Guild Wars 2

Here’s my situation, I’m not in a financial position to spend real money on the gem store (hopefully that changes soon) nor do I have the personal time to grind, grind, grind out gold to convert to gems (given the prices now a days), So I’m stuck with two characters, bags full of rear gear waiting to be broken down for ectos, but I have no real viable way to get the black lion salvage kits off the gem store, I don’t really want to use the in game salvage kits as I have had a string of back luck using those. Any advice or ideas would be great, because at this point I am stuck with either waiting to get lucky with an in game drop or just buying ecto off the TP. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to any thoughts.

do you have enough in game gold to buy black lion kits with gems? you can convert gold>gems if not wanting to spend RL monies.

if you can afford to buy ecto at current prices, you could do that.

You could use Master’s Salvage kits to get them at half the rate.

Cheers.

I don’t last time I tried, Tuesday I think it was, It would have taken all my game money to get around 243 gems, I need 300 for the Lion salvage kits. Not really worth it in my opinion, I do buy then from the TP since that’s my only option atm, but I buy one or two then have to grind more money, buy 1 or 2 more then grind some more lol. Not alot of fun really.

I have tried the Masters but no luck with those, the mats I do get I can just go gathering and save the money I would have spent on those salvage kits.

You can either get the BL kits or use master kits or sell the rares directly so someone else can break them down. I’m not sure what other answer you are looking for here.

So if I were in your situation, I would probably sell all the rares in order to buy ectos with the proceeds. Saving up the rares don’t seem to be helping. I got lucky with the few keys I’ve gotten to get bl kits from the chests I’ve opened. The rares do generally go for about the price of one ecto, so it’s not an unreasonable trade, and probably a lot better than salvaging with the lesser kits and getting no ectos from them. Best of luck to you.

If you have another character slot free, you could create a new character, outsource the yellows and wait until the black lion kits will drop for you in the future. ^^
Or do you need ectos now?

Don’t buy the BLSK. you spend 5 gold on 25 salvages which you can get for 14 silver. And it’s not even confirmed that you have an increased drop rate of ectos. I myself didn’t notice any big difference when going from BLSK to rare kits, I even have a friend in my guild beliving that you get as many ectos from the crude salvage kits as from the rare ones(as it doesn’t really quallify to get into the rare material category as that is where the higher tier materials would go).

There is a difference, and it is somewhat confirmed.
More or less it’s just a multiplier, so if you have basic chance of 50% to get 1 ecto and 50% chance to get 0(Fake Numbers), with master kits it will be 62.5% to get 1 and 37.5% to get 0 while with black lion kits it would be 75% and 25% respectively.
What I mean here that 25 and 50 % chance increases mean % increase on base chance, thus 0.5×1.25 = 0.625 and 0.5×1.5 = 0.75.
Which basically means you are better off using master(or mystic, but with current gem prices not worth it unless you maybe want a 250 stack kit) kit to salvage rares(much better than selling them to a salvager because he has to deal with 15% trading post fee and thus guaranteedly buys them cheaper from you to salvage with at least any profit).
Oh, and basic kit to salvage anything white/blue worth salvaging(basically all of them except those that consist of wood and leather, these are better vendored). Vendor expensive masterwork, mystic forge cheap masterwork(chance for rare to break down, you get a rare a bit more rarer than every 5th attempt, that is around 16-17 masterworks for 1 rare)
And BLKits are here to salvage exotic items or exotic gear that you’ve used to wear. Price of 20 silver per salvage(or more) is completely fine to pay when you have to take out that superior rune or sigil guaranteedly.
From a guy with Sunrise who got 50% of gold for it by just playing(not!!! farming orr 24/7) and 50% of gold by flipping on trading post(boring stuff to do for me =/ I don’t play trader wars but I wanted that sunrise so yea).

All really good ideas, and ones i definitely did not consider, thank you, I think I’m going to start comparing prices of these yellows to ecto, the ones that are better ill sell the rest I’ll us the masters on and hope luck is with me. Thanks again.

Junel.5479:

All really good ideas, and ones i definitely did not consider, thank you, I think I’m going to start comparing prices of these yellows to ecto, the ones that are better ill sell the rest I’ll us the masters on and hope luck is with me. Thanks again.

Do not forget to count in monetary value of sigil/rune as well as common materials.
Chance for T6 common is pretty high when salvaging rare with master kit and sigil/rune is to be considered, too.

You roughly get .9ectos for every item you salvage. I sell rares that are currently around 27/28s+. Everything else I just salvage with the mystic. They have the same rate, the only benefit is the 100% on getting the sigil back with the BLSK.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Salvage_Kit

If you have 3 mystic forge stones you can make these.

The same as master, but if you have the stones its way cheaper and if gives you 250 charges.

Honestly I have about the same success rate with masters kits as I do with BL kits. In fact the last 5 times I tried a BL kit I got no ectos, while out of the last 5 master kits I got success 4 times. Go figure. It’s gonna be a gamble either way, so you might as well just save your money and stick with the masters kits if the BL isn’t an option for you. There’s really not much more to it than that. You can try getting some MF boosts from your guild and banners and eating some food, but there’s no proof that actually works. Can’t hurt though.

Mystic and Master kits drop about 0.9 ecto/rare
BL kits drop about 1.4 ecto/rare
I agree with Ethics: sell rares if they give you more than ecto price, salvage otherwise (keep in mind any sigils/runes in the item – they will increase your profit from salvaging). If it’s close, sell it (kits do cost ~1s each use)

Since reading the replays from this great GW2 community, I have actually started comparing sigils and rears to TP costs which has made a huge difference, something I didn’t do before derrr. So far with just using the master salvage I have acquired a few ectos, but with using your advice I have been able to keep revenue up to keep buying them, finally feel like I’m moving forward, thank you again for the replays and great ideas, one of these days I’m going to try and make the mystics just to try them out.

Junel.5479:

one of these days I’m going to try and make the mystics just to try them out.

I did that, not worth it. Glad we could help!