Is Salvaging materials to the Merchant a wise economic move?

I vanquished Drakker Lake today and with all of the items I felt I would track if I could make more money selling the materials from items rather than selling them to the merchant. With our conversation ongoing about IDing Items I felt this was relevant.

I had 53 traceable drops which I wanted to record. I did not record the two golds I will keep or the items I got from the lockpicks that dropped. For each of the 53 items I recorded the type of item, the ID'd merchant value and then the amount of materials it salvaged into.

The results are a wash. You will probably breakeven when you consider the cost of salvage and ID an item, and it would appear that ID'ing and selling is a better method of making money than materials are if you are selling to the merchant.

If you are selling to a player at (half-point), then the results are a little more favorable.

http://rapidshare.com/files/96351377...golds.xls.html

Consider the following:

I can expect to make $4,882 from the materials I salvaged; however the opportunity costs of doing this is $5,025. Making me loose $143 over the 53 items.

If selling to another player you can expect to make $7,637, considering costs that is $2,612 over the 53 items.

You could further refine your income by not IDing white items, and by doing so you can expect to loose $8 over the 53 items.

Hi there, I had a similar experience as yours. When I experimented with salvaging materials from all the items that I got in hard mode, I ended up with less money than if I had just sold them all (in identified form) to the merchant. I also recorded the values of the identified items (white, blue, purple, gold) and then compared the total to what I got when I sold the salvaged materials to the proper material trader. I was down by around 500 gold actually.

These days, the only things I even consider salvaging are those with the inscription "Highly Salvageable" because so far, those things have given me more value than if I sold it straight to the merchant. A few minutes ago I salvaged this gold item worth 250 gold (it was a sword I think with a Highly Salvageable inscription) and got around 9 steel ingots. At that time, the steel ingots were worth 90 gold each, so I made 810 gold versus 250.

I mainly use Superior Salvage Kits which are 500 gold each, and normally on Hard Mode, white items are worth 50 gold at least. When I identify white items, they usually jump up by 20 gold, and sometimes even 50. I think it's still profitable to identify white items in hard mode because you only need a few to make up for the cost of the superior salvage kit.

Are you also considering that salvaging items while Vanquishing ends up saving you a ton of inventory space? If you are a Vanquishing a large area, then you will run out of inventory space long before the junk stops dropping on the ground for you. You are losing a lot of money there due to not having the inventory space to pick up all your junk, therefore you get no money from that junk you weren't able to pick up due to no inventory space. Whereas if you salvage your inventory, you have space to pick up all that junk too. This would need to be factored in in order to give a reliable equation of whether salvaging is worth it or not.

My inventory space is generally very limited. I carry a Superior ID kit, a Superior Salvage Kit, 7 bows, the bear club, all hero books, pumpkin cookies, a charr decorder. All this leaves me with a belt pouch and a backpack (minus two spots). I have a bow for every purpose known to man and although not really nesscarry does come in handy ever once in awhile.... back on topic...


Almost every zone has a merchant in it, so I dont know if this is really relevent but I do understand your point.

This is entirely biased if you are not seeking higher-end materials. I farm feathers and make a ton off of them by selling them to people and the merchant equally. Iron, wood, and glittering dust are the most common materials and sell for crap at the merchant. Granite and feathers are awesome to farm (HM only) in terms of selling. Lastly, this is my experience only, I could be horribly wrong.

The goal here was not to treat items differently, but to see how salvaging would work on a sample size.

If you determine which types of items yield the best salvaged materials you can maximize your income by only salvaging the high quality materials and selling the others.

The cheap materials would never warrant a logical kind of investigation...

The average white drop sells for 50g (average before IDing). Salvaging the white will net you 6 (average) of whatever material it was made from. You need ten of any kind of material to sell to a trader, and ten of an average material normally nets 80g. That loses 5-10g a salvage, which in turn, sucks.

I agree with your end result, though.

The rule I've always used is to ID and merch all weapons, and salvage collectors items and armours for materials to trade. Only time the rule gets broken is when I come across something that is highly salvageable.

I find I lose less cash that way.

I salvage when the alternative is to leave whites and blues on the ground.