ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, for those who have the new expansion and unlocked certain requirements, you can now find tinker escorts. Put aside for a moment that the actual talents you can get from them seem pretty dang rad, what classes would make the best use of learning the two tinker trees? As I understand it, recipes and schematics and whatnot are far, far more rare in the standard campaign, which would I assume narrow down a lot of usefulness.

You need to spend a category point to learn the tinkering trees so ideally tinkering would suit any class that only has a few good trees to unlock and isn't already extremely generic heavy. Also tinkering greatly favours weapon focused classes over casters, so they would get more benefit out of it. So Berserkers, Bulwarks, Skirmishers, Archers, Stone Wardens, Cursed and Doomed all stand out as having something to gain from taking tinkering and being able to work it into their builds without too much sacrifice.

The more interesting question is how effective tinkering is in the main campaign. Will enough recipes drop? Where would you get the rare ingredients for the unique recipes? For instance Steam Powered Armour requires creature drops from bosses in a particular zone in the Embers campaign. Is it even possible to make that armour in the main campaign?

Okay, some details!

1)Talent 5/Capstone recipes are not available (Looking at you steam powered armor). They won't drop, and neither will their ingredients. Unstoppable Force is not a capstone though, and is an exception that actually cares about 5th level talent. In general, a spend of more than 3 on a tinker talent gets you nothing in maj'eyal and is a waste of generics.
2)Just unlocking it does allow equipping tinkers, if you want to send them across the vault.
3)Once you have it, recipes and tinker stuff will drop super commonly. There is generally no trouble getting a lot of recipes. This does include things like Injections, Steam Generators, and Steam Powered Gauntlets.

What is more trouble is getting ingredients. If you don't swap back and forth regularly with the two, you can end up with either having plenty of energy or plenty of ingredients...

But you also don't need that many ingredients either. Since you can't build capstone, just a handful of voratun (even one screen worth) can be enough to build Tier 5 tinkers for all your slots.

Given that Tier 5 tinkers are often basically 2 Tier 5 egos, this generally seems a lot cheaper and better than Stone Alchemy for buffing equipment, though less rewarding in terms of additional gold.

Basically, any build in which you might stick Stone Alchemy into in order to buff gear, this is almost certainly the better option.

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ToME Tips - auto-generated spoilers for ToME. - someone else made. I find super awesome, so spreading as well.

The classes that can use them well are ones that don't need to unlock more than one category, since it's not likely that they're worth the generic points and category point. These classes are Berserker, Bulwark, Arcane Blade, Alchemist, non-Ogre Sun Paladin, Anorithil, Demonologist, Cursed, Doomed and Solipsist. Debatable classes are Rogue, Shadowblade, Necromancer, Summoner, Oozemancer, Stone Warden, Corruptor, Doombringer

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My wiki page, which contains a guide and resource compilation and class tier list.

Someone with a Tinker escort probably doesn't need more than three or four inscription slots. Two high-speed medical injectors are more inscription power than most classes need.