Tinker

Tinker is a technique that appears in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM, and is used to improve certain items. All gnomes obtain the technique at experience level 7.

Description

To use the technique, you must not be blinded and wield an applicable object - see upgrading objects for a list of eligible items. When used, you will become occupied until you either complete the technique (which takes [150-technique level] turns) or you are interrupted; there is no specific cooldown afterward, though you will fail to upgrade the object if you are interrupted. The chances of actually upgrading an object after finishing the technique without interruption are dependent on Luck.

Using the tinker technique does not break any conduct, such as polypileless. Items produced will have the same enchantment and BUC status as the original item.

Strategy

The tinker technique grants gnomes in SLASH'EM and SlashTHEM access to several common ascension kit items while preserving conducts and saving several wishes. Below is a list of common candidates and the items you can tinker with to obtain them:

• The cloak of magic resistance can be obtained by tinkering with an elven cloak or an oilskin cloak, with a ¹⁄₄ chance. Dwarvish and orcish cloaks can always be upgraded to elven or oilskin cloaks.
• An oilskin cloak can be obtained, with a ¹⁄₂ chance, from upgrading any of the following cloaks: magic resistance, protection, displacement, invisiblity, dwarvish, or orcish.
  • Gnomes can safely enchant their oilskin cloak or cloak of magic resistance to +7 by enchanting while it is an elven cloak.
• Gauntlets of dexterity can be obtained with a ¹⁄₂ chance from upgrading leather gloves.
• A bag of holding can be obtained with a ¹⁄₅ chance from upgrading a sack, and the remainder of the time you will get an oilskin sack, which always becomes a bag of holding when upgraded.
• Upgrading a dwarvish iron helm will produce either a helm of brilliance or a helm of telepathy, with an equal probability for each. An orcish helm can always be upgraded to a dwarvish iron helm.
• An ordinary robe can be upgraded into a robe of power with a ¹⁄₂ chance.

All of these upgrades are reversible in that you can "upgrade" the item back to an un-upgraded form. This is useful for the items where the correct result is not guaranteed: as an example, if you upgrade leather gloves and produce gauntlets of swimming rather than gauntlets of dexterity, you can then "upgrade" those gauntlets of swimming back to leather gloves, and try again. In this way, you will only ever need one of the base item.

Ensure that you cannot be interrupted when using the tinker technique, e.g. by a hostile monster coming into view - you will generally want to lock yourself in a small room with a stockpile of food, since even with high Luck many of the above upgrades may require multiple attempts, whether to obtain a specific desired item or to complete a multi-step chain leading to one. An early ring of slow digestion is quite useful to this end if you happen to find one.

Gnomes with an early wish should take this technique into consideration when choosing what to wish for: the ability to 'guarantee' a cloak of magic resistance makes silver dragon scale mail a much better first wish for them.