table. You must stand at the master's actual station to train, and a mobile station never counts. The common field recipes and the six crafted land-tool recipes need no training at all; every character knows them from the start.

Specialization

At skill 75 this craft specializes you, no quest needed: discountable recipe materials cost 20% less from then on, and specialization adds its own bump to the masterwork chance. Raid-core costs are never discounted.

Specialists also learn to take the workshop with them: a specialized crafter can set up a mobile station in the field for ten minutes at a time, so station-bound recipes can be worked at the mine mouth instead of back in town. Its limits are deliberate: it never counts for training with a master or for unbinding a commissioned piece, and it expires on its timer whether or not you used it.

An engineer's route to 125

Tools carry no combat stats, so they never roll masterworks; that proc belongs to stat-bearing gear. Specialization still lands at skill 75: 20 percent fewer materials per craft, and a temporary field toolworks that turns any gathering trip into a workshop. The gain math barely fades here: the skill 75 recipes pay full gain until 100 and half after, and the skill 125 recipes pay full gain all the way to the cap, so the real constraint is reagents and coin, never gray recipes.

Pick your pair early, because the tool ladder does not move without it: take the Bombardier attunement from Tinker Gizzel. Then feed the ladder: level Mining, Logging, or Herbalism yourself or befriend gatherers, buy the tier 3 tools from vendors, and treat Gizzel's work order (eight Ironbark Logs for 16 copper, repeatable every 30 minutes) as walking-around money.

Engineering is a low-volume prestige trade, roughly one skill point per finished tool, so treat every craft as stock for sale. The pitch to your customers writes itself: each tool tier above a node's own trims 0.4 seconds off the 2.5 second harvest cast (down to a 1.5 second floor), so a tier 5 tool is a speed upgrade on every node in the world, and only you can make one. The Book of Deeds marks Cogs and Sprockets at skill 50 and Grandmaster Engineering at 125.