Guild Wars 2

So after getting my kitten dying a number of times on my upleveled WvW char I decided to simply power level him the final 15 levels to 80 with Glory Tomes.

I was eager to get back into the action asap and so purchased him a set of exotic WvW armor as well as a rather expensive set of Superior Runes of Melandru.

I was excited to get back into the action asap…that was…until someone pointed out that I was wearing level 70 armor. kitten? Since when is exotic WvW armor level 70?

Obviously I wasn’t paying that much attention while buying the set but I was always very sure that it was a level 80 endgame set with Power, Toughness, Vitality.

This was bad enough as I’d just sunk well over 3000 WvW badges into sub-optimal armor. But what hurts more is the 25 Gold worth of Melandru Runes I have stuck in them.

Ad as you might have guessed…I cannot salvage the armor.

So what do? Somebody suggested I could try and transmute the items and thus save the runes, but how exactly would that work out.

On a similar note, why is it that we still can’t salvage Karma/Badge armor but we can salvage armor from dungeons?

Originally karma armor was salvageable, but they had problems with people buying them and salvaging for the materials, so they made them not salvageable. Anyway, there’s an Upgrade Extractor available in the gem store, which should allow you to remove the runes. As for transmuting, if you transmute the armor with a normal piece of armor (obtained as a drop), the resulting piece of armor is then salvageable. Or you could use Transmutation Crystals to transmute your current armor looks and rune onto a set of level 80 armor.

There are several different levels of karma WvW armor and weapons you can buy. Make sure you check before you buy.

Bron.9647:

Originally karma armor was salvageable, but they had problems with people buying them and salvaging for the materials, so they made them not salvageable. Anyway, there’s an Upgrade Extractor available in the gem store, which should allow you to remove the runes. As for transmuting, if you transmute the armor with a normal piece of armor (obtained as a drop), the resulting piece of armor is then salvageable. Or you could use Transmutation Crystals to transmute your current armor looks and rune onto a set of level 80 armor.

Using the upgrade extractor would be a terrible idea.
If you are converting gold to gems it would cost around 20g. For around 21g you can get a six Superior Rune of Melandru. Paying 6x the cost for the same result does not make sense.

If you buy gems directly you would be better off converting the gem to gold. Each extractor(250 gems) would get you around 14g. For the cost of 6 extractors you could get 24 Superior Runes of Melandru.

The only upgrade that is worth using an upgrade extractor on in the game right now is a +9 or higher Agony Infusion(this will likely change, it used to be +8 or higher).

You can use a transmutation stone to move the runes over to a non-level 80 blue/green item then salvage. Only move over the runes, keep the other item’s look/stats. Since they are not level 80 items you shouldn’t need to use the fine transmutation crystals (gem shop item).

You can get the non-fine ones very frequently from doing map completions (especially finishing cities like lion’s arch/divinity’s reach/rata sum etc.)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Stone

Hopefully you’ve gotten some free black lion salvage kits from doing your dailies. If not I pray for good RNG on the 80% chance on the master kits.