Guild Wars 2

Farm CoF endlessly and tirelessly.

I like to buy cheap 68+ rares, salvage with MSK, sell ecto. I make about 5-9s per rare, but it’s clear that a lot of people do this, as each buy order I place is outbidded within minutes.
the ecto isn’t where most of the profit comes from – the socket is.

You’re kind of gambling by doing this.

First off, master salvage kits cost a lot. And if you are using them up on lower-rarity runes of divinity, the cost per salvage can really knock you out of any sort of profitable range.

Secondly, while it sounds like you have gotten lucky, you recover the runes 80% of the time.

If you do the math on it, you would find out that you won’t be able to sustain much of a profit long-term. You can calculate it out with something like this:

Expected Profit = (Min Sale Price of Rune * 0.85 * 0.8) + (Min Sale Price of Salvaged Mats * 0.85) – (Cost of the item) – (Cost per salvage)

Pull some information from the TP and plug those numbers into this formula. When you start to aggregate it, the margin isn’t going to get you rich quick – especially if you are using master kits on anything except for superior runes (you might get lucky with majors).

—EDIT—

Black lion salvage kits are where you get good profits though. If you use them on lvl 68+ rare or exotic items, you are guaranteed the upgrade component and you have a strong chance to get ectos out of it. At the current gem price it isn’t worth it to buy the salvage kits, though. Just save them whenever you get a stack of them.

Do dailies> get laurels> use laurels to buy heavy crafting bags> sell tier 6 mats

AggieTechGuy.4901:

Expected Profit = (Min Sale Price of Rune * 0.85 * 0.8) + (Min Sale Price of Salvaged Mats * 0.85) – (Cost of the item) – (Cost per salvage)

That’s what I thought at first, too. however:
Expected Profit = (2.45s * 0.85 * 0.8) + (0.51s * 0.85) – (1s) – (0.6144s) = 0.4851s profit
(I’m assuming you get mithril. some of the time you’ll get ori = bonus. but you might get leather or fabric…)
not exactly awesome, but if you do that every 10 seconds for an hour, that’s 360 salvages = 1g74s63c. I believe you can get these greens REALLY reliably for cheap.
profit? yes. most profit possible? nope.

AggieTechGuy.4901:

Black lion salvage kits are where you get good profits though. If you use them on lvl 68+ rare or exotic items, you are guaranteed the upgrade component and you have a strong chance to get ectos out of it. At the current gem price it isn’t worth it to buy the salvage kits, though. Just save them whenever you get a stack of them.

I made a spreadsheet for this.
at current values of gems (2.4g/100gems) and ecto (25s), the cost of 1 BLSK is 28.8s, while the cost of 1 Master SK is 0.6144s.
at expected ecto return amounts, BLSK will give a estimated profit of 2.45s, while MSK gives 21.89s
then there’s the socket. now, in order to make up that difference, the socket would have to sell for (21.89-0.6144)/ 0.2 / 0.85 = 1.25g
so if the socket sells for more than 1.25g, use BLSK. under that, then MSK is more profitable
(0.2 is the 20% chance that MSK does not return the socket, 0.85 accounts for TP tax)
gem price is just too high for BLSK to be very profitable.
now, if you happen to have a huge amount of extra BLSK that you happen to get from chests or w/e, then go ahead and use them, as they will indeed give more than MSK

Yeah, I made a spreadsheet for it too

While I did the calculations a little differently, I still came out with similar results.