Guild Wars 2

Ok, So Ive been doing this for a while to gain magic find.
The idea is to gain Luck essence through salvaging rares for ecto, and then ecto for the essence of luck.
I started out with 50 gold, purchased the cheapest level 80 rare gear which is about 33 to 34 silver, which yields about 140 – 150 rares. Salvage them for Ecto using Mystic Salvaging kit (it is the “most uses for the money”)
(note: they also give you some T5 mats and Rare Runes).
After that is done you should have anywhere between 125 – 170 ecto based on how lucky you were. with the salvaging.
Salvage the Ecto using Mystic salvaging kits as well.
You will recieve Crystaline Dust almost equal to the value of the ecto you salvaged
As well as around 13000 points of luck.
(note: use artificer to reduce all luck essence into the 200s (exotic essence))
Lastly: Sell the Crystaline Dust to recover your gold (you should get around 46 to 54 gold), as well as the Materials and Runes.
Alternatively you can use the rare runes in the Mystic Forge at a risk for some expensive exotic runes, If you came ahead in gold from the Dust/materials, i would suggest trying your luck, I profited 18 gold this way, but if you are shorted in returns from the materials, sell the runes to recover your losses. 150x 5siver = 7.5gold.
Simple right?
Just repeat this process over and over until you max out your magic find.
There is little risk in a large gold loss, though you will lose/gain 1-2 gold every now and then, and the temptation of selling/keeping the ecto will be great.

Best of luck ladies and gents!
And post if you know of any better ways to acquire essence of luck.

I personally just bought the Ecto right out and salvaged them, your return of 125-170ecto per 140-150 rares seems a little high, ive seen me salvage 30 rares and get 1 ecto before,

Also given that Ecto are selling for 41silver each, if you invested 50g into buying rares, your Ecto return rate would get you nearly 51-70g would you not be better selling some of the Ecto to buy more rares keeping your 50g balance the same, and salvage the difference?

Regardless, what im saying is, if that return rate from rares was so high, rare prices would be way higher, as big big TP flippers would be all over this.

Ill try find the link on the forums to the guide to maxing MF that someone did, and post it here.

The salvage rate of rares > lvl 68 into ectoplasm is approximately 0.9 via mystic salvage kits, there’s been large-number studies done on this already.

The salvage rate of ectoplasm into crystalline dust, numbers are limited, but my own tests with several thousand ectoplasm (not enough sample size frankly, to be more accurate we’d want several hundred thousand to be sure) is approximately 2.0 dusts per ectoplasm.

What both of you seem to ignore is that there is a 10+5(x)% loss in listing and transaction fees whenever you use the TP in any form. If you spend 100 gold on rares, you will always lose 15 gold in fees, even though the crystalline dust you get is almost the same base price as the rares themselves. In order to reduce the losses somewhat you’d want to salvage specific rares that give higher value alternate drops in addition to the ectoplasm itself. Such as anything made from cloth, since silk is relatively expensive – and mforging the runes you get out isn’t optional anymore, it’s a necessity to reduce your losses over very large sizes.

Generally, rares > ectoplasm direct purchasing due to the rune and silk you also get in addition to simply the 0.9 ecto/rare.

From the analysis I have seen (done by MULTIPLE players on the crafting forums). There is NO WAY you will recoup your investment money by selling the Cystaline Dust from Salvaging Ectos (you can come close and MAY pull it off if you are VERY luck in your salvages). No doubt Salvaging Ectos for Dust & Luck is the least expensive way to boost your MF %, but stating that you can make money at the same time is not a given and the process will end up costing you gold in the long run.

Again, it’s a great way to boost MF , but it’s not going to generate profit 80 of the time (market fluctuations in Ectos / Dust not withstanding).

Also, using artificer to upgrade the essences of luck is only useful to reduce the amount of clicks necessary (although with the time spent crafting, you’re better off just writing a mouse-click script that does a mousepress for every key you hit on your keyboard while you faceroll it. note: this specific script is allowed by anet’s “one key one action” rule.) or to craft specific items, cough Mawdrey.

I back of the envelope figure you might be able to get 95,000 EoL out of this method until your run out of your initial 50g investment. That’s only a bit over 3% at the higher end of the luck curve.

a lot of conflicting statements here. I’ll add my own:
Buy Ecto, sell Dust = (buy ecto and salvage for 39s32c – 30s35c dust sale) = 0.74c per luck
Have Ecto, sell Ecto vs. sell Dust = (34s86c ecto sale – 29s74c salvage and dust sale) = 3.547c per luck
Buy Ecto vs. buy Dust, use Dust = (buy ecto and salvage for 39s32c – buy dust for 34s38c) = 4.491c per luck
Have Ecto, sell Ecto and buy Dust vs. salvage Ecto, use Dust = (34s86c ecto sale – buy dust for 34s38c + 61c salvage) = 0.997c per luck

this is using the current prices:
Ecto: 38s71c-41s2c
Dust: 19s10c-19s84c

salvaging rares for ectos then salvaging ectos for dust would fall under “have ecto, sell ecto vs. sell dust”. current that costs about 3.5c per luck. x110 luck per ecto = you currently get 3s85c less by salvaging the ecto into dust and selling the dust than you would just selling the ecto.
every now and then there is a negative cost per luck (meaning salvaging into dust gives more coin than the ecto). But unless you get lucky during one of those times, salvaging ectos will cost you about 2s per ecto.
On the other hand, salvaging ecto is hands down the fastest way to get luck. by about 2 orders of magnitude (ectos give 10x more, and you can buy 10x as many in the same time).
I would recommend salvaging blues and greens, and that will give you a profit which you can then use to salvage ecto. In the end you should be about even. maybe 10% of your luck will come from blues/greens and 90% from ectos.

OP has a good advice about buying cheap rares to get ectos.

Mystic.5934:

OP has a good advice about buying cheap rares to get ectos.

I don’t disagree with that. I disagree that you can earn enough from the salvage to keep doing it indefinitely and in the end still have your 50g.

In the end you need 4,295,450 EoL to reach 300%. The curve isn’t pretty.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:TotalLuckReq.png

Side tip…..

If you are working on getting 500 crafting, note that you can discover T5 RARES (cost karma for the recipes) that cost NO ECTOS to craft but generate ECTOS when you salvage them…..

Not directly related and it’s a drop in the bucket for both 400-500 crating XP (they can gain you about 5 levels somewhere) and the Ectos needed to get to 300% MF, but just a little tidbit I picked up leveling my crafting to 500.

Behellagh.1468:

Mystic.5934:

OP has a good advice about buying cheap rares to get ectos.

I don’t disagree with that. I disagree that you can earn enough from the salvage to keep doing it indefinitely and in the end still have your 50g.

In the end you need 4,295,450 EoL to reach 300%. The curve isn’t pretty.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:TotalLuckReq.png

It won’t happen quick. the more profit you want, the slower it’ll go. But since we’re just shooting for breaking even, it works well enough. It’s much slower than just buying ectos (maybe 1 day/stack of ectos?), but it’s profitable.
For a long time now (over a year), I’ve been making a profit from doing just this; buying rares and exotics and salvaging them and selling everything. Currently there are 665 rares that you can buy order, salvage with MSK, and sell the ecto and socket to make a >0% profit. And that’s with taking the 15% TP fee into account (since you’re planning on selling the dust, it should be). Also, 243 exotics that give >0% profit.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Mystic-s-Gold-Profiting-Guide/first#post4340561

Your better off not reselling your piles of dust and using them for promotion. Technically, you can earn gold from the salvage of ectos if you then promote other materials with the salvaged dust.

When the MF rework patch first came out, it was cheaper to craft rares > salvage for globs > salvage for dust > promote lodestones. Now there are alot of other materials you can promote other than lodestones as well that will provide profit. But, without having looked much into it, it seems cheaper to either buy rares or globs from the TP rather than craft them. Back when the MF rework came back you could craft a number of tailor (and leatherworker I think) rares for around 19-20 silver worth of materials where the cheaper rares could be purchased for 25-28 silver (saving you around 6-9 Silver for every rare (before the 90% glob salvage rate).

How much luck do you get on average from 1 ecto?

110 according to Mystic’s luck cheat sheet. At least I think it’s Mystic’s.

http://legendsrpg.com/gw2.php?luck=yes&purpose=sell&lower_limit=100

Question I would have is – does it pay off once you’ve reached 300% MF.

Yup, I did make that. I tested the salvages of 1,000 ectos and got about 110,000 luck. (with mystic salvage kits) I wouldn’t call that definitive, but it was good enough for an estimate.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glob_of_Ectoplasm/salvage_research says the average is 104.42 luck, based on 27,060 salvages, which gave 1.84 dust. The amount of luck you get seems to be consistent across all kit types, but the amount of dust you get increases with the kit (1.62 for Basic/C-SoM, 1.84 for M/M, 1.98 for BLSK). I didn’t know about this page until just now, so I’ll have to change my numbers a bit.

Rouven: are you asking OP? I would say once you reach 300% MF, you’re almost always better off selling the ecto than salvaging it into dust. You can always make a profit buying rares and salvaging into ecto. You can also make a profit buying and salvaging select blues and greens.

You don’t really earn for promotion of t5 to t6 because you’re using skill points. Rather, you’re selling the skill point.

That is not to say that it isn’t worth doing. IT ABSOLUTELY IS worth promoting t5 blue mats, and ‘some’ of the cores into lodestones, and standard blueprints into superiors, but there’s a limit to this set by the number of skill points you possess.

Mystic.5934:

(…)
Rouven: are you asking OP? I would say once you reach 300% MF, you’re almost always better off selling the ecto than salvaging it into dust. You can always make a profit buying rares and salvaging into ecto. You can also make a profit buying and salvaging select blues and greens.

No, I was asking in general and more in regards to the potential higher income to offset the initial costs.

Going by the limited stats on the Wiki page, the trend seems to point to kit rarity being irrelevant to the output of ecto salvaging:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glob_of_Ectoplasm/salvage_research

Save your mystic forge stones and use a copper fed.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Going by the limited stats on the Wiki page, the trend seems to point to kit rarity being irrelevant to the output of ecto salvaging:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glob_of_Ectoplasm/salvage_research

Save your mystic forge stones and use a copper fed.

But den you no get rune/sigil/t6.

use a master kit to salvage ecto. zero reason not to.
with SoM: costs 3c, gives 1.62 dust. let’s say dust sells for 20s, that’s 32s40c returned
with MSK: costs 61c, gives 1.84 dust. at 20s/dust, that’s 36s80c returned.
So MSK gives 3s80c more than SoM (and basic), even after including the cost of the kit.

Mystic kits are only good to use in place of master if you have free forge stones, in which case the cost of MSK drops to like 10c per use.