Guild Wars 2

Should I salvage only greens and blues or should I do the same for rares and exotics? What items in particular should I NOT salvage, and instead, sell on the Trading Post?

Depends. What’s your magic find? How full is your mats?
Anyway going by the average mats you’d get form salvaging times:
Silk is around 2 silver
Cured Thick Leather Square is around 30 copper
Mithril Ore around 50 copper
Elder Wood Plank is 1 silver

So if you’re going to salvage anything salvage the light and sell the rest

What do you mean how full is my mats?

Avectius.3271:

What do you mean how full is my mats?

In your bank storage you can have stacks of 255 of a mat, which is regarded as full.

Personally I salvage every green and blue, and with rares I check to see if they are worth more than 40s, if so I sell on TP, if not I salvage and keep/sell the ecto.

The downside of SW is the sheer amount of stuff you get, so trying to min/max by salvaging cloth and selling heavy/medium is extremely time consuming. So it really depends on how long you want to spend clearing out your bags.

I salvage everything except exotics (which i dont get) and some rares that im wasting on the forge (i should quit that). I usually check the TP for exotics and their rune/sigil (abbreviated R/S) to see the value. If the R/S is close to the value of the rare, i salvage and sell the R/S. If i need the skin, ill salvage it. If there is a sufficient difference between the R/S and the exotic and i dont need the skin i’ll sell the exotic. Theres also that rare chance that its an item with a salvageable inscription/insignia… I always salvage those

This is what i do

- Open the tp and sort items by price. All exotics and rares worth more than 35-40s sell. The exception is for exotics with a rune/sigil worth more than the item itself, then salvage it, but ONLY if you have a black lion kit to use, otherwise just sell

- Other rares it depends on the price of ecto and how much you like rng. The “average” is .85 ecto per rare with a mystic/masters kit, so if an item is worth less than 85% the price of ecto you “should” get more profit by salvaging, but again, rng. I just sell everything nowadays because getting 5 ectos from 20 salvages every other day is tiring, but if you like rng, salvage all you want.

Anything below rare thats cloth salvage with the cheapest kits, since gossamer is garbage (though who knows, maybe by year 3 of this game higher level mats wont cost 1/6th the price of lower level ones!)

Masterwork gear (that isnt cloth) sell to the vendor, or throw in the mystic forge/toilet if you want more rng, because everyone needs a little rng in their lives. If you really want luck you can salvage instead, but it takes a lot of clicking and isnt really worth it

Any leftover fine/basic stuff leftover just salvage with a cheap kit or vendor, it usually doesnt matter.

After that sell rare sigils/runes on the tp, and vendor the masterwork ones, and sell the rest of the junk and medallions and whatever you end up with.

And there! After only 20 minutes of work, you finally cleared out the loot it took 10 minutes of chest farming to get, so now you get to do even more chest farming! FUN! (kind of but not entirely joking here).