Guild Wars 2

Hello!

(Somewhat) Newbie question: I know combining exotic weapons in the Mystic Forge gives chances at precursors, but what about Armour and Trinkets? Is the best bet to sell these (or salvage in hope of rare materials)?

Thanks!

Mystic forging your exotics is probably not the most cost efficient way to get a precursor. Some have forged thousands of gold to get nothing, with which they could have gotten several if not dozens of precursors. The “success stories” are few and far between. You can also get precursors from forging average level 75+ rares since there’s a 20% chance to promote the forged item to the next rarity. But I don’t recommend doing so either.

Personally, I sell any exotic with a useless sigil/rune worth above 1g. If salvaging the sigil/rune gets me most of the money I would get from selling it, then I salvage it with the free black lion salvage kits from dailies to get the upgrade component and a chance at getting globs of ectoplasms.

Frankly, unless you really want to go for a lot of ascended, I don’t recommend salvaging exotics just for the sake of getting dark matter. I’m at 198 dark matter without even trying. The ‘% at rare materials’ that salvage kits have simply means you have a chance of getting gossamer scraps(t6) instead of silk scraps(t5) for light armor, orichalcum(t6) instead of mithril(t5) for heavy, etc. It does not reflect the drop rate of globs of ectoplasm.
However, the higher the quality of the kit, the higher the chance of getting ectoplasms from the salvaged lv68+ rare/exotic.

Salvaging exos is the only way to get globs of dark matter. My rule is if I can get more than 3g or so on the tp, I sell.

Aside from the upgrade there is the insignia/inscription to consider but only the uncraftable ones can be salvaged.

For armor, anything that is selling for 3g or more I check on the Rune/Prefix to see if salvaging it will result in more value, then I either salvage or sell it. Anything selling for less than 3g gets salvaged.

For trinkets, I’ve been saving them up for forge attempts to see if you can actually get anything good for them (like the collection items). I have almost no sample size though since they drop very rarely (and I’m not going to sink any gold into buying and forging).

For weapons, I’m currently forging any that are worth less than 3g on the TP. This has helped me unlock a ton of skins and has netted me 2 Precursors.