In order for me to use a titanium hammer to its ‘full potential’ I actually have to spend points in tool mastery instead of it just doing the damage it says in the item description?
It could be your mastery level. With higher level tools, they require mastery to be more effective. It used to lower your action speed and damage if you didn’t take the skill, but I think they are trying to transition it at the moment.
Well I hope they do because that’s ridiculous. If an item says it does 900 damage, it should DO 900 damage without needing extra skills to help it along, like training wheels. 
Again, it’s in a transitional phase. The tooltips for all weapons and tools used to reflect the necessary mastery level as well as the skills showing which attributes would be affected for not having the right mastery level.
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Without the proper level of Tool Mastery the tool will deal less damage. Same goes for reel speed and range on Grapples if you don’t get Grapple Mastery. Hammer Mastery is obviously more important to get. At level 50 you can have level 4 Hammer, Shovel, and Axe Mastery on a single character if you’re going for more of a “gathering” type of build.
So if you don’t have the proper Tool Mastery for a Hammer… it could say something like… (450 damage) 900 damage for the damage part of the tooltip.
I honestly don’t like the idea behind the Item Mastery skills cause I would much rather have more impactful and meaningful skills to put points into. That’s more of a personal opinion thing though.
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The tool tips don’t say anything about needed skill levels now. They should have kept that at least.
I’m not sure I’ll have enough skill points. How many skill points do you get from levels 40-50? I have put a lot in attributes and armor skills, allowing me to solo tier 3 meteorites. I’d like to be able to use tools to their full potential on the same character.
You get a total of 1500 once you hit level 50. Sounds like you’re going more of a hunter style build than a miner/gather/lumberjack/digger build. In that case you’d want to look into Slingbow and Bomb Mastery (if you use bombs).
This is where having additional characters comes into play. You get the option of making other characters specialize in different types of tasks. aka: crafting, building, resource gathering (mining, lumberjack, digger, etc.) hunting (tank, dps, or healing).
I have a second character that lets me craft just about anything in the game that I want to craft, outside of Expert Level food and brews (not really something I am interested in right now) while my main character can gather any resource in the game, hunt any creature in the game, and do basic building.
You might just need another character to get specific tasks you want to get done, well actually done.
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Hunter/Gatherer, yeah. Like the old days. Also have a full crafter (all in game crafting skills) and a builder.
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I can see you replying but I have to head off. I’ll reply when I get back.
You just need to level up and hit 50 and you’ll be able to have level 4 Slingbow, Bomb, Axe, Hammer, and Shovel Mastery. But you’ll be giving up skill points in other areas, such as Armor skills.
The tool tips will give you that info when the Forge Patch goes live “Soonish”
You must remember this game is still in development…
Armor skills are ones I want to keep. Without them I can’t solo tier 3 meteorites. I can make do with iron tools for normal terrain and a titanium hammer or two for gems/etc. I already have level 5 in slingbow mastery and let me tell you, one shotting mobs with a diamond slingbow is fun. I suppose I could still get level 3 in tool masteries? That would tip the titanium tools slightly in favour of iron ones wouldn’t it?
You currently don’t get any benefit from Level 5 Slingbow Mastery. Although, it seems likely you will once the new worlds are patched to the live server. People have already confirmed that you can mine the next tier up of resources from gems. So if that’s going to be a thing sooner than we realize, then yeah having Level 5 Item Mastery in whatever you want is going to be needed if you want to benefit fully from using those crafted tools and weapons from those resources.
If I was going to have a dedicated hunter character, I wouldn’t try and mix and match different skill build components that aren’t related to hunting monsters. That means no tool mastery skills at all and I’d only pick Slingbow Mastery cause it’s more reliable than bombs.
To me it’s pretty important to make the build you want for your character to do the best it can at the main tasks you want it to do. Hunters should only get things that make them more survivable in monster fights. Crafters get only the stuff the makes the craft everything. Resource gathers only get the stuff that makes them good at that.
Also, all gem tools and weapons and bombs lose all their modded effects that are on them once the Forge patch goes to live server. Cause the Forge machine is what you use to get those effects (and others) crafted onto those items. So with Slingbows you can give every Slingbow max Multi-Shot level and have them shotgun blast mobs back to the stone ages. The main difference with them will be their elemental damage (Shock, Burn, Toxic, Blast, etc.).
So if you’re worrying about whether or not your Diamond Tools will be able to get the 1x3 block damaging ability back, they can. In fact you can Centraforge them to have a 3x3 block damaging ability, more damage, more crit chance, more crit damage, more action speed, etc. However, only can have 3 of these Boon traits on the item when you Forge it.
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This is why I want 4 characters. A crafter, a builder, a gatherer and a hunter would be ideal.
I don’t think special tools are quite ready for the next patch, judging by the glfact that the recipes aren’t in game yet, though I could be wrong. You are right that lvl 5 masteries will apply to these tools, though.
You currently don’t get any benefit from Level 5 Slingbow Mastery.
Oh! Thank you, had no idea about this. Got some skill points back. 
Although I switch it up as I’m levelling the two that aren’t L50, I tend to arrange it like with each of those roles except Crafter and then spread that round the other three. Each of them has some minimum defenses but I find you can just about squeeze a reasonable Hunter, Gatherer and Builder out of what’s left once you add the defenses and ~1/3 of the crafting skills.
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Weapon, tool, and gear Mastery is changing in the coming Skill Tree update. Players in general don’t like (or get) that Mastery is required to unlock an items full potential. Instead it will simply give a performance boost. Which is ultimately the same thing but presented in a way people generally expect.
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Will, I don’t know if they are either. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be sorted out before we get those new resource tier blocks.
Personally I’d like to see them introduced at the same time as Lances.
I mainly just want new worlds and the Forge over new resource blocks to play around with. /shrugs