Salvaging, Ectos, and Money

E

Enok

New Member
One of the things I see frequently is the statement that one of the main ways people make money at endgame is by salvaging rares for ectos, then selling the ectos and upgrades on the TP. I had several Black Lion Trading Kits around (though mostly from my first toon, don't seem to get them any more in the last two months) and indeed, I could get several gold a day hitting the world bosses and selling ectos. It got me to full exotics really quickly after I hit 80.

Now that I've run out of Black Lion Trading kits, I went looking to figure out if I should be buying more.

From what I've found the consensus among the community is that they are only worth it for insuring you get a specific upgrade out of an item. They aren't cost effective for getting ectos. According to some of the research threads on forums and the wiki, the community has determined that you get an average of about 1.25 ectos out of a level 80 rare with the BL kit, and .95 ectos with a Mystic or Master kit. Since master kits are considerably cheaper than Black Lion, the common wisdom is to use master for salvaging rares.

But I'm wondering if it's even worth salvaging at all. With the price of ectos hovering around 30 silver, and the average rare item around 27 silver, would it make the most sense to just sell the rares, and be free of the risk of RNG giving you no ectos? I salvaged two rares today and got no ectos. Could have gotten roughly 54 silver for them, but instead wound up with about 6 silver worth of upgrades.

Upgrades throw another twist, though. If you really do get .95 ectos/rare, you should be making a little more money than just selling the rares on ectos alone, plus 80% of the time you are getting an upgrade item worth 2 to 3 silver, so salvaging with master/mystic kits would net you 3 to 5 silver more per rare. But.... I ran into at least one post where the writer seemed to be suggesting the best bet is not to sell the updgrades, but to throw them into the mystic forge. He didn't elaborate, but I expect the goal here is to go for an exotic upgrade, which will net 3 to 5 gold. I'm not sure what the chances of getting an exotic from forging four rares, but you'd it'd have to be as bad as 1/100 or worse for you to not at least break even.

Which then makes me wonder if it would be best to forge rares armors/weapons in hopes of an exotic. Since those go for twenty something silver, you'd have to get an exotic every ten rares or so to make it worth it. I get rares pretty often out of forging greens, but not sure if the chances are similar for rares to exotics.

So, anyone have some insight into these things? What do you do with your rare loot?
 
After a little more poking around, I found that research on upgrading major (rare) upgrade to superior (exotic) upgrade seems to indicate about a 20% chance to get a higher tier item per use of the forge.

If that rate is correct, you need 5 forge attempts to get an exotic. That means 16 major upgrades (since you'll get a major back for each time you don't get a superior).

After looking at runes and sigils more, though, I realized not all of them go for gold. Some are apparently worthless, as they sell for a few copper a piece. So, again, it's about gambling. You could end up with a 3g upgrade, giving you a huge profit on 15 silver worth of rare upgrades, or you could end up with something like a Superior Rune of Grenth, which goes for 3 silver on the TP.

Most superior runes, though, seem to be going for 15 silver at least, so you've got a good chance to break even or better. Kinda makes me want to sink some gold into a large batch of cheap major runes and run them through the forge to see what happens.

There are a lot of superior sigils, however, going for a couple silver a piece. It's probably better to just sell the major sigils.

RNG :p
 
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Pretty good info here, ty for posting it!

  • BL Kit is definitely not worth it for ecto. I use them if I start to accumulate several, but otherwise it's only for getting an upgrade as you said. It's pretty rare you'd want to salvage an armor to get the upgrade though...I only use it when I get a nice sigil/rune in a drop.
  • Didn't mention, but mystic salvage kits are also not worth it.
  • I salvage all my rares, except greatswords and staves. These go for more because people are dumping them trying to get dusk/dawn/legend. Sometimes you come out a little ahead or behind, but it's just not worth figuring the .9 x the price verus ecto, factoring in materials and sigil.
  • 1/5 chance to forge will burn 16 items for each upgrade. I used to save my sigils/runes...but it just got annoying and I sell them on TP now. Very rare I'd get an upgrade, and most of the time it'd be worthless - there are a lot of superior sigils going for under 3s. Runes may be worth it.
 
Ah, yeah. I forgot to mention that about the mystic kits. Someone figured out the math, and mystic kits are only worth it if the gem price drops to 94 silver/gem, which doesn't look it will happen any time soon.

You're right about 16 items for 5 forgings, missed one of them when I figured it. :D Will go back and edit post to reflect.

Good point about greatwords and staves.

Oh, and all of this reminds me. Weren't you going to put together a money making guide a while back? Still thinking about doing that?
 
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I was, still thinking about it! Each time I sit down to write stuff...get overloaded. IE: An equpping guide would be absolutely huge. I think ultimately what I really need to do is break it down into multiple parts and then have a wrap up on each. So much to this game!
 
a money guide would be excellent, as i am terrible at making gold. we could do a guide thread (sticky) or something? i have a unique and i think very good method for crafting that usually beats the dynamic crafting guides price wise. breaking down each crafting tier by which products are selling best at a cost to make/tp profit ratio. i would put up a guide, though it's a somewhat complicated method that takes research and is heavily dependent on the tp.
 
After reading this thread I realized I had about 72 ectos from salvage and decided that was enough in my stash. Then I started selling off my rares I was getting from doing major events and have slowly been accumulating more gold.
 
Is everyone aware of key running?

I get bored too quickly to be much of a farmer, but with 70 BL chests sitting in my inventory and a chance at those great molten weapon skins, I decided to figure out how to get some keys.

With an empty characters lot, you can make a human warrior, common background, and run through to the level 10 story quest to get a BL Key. Choose hospital when given the choice between hospital and orphanage. As a level 4 you are pretty squishy in the last couple of missions, but there are NPCs that do most of the work. Guards at the hospital and Logan and Countess Anise in the prison. Countess Anise seems to have no limit on how many illusions she can produce. It's kinda fun just to see her spawning phantasms all over the place.

Takes about 20 minutes once you get the hang of what you simply run through.

The reason I bring it up in this thread, is that I've gotten a couple of BL salvage kits after running this only a few times. While it isn't cost effective to buy BL salvage kits, they do give a significantly better return of Ectos than Mystic/Masters kits, so a couple 20 minute key runs might be worth it. I know I feel a lot less discouraged getting at least one ecto out of every rare rather than those dry spells where a Masters kit gives you no ectos over several rares.
 
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