Engineering Specialization

I can't believe no-one has noticed the biggest advantage of this - it makes levelling engineering easier, cheaper and more useful!

Because the +15 is applied when determining what schematics you can learn (and yes, how effective dragonlings were before they were nerfed), but not when calculating skillups, every schematic gets an extra 15 levels of being orange for gnomes. That means that you hardly ever have to go making things that you don't need just to level your skill; instead you can make useful (or cheap in mats) things instead.

As an example, engineering levelling guides (I'll use this one as an example) recommend making Fel Iron Bolts, Elemental Blasting Powder and Fel Iron Casings until 310, when bolts go grey and they other two go green, then 10 Fel Iron Bombs until 320 (when they turn yellow), then Fel Iron Muskets until 335 (half way through yellow). Now you can probably find something to throw the bombs at, but it's unlikely that you'll have a use for ~20 mediocre guns. From 335-350 they recommend making White Smoke Flares, which is to halfway through green as you're really running out of cheap things you can make. Personally I'd make Adamantite Shell Machines instead as they require only slightly more mats and are much more useful, and you'll end up with about 40 of whichever you make, but we'll humour them.

If you're a gnome, however, each of these schematics gets 15 more levels at orange, so let's just make 12 Fel Iron Bombs (why 12? 'cos it's a multiple of the quantities you make blasting powder in) and their components. The Fel Iron Bolts have 15 orange levels for gnomes, whereas they start yellow for non-gnomes, so those'll get us to about 320, and the rest of the components will get us to 326 or so. The 12 Fel Iron Bombs will bring us to 336+. Then it's White Smoke Flares or Adamantite Shell Machines to 350, when they turn yellow for the first time. The result? In going from 300-350, a gnome can skip making ~20 useless guns, and make at most 15 of whatever they choose between 335 and 350, instead of 40.

Getting to 375 is even better. Where everyone else is complaining bitterly about the cost of mats for the schematics at that level, gnomes can make Adamantite Shell Machines (or flares) until they turn grey at 370. Know any hunters (you can mix in Adamantite Arrow Makers for even cheaper mats if they're the other kind of hunter and you've got the schematic; they have the same levelling range)? And for the final push to 375 for the top level schematics, gnomes could fall back to making a bunch of handy, cheap Frost Grenades, which only turn grey at 380 for us, or just 5 Khorium Scopes and/or Field Repair Bot 110Gs.

I've heard people complain about the difficulty of levelling engineering, but with this racial ability it's a breeze.

While there are currently no engineering recipes that require greater than 375 skill to learn, this racial trait has the practical effect of making Mechanical Dragonlings that a gnomish engineer makes 3 levels higher than normal, as their level is [Engineering Skill] / 5.

Of course, this also allows you to learn recipes sooner than you normally would be able to do so.

The way the racial works for your skill:

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• New Character/Apprentice: Start at 16, cap at 90.
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• Journeyman: Increases cap from 90 to 165
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• Expert: Increases cap from 165 to 240
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• Artisan: Increases cap from 240 to 315
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• Master: Increases cap from 315 to 390
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Also of note: You still need to be at skill level "375" to make items requiring 375 skill in engineering. The effect of this racial is that it takes you 15 fewer skill-ups before you reach 375 Engineering.

How this bonus functions when changing races from Gnome to something else:

As a gnome, my Engineering skill was displayed as 461 / 540.
After changing race it was 446 / 525.

I retained all the recipes that I had learnt, despite some requiring 450 or 460 skill to learn.
I was also still able to make them.

I was looking for this information for quite a while before deciding to just go ahead with the race change. I hope it's useful to someone in the future.