Tinker items in classic campaign?

[hackandslashtoface]

You can pick tinker categories as an adventurer and get tinker escorts, but how do you find materials to create stuff?

I just bought the Embers campaign and enjoy adventurer shenanigans a lot. I am at level 10 and still haven't found a steam gun or materials.

I know I should probably play there Ember first to get a better idea, but I'm impatient.

[Coldbringer]

I find the steam weapons such as guns and saws drop with relative regularity from Zigur and Adventurer parties. If you are strong and skilled enough to beat them it's a good way to farm the weapons and materials. You get the herbs and metals from breaking down various loot. The tinker escort will reveal a map location for recipes

[hackandslashtoface]

Thank you for the response Coldbringer.

My initial response was "How can you break down loot into components in the main campaign without the Automated Portable Extractor from the Ember campaign?"

It appears that the class/race unlock addon I'm using is comprehensive. This solves my problems: https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/APE-tweak

[Coldbringer]

Oh I'm sorry I misunderstood your initial question.

Hadn't tried main campaign with an embers class without the unlock addon so I had no idea you couldn't break down items into metals and herbs there. Seems like a massive oversight not including the A.P.E!

[St_ranger_er]

If you play a non ember classes in vanilla campaign, then extractor can be obtained after visiting tinker escort cave and learning tinker categories.

[Snarvid]

To add to that: you can choose which of the game's two options will become your default item destroyer - the Transmutation Chest or the Automated Portable Extractor. APE is the one that gives you tinker materials. Adventurers start with an APE in their inventory and will have recipes drop even before they unlock tinkers, so hold on to them and you can read them all once you unlock tinkers.

If you are planning on doing so you may, btw, want to keep some extra higher tier inscriptions and break them down manually later - IIRC they yield tinker herbs and are fairly light to carry.

[Chronosplit]

I have found Steamguns aplenty as random items on the ground with Tinkers enabled. They're just a tiny bit more rare (which is a good thing actually, most classes can't use them).

What I end up basically doing with transmogrification was keeping the APE as default, and up until unlocking the fortress Farportal I would manually melt down anything that yielded material. The chest was then used for stuff I didn't need anymore. Whenever I transmog gems I switched to the chest. You can put both the APE and chest on your hotbar for easier switching. After that, in the name of laziness I used the APE for everything but gems until I had no need for materials. This will usually happen for a short time before Dreadfell for Tier 3 items (remember to melt Stralite), and 1-3 pride vaults will most likely give you enough Voratun lumps for all of your tinkers. I still had plenty of energy for Farportal runs.