Guild Wars 2

Has anyone done an analysis (for level 80 characters only of course) of when the diminishing return from consuming more and more of the various Essences of Luck to boost account wide Magic Find stops making income sense, and makes just selling all the blues and greens the correct move?

Currently I find on my main, now at 77% account wide plus 20% using the MF Infusion Berserker Golden Lotus I was forced to keep and put duplicate stats on, and the 10% guild bonus for a total MF of 107%, that I get very few whites, mostly blues and a few more greens and perhaps one open world rare a day (4-6 hours play a day,) compared to maybe 1 open world rare a week when I ran alts with no MF. I am buying 3 basic kits a day on average, so that would be 75 blue and green salvages a day. Ratio there is probably 60% blue and 40% green. I do a lot of events/champs.

Salvaging all those blues and greens seems to generate a lot more useful mats and a surprising number of t6 which offsets the lost sale profits somewhat.

I was using Mystic Kits on greens and forging the extra runes and sigils until I realized that they appear to have nerfed green sigil/rune forging to only give 10-12% upgrades (my est. based on records of 200 forges. I felt unlucky for several weeks before I sat down and did a careful experiment – possibly it was always this way and I just never noticed, since I so seldom had any mass green upgrade items to mess with before luck salvaging.) So now I just vend the green ups.

I just don’t have the skills to do a spreadsheet or whatever that considers all the random variables of salvaging and includes the random essence, if any, and the level of that essence and its impact on MF level as you go up the MF scale, versus the estimated sale value of the un-salvaged drops (some of which should probably be sold on the TP to boot,) and then looks at the expected improvement in drop quality from the various levels of MF. And I suppose any fair model would need to exclude infusion, food and guild boosts.

Anyway I am sick of the extra time spent constantly salvaging and then clicking all those essences, and I miss the extra gold. What is a good target to hit and just relax and play again? 70+% where I am? 100%? or have I passed the optimum?

If you’re not a hardcore farmer, don’t bother with luck. IF you are, then go max all the way.

If you are wondering how long it will take you, check out the wiki chart,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

You wont be maxing it out anytime before xmas that’s for sure, its basically going to come down to when you’ve had enough of salvaging.

I’ve found that simply salvaging all of my blues and greens not only gives me Essences of Luck, but I’m amassing mats to level my crafting that I never bothered to before. Now this is obvious, but before it was more lucrative to simply vend the greens. But now that salvaging has the benefit of EoL, it’s more worth it to me. And now I’m leveling my weaponsmith and huntsman without much effort. Plus, I’m getting even MORE greens to salvage with higher MF%, so it’s like a beneficial cycle.

Returning to your question: for me it’ll be when I’ve gotten my crafts to 400/500. I’ll stop salvaging the greens that sell for 1s+ and just do the blues. Right now I’m only at around 59% account wide MF but it’s growth is slowing already.

OP: if you’re fed-up clicking the essences to consume them, i would suggest you take the artificer craft which can condense all essences into exotic tier which is far less clicking. I think artificer gets to upgrade the essences at entry level so you don’t even need to level the craft.

As for when to stop salvaging? I’d stop at 270% and use MF food, or 250 and use food+banners.

I only salvage blues and TP most of my greens, and I’m at around 70% account luck. Works for me, but I suppose if you are tired of salvaging, then you could just sell everything. I don’t really know which one makes more gold, as I am not the kind of person that keeps track of stuff like that. =P

And remember you can use any kit, including rough and get the same amount of essence of magic. You can buy rough salvage kits at many hearts for karma and you can buy both fine and rough ones for karma at cultural weapon sellers in the cities (besides LA). I buy a bunch of rough ones every time a daily requires spending karma. You can get a bunch of them on those days.

Funky.4861:

OP: if you’re fed-up clicking the essences to consume them, i would suggest you take the artificer craft which can condense all essences into exotic tier which is far less clicking. I think artificer gets to upgrade the essences at entry level so you don’t even need to level the craft.

As for when to stop salvaging? I’d stop at 270% and use MF food, or 250 and use food+banners.

You can get more than 300% magic find, the magic find from achievements and luck just caps at 300%

Ok I Did It.2854:

If you are wondering how long it will take you, check out the wiki chart,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

You wont be maxing it out anytime before xmas that’s for sure, its basically going to come down to when you’ve had enough of salvaging.

chuckle This completely reminds me of trying to build lucky and unlucky titles on GW1, and building lucky benefited your account a bit as well. Entirely insane to max out though.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lucky

You probably need to keep going until you salvage enough mats to get sets of ascended weapons for all your characters. And I don’t mean just the ascended mats, but the ones to also make exotics to salvage for ascended mats. With MF + Mats + Ascended weapons, it seems to just be and endless treadmill …unless you buy gems to sell for gold. Otherwise just brace for a very slow progression I suppose.

They may have adjusted the drop rates so it’s impossible to say anything conclusively, but my drops have been substantially better since I started getting magic find. As long as it continues, I will probably never sell a blue or green again.

The only practical advice I would have is to roll a die 50 times and add the numbers up.

Personally? I like not to think about it and will just keep on salvaging. Then, one day I’ll be at 300% and my next achievement chest will award one more % and I will be like: “Doh!”

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Ok I Did It.2854:

If you are wondering how long it will take you, check out the wiki chart,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

You wont be maxing it out anytime before xmas that’s for sure, its basically going to come down to when you’ve had enough of salvaging.

chuckle This completely reminds me of trying to build lucky and unlucky titles on GW1, and building lucky benefited your account a bit as well. Entirely insane to max out though.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lucky

Nah, it just required a couple hundred plat and several weekends AFK on the boardwalk 9-rings game, and that ended up working toward lucky and unlucky simultaneously.

The insane part was figuring out how to keep yourself entertained when you’re AFK all weekend. :P

Thanks for the responses. Apparently no one has attempted any rigorous analysis of the economics of this (when salvaging becomes a money loser.) And of course the tip over point will constantly change a lot, as the market on say – wood – corrects, and then the market goes nuts with other mats when ascended armor appears.

I have no concern with maxing it, that was never an issue.

I guess I’ll just salvage till it takes 3 or 4 days to gain 1% (225 to 300 salvages) and thus be sure that selling most of the stuff has to be the correct move.

1.7 million. far lekittenhan the ekittenimated 4.2 million reddit predicted, but kittenill a lot. funny how the amount required per level caps at 30,000 after +217% mf.

Hmm, well IMO : It’s account bound, so has value affecting all of your characters, also you might want to consider jukitten salvaging items below lvl 70 or so. Since silk/leather from 70-80 kittenuff is worth almokitten nothing you could jukitten sell those inkittenead and jukitten salvage kittenuff where the mats are worth it.

JakHammer.7094:

Thanks for the responses. Apparently no one has attempted any rigorous analysis of the economics of this (when salvaging becomes a money loser.) And of course the tip over point will constantly change a lot, as the market on say – wood – corrects, and then the market goes nuts with other mats when ascended armor appears.

I have no concern with maxing it, that was never an issue.

I guess I’ll just salvage till it takes 3 or 4 days to gain 1% (225 to 300 salvages) and thus be sure that selling most of the stuff has to be the correct move.

I’m only high 70s-low 80s right now, and it takes over 2k luck per level, and I manage somewhere between 1k-2.5k luck per day, just salvaging greens and blues. The most efficient way to get luck by far is to salvages ectos. I haven’t had a chance to do this myself yet, as I’m still saving ectos for my clovers/the 250 base for a legendary/crafting from 475-500, but it will take an insane amount of time if you just use blues and greens. I’ll just be happy when I finally get my open world MF back to where it was before the patch in another 1-2 months.

To do what you suggest would be nice, but near impossible as you would need to look at the loot table ‘s for each creature then compound the salvage %’s for those items. And remember MF does not really add much with +1. 100% MF makes something on the loot table go from 10% to 20%. So looking at the small values of 10% to 10.1% I don’t think you’ll be able to see/notice that rate without days of farming.

Edit: sorry about all those multiple posts, for some strange reason the post wasn’t showing up after I hit submit.

Mystic.5934:

1.7 million. far lekittenhan the ekittenimated 4.2 million reddit predicted, but kittenill a lot. funny how the amount required per level caps at 30,000 after +217% mf.

Look at the table again at 215% shows the 1.7 mil number. It’s the last time the total is updated.

Here’s a protip

If you have multiple alts and you do not play them often, park them at jumping puzzles. It’s best to park them at the most difficult ones since the # of loots you get scales.

For example, the pirate one south of LA is the hardest and longest JP in the game and can reward you up to 7 items.

It’s a good way of getting use out of your alts and getting green/blues to salvage

Vick.6805:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Ok I Did It.2854:

If you are wondering how long it will take you, check out the wiki chart,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

You wont be maxing it out anytime before xmas that’s for sure, its basically going to come down to when you’ve had enough of salvaging.

chuckle This completely reminds me of trying to build lucky and unlucky titles on GW1, and building lucky benefited your account a bit as well. Entirely insane to max out though.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lucky

Nah, it just required a couple hundred plat and several weekends AFK on the boardwalk 9-rings game, and that ended up working toward lucky and unlucky simultaneously.

The insane part was figuring out how to keep yourself entertained when you’re AFK all weekend. :P

Lol not everyone went that route :p

Melfice.5091:

Funky.4861:

OP: if you’re fed-up clicking the essences to consume them, i would suggest you take the artificer craft which can condense all essences into exotic tier which is far less clicking. I think artificer gets to upgrade the essences at entry level so you don’t even need to level the craft.

As for when to stop salvaging? I’d stop at 270% and use MF food, or 250 and use food+banners.

You can get more than 300% magic find, the magic find from achievements and luck just caps at 300%

You;re half right! MF from luck caps at 300%. achievements, food, guild buffs and consumables go over 300%!

It would however be possible to do a rough estimate by just taking vendor price as the base for all typical lvl 80 drops (I generally see 74-80 lvl stuff,) and using an average figure for each class (blue / green.) If nothing else, this plus an average output of the expected essence drops per 100 salvages, with some arbitrary ratio of blue/green (mine is about 60%blue/40%green due to play style) would at least give an estimated minimum cost per level of Account Magic Find. That minimum cost could offset by a similar rough estimate of the value of the salvaged output of materials and usless green upgrades.

I think my plan, stated above, to get to a point where it takes say 300 salvages to get a 1% increase to my Account wide MF, which would be about 180 blue salvages and 120 green salvages, is pretty certain to take me into non-profit from salvage.

That would be about 120×2 silver and 180×1 silver, less some TP fees, so maybe 3 gold lost sales, less the recovered value of the salvaged mats, which is so variable because of ancient wood, ori, and gossamer drops. Call it a 2 gold cost per 1% increase if I am in the ball park. That should be about the point where it just does not pay to continue.

Of course if you could just BUY % boosts off the TP, I suppose many people would happily pay 100 gold for a 10% permanent MF increase. So maybe 10 gold net per 1% gain is the target.

Anyway some relationship between gold cost and % gain is what I intended to seek with my OP

what’s going on? it looks like they added a new word to their kitten replace: s and t when placed in close proximity. l_e_s_s_ _t_h_a_n_ _e_s_t_i_m_a_t_e_d = lekittenhan ekittenimated ????
s_t_u_f_f = stuff
a_l_m_o_s_t = almost
j_u_s_t = just
i_n_s_t_e_a_d = instead
that’s going too far! it makes it look like french with the le kitten han.
edit: looks like they took out that filter

wallace, I did notice that a few minutes after posting that. I got out my trusty calculator and it looks like 4.2 million is still the estimation for maxing it.

when you mouse over the account magic find, it breaks it up into luck mf and ach mf. is it luck mf that maxes at 300%, or the sum of luck and ach that maxes at 300%?

i get about 10 luck (one blue one) per salvage. So in 300 salvages, that would be 3000 luck. The point where it takes 3000 luck to get an extra percent is at 89%.

Don’t forget to count the cost of the mystic kits. A forge stone can be counted as the value of a rare in calculations.

You could count the value of returned items by counting the t5 and t6 mats in a given batch, as well as sigils/runes. Don’t forget tax fees if you are selling stuff on the TP.

Mystic.5934:

what’s going on? it looks like they added a new word to their kitten replace: s and t when placed in close proximity. l_e_s_s_ _t_h_a_n_ _e_s_t_i_m_a_t_e_d = lekittenhan ekittenimated ????
s_t_u_f_f = stuff
a_l_m_o_s_t = almost
j_u_s_t = just
i_n_s_t_e_a_d = instead
that’s going too far! it makes it look like french with the le kitten han.
edit: looks like they took out that filter

wallace, I did notice that a few minutes after posting that. I got out my trusty calculator and it looks like 4.2 million is still the estimation for maxing it.

when you mouse over the account magic find, it breaks it up into luck mf and ach mf. is it luck mf that maxes at 300%, or the sum of luck and ach that maxes at 300%?

Read my post again. MF LUCK is max at 300%. Everything else exceeds that cap.

Wiki members confirmed this. So its not just coming out of my rear end.

You stop when you cant afford it anymore, lol?

A guildie is well over 200% MF now. At that level, its pretty much the salvage of a full 250 ecto stack to get 1% extra MF.

Yes, that’s about 100 gold to gain 1% of MF (although you get some of it back on dusts).

Well played Anet. Well played.

I use a B’day bosoter to get to mine up to 180%, thought its mainly for the xp I’ve noticed barely any change of loot quality. Sixteen hours left and 1 rare and 2 unid dyes.

Although I’ve barely set foot out of Queensdale which may be a reason.

For myself I believe 150% base luck MF is a good amount. 100% if you really do not like salvaging much but still want base luck mf.

Salvaging for luck gets way too time consuming after 150 for the benefits and for the amount of gold lost trying to get luck essences.

This my friends is where I think the Salvage-o-matic would be VERY BENEFICIAL to have IMO.

I think 70 MF is a good break even point. If you plot on a graph the essence required to gain 1%, the curve approaches zero around 65-70 and from there and you spend a lot to get a little.

Salvage-o-matic is just a way to make it a much bigger expense than it already is. It takes skill to get MF up at minimal cost. Since essences aren’t affected by kit type, Crude kits are most cost effective. Optimally, finding a TP near a cultural weapon vendor for crude kits bought with karma is your best bet *cough*blackcitadel*cough*.

I’m at near 100 and its starting to take an enormous amount of salvaging to move that bar a point. Been making the mystic forge kits for better remaining mats but starting to run low on crystals and I’m not spending the silver to keep buying the master ones.

I honestly think a lot of the plan here was just one giant money sink. Theoretically all the MF you gain would pay off if you play long enough. But how long, 5 years?

I’m definitely feeling where my MF is at its time to start thinking more short term and selling or trade posting the items instead of salvaging them.

This whole thing makes me sad. I had my main I use for farming those rare goods at 150% with armor and such. Now the changes where good but now after a month of causal play I find myself at 55% magic find. More grinding I guess.

I’m at 80 but I’m wondering as well. Since MF only affect loot drop directly from mobs, and dungeon, world boss, champ farm award you with boss chest/champ bags, I am not sure if it is still worth to keep increasing MF. I probably won’t stop in near future, but still….

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Vick.6805:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Ok I Did It.2854:

If you are wondering how long it will take you, check out the wiki chart,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

You wont be maxing it out anytime before xmas that’s for sure, its basically going to come down to when you’ve had enough of salvaging.

chuckle This completely reminds me of trying to build lucky and unlucky titles on GW1, and building lucky benefited your account a bit as well. Entirely insane to max out though.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lucky

Nah, it just required a couple hundred plat and several weekends AFK on the boardwalk 9-rings game, and that ended up working toward lucky and unlucky simultaneously.

The insane part was figuring out how to keep yourself entertained when you’re AFK all weekend. :P

Lol not everyone went that route :p

If you maxed those two titles just by doing a lockpick chest grind….you have far more patience than I do, my friend.

I played GW for far more hours than I care to admit, and I wasn’t anywhere near maxing them “legitimately.”

I’m not bothering at all.
Adding a percent to an unknown number is STUPID.

I’m at 91% account, and I’m just starting to notice how much blues and greens added to my daily gold increase. My income has become stagnant on days I don’t play the tp :P

I’m on 202% account… I would say 200 is a good stopping point. My last big usage was 383 exotic essences, it got me 3.5%. I figured it is time to stop, it is insane. And it burns you out massively.

My ‘agent of entropy’ achievement has been completed 608 times now.

And I gained money doing this, didn’t lose any. Gained between 400-500g alone from playing the TP for blues/greens. The problem was I was relisting 600 different buy orders each night, which took about an hour if I was concentrating, longer if I wasn’t. Massive burn out. Not to mention when I logged in I’d be salvaging for 40-60 mins.

If you want to do it the way where you won’t hate yourself, salvage ectos, but you’ll be losing money that way.

At around 100%. The rate feels about right.
I could stop now but at this point salvaging is more about convenience. Especially with the champion boxes also giving greens. If I were to keep some to sell I’d have to run off to a merchant after every dungeon run or buy more bag slots.