"I tell you, she's getting too old for this! We have to protect her from herself!"

"Nonsense. Sure, she's been out and about a bit less, but if anyone deserves some downtime, it is her."

"I'm worried something more is wrong. What if the next thing to go 'boom' is her heart?!"

"Even if you are right, what can we do about it? If we try to coddle her, she'll get her back up and push herself even more just to prove we're wrong!"

"It will take a bit of manipulating, but here's what we'll do ..."

~~~~~~~~~~

"Dagnabbit! Ye'd think after all these years that I could learn tae say "NO!" a bit better! It'll be hard tae fit in any daylight time frae Tinkerfest festivities as this rate!"

Niami DenMother wadded up a leftover scrap of fabric and threw it at the wicker basket that held scraps that were too small for clothing, but that might still be useful for something -- some day. The scrap fell just short of the mark, reminding her of how her Tinkerfest plans were going to fall short thanks to several friends.

It had started with Gnormajean asking Niami to cover the shop for a day. After all, some of Gnorma's family only showed up in town during Tinkerfest, and while Gnorma had a good staff, she still wanted someone to supervise each day, "just in case". Scarletwing, Gnorma's usual replacement, had some unspecified commitment, and not only couldn't cover at the shop, but also needed Niami's help on another day for party catering prep. Then Naitani needed help with some clothing alterations for a wedding party that she was outfitting. Then Pinking asked for help, and so on. Between all her friends, they'd managed to book in requests for all but a few daylight hours during the yearly Tinkerfest festivities.

"Bah! I'd been making such guid progress on getting them tae depend on me less, an' now this!" Mum tucked a loose strand of grey-streaked red hair behind her ear while she grumbled at Audrey, one of her carnivorous plants.

Audrey, once it had determined that none of the stuff being thrown around were food scraps fit for a hungry plant, wisely stayed out of Mum's way and simply quivered a leaf or two during lulls in Mum's ranting. It had learned years ago that this sort of response often left Mum feeling apologetic, which led to food. Food was good.

Mum had been pushing her friends rely on her less for months. It wasn't so much that she was getting old (which she was), or that she was slowing down (which she would deny, despite any grain of truth in it), but that she wanted more time for herself. Time to relax, to breathe, to sleep in now and then. That wasn't too much to ask, was it?

Her plan had been going fairly well until recently, then they all turned needy at once. Other than the one day of shop supervision, though, it was all stuff that their apprentices "should" be able to d- ... Wait, why weren't the apprentices doing some of this "emergency" work?

Her eyes narrowed in thought. She remembered overhearing a couple apprentices complaining about taking "shifts" to be on-duty in case something came up during the Tinkerfest event, but that they were likely going to end up doing boring busy work, since the grandmasters were all going to be busy with the celebration.

She gathered up the alterations that she had been working on for Pinking, then spotted Audrey quivering in a corner. "Och! I did nae mean tae growl at ye, puir thing. Ye know I'd ne'er hurt ye!" A rustle of leaves was her only response, and she pulled a large bone out of the icebox before she left and tossed it to the plant in apology.

On her way to the crafting hall, she puzzled over the fact that her friends, who KNEW how much she adored exploding defective clockworks during this event, seemed to be giving her make-work to keep her from indulging in her passion. It just didn't make sense, unless they'd gotten involved in the betting pool or something. Ah well, she'd have to corner one of them to get a straight answer, and they'd been making themselves extremely scarce ever since cajoling, begging, etc. for help from her.

Mum dragged the back of her hand over her forehead, swiping at the dripping sweat as she finished walking through Qeynos and entered the relative coolness of the crafting hall. The recent heatwave showed no signs of breaking and she was sure it was sweltering in the Steamfont Mountains as well. Perhaps she needed to revise her plans a bit ...

She brought her mind back to the current situation as her entrance caused a hurried scramble from the three apprentices that were on-duty at the time. The card house that they'd been building crashed to the tabletop as they rushed to pick up brooms and dust rags.

"Och. Th' floor is already clean enough, an' there's no use trying tae get rid o' every last speck o' sawdust from around th' woodworking table. I've got summat better frae ye tae work on."

And work they did. With their help, she finished the day's project in record time, and made arrangements to have the apprentices that were scheduled for tomorrow be ready for some cooking assistance.

Then, with most of the afternoon still left, she went back to bed for a long nap, after ensuring that the apprentices knew that she was tired and didn't want to be disturbed.

She finally arrived at Gnomeland Security just as dusk was falling on the third day of the Tinkerfest festivities.

Mad Mattie's spiky hair was sticking up even more than usual, as if she'd been trying to pull it out by the roots as she rushed up to Niami. Her words came out in a rushed babble: "Mum! Thank goodness you're here! I swear the others have been intentionally making the darn things go haywire in even greater numbers than past years. When I complained, they brushed me off, saying you'd take care of them. And then you didn't show, and the darn clockworks started multiplying, and it is chaos! Chaos, I tell you!"

"Och. Nae worries, lass. I'll take care o' them."

"But, it is getting dark, and ...

"Aye, so it is. But th' clockworks hae all those sparkly lights on 'em, an' it is MUCH cooler wi' th' sun nae beating down on us, eh? Jus' think o' how pretty those explosions will be when they light up the night!" Mum's grin was almost feral. She was well-rested thanks to her nap, it was finally a tolerable temperature out, and getting cooler by the minute, and she was ready to make up for lost time.

And make up for lost time she did. While her friends may have tried to keep her from overexerting herself, all they had managed to do was frustrate her, and make her even more ready to explode things. Many, many things.

A small crowd, whispering excitedly, gathered on a bluff overlooking the area that was infested with haywire clockworks. With her history of memorable explosive Tinkerfest binges there had been some pretty active betting in the past few weeks, followed by much panic from the bettors when she didn't even show up on the first two days.

Oh the joy, oh the glee, oh the maniacal laughter from Mum as she ran around in the darkened field. "BOOM!" "Got ye, an' ... BOOM!" "Get back here, ye ... BOOM!" "BOOM!" She scampered around for hours, finally running out of steam at about 2 in the morning.

"I'll be back in th' evening again, Mad Mattie. I need a bit o' sleep afore I chase some apprentices aboot an' then another nap afore I come back."

Bettors celebrated or mourned, depending on the bets they had made regarding Mum and the clockworks she loved to blow up. Gnomish bookies sleepily went back to trying to scientifically recalculate odds for the rest of the event, plotting kill ratio curves, daily heat indices, and many other factors only of interest to gnomish statisticians.

Mum simply slept the sleep of the exhausted.

By the time she shambled into the crafting hall in the morning to delegate and supervise the projects that her friends had piled upon her, those same friends had heard of her night antics.

~~~~~~~~~~

"But, but ... instead of making her slow down and cut back on her Tinkerfest load, she's burning the candle at both ends and overdoing it even MORE!"

"Well, it IS Mum, after all, and trying to steer her when she wants to do something doesn't always work as well as we'd like. We'd best call off some of those "emergencies" that conflicted with our "prior plans" though."

"Definitely! Those wedding alterations won't be needed for another 2 weeks, and at the rate the bride is stress-eating, we'll have to alter any alterations done now anyway!"

"I still worry about her in this heat and all ..."

"Pffft. She still seems able to run rings around us. Hopefully, though, she'll stick to running around in the evening until the heat wave is over. If not, well, there are healers on-call at Gnomeland Security, and we'll just have to make sure they keep an eye out for her."

~~~~~~~~~~

Mum didn't know how much worry she'd caused her friends with her attempts to delegate and to say "No" more often in the past few months. All she knew (and all she cared about while Tinkerfest was running) was that her friends pulled most of the emergency requests for help off her plate, and dropped them on the bored apprentices again, where they had belonged in the first place.

As soon as they told her, she shook her head at the neon pink frog standing beside her. "Pinking, lass, ye gals have tae stop mollycoddling those apprentices an' stop leaning on me sae much. I need some time off as well, ye know!"

Mumbling about mollycoddling and seemingly helpless friends, Mum headed back home to sleep through the worst of the day's heat. She had clockworks to blow up as soon as it cooled down.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Well, at least she's waiting until it is cooler to run around like a halfling a third of her age...."

"I swear, no more trying to manipulate her for her own good. We'll just tell her straight out the next time we are worried about her overdoing it."

Disbelieving stares met this pronouncement from Scarletwing, and the aerakyn lady's wings drooped after she exhaled her breath in a huff. "Um, maybe we can delegate one of the apprentices to tell her, when we're far, far, away?"

All the women rolled their eyes and started laughing.

Once they settled down, however, Gnormajean spoke up, her brown eyes serious behind her wire-rimmed glasses. "Well, we'd better figure out a better way to slow her down soon, because we all know what is coming next ..."

Groans of dismay came from the others. The amount chaos that was Mum blowing up clockworks was only eclipsed by one thing ... Mum high on candy corn.

If you are new to this yearly live event, there's a section at the bottom of this page to give you the highlights that you'll want to know.

Do you like things that go "Click!" "Whirr!" "Ping!" or, most importantly, "BOOM!!?" If so, Tinkerfest might be for you! This annual event celebrates all things gnomish, especially if those things go boom in some spectacular manner. This EQ2 event will run from July 19, 2018 through August 2, 2018.

What's New?

Last year added a rather intense and massive public quest to the Tinkerfest lineup, so it makes sense to have a relatively mellow Tinkerfest this year. There are new items to craft and to purchase, but no new quests and achievements. That having been said, non-TLE servers will see ten returning quests (including the above-mentioned massive public quest), two returning collections, aether races in four locations and six returning achievements. The two time-locked servers have the following additional restrictions on the event: Stormhold has the entire event EXCEPT Aether races (Great Divide, Butcherblock, Lavastorm, Tenebrous Tangle), "The Reticent Tinkerer", and "Hack 'n Slash" (public quest). Fallen Gate will only receive a special event merchant.

New Crafted

Myron in Gnomeland Security is selling the new Tinkerfest Blueprints 10.0. which gives you recipes for the following items:

Great Gear Wall Icon	Grime-Covered Axle Cogs	Grime-Covered Spindle Gears
Innovator's Engine Blox (animated)	Intricate Vertical Gold Gear	Mad Cog Rotgut
Tall Auric Magitronic Window Pane (animated)	Tall Cyanic Magitronic Window Pane (animated)	Tinkerer's Anvil
Tinkerer's Cooking Utensils	Tinkershop Scrap Bin	Tinkershop Scrap Bucket
Wide Auric Magitronic Window Pane (animated)	Wide Cyanic Magitronic Window Pane (animated)	Arched Doorfame of Corrugated Wood
Horizontal Window Frame in Tall Divider of Corrugated Wood	Rectangular Doorfame of Corrugated Wood	Square Window Frame in Narrow Divider of Corrugated Wood
Square Window Frame in Tall Divider of Corrugated Wood	Tall Window Frame in Narrow Divider of Corrugated Wood	Tall Window Frame in Tall Divider of Corrugated Wood
Vertical Window Frame in Tall Divider of Corrugated Wood

New Buyables

Myron in Gnomeland Security also sells the following items. (Note that he also sells the new items that you can craft, for 2 shiny tinkerfest cogs each, so it is good to make note of the following buy-only items.) Meanwhile, Tarly, who stands near him, has past recipe books and past buyables as her offerings.

Double-Headed Rockpicker (Active) 5 cogs	Factory Sweeper Drone Heirloom housepet, 1 cog	Great Gear Shrine 10 cogs
Mechanamagical Coil Heirloom fluff pet, 15 cogs	Mechanamagical Menace Plushie 8 cogs	Petamorph Wand: Factory Scanner Drone (unlimited charges, 2 hour duration) 4 cogs
Spiked Carbonite Roller (Active) 5 cogs	Whizbang Plate Door (front view) 30 cogs (functional door)	Whizbang Plate Door (back view)

Tinkerer's Bulkhorn Runner Ground mount - 130 speed, 300 cogs

And yes, he really DOES have a plug for a tail. How adorable is that? :D

Quest Trackers?

As mentioned above, we have a goodly number of quests/achievements/collections for this event. If you need a spreadsheet to track which alts have done what, here are Tinkerfest quest tracker for 2018 in XLS form, and there is also a PDF version. (Trackers are courtesy of Casdoe from Maj'Dul. Thanks again!)

Videos?

Need a closer look at those items and how they place, scale, etc.? Ocarinah to the rescue once again! She has put together a full version of her item preview and a short version depending on what depth of detail you desire. However, please note that several items had max/min sizing changed, and a couple became wall-placed instead of floor placed after this was written.

Late-Breaking Changes

So, what were those changes that happened after the video walk-through? Kaitheel took our feedback about things sinking into the ground, etc and had the following changes put in:

• Factory Sweeper Drone - Housepet now has a "stay" option, but the "attack" option had been removed. (That model doesn't have proper animation for attack due to the garbage in the tray, blocking the arm.)
• Grime-Covered Spindle Gears - House item no longer is placed sunken in the ground.
• Grime-Covered Axle Cogs – House item no longer is placed sunken in the ground.
• Spiked Carbonite Roller (Active) – House item no longer is placed sunken in the ground.
• Double-Headed Rockpicker (Active) – House item is now a wall placed item.
• Intricate Vertical Gold Gear – House item is now a wall placed item.
• Coiled Fligger Prototype - Can now be scaled even smaller. )
• Ornate Gold Gear - Can now be scaled even smaller.
• Intricate Vertical Gold Gear - Can now be scaled even smaller.

Are You New?

Is this your first time at this event? Or is your memory fuzzy enough that you need a refresher?

• Gnomeland Security in the Steamfont Mountains is the main hub for this event, with portals from all "celebration" areas sending you back to the main hub in Gnomeland. (Celebrating gnomes, surrounded by harvestable cogs and purple shinies, can be found in all home cities as well as the docks of Thurgadin, the gnome area in Solusek's Eye, and Dropship Landing in the Moors)
• The shiny tinkerfest cogs, used for shopping and for crafting, are harvestable "!" items in all celebration areas. They can also be brought back by an upgraded pack pony (100 per 2-hour run).
• The second purple shiny collection (added in 2016) requires that you have completed (and handed in) the first purple shiny collection. Once you have done so, half of the collection can then be found in the Gnomeland Security area; the other half of the collection will be found in Qeynos and Freeport in the celebration areas.
• You will need to know the gnomish language (from a language trainer if you're not a gnome) in order to obtain some of the quests.
• Vendor Tarly in Gnomeland Security will sell all of the past Tinkerfest recipes for you while Myron will sell the current year's recipes. You will need some shiny tinkerfest cogs before you can buy the books, so scrounge up a few before you go shopping.
• The quest tracker mentioned in a section above will be a godsend if you are trying to run more than one alt through the event. Quest details for all the quests can be found on the wiki's Tinkerfest article.