Guides:Tinkering

From Auto Assault Wiki

The following thanks to HawkSteel of the Auto Assault team

Let’s say you have a Masters Degree in Blowing Stuff Up. You don’t have much of an interest in recipes, building your crafting disciplines, spending time gathering components and experimenting with weirdo commodities in the hope that you can make a bigger, badder gun. We get it. Your destiny is to cruise the wastelands, raining destruction on your enemies – and leaving all the crafting and refining stuff to the city dwellers. You use whatever is useful what your enemies leave in your wake, and sell the rest.

Thankfully however that doesn’t mean you can’t still mess around with your items and make them even more powerful. As you’ve been checking out how nice and shiny your new flamethrower is in your inventory, you might have seen one or more red dots next to its icon in your display. If you check out the description, you’ll see a line that says, for example: Gadget Slots: 1 (1 Locked) and (Requires Tinkering Kit 1+). This means that you can spiff up this item with a Gadget.

Gadgets are one of those many small inventory items you can pick up as loot in the Central Wastelands, and are different than components, commodities or consumables. They are identified by what type of item they are for (split up into weapon gadgets, armor gadgets, power plants, and so on) and what special ability they will add. Some may be limited by race, class and/or character level. As long as you meet these criteria, you can add them to the item in question.

Except for the fact that in many cases the Gadget slots are Locked. So, naturally, you will need to Unlock each one. You do this through the mystical process called Tinkering. Before you hardcore warriors go off screaming into the night, this is a fairly simple procedure that doesn’t require a lot of thought or advance planning. You’ll need to acquire a Tinkering Kit, one specific to the item you wish to unlock. You can typically find the lower level Tinkering Kits at vendors in towns and occasionally as loot in the wastelands.

To use it, open your inventory, right-click on the Tinkering Kit, then click on the item with the Gadget slot you want unlocked. You’ll get a confirmation window, telling you there is a certain percentage chance of success. Failure can result in (typically) the loss of the kit or (less typically) the destruction of the item. Remember, failure is an option!

Should you be successful the color of the dot will change from red to blank and the description will change to (1 Open) instead of (1 Locked). That’s Tinkering. Easy.

Remember, items can have multiple Gadget Slots. For each additional slot, you’ll need a Tinkering Kit of equivalent level. For instance, for the second Gadget Slot, you’ll need a Tinkering Kit II. If there is a third slot, you’ll need a Kit III.

Now you can add your Gadget to the item with the Open slot. Right-click on the Gadget, then left-click on the item. If the process is successful, you will now see the Gadget added to the item and the abilities of the item permanently increased. Note that this procedure may actually increase the base level requirement of the item.

That’s the basics of Gadgets and Tinkering. Now you can make your weapons, armor and chassis even more powerful than ever before.