When to Salvage vs expert salvage?

Hello all,

Forgive the beginner's question but I have been gone for quite a while and tried to look up the info, but to no avail.

I'm trying to figure out when I should use an expert salvage kit over a common one. Obviously if it is an armor or weapon that contains a upgrade, but I'm talking about white vs blue vs purple, and so on, and my chances of getting an improved crafting drop.

Thanks so much!

Monster trophies it doesnt matter they drop the same material and amount whichever. So normal kits.

Weapons it can depend on the kit. Some swords may give iron or steel ingots depending on the kit. It is safer to use a normal kit for normal mats. And an exper/sup kit for "rarer" mats.
The amount does not matter on the kit that I know?

Smars~

As marmar256 says, you can only get rare materials using an Expert Salvage Kit (but not guaranteed), you'll only get normal materials from Salvage Kit.

I don't think the rarity of the weapon makes a difference however weapons found later in the game will yield more materials than a weapon in an early area (and also higher value), whether they be White/gold etc.

I use an expert salvage kit if the weapon has a "highly salvagable" mod. Not sure if it makes any difference in getting the rare salvage.

Depends what you want.

These days most of the time you are better off regular salvaging than expert salvaging weapons seems Iron is in much higher demand than Steel, and you'll almost certainly make more profit from 50 Iron on a highly salvagable item than you will from the 5 Steel you'd get otherwise.

Scrolls and stuff it's upto you though. 50 Wood is pretty worthless, but then these days so is the 5 Parchment you might get from using an expert salvage kit instead.

Leather and Fur are pretty common as an expert salvagable material from some drops too, though once again both have a pretty low value and you're not likely to make much more than you would from the Tanned Hide or Cloth you'd get from a regular Salvage Kit anyway (and remember regular salvages themselves are cheaper than expert ones).

Not really any other rare materials I commonly see salvagable from items though (there is more, but the chances are in general pretty low that it's not worth counting on). So most of the time it makes more sense to regular salvage anyway. Golds and some purples you are better off vendoring than salvaging in most cases.

You would use an Expert Salvage Kit if you want to try to get rare materials out of a salvage (and get mods off weapons and armor). Usually there is a certain percentage chance of getting the rare vs common materials, so using the ESK doesn't guarantee rare salvage, but you will only get common salvage using a regular Salvage Kit.

Note though, that some items only salvage into common materials, so using an ESK would be a waste. If you look up an item on the wiki, it will usually tell you what it can salvage into.

Afaik, an Expert salvage will give you the same quantity of common materials as a basic salvage. So there is no advantage to using an ESK if you are only after common materials.

When in doubt check on wiki to see if an item has a chance to yield a big prize like a ruby, sapphire, or diamond. Otherwise I usually just go with the regular salvage kit since I can always go to a crafter and convert common materials into rare materials if they are needed for a particular set of armor or something.

Well, thank you everyone for the advice :-)