Beginner’s Guide to Magical Salvaging

The next in my series of “Beginner’s Guides” for WAR:  Magical Salvaging.

This Gathering profession has had its ups and downs.  Currently, it tends to take a back seat to Scavenging simply due to the ease of that profession.  However, for those who are patient and dedicated, Magical Salvaging offers a wider variety of options as well as some much-sought-after fragments!

Enjoy!

~Gaar

Quick Explanation of Crafting in WAR

WAR has a two-stage crafting system.  The first stage is handled through a “gathering” profession and the second stage is the actual “crafting” profession.

Here’s the rundown:

Apothecary – Crafting Profession – Makes potions with various temporary effects.

• Butchering – Gathering Profession – Harvests monsters for items to use in making potions.
• Cultivation – Gathering Profession – Grows plants and fungi to use in making potions.

Talisman Making – Crafting Profession – Makes talismans that can be added to worn items to boost stats.

• Magical Salvaging – Gathering Profession – Deconstructs items for the parts to use in making talismans.
• Scavenging – Gathering Profession – Harvests players/NPCs for items to use in making talismans.

At the time this guide was created, all Gathering professions were viable for use in each of their respective Crafting professions.  However, each Crafting profession has its own pros and cons, as does each gathering profession.  It is best to understand those pros/cons before selecting your professions, however you are able to change both your Crafting and Gathering profession at any time (however at the loss of all progress).

Crafting Storage

Most of the items you will use in your crafting will be tradeable, thus can be stored not just in your own inventory, but also your Personal Bank Vault and your Guild Bank Vault.  The exception to this rule currently are the Hybrid Seeds that are looted in Tier 4.

You have two options now for storing them in your personal inventory though.  Crafting items will automatically (upon purchase/loot) go to your Crafting Item Inventory.  This is the third tab of your Backpack as shown in the picture below.

This special inventory space starts with only one bag, but you gain more bags by leveling your crafting professions.  You gain a new bag for each 100 points you earn in each profession, giving you a total of five bags when you’re done.

If you run out of space here, items will start to automatically go into your regular inventory.  Items can be moved back and forth between the two types of personal storage areas by right-clicking on them.

Finally, no discussion of Crafting Storage would be complete without mentioning the Mail System.  :p

All tradeable items can be sent back and forth between alts (alternate characters on your account) and friends, then left in your mailbox unopened for a good deal of time.  Proper mailbox use can extend your personal storage space for tradeable items infinitely.

Selecting your Crafting and Gathering Professions

As a new player, your first exposure to Crafting trainers comes in Chapter 2 of the WAR Story.  (The PvE towns in WAR are designated as Chapters and the PvE road moves you through these Chapters in sequential order.)  If you are on a Trial Account, this is the only place you can learn these professions.

Those players with subscriptions to WAR can also train in their Capital City (Altdorf or the Inevitible City).

It costs no money to train or re-train a Crafting profession.  You can change your profession at any time, however you will lose all progress you have made in that profession.

The Apothecary, Cultivator and Hedge Wizard (Talisman Making) trainers also are Merchants selling items for their respective craft.

Once you’ve made your choice, it’s time to level your profession(s).  For the sake of this guide, let’s assume you’ve made Salvaging your Gathering profession and Talisman Making your Crafting profession.

Salvaging Overview

Salvaging is the deconstruction of items (armor, weapons, jewelry) into ingredients for making Talismans.

Salvaging is another “pure” Gathering profession because there’s really just one step to it.  Take an item you have, click the Salvage icon, click the item, receive your ingredients.

Salvaging works well in both RvR and PvE, however at times it is much easier to farm PvE to obtain the items you want.  Unlike Scavenging, you won’t be flooded with items, however you have more of a choice in the items you get than the randomness of Scavenging.  Not to mention, you can Salvage every available stat with Salvaging whereas Scavenging only provides you with a small sub-set of them.

Salvaging also provides three of the four items required for Talisman Making, just as Scavenging does.  If you’re so inclined, you can sell off your extra Essences on the Auction House to supplement your income.

Must-Have Addons for Salvaging

There really is only one Addon you need to have for Salvaging:  Crafting Info Tooltip.

To be honest, it’s a must-have for all Crafting/Gathering professions.  It’s just that good.

Why?  Because it shows you the “hidden” crafting information for each item when you hover over them in your inventory.  This is invaluable information for all crafters, especially when you want to make very specific things and at maximum potency.  Understanding the information it provides is the key to being a great crafter.

Go to Curse.com and do a search for this Addon and download it.  I prefer to manually install all my Addons.  It’s not difficult.  However, if you’d rather not, you can use the Curse Client instead.  (I’m not a fan as it’s always had issues on Patch Day when the new versions of addons come out and the old ones don’t always work.)

Leveling Salvaging

Once you’ve trained Salvaging and have your Addon downloaded, it’s time to get started.

First off, go to your Abilities sheet, click on the General tab at the far right and then drag the Magical Salvaging icon to your toolbar.

Now you’re ready to start leveling.  Right off the bat, you have a choice to make.  You can choose to level only off items you loot, or you can choose to spend a little money up front to max out this first bit of skill using items from the Merchant.

I recommend the Merchant route at this stage.  Mainly because at this point it’s fairly inexpensive and very fast.  I’m going to walk you through it this way before discussing the loot-only path.

As a brand new Salvager, go to the Merchant and browse their Wares.  You’re looking for “Shattered Figurine”.  Once you find it, buy 19.  Yes, 19 exactly.  It will cost you 9 silver 50 copper up front, but you’ll be getting the bulk of this back in a moment, so don’t be afraid to spend it.

Once you have your 19 Shattered Figurines in your Crafting Inventory, click on the Magical Salvaging icon on your toolbar.  You cursor will become a miniature hammer.  Hover it over the stack of Shattered Figurines and left-click on it.  The item will deconstruct and you will either succeed or fail.  At this point though, it doesn’t really matter.  Your skill will go up regardless.  Continue doing this until the stack is completely gone and you will be at skill 20 which is the highest these items can take you.

Depending on your success rate, you will have anywhere from 2-4 Gold Dust and 15-17 Essences in your inventory.  Go ahead and sell those back to the Merchant.  The Essences command a high price so will earn you back the bulk of what you already spent.  Yay!

Now, buy 30 of the “Ruined Figurines”.  This will cost you a bit more, 37 silver 50 copper.  You will only be getting maybe 10 silver of this back.  Once you have them, go ahead and salvage them all and sell off the Gold Dust and Essences again.  You should now be at skill 50 for Salvaging.

While you could continue to bump it up slowly via the Merchant’s Ruined Figurines, at this point it’s far more economical to just level off looted items.  With your handy-dandy Addon, it’s easy to tell what’s going to be a good item to salvage to try to level with.  When you hover over the item in your inventory, it will give you a chance for success on the bottom of the tooltip.  A rating of “Difficult” is usually a guaranteed skill-up, if it succeeds.  Anything showing “Easy” is only going to give you a skill-up occasionally.  Anything marked “Trivial” will never give you a skill-up.

Note:  If you can afford to keep going with the Ruined Figurines, do it.  Until they become “Trivial”, you may as well milk them for what they’re worth and save the loot for the rest.

Second Note:  You can continue this method of “paying for leveling” indefinitely via the Auction House, however it will become very, very expensive.

For those of you who either don’t have the money or don’t want to spend it, leveling via the items you loot works in much the same manner, albeit much more slowly.

As you loot items that are green/blue/purple in rarity, go ahead and salvage them if you can’t use them.  (You cannot salvage white items, keep that in mind.)  Pay close attention to your tooltip to tell you your difficulty rating and chance of success.  You may want to save those purple items for when they’re guaranteed just so you can make a nice blue talisman for yourself.  :p

If you find that the items you’re looting are too difficult for you to salvage and/or you’re failing a lot, go back a Chapter and kill lower-level mobs/NPCs for a while and raise your salvaging until you can continue at the higher level.

As you can tell, this profession requires patience and dedication.  Leveling can be very, very slow when you’re doing it via loot which is how most do it.

Just like with Butchering and Scavenging, you will not hit skill 200 in Salvaging without entering Tier 4.  You will need to salvage the high-level loot to finish off your skill, so there’s no need to be in a hurry.

Advanced Salvaging

Once you’ve leveled your Salvaging skill to 200, you’re ready to learn more!

The best thing to do is to go to the following web sites and read up on the information they have to offer.  They are also places you can ask for more information on things that you aren’t sure about.

Also, don’t forget to use your in-game Advice channel as well!

Official Forums for Salvaging

Warhammer Alliance Forums for Salvaging