Value of Unidentified Gear in the Post-Istan Markets

This is an update on the data published originally by @Wanze.8410 regarding what drops from unidentified gear and how much it's worth. For ease of reading, I'm publishing the methodology and data sources as separate replies.

General Recommendations

There are three things we can do with unidentified gear: open it, sell it on the TP, or salvage it. Under the current market, it turns out that

• The most economically efficient choice is always to open using the highest possible magic find.
• Salvaging is always the worst thing to do.
• Selling on the TP is a viable option for those short on time, bag space, or patience.

Detailed Recommendations

Piece of Common Unidentified Gear

• TP value: ~2.2 silver/piece
• Open with ~300 MF: ~2.9s
• Open with ~580 MF: ~4.4s
• Salvage with Copper-Fed: 1.1s
• Salvage with Silver-Fed: 0.7s

Recommendation: sell on the TP.

The best option is worth about 10g extra per stack of gear, but takes a lot more time to process (boosting MF, then dealing with the mats and minor runes). Salvaging is terrible at the moment because mats are at their lowest prices in years, which makes the cost of salvaging noticeable. Silver-Fed suffers from this a lot: it drops more and 'better' loot, but not enough of it to pay for the extra cost.

Piece of Unidentified Gear (i.e. 'uncommon')

• TP value: ~5.5 silver/piece
• Open: no data
• Salvage with Copper-Fed: 1.2s
• Salvage with Silver-Fed: 0.7s

Recommendation: sell on the TP.

I have data on salvaging, but not from opening. (I'm sure it's out there, I just haven't found a good source to collate). Based on my own experience with smaller samples, I don't expect significant differences from the blue/common variety.

Piece of Rare Unidentified Gear

• TP value: ~34.4 silver/piece
• Open with ~300 MF: ~26.7s
• Open with ~950 MF: ~41.3s
• Open with ~1000 MF: 49.7s
• Salvage: no data

Recommendation: open if you can boost your MF to 750% or better, otherwise sell on the TP.

On average, you can expect 20-40 gold more per stack from opening with super high magic find than you can get from the TP. Be warned: it takes time and a lot of effort (and it helps to have 100+ empty bag slots, permanent bank access — with lots of free slots, and a nearby vendor). If you don't have the patience to maximize MF, then you are better off selling: unless you get lucky, your might actually end up with less value.

Methodology

I collected data from each source, copied the drop counts to a spreadsheet, and divided by the number of pieces consumed, to get a per-container drop rate. For mats, I took the TP values and multiplied through. That's all uncontroversial.

Estimating the value of gear is trickier for a variety of reasons. These assumptions seem safe.

• Masterwork/Fine gear was salvaged using Copper-Fed.
• All rare was salvaged using Silver-Fed, but I estimated the cost as Copper-Fed. This is technically wrong by 57 copper per rare, which is 'noise' because the value of ecto fluctuates by more than that during any 5 minute period. In other words, the difference is less important than being careful about when you sell and it's small.

Estimating the value of exotics is trickier because the rates are relatively low. These assumptions could affect the results for rare unID gear, but aren't that important for the other types.

• I divided exotics into these categories: named PoF armor, named Sunspear weapons, named Mordant weapons, other named weapons, other weapons, and all other exotics.
• For the named gear, I assumed that each drops equally within the category, e.g. that Sunspear swords are as common as daggers or staffs. (It's a safe-enough assumption at the low rates we see).
• I estimated the value of each category by taking the average value from the TP: over all named Sunspear weapons, over the Mordants, etc. I feel confident in these numbers after doing a fair bit of sanity checking against actual drops.
• For non-named weapons, I have good estimates from the TP that I've been using for tracking value of mystic forging rares/exotics, so I feel confident with that.
• For the non-named, non-weapons (L74+ armor and trinkets), I don't have a good estimate, so I approximated as a percentage of non-named exotic weapons. This is "pretty good" as an estimate, but even if it wasn't, it doesn't have much impact on the the average value because the drop rate in this category is tiny.

Sources

Piece of Common Unidentified Gear

• Opening: Wanze, Trutichup, & Wanze again
• Salvaging: Wanze

Piece of Unidentified Gear

• Salvaging: Wanze

Piece of Rare Unidentified Gear

• Opening @340MF: Wanze

• 900%: Personal data (750 units)

• 1000% Patron03041

Patience .. yeah took me around 1h to clear out around 1750

@Khisanth.2948 said:Patience .. yeah took me around 1h to clear out around 1750

Even if you have 800 Magic Find, my guess is that selling at the TP is more efficient than identifying and salvaging yourself. Just sell and you can spend the time saved to get more bags instead. Buddy of mine didn't get any of the skins out of 10k salvages btw, so the drop rate of those is stupidly low. He spent hours over hours of game time identyfying and salvaging and was locked into the zone and for the period of the MF boost.

The profit difference per hour you get from doing the monkey-work yourself needs to be big enough to make it worthwhile. If you spend an hour to get 10 gold more than from selling, it's probably better to sell and farm for another hour. I would outsource that labour. But then, farming is no fun for me at all, I didn't set foot into this new farm yet, and I never entered that Halloween Labyrinth. It feels like spending hours over hours at a resource node as people did in the first MMO games.

If more people started following the general advice of selling the unidentified gear, my guess is the price would tank quite a bit. So while this may be true atm, posts like these may very well have a big impact on the market depending on how many follow the advice.

Also there probably had been a stealth nerf to unidentified gears, that's why selling them is probably the best choice.> @Khisanth.2948 said:

Patience .. yeah took me around 1h to clear out around 1750

and as Khisanth said

@Khisanth.2948 said:Patience .. yeah took me around 1h to clear out around 1750

1 extra hour, which could have been way more drops, karma, currency, volatile magic etc...

Allow me to clarify: the most efficient option is always buffing magic find and opening. It's worth a lot of extra coin compared to selling on the TP. However, that's not practical for the vast majority of people.

The bonus is as lot more gold/hour than Silverwastes farming, but the specific labor is brain-alive, rather than brain-dead as most farmers prefer. You have to be thoughtful about setting up your buffs, about not changing zones, about salvaging the right things, selling the relevant items at the appropriate price for the market, and about not hoarding any of your mats.

tl;dr opening with high MF is definitely worth the time; it might not be worth the aggravation for those looking for easy gold.

@Faaris.8013 said:Even if you have 800 Magic Find, my guess is that selling at the TP is more efficient than identifying and salvaging yourself.

The data suggests otherwise: at only ~600% MF, a single stack of common unID gear is worth 10g more to open. Assuming labor costs from @Khisanth.2948, that's an extra 70g/hour (1750 = 7 stacks, one stack is worth an extra 10g/hour). So the data suggests otherwise.

The profit difference per hour you get from doing the monkey-work yourself needs to be big enough to make it worthwhile. If you spend an hour to get 10 gold more than from selling, it's probably better to sell and farm for another hour.It only takes an hour/stack if you're inefficient about it. @Khisanth.2948 managed 7 stacks in an hour. At current rates of Silverwastes farming, you only need to manage 3+ stacks/hour to match.

@OGDeadHead.8326 said:If more people started following the general advice of selling the unidentified gear, my guess is the price would tank quite a bit. So while this may be true atm, posts like these may very well have a big impact on the market depending on how many follow the advice.Prices have already tanked, because unID gear is such huge supply.

@Shirlias.8104 said:Also there probably had been a stealth nerf to unidentified gears, that's why selling them is probably the best choice.Nope, there's no evidence of that at all. The amount of drops has been consistent across those opening with similar amounts of MF.Selling them is the best choice only because most people aren't willing to deal with the inconvenience of maximizing their MF.

1 extra hour, which could have been way more drops, karma, currency, volatile magic etc...Again, @Khisanth.2948 processed seven stacks in that hour. For common gear, that's an extra 70g for that one hour. For rare gear, it's much, much more.

The reason I recommend selling is that most people aren't willing to spend the energy. Opening 7 stacks in an hour is very efficient, but buffing MF to the max for just 50 or even 250 units isn't.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Shirlias.8104" said:Also there probably had been a stealth nerf to unidentified gears, that's why selling them is probably the best choice.Nope, there's no evidence of that at all. The amount of drops has been consistent across those opening with similar amounts of MF.

I know what i am talking about since i made a check.More or less 20k per day for over 1 month, and something changed after LS4 release.

When you get something after 1000 unidenfied items you can call it luck, after 5k coincidence.After 600k splitted into 30 days, i have enough data to work with.

PS: obviously, the same amount of MF. And obviously i can't be more specific since i am trying to make some adjustments in case they modified but not "fixed" as you claim ( maybe different requirements, which could be ).

Btw, whatever, selling is the best way so far.

@Shirlias.8104 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Shirlias.8104 said:Also there probably had been a stealth nerf to unidentified gears, that's why selling them is probably the best choice.Nope, there's no evidence of that at all. The amount of drops has been consistent across those opening with similar amounts of MF.

However the rates at which such items drop haven't changed, at least not that I can see from the data available.

When you get something after 1000 unidenfied items you can call it luck, after 5k coincidence.After 600k splitted into 30 days, i have enough data to work with.I'd love to see your data and compare it to what others have published.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Yes, something changed: the price of the named exotics tanked (that started before Istan and accelerated after). The drop rates haven't changed.

I was not talking about the price.

When you get something after 1000 unidenfied items you can call it luck, after 5k coincidence.After 600k splitted into 30 days, i have enough data to work with.I'd love to see your data and compare it.

As i said in my edit

PS: obviously, the same amount of MF. And obviously i can't be more specific since i am trying to make some adjustments in case they modified but not "fixed" as you claim ( maybe different requirements, which could be ).

it would be not good for me to share more information on a forum.

Consider it like a "you are probably wrong, but i chose not to prove it to you" + "i am still trying to find out if they simply adjusted something, or definitely removed that feature".

@Faaris.8013 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Patience .. yeah took me around 1h to clear out around 1750

Heh I DID get the axe which I sold to partially cover the cost of the Brandstone node(not really worth getting BTW unless you are a completionist). Also got some other exotics. For some reason Droknar's shortbow seems to have the highest drop rate. Also got a hammer skin I didn't unlock yet(probably a 1 or 2g thing).

Another thing to note is that if you have a dedicated bag opening character as some people do it would have gone much faster. More so if you are only dealing with rare gear. Also you can use WvW for the buff instead, just need to find a t3 keep with the presence of the keep upgrade. You sacrifice some MF but there is more convience and flexibility.

@Shirlias.8104 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Yes, something changed: the price of the named exotics tanked (that started before Istan and accelerated after). The drop rates haven't changed.

PS: obviously, the same amount of MF. And obviously

i can't be more specific since i am trying to make some adjustments in case they modified but not "fixed" as you claim

( maybe different requirements, which could be ).Why would you need to make any adjustments at all for

data

? You open your items and display your drops.

@"Khisanth.2948" said:For some reason Droknar's shortbow seems to have the highest drop rate. Also got a hammer skin I didn't unlock yet(probably a 1 or 2g thing).Given the relatively low drop rates, it's typical RNG for any one person to see one skin drop more often than another. Or rather, it would be incredibly unusual if you got 32 named Sunspear weapons, two of each. We'd have to be looking at around 300 Sunspear drops before it would be worth worrying about any difference in rates.

Another thing to note is that if you have a dedicated bag opening character as some people do it would have gone much faster. More so if you are only dealing with rare gear.Yes, I can vouch for both. In one session, I had 100 free slots in inventory, 100 free in the bank. That went close to twice as fast as the 70+70 session.

Also you can use WvW for the buff instead, just need to find a t3 keep with the presence of the keep upgrade. You sacrifice some MF but there is more convience and flexibility.Great tip.Presence of the Keep is worth +20% MF. In contrast, five stacks of Silverwastes perseverance is worth 150%. That's probably about an exotic or two per stack of common gear and perhaps 3-4 exotics for rare.

Heh this is where being on a low tier world can be handy. If the map is outnumber you get another +20% MF

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Shirlias.8104 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Yes, something changed: the price of the named exotics tanked (that started before Istan and accelerated after). The drop rates haven't changed.

PS: obviously, the same amount of MF. And obviously

i can't be more specific since i am trying to make some adjustments in case they modified but not "fixed" as you claim

( maybe different requirements, which could be ).Why would you need to make any adjustments at all for

data

? You open your items and display your drops.

Oh no. Definitely not.I gave you more details because you stated "FALSE, THERE'S NO DATA" in response on what i said.

If you trust my words or not has no importance to me.I just told you how i managed to test it ( 600k is not the total unidentified gear i identified since pof release, but just something i used for that specific test within 30 days ), and that i can't share nothing because it could turn against me ( if what i am currently testing was not removed but only adjusted due to new requirements ).

@Khisanth.2948 said:Heh this is where being on a low tier world can be handy. If the map is outnumber you get another +20% MF

The silverwastes gives you +30% without playing the map. If you manage to complete it ( 5 stacks + meta event ) you will instead have 150% + 50% mf.

@"Shirlias.8104" said:Oh no. Definitely not.I gave you more details because you stated "FALSE, THERE'S NO DATA" in response on what i said.Not what I said. There's no published data. I can only collate what I have access to. If you have 600k worth of data, I'd love to see it. If you aren't willing or able to share it, then for the purposes of discussing this publicly, it's as if the data doesn't exist.

If you trust my words or not has no importance to me."Trust but verify," is the slogan and ... well, I don't have anything with which to verify the claim. It's not about your words or mine, it's about what we demonstrate with data.

I just told you how i managed to test it ( 600k is not the total unidentified gear i identified since pof release, but just something i used for that specific test within 30 days )and that i can't share nothing because it could turn against me ( if what i am currently testing was not removed but only adjusted due to new requirements ).I can't test what you did if you aren't sharing how you did it or what your results are. All you've said is you have a ton of data that says there was a drop rate change, but you haven't said when it might have happened, what the difference was, how much data was used to compare, nor anything I can use to compare.

That leaves me with the data I do have and that data doesn't support the claim.

I have an open mind about what drops and whether it's changed; I'm swayed by the data, not by anyone's words. The data I've collated makes it improbable that something was changed in a patch. If you have evidence that proves that hypothesis wrong, I'm happy to include the data in my results and compare and I'll even say that you were right. But until you share the data, I don't see how it's useful to discuss it.

@"Shirlias.8104"

Too many people have said that they have experienced a change in the drop rate only for it to turn out they hit a bad/good RNG streak for most players to accept anecdotal evidence from one person. If others were coming in here and saying that they felt the drop rate had change but didn't record drops, then it might be different. But right now, it's just you. And too many people have proverbially cried wolf for people to believe "drop rate changed".

@Seera.5916 said:@"Shirlias.8104"

Too many people have said that they have experienced a change in the drop rate only for it to turn out they hit a bad/good RNG streak for most players to accept anecdotal evidence from one person. If others were coming in here and saying that they felt the drop rate had change but didn't record drops, then it might be different. But right now, it's just you. And too many people have proverbially cried wolf for people to believe "drop rate changed".

That's your point.From what i happened to read here and maybe on reddit, there are plenty of players which don't have identified enough stacks in order to gather data or simply know what i am talking about.

That said, i am still doing my research, which is not free but still useful.And ofc i wouldn't share my results if not 100% sure, or after a real nerf ( which mean that i am sure about it ).And even so, i will probably not share any more specific information ( though i do appreciate if somebody share their, i tend not to share mine because the more players know, the worst for me. And this is not about Unidenfied items, but everything which allows you to make a profit. You would be stupid to share informations which could create competitors, don't you agree? ).

The two of you probably didn't read my first message that good if you missed the part "probably", which is inherent to what i am researching now.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

• Salvaging is always the worst thing to do.Inventory full of misc loot and tons of unidentified bags, sweet, right let just fix that so we have room for opening them.

Rightclick, salvage all

... god dammit not again.

@Shirlias.8104 said:

@Seera.5916 said:@Shirlias.8104

Too many people have said that they have experienced a change in the drop rate only for it to turn out they hit a bad/good RNG streak for most players to accept anecdotal evidence from one person. If others were coming in here and saying that they felt the drop rate had change but didn't record drops, then it might be different. But right now, it's just you. And too many people have proverbially cried wolf for people to believe "drop rate changed".

I did read your post. I saw the probably. If it's probably, you've got data that shows that. But I'm more inclined to believe Illconceived and that there hasn't been a nerf because he's actually shown me his data and explained how he came to the conclusions he did.

That's all I'm saying.

So until you're ready to cough up proof, I'm just going to think that you're just trying to keep people away from your gold mine by making people think that it's been nerfed. But I'm not going to tell you how I came up with that. That's my data and I'm not sharing.

It's definitely a Nice bait.Yours.

My point is the same as you all, which is that it is better to sell them.

And I don't know how this could be different in your Head though.Or maybe everybody here which says that is better to sell them is lying.

@Shirlias.8104 said:It's definitely a Nice bait.Yours.

My point is the same as you all, which is that it is better to sell them.

And I don't know how this could be different in your Head though.Or maybe everybody here which says that is better to sell them is lying.

But the reason is different. And that reason is important. Better to sell due to convenience for the average player is different than it's better to sell due to things being nerfed, which means that no matter what the MF is, it's better to sell.

The reason does not count imho.If we do agree on something like selling an item, whatever the reason the outcome is the same.

However I could have just omitted the part about the stealth nerf because i am still trying, this is true.

@Shirlias.8104 said:The reason does not count imho.If we do agree on something like selling an item, whatever the reason the outcome is the same.

However I could have just omitted the part about the stealth nerf because i am still trying, this is true.

If the reason is because something was nerfed, then even those who raise their MF to the max are better off selling.

If the reason is because something is tedious, then it's a personal choice.

So yes, the reason matters.