Guild Wars 2

Just wondering what the difference is between the different Salvage Kits? Crude, fine, etc.

I usually only salvage white stuff, and vendor the blues and greens. Do the different salvage kits give different chances of results on whites, or blues, or greens, or what?

TIA. Cheers.

Okay, There’s some wrong/misleading information here, so lets get things straight.

Each Savlage kit has 2 different variables displayed. %Chance for rarer materials, and %Chance to salvage upgrade components.

Now, Every time you salvage something, you’re going to get a crafting mat. Generally Light armor gives Cloth, Medium gives leather, and Heavy gives ore, with Weapons giving wood or ore. Jewelry gives ore as well, btw.

The Tier of crafting material you receive is based on the level of the item. SO salvaging a level 60 piece of light armor gives you Linen, while a level 80 piece of gear gives you Silk.

The % Chance of rarer materials determines the % chance to get the next higher tier of materials. So if you’re doing the level 80 light armor example from above, with a master salvage kit (25% chance of rare mats) you will get Silk most of the time, and occasionally Gossamer. Testing has shown that the % chance isn’t actually at 25%, but it’s far more likely than using a basic or Crude.

The % Chance of Upgrade components simply determines whether you get the Rune/Jewel/Sigil out of the item. Crude has a next to nothing chance of getting the component, while Master has an 80% chance. Black Lions can get them 100% of the time, which is really good when you’re extracting very expensive sigils/runes (Superior runes of divinity, for example.)

Ectoplasms (Which drop from level 68+ Rares/exotics) are thought to also be a part of the “% chance for rarer items” That being said, they drop incredibly often (Average salvage rate with a master kit is .9 Ectos per Rare) I am unaware of anyone doing testing with Ecto salvaging rates with Basic kits. It would not surprise me if it has some effect, but I’ve yet to see anyone provide evidence to this effect. And who can blame them, ectos are ~30 silver a pop, no one wants to make that gamble.

Keep in mind that Exotics will salvage 0-5 ectos, where Rares will salvage 0-3. How many you get has nothing to do with the salvage kit quality. It’s possible how often you get them has to do with kit quality but, as I said, no research as of yet.

TL;DR: Use higher Level kits only on items over level 68, and only if you want to recover the rune, get Tier 6 mats, or get Ectos. Otherwise use a Crude

Supposedly they give you better stuff if you use the more expensive ones. I haven’t played with them a lot, i use the mid level ones, but would use the bestest ones if breaking down a yellow or orange to get the runes and stuff off them.

Anyone got a more thorough explanation?

Cheers.

If you are breaking down a high level Yellow (level 68+) or Orange for ecto(or a rune/sigil that you want) then use a Mystic or Black Lion salvage kit for the best chance at an ecto reward. Everything else, use basic or crude – I tend to use basic purely because they come in stacks of 25 rather than 15 so I feel they take up less space. Lots of people just use crude because they are the cheapest salvage kit for your return.

if you read the description for example basic salvage kit it says 10% chance of rarer material and 20% chance of recovering upgrade.

The 20% chance of recovering upgrade means if you have a rune in armor or sigil in weapon it have a 20% chance of recovering. For expensive rune or sigil it’s a good idea to use the highest salving kit since usually those is worth a few gold.

The 10% chance of rare material means if an item you salvage usually give for example copper ore, you have 10% chance it’ll give you the next tier item which is iron ore. Usually you should use at least basic salvage kit and not crude since those 10% chance is good to get you the next tier item which sells for more. For example if you have lvl75 white cloth armor you should use basic salvage kit since it’ll give you 10% chance to get you gossamer scrap which sells for a few silver.

I’m not sure if you should use fine salvage kit over basic. I think it depend on the price of item. Since fine salvage kit cost alot more than basic. But use at least basic salvage kit for every white item is a good idea.

Kit is absolutely right, follow her general advice.

Higher tier kits give you an increased ‘chance’ of obtaining the rarer components that the salvaged item contained.

E.g A rare 72+ item will have an increased chance of obtaining components such as ectos when using a Master Salvage kit compared to using a crude salvage kit.

The real word here is chance as it is not guaranteed that on average you will end up with more ectos using master salvage kits compared to crude one in this case salvaging rares for ectos.

In the general care you want to be using master salvage kits on rares or above and use lesser kits on general items. I recommend if you’re lucky enough to obtain black lion kits save for salvaging rares or unwanted exotic or something, however if I am not mistaken even with BL kits you can obtain anywhere from 0 to 5 (???) ectos. This only applies to ectos I believe, there is 100% chance to salvage it’s raw materials and any runes the item contains.

Hope this helps a little bit.

^ what this person said, I’d recommend only using master kits on rare or exotics, I haven’t done the math for it, but currently kits aren’t even worth buying except to make space in your inventory. Normally its more profitable to just sell the items at high levels, while salvaging is only beneficial for lowlevel materials.

Thanks everyone. The character I’m playing is only level 22 at the moment, so I guess I’ll stick with Crude for the whites, and only worry about better salvage kits at high levels.

Cheers.

at level 22 i find most white items vend for more than you could sell the salvaged materials for. ie – vend for 10c, salvage and get 1 copper ore which sells for like 3c

Seras.5702:

at level 22 i find most white items vend for more than you could sell the salvaged materials for. ie – vend for 10c, salvage and get 1 copper ore which sells for like 3c

Hmm, good point. I guess I could vendor them and then buy the mats I need for crafting. I’ve been concentrating on salvaging for the mats I need, but what you suggest might be a better way to go. I’ll check it out.

Cheers.

If you are interested in making every copper count, at low levels some mats (specially the fabrics and fine quality mats) are worth quite a bit on the trading post.

Copper Ore still sells for around 15c each, and Jute Scraps around 20c each, so it’s actually still worthwhile to salvage most low level white armors. Rawhide tends to fluctuate a lot more wildly, but it rarely exceeds 7 or 8c, so I typically just vendor them.