I have to ask this because I'm super-frustrated this morning with skill gains on one of my tinkers: Have skill gains been adjusted to happen more slowly now if you don't use the Token of Skill Alacrity or some other method of accelerating skill gains?
Are skill gains slowed down if you use the "Make Max" option on the crafting gump? Would I be better off clicking over and over again and destroying yet another mouse in the process?
I doubt they've made any changes to skill gain that would require you to use an alacrity. There have always been "dry-spells" as it were where you seem to hit a wall and it takes forever to get a gain.
Personally I usually use a scroll of transcendence to push past that wall and it tends to pick up again for me, but if you keep going, eventually you should get a gain.
Also, gains do tend slow down the higher your skill level and closer you are to the cap.
What is your skill at and what are you making? Have you hit the 720 total skill cap and if so do you have skills you don't want turned down so you have points to gain?
She's at 667.4 total skill and has multiple skills turned down to lose. This isn't the first time I've trained a tinker, as I have one on every shard. I'm just irritated with the slow skill gains. Finally got her to 90 tinkering this morning so she could make another lockpicking practice box for the treasure hunter character to use. She's been making gargoyle earrings for gains in both tinkering and arms lore. After the gains from those peter out, she'll do gargoyle necklaces to keep gaining in both tinkering and arms lore. And if arms lore finishes before tinkering, she'll do regular rings, heating stands, spyglasses, and scales depending on how bored I get with making any one particular thing and also casting spells on herself to gain in magery. It really depends on when I get sick of the slow gains and give up. And also on what she can find around the house to organize, sort, or otherwise mess with while the tinkering goes on. At least it's not blacksmithing where she has to stand in front of a forge, although that's still on the list too.
Tinkering is lame. It took me half a day to get from 99.7 to 100 making rings.
Use a soulstone or soulstone frag to drop all the skills you have pointing down.