Newb questions on IDing and Salvageing

Hi. I am fairly new and have several questions about these two activities.

#1 Is using ID kits worth the time /money/packspace if your not gonna try for runes/upgrades? I am really talking about whiteitems or very low level blue/purple ones.

#2 I have been forgoing selling most of my loot to salvage it to the materials vault.When my count is High, I've gone to an Artisan and turned in the regular materials and gold for some rare materials. My friend tells me I'd be better off sellin the junk for cash and just buyin my rare materials from the trader. Is that true?

#3 When trading materials to artisans to get rare materials, I have found no use for bolts of cloth or bones, Where can I use those materials?

Thanks for any help you might be able to give me on these questions

1. If you are fighting lvl 20+ enemies, then your items with be worth more to the merchant if you ID them first.

2. For the most part, yes.

3. For crafting armors.

Not counting the price of the salvage kit, you can consider most of the materials you salvage free. You can sell to the traders or sell to other players and make a bit of money. Now that we have a material storage, it is totally worth salvaging and selling to someone. It's not big money, but there is money to be made with the materials. If you go to a town with an armor crafter, you can sell most of the materials you salvage. The only material I've never seen a use for is slabs of granite and those are so cheap, it's not worth saving.

Yes, you should always ID everything that's blue & purple, as blues can have the "show me the money" inscription or the equivelant "precious" attribute, whis makes it more valuable. They may even be "highly salvagable", possible making the materials you can salvage out of them more valuable than the item itself. IDing white items is a good idea in high-end areas, as they ususally increase in value above what you spend usingthe ID kit.

GENERALLY, you'll be better off trading with other players, you'll get much better deals than what the materials traders will give you. (But know what the NPC buy/sell prices are so you get a fair deal.) Seldom used materials, such as bone & granite slabs are very hard to sell and are best sold to the MERCHANT, not the materials trader.

Cloth is used by many professions for armor crafting. The only use for bone that I know of is for crafting Necromancer armors.

You're welcome, and Welcome to GW!

Thanks for everyone for all advice . Now if I could just get my warrior past Thunderhead Keep... . Just like another post Ive seen on this page, I'm 0-5 there when I can get a group there. Too many warriors there needin groups

ok, my advice is a little different than the rest of the people here.

You can apply runes to your armor, although i dont reccomend putting mjors and up on your armor untill you think that you are going to use the armor for a while. runes can be very inportant and valuble

Crafting materials are tricky things. its almost always good to have an excess of cloth, tanned hide, iron, and a few other basic materials. i reccomend salvaging about 50-75 percent of all salvage items that you recive. this way, you build up materials, and still make some money. if you can, invest in a expert or superior salvage and ID kit. the extra uses really add up.

If you keep this up you will find that you will have more than enough materials to go around for armor and weapons. for example, i always sell all the cloth, bone, tanned hide, granite, and wood planks i get, because my storage has 250 (the max) of all of those already.

Hope that this helps,
-Illithen