Guild Wars 2

A while back I applied a rune to a piece of equipment and when I found an upgrade for it I figured I would salvage the piece of equipment for the chance of getting my rune back.

However, no dice, turns out the piece of equipment in question could not be salvaged, and for the record was not bought from a karma vendor. Besides even if it was, that rune was added by me, so even if you don’t want me to have any mats because it is karma gear or whatever please give me the 25% (or whatever, depends on salvage kit) chance to obtain back the rune or sigil I added to the particular piece of equipment.

Luckily I had a spare of the rune in question so I did not loose any bonuses because of this, but with runes more rare something like this would be very annoying, especially since the game does not in any way attempt to inform you that a particular piece of equipment cannot be salvaged for (a chance to) recovering upgrades when one is applied.

All of the items I can’t salvage were bought from Karma vendors. I’ve now completely stopped buying any equipment with Karma, at least until endgame, because of it.

This is actually a big problem. I can understand why they made it so certain karma vendor items can’t be salvage to stop gold conversion, but at least let us take out the runes from them.

Out of interest do transmutation stones transfer runes, if so can you transmute to get them out?

Use transmutation stones. You can transfer the look, the stats, and the upgrades into what you want.

Transmutation stones transfer the skin to another item, this has no relation to recovering upgrades from these gear pieces.

Also, for the recodr I am pretty sure that piece of equipment I got through mystic forging some crafting trash equipment in early levels of crafting so the only method to acquire “karma gear” isn’t karma vendors so you can’t just avoid them, nor for certain know in advance.

@Crise After you transfer the rune to another item with the Transmutation Stone, you can extract it.

Yes, please fix this, so one can remove the runes from karma items as well – basically renders them completely useless unless you want to lose your hard earned sigil / runes to them.

Lemnear.6215:

@Crise After you transfer the rune to another item with the Transmutation Stone, you can extract it.

So, if I change the skin on a karma weapon it becomes available for salvaging?

Interesting, does this also mean that the other materials you get such as copper, iron, silver, etc are actually determined by the skin and not the actual weapons power level.

Crise.9401:

Lemnear.6215:

@Crise After you transfer the rune to another item with the Transmutation Stone, you can extract it.

So, if I change the skin on a karma weapon it becomes available for salvaging?

Interesting, does this also mean that the other materials you get such as copper, iron, silver, etc are actually determined by the skin and not the actual weapons power level.

well no, you transfer just the rune to the new item, not the skin/stats.

Well, another option you have, (and I think this was intentional on the dev’s part), is to take the items you buy with karma to the forge in Lion’s Arch. You trade them in with other items to forge into another piece entirely. At least you get something back off your investment of the karma points, rather than just destroying the item.

Trasmutation stones are the best work around, They work as follows select the look you want with the top box, select the stats you want in the second, select the rune you want in the third. Sadly one of the 2 items is destroyed but you get the rune stats on the new item created

Leithian.3109:

Trasmutation stones are the best work around, They work as follows select the look you want with the top box, select the stats you want in the second, select the rune you want in the third. Sadly one of the 2 items is destroyed but you get the rune stats on the new item created

I wasn’t aware of that third selection, I assumed runes and sigils would just be retained from the stats item, I have yet to transmute anything, figured it would make most sense to save those stones for something good.

I am VERY disappointed about this change; it’s absurd. I can’t do ANYTHING with items purchased with karma. It’s total nonsense. I can’t sell them or salvage them. I think it’s messed up that I am getting penalized for exploits other players took advantage of at launch. It’s wrong and it shouldn’t be this way. Will this be fixed, or are all players simply discouraged from buying karma items.