To expert salvage or not, that is the question

As you may know, there are ways of building up your funds in-game. Some people prefer to sell items and some people swear by salvaging items and selling those salvaged materials.

I've been reading several threads on this topic and some fellow players have advised me to be more aggressive about using expert salvage kits. However there are items that always will yield basic materials no matter what type of salvage kit you use.

As you all know, Expert Salvage Kits are more expensive than the standard kit so to help save some gold (a penny saved is a penny earned) it'd be beneficial for salvagers to know which items only yield basic material so they'd use the basic kit on those items instead of wasting an expert salvage kit usage on those.

So I'd like to ask the community to help me comply a list of those items given the huge amount of items available in the game.

Many thanks!

Here's what I got so far...

Basically I plan to expert salvage an item ten times before 'declaring' it as never yielding a rare material. Asteriked items are those collectors want. If you want to help out - great! Just let me know which items that you do know yield a rare material, whether if it's one of those items collectors want, and if you are absolutely confident that an item never yields a rare material.

Weapons (and items collectors want) only yeild basic material, so normal salvage only. Only use expert if you want to pull a mod off a weapon.

All enemy armors have a chance of producing a rare material item, so you can use expert salvage items on those to attempt to get it.

That helps to narrow it down. However some weapons do yield rare materials.

I expert salvage things like swords, axes, hammers and holy rods all the time. Basically anything that looks metal because i tend to get steel ingots from them

I haven't bought a regular salvage kit since they introduced Superior Salvage Kits. I always keep a Sup Salvage and a Sup ID kit on all characters at all times. Being a farmer, the saved inventory slots are well worth the little extra money for the superior kits.

From my experience, items that have a value of less than about 10, normally only produce 1 crafting material, even with expert salvage. These items, you should use normal salvage on or just sell separately. All other items should be expert salvaged. Why? Well, using a superior kit, it costs you 20 gold per salvage attempt. So as long as you make more than 20 gold worth of materials, you're doing well. The big thing is though, a lot of metal weapons will end up giving you steel ingots instead of iron (for example), which are worth a *lot* more than basic crafting materials. I'd say this happens about ~1/10 of the time, depending slightly on what region you're in. That means you should expect to get about 10 steel for one expert salvage kit, which alone covers the cost of the kit. Everything else is pure profit.

Note: I also don't salvage items like idols or bone staffs, because they normally produce bones, which I've found to be completely worthless as trade materials go.

Rico

Steel at trader now sells for 100ea. 10 of them would be 1000gp. - a 600 profit form the 400 expert kit.

I expert Salvage all the Enemy armors exceot unid ones. Then I ID it - if its a decent rune I'll slavage it, if its a bad rune i'll sell the armor to merchant (you acutally get more from the armor than the rune you would have slavaged.

This is incorrect. Weapons in higher level areas commonly yeild steel ingots.


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In my experience, there is not a type of item that wouln't yeild anything to a superior salvage kit, but that the percent chance of finding such crafting materials varies from item to item; possibly that the better stats on the item, the better the salvage.

I know that I salvaged a superior 1.5k Tactics Helm of Major Vigor and got the rune out of it, but I salvaged a 1.5k Hammer Helm of Major Vigor and only got 15 iron ingots back. That was disapointing. That's kind of off topic, though.

empty your inventory, only 2 medium salvage kids inside it, no superior one, its barely worth it.

do not salvage anything untill your inventory is full, then
-0th salvage colored items last, identify first and compare its selling price with its average salvage items price, wich is lower most times.
-1st salvage all bows and stuff that gives wood.
-2nd salvage all staffs and wands that do NOT give bones or glittering dust...
-3rd salvage all other stuff to make more space for items.

Only salvage if you have to, when done identify everything that is not salvaged and sell it.

Most time just identifiing increases the price more than average salvaging, but the prices change to much for a clear statement. To salvage or not is still your choice after identifiing.

If you want to convert materials into rare materials before selling, for wood its most times worth it, thats why we salvage bows first.

Currently this is how I do it on SF runs:

If it's wood-based like most bows, I use regular Salvage Kits. Cheapest way to make Parchment ever.

If it's iron-based like most weapons, I use Expert/Superior Salvage. Steel ingots even at merchant prices make up for it.

If it's enemy armors, I look at the AL. An AL of 40 usually means it's worth anywhere from 70-100g at the merchant, so I ID it and hold onto it for later selling. If it's AL 39 or less, it's not worth as much at merchant, but it'll still yield a good amount of materials. It's kind of random what I use on armors, as the chance for them to yield rare materials is a bit low. Usually you end up with Tanned Hide Squares, Bolts of Cloth or Iron Ingots.

Good info here!

From what I understand, Superior Kit is really just basic kit with more usage?

it gives 100 uses at a higher cost per use for the convenience of not lugging along 4 standard 25 use kits.

i think the extra cost per use is simply a waste of money but that is only my personal opinion.

line of flamers stand to right in orderly line please

Yeah, that's the way I do it too.

What about non-metal armors? I'm having my doubt about ESing them, material prices are barely worth of it.

You should check out this list:
http://www.gwonline.net/page.php?p=90

It doesn't include everything, but most stuff.

Yeah - I'm using that as a place to start but I already am finding errors. If they were good about keeping the list updated I wouldn't have started this thread.

I have found that any regular white armor with an armor level over 30 has an increased chance of being Expert Salvaged into a rare material. The higher the AL the better the chance. I've tried a few with AL below 30 and not gotten any rare materials. Armors that regularly salvage into cloth have a chance to give you silk or linen. Armors that salvage into Tanned Hides have a chance to give you Leather Squares.

For Weapons (Swords, axes, hammers) I find the closer the weapon is to being Max Damage the better the chance of getting a Steel Ignot. Bows always give wood. (At least I've never gotten anthing but wood out of them) Staves, Wands and rods vary as you can get various materials out of them. For example a Bone Staff will almost always give you bones which are pretty worthless, but occasionally you'll get wood which can make you some money (as Parchment or Vellum).

Focii vary quite a bit. I haven't figured out if thiers a pattern here yet.

Hopefully we will be able to figure out a pattern here. Perhaps I should start keeping track of armor's rating level?