Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to craft ascended armor, and I’m having a huge problem getting globs of dark matter. I’ve salvaged maybe 20 exotic items, all level 80, all with master salvage kit, and I have 5 globs to show for it. I could have sold those exotic items for probably over 60 gold, making a glob of dark matter worth 12 gold each!!!
What am I doing wrong????

You’re doing nothing wrong… Dark Matter is pretty expensive to acquire thanks to the RNG involved. Over enough salvages, it should average out to around 0.5 Dark Matter per exotic. 20 exotics is such a low number of salvages that you are susceptible to bad streaks that will discourage you.

Buy exotics with some valueable rune inside (Traveler), use Blacklion kit. Sell rune and ecto, enjoy your 1-2g profit and keep collecting Dark Matter. I made much gold like this before I got bored and ended with tons of Dark Matter as well.

Imo, it matters which kit you use to salvage. I was using the mystic kit and wasn’t getting very much dark matter. I switched to a Black Lion Salvage kit and saw a noticeable increase. Never seen any hard numbers on this but seen several threads saying they have gotten better rates with the BLSK.

you may way to just buy the ascended inscriptions/insignia you would otherwise use dark matter to make. There are some weird parts of ascended crafting that are TP-able… You don’t actually have to deal with dark matter.

You had some bad luck, but not unusually bad – mystic salvage kits do not have a great dark matter rate (~0.5 / exotic). You’d expect to get around 10 from 20 exotics, but 5 isn’t unusual (0 is very common, as it is possible to get up to 3 dark matter from each exotic). This shouldn’t have cost you 60 gold though; there are plenty of exotics on the trading post for less than 1 gold each. If you’re salvaging anything that costs more than that, it had better have a valuable rune or sigil in it.

You’re much better off using a black lion salvage kit. The BLSK gives roughly 1 dark matter per exotic. If you don’t have any black lion kits, you might be better off just buying the ascended insignia or inscriptions off the TP – yes, you pay a premium, but it’s a lot better than setting exotics on fire with a mystic kit and hoping for the best.

Here is what I do. Do dailies and sometimes you get 25 black lion salvage kit. Put offer in TP for level > 75 exotics that has a more expensive rune (usually the 3 to 4g ones like eagle or hoelbrak). Salvage exotics and sell everything. Sometimes you get 0 but sometimes you get 3 dark matters, on average I notice you get around a little less than 1 per exotic, but I always make a profit doing this.

I have read somewhere that black lion salvage kit is not going to get you more dark matter. It is just there to make sure you get the Rune so you can sell it for > cost.

Both quoted for a lot of truth:

you may way to just buy the ascended inscriptions/insignia you would otherwise use dark matter to make. There are some weird parts of ascended crafting that are TP-able… You don’t actually have to deal with dark matter.

My personal favourite:

Buy exotics with some valueable rune inside (Traveler), use Blacklion kit. Sell rune and ecto, enjoy your 1-2g profit and keep collecting Dark Matter. I made much gold like this before I got bored and ended with tons of Dark Matter as well.

I’ve saved up about 8 Black Lion Salvage Kits from dailies over the past 4 months, made a nice profit by finding the right weapons/armor with profitable sigils, ecto/dark matter was a bonus, currently sitting at 170. Who isn’t lucky has to be smart. Sorry you had such an unlucky streak though.

Use BL salvage kit for the exotics, as the salvaging rate IS better than with mystic/master salvage kits. Do not buy the BL salvage kit from the TP though, as it is not worth its costs.
Salvage spare exotics from dungeon runs.
If you do some smart buying from TP, you can buy exotics for very little too (as mentioned in above posts).

I echo the advice given by the above posters. If you do some digging, you’ll find some Exotics that are crazily cheap (for Exotics), sometimes worth less than 1 gold! These make excellent candidates for salvage.

And always, ALWAYS use Black Lion Kits when salvaging Exotics.

Besides salvaging the items with expensive runes/sigils you can also try salvaging the ones that can yield an inscription or insignia.

Matisse.9356:

Use BL salvage kit for the exotics, as the salvaging rate IS better than with mystic/master salvage kits.

This is never confirm for Dark Matter. It is confirm that kits has no affect on ecto drop rate. So I would assume it does not matter with Dark Matter.

It is however not always a good idea to use BL salvage kit for exotics. Keep in mind BL salvage kits are around 60s each. You should only use it on ones with expensive runes. On exotics that cost less than 1g, your cost would almost double by using a BL salvage kit.

With high price runes, you can always resell the rune with around 60s to 70s profit which is about break even if you count cost of BL salvage kit. And if you sell the ectos, you will make a some profit.

bigmonto.4215:

This is never confirm for Dark Matter. It is confirm that kits has no affect on ecto drop rate. So I would assume it does not matter with Dark Matter.

this is absolutely not the case.
rares with a master salvage kit = 0.875 ecto
rares with a black lion salvage kit = 1.25 ecto
exotics with a master salvage kit = 1.27 ecto
exotics with a black lion salvage kit = 1.66 ecto
I have no idea if kit quality affects dark matter drop rate, but I would assume it does make a small difference (probably something like 0.5 vs. 0.6)

also, BLSK are currently at (1)(23)(36) per use (gem price of (10)(28)(0) / 100 gems)

I do agree that you should use MSK on low value exotics and BLSK on high-value exotics. add up the cost of the rune/sigil and inscription/insignia (if it can give one), if that total sells for below ~4g = use a MSK, above 4g = BLSK.

Mystic.5934:

I have no idea if kit quality affects dark matter drop rate, but I would assume it does make a small difference (probably something like 0.5 vs. 0.6)

The dark matter salvage rate with a black lion salvage kit is really close to 1 per exotic (1.006 +/- 0.121 at a 95% confidence level). It’s not anywhere near 0.5.

Using a black lion kit makes a huge difference when salvaging for dark matter.

thanks for the great response. Just to clarify, I didn’t buy 60 golds worth of exotics. These were all drops or things I got from the mystic forge. My plan moving forward is to Sell my rares, not drop them in the mystic forge and then buy cheap exotics at about 1 gold or less.
In terms of the BLSK, I’ve only gotten one in my daily chest. I’ll use it strictly for exotics if I do get one. At some point I’ll have to sit down and do the math as to whether or not its worth it to buy them from the gem store at an approximately 10:1 gem:gold ratio.

Jayjaydee.3827:

thanks for the great response. Just to clarify, I didn’t buy 60 golds worth of exotics. These were all drops or things I got from the mystic forge. My plan moving forward is to Sell my rares, not drop them in the mystic forge and then buy cheap exotics at about 1 gold or less.
In terms of the BLSK, I’ve only gotten one in my daily chest. I’ll use it strictly for exotics if I do get one. At some point I’ll have to sit down and do the math as to whether or not its worth it to buy them from the gem store at an approximately 10:1 gem:gold ratio.

To safe you some time: As I have written earlier in this thread, it is definitely not worth it to buy BLSK from the trading post. If you need dark matter urgently and don’t have a BLSK available, use a mystic salvage kit.
This is my conclusion from 100 BLSK vs. 100 mystic salvage kit uses on level 80 exotics.
Can’t provide you with precise numbers though, as I did this about half a year ago.

I didn’t use BLK many times so it doesn’t mean anything, but i can say that (would have to log in to be sure, but im positive) i have more than 1dark matter average with them, yet i only got Dark matter from Master’s about 3times. But again i only used the bl 14times max so i could have been just lucky with them and unlucky with Master’s :/