Also, high Alchemy/Tinkering is a totally boss combination. I thought putting most of my levels into crafting skills would underpower me, but not at all. Strong mana-boosting shields and powerful crossbows early on, super high trapsense, almost unlimited bolts/healing potions/powerful booze. Combined with Golemancy for crowd control and I'm having a good run so far.
I had a similar idea myself, now that archery is fixed. Do you grind down the iron for healing potions and stick to bronze for the arrows? What other skills did you take? Difficulty? Also how does a higher tinker/trapaware skill affect your own trap effectiveness?
I was playing Dwarvish Difficulty, permadeath. Past tense, of course, because a combination of bad luck, bad planning, and MONSTER ZOO retired him on level 4. So I can't speak for this builds usefulness later in the game, but it's a fun one to play. My skills were:
Alchemy - Because I like it.
Tinkering - Wanted to try it out since Crossbows had been fixed.
Archery - See above.
Golemancy - Walls are invaluable.
Maces - Chance of knockback in Melee.
Burglary - For general usefulness.
Assassination - Because I couldn't decide on my last skill.
Next game, I'm switching out Maces for Unarmed. That way I can do the dual-shield thing (Alchemy crafts some damn fine shields) while retaining chance of knockback (which wasn't as useful as you'd think anyway) and generally increasing defense. I'll also switch out Assassination and/or maybe Burglary for some more magic, but I haven't decided what.
Once you get Tinkering level 3, you can create area of effect acid and poison bolts, which require iron. So I used iron for those as well as healing potions. "Rusty" items can also be turned to rust, I recently found out, so that helps with the potions. AFAIK Trap skill does not effect damage of laid down traps, only which types you can disable or reclaim from the dungeon. Honestly I haven't really been able to use traps effectively, but disabling them grabs xp and snagged ones can be sold or lutefisked, which is handy.
God I forgot how much fun this game is.