Is there any point collecting crafting equipment if the skills aren't chosen at the beginning of the game? Is it possible to learn crafting skills later in the game?
There's tinkerer goggles that can get you a point in tinkering. And I think maybe an Anvil of Krong can enchant an item to give you a boost to one of the others. Personally, the ability to make arrows was quite useful through a good chunk of the game for me. And that was without taking tinkering.
I don't think there are any recipes requiring a Tinkering of 6, which means that wearing the goggles with Tinkerer level 5 is kinda useless.
Aqua Regia + Empty Flask=Acid Flask was pretty good. That is, if you happen upon them. Diggle Egg x4=Deep Omelet is an awesome reason to have an ingot press around, as Eggs are pretty common early on. As for Brass Mechanism, Pressure Plate, etc, trash 'em. Traps are WAY too complicated, especially when a high-level Tinkerer can just pick them up off the floor for free. I think most traps (like Blade Trap) should have no more than 2 components, if that, since they do almost no damage.
I think the traps you pick up should do pitiful damage after all most are dwarven and shoddy. Dredmor always outsources to the cheapest mass production driven dwarven sweat shops he can find. It takes a lot of Zorkmids to furnish a dungeon you know. I suspect he is a quantity over quality kind of dude. However if you craft them yourself they should do more damage, I mean you do know how to do it better than those inferior dwarves. Would make it more fun to play a "Trapper" and make it worthwhile to craft them.
Personally I think the tinkering skill should directly influence the damage of traps and bombs. Currently the only trap worth ever using beyond DL1 is the Acidic Ryizome trap (That's spelt wrong but I'm at work and can't look up the correct spelling) which is actually really useful against monster zoos. Every other trap is completely worthless against anything tougher than diggles. Makeshift bombs, iron bombs, frag grenades and hand grenades are similarly useless against anything but the weakest enemies. I threw a 10 stack of iron bombs at a group of enemies on DL3 and killed two of them. In fact, all of the bombs currently available are uselessly weak. The brimstone and poison bottles are extremely effective, however.
Um, don't know about you, but toxic gas traps and acid traps tear through monster zoos on any dungeon floor up to 6 for me. Mind you, that's usually ones I pick up off the floor, but Acidic Rhyzome or whatever is hardly the only useful trap. Same thing with acid bottle bolts and poison bottle bolts. Those and the squid/mass destruction are the only bolts you need to tear through a monster zoo. Yeah, the bombs are weak. The brimstone is amazing though.
