«Ackadia's Guide to Guild Wars… Salvage »

Crafting Materials Menu

• Identification and Salvage Kits
  
  
• A pictorial guide to salvaging crafting materials, runes and weapon upgrade components
  
  
• 'Salvage Items'
  
  
• Common Crafting Materials
  
  
• Rare Crafting Materials
  
  
• [Materials] Traders in Tyria (Guild Wars Prophecies)
  
  
• [Materials] Traders in Cantha (Guild Wars Factions)
  
  
• See also: Guide to Using and Trading Weapons Upgrades
  
  

A pictorial guide to salvaging crafting materials, runes and weapon upgrades

While I've used 'salvage items' like robes below it could just as easily been the image of a sword, staff or scroll

I haven't done the maths yet, but at low levels using the expert kits is a waste of money for salvage, though fine for extracting runes, inscriptions and upgrades. At higher levels though, i.e. drops from level 24 mobs, the chances of getting rare items like silk, fur and steel are very high.

OK. I can get 6 out of 6 often as not. I've found the chance to get a rare items is tied in with the value of the item you are extracting from, a 60g sword being far more likely to have steel than a 3g rusty axe. Forgot to keep count, but using expert I have 240 ingot ingots to 41 steel. For arguments sake lets say a 50g items average 8 iron ingots…

Iron   240/8 = 30
Steel = 41
71 items worth are 3,350g
Cost of salvage kits (3 x 400g) 1,200g
240 iron ingots are worth 2,400g
41 steel are worth (280g *)(11,480g)
Net profit (vs purchase) (16,200 + 2,400g) - (3,350 + 1,200) = 9,330g

*Naturally it depends of the value of steel, but it crosses over with silk, leather squares and other rare items

A normal, white salvage item:

A 'highly salvageable' item:
These are invariably worth more salvaged, often giving ten times more salvage than normal. On a number of occassions I've seen a dozen rare Steel Ingots drop from an item merchants value around 60g.
If you are not aware, steel fluctuates around 200g to 250g each, and people always want to Steel for armour, making this quite profitable…

Good drop(s) from 'highly salvageable' items:

An unidentified purple salvage item:

An purple salvage item, identified:

An unidentified gold salvage item

Gold salvage item, identified

Purple Rune of Major Vigor extracted from the gold robes

Chat message from an 'item unlocked' as it is identified - bow and axe grips in this case. Originally, on rare ocassions you can get two items unlocked from the same item - like a pommel and hilt from a sword, though you can only salvage one of them…

Now, with the advent of Nightfall and new code it is possible to extract all the items. There remains the chance that the item will be destroyed when you release the item, but this is directly tied to your ranks in the Titles of Wisdom and Treasure hunter. I believe, with both maxed out, the success rate is 92%, your chance improving 3% for each rank in the Titles.

Window messages from an 'item unlocked' as it is identified - an 'icy hammer haft' this time. These become available for your PvP characters when unlocked.

Expert kit used to salvage rare components - two bolts of linen. When the 'expert' salvage fails you typically get about a dozen bolts of common cloth from this particular white avicara attire.

Expert kit used to salvage steel from a Tribal Blade. When the 'expert' salvage fails you tend to get about a dozen iron ingots.

Expert salvage - failed, doubly so!
Note however that this is no longer the case - you will always salvage at least one item before the item is destroyed. I've left this in for archival reasons!