Important observation about Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic

Hey folks,

Thought you might be interested to learn that Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic appears to have no visible impact on the droprate of Symbols and Charms.

I had used the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic since release to salvage Greens. These past few days, I put the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic into my bank, since I already have 2,000 Motes in my storage, and went back to using the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic for all Greens - and lo and behold, the droprate of Symbols and Charms remained the same as before. (I.e., yes, you can get Symbols and Charms out of items without using the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic.)

My conclusion is that the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic seems to only serve the purpose of reliably salvaging contained Runes and Sigils into Motes, with Symbols and Charms dropping independently of those. :)

I feel cheated.

@casualkenny.9817 said:I feel cheated.

Well, apparently the Charms and Symbols drop independantly of Motes, so better to learn this late than never. ;)

I used the costly Runecrafter's for weeks myself, but only on Greens. (For Whites and Blues I used the Copper-Fed, for Rares my Endless Upgrade Extractor and then the Mystic Salvage Kit, for Exotics the Black Lion Kit because these days exotics don't seem to be worth much at all on the TP, with very few exceptions. :/ )

@"Ashantara.8731" said:Thought you might be interested to learn that Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic appears to have no visible impact on the droprate of Symbols and Charms.

The data we have to date proves otherwise.

I had used the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic since release to salvage Greens. These past few days, I put the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic into my bank, since I already have 2,000 Motes in my storage, and went back to using the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic for all Greens - and lo and behold, the droprate of Symbols and Charms remained the same as before. (I.e., yes, you can get Symbols and Charms out of items without using the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic.)

Sorry that demonstrates nothing at all. Because there's no actual drop rate presented for either scenario.

How many greens did you salvage? Did you include greens without runes or sigils (including accessories, back items, and certain skins that always drop without upgrades)? How many greens did you salvage with each kit? How many symbols & charms did you get in each case?

People who have done both and have posted their data have come to a different conclusion.For example this spreadsheet shows a substantial difference in overall results for salvaging with Copper-Fed vs Runecrafters. The poster discusses the results further in this thread.

Another poster discusses in this thread the distribution of specific charms and sigils in unID gear. They looked at 100k greens for their analysis.

tl;dr the conclusion drawn from the OP's anecdotal experience is unsupported by data

@casualkenny.9817 said:I feel cheated.

Don't be.

If you happen to own all three salvage kits, the most efficient use is:

• Use Copper-Fed to "salvage all" blues
• Use the inventory word filter on "masterwork" to CF green accessories & those greens that don't drop with runes (this saves 27c per salvage, but takes longer; it can be skipped for people with small amounts of loot or just hate managing inventory).
• Use the Runecrafters to "salvage all" of the remaining masterwork
• Sell (at custom prices) all rares below L68.
• Use Silver-Fed to "salvage all" rares L68 or better, regardless of upgrade status. (If you have mystic stones, it's better still to use Mystic Kits.)
• Identify exotics with upgrades worth 1g or more and extract them (BL Kit is fine)
• Sell all other exotics (custom prices).

If you don't own all three or if you want to simplify things, you can skip steps above or be less careful about which kit is used on what. If you are a heavy farmer, this ends up with you leaving a lot of potential on the table; if you're a light farmer, then you might prefer a system with fewer steps (even if it costs you a little gold).

How much gold will you leave on the table? Depends on your choices and your loot. The links above can give us some reasonable approximations. (I can help you do the math, if you provide the scenario.)

With those caveats, using runecrafters on all non-ecto-bearing loot is probably the simplest choice, selling all your rares and above. Next simplest is to salvage just L68+ rares using Mystic Kits.

Runes and sigils are rarely present in gear below rare. Of course you get nothing for using that kit on those because there is no rune/sigil to salvage.

I use the runecrafters to salvage all my greens and have noticed a sizable increase in symbol drops.

It's true that the Runecrafter's salvage kit does not increase the drop rate of symbols from sigils and runes. However, it still guarantees that the sigil or rune will be salvaged for materials. That's 5x more runes and sigils salvaged than with the copper fed. This does mean that you will get flooded with 5x more motes, but it also means that you will end up getting 5x more symbols as well.

@rng.1024 said:Runes and sigils are rarely present in gear below rare.Specifically:

• Fine gear doesn't drop with sigils or runes.
• Nearly all masterwork armor|weapons come with upgrades. Exceptions include particular skin sets (e.g. krytan or the various crafted skins, many of which drop from some foes and none of which come with upgrades). The other big exception is accessories (including back items).
• The pattern is the same for rare & exotic: they mostly come upgraded; the exceptions are with particular sets & accessories.

Of course you get nothing for using that kit on those because there is no rune/sigil to salvage.

Yes.

@Ganathar.4956 said:It's true that the Runecrafter's salvage kit does not increase the drop rate of symbols from sigils and runes. However, it still guarantees that the sigil or rune will be salvaged for materials. That's 5x more runes and sigils salvaged than with the copper fed. This does mean that you will get flooded with 5x more motes, but it also means that you will end up getting 5x more symbols as well.

Putting some specific numbers on this: the drop rate of charms|symbols from minor upgrades is under 2 per 100. If you salvage a full stack of 250 minor runes, on average, you'd see maybe 5 charms (choice of kit doesn't matter for this).

To get the same 5-charm average from masterwork using Copper-Fed (or Basic) Kits, you'd need 1250 pieces of armor (each with a rune). To get that result using Runecrafters, you'd need just 250 pieces. That's because the Copper-Fed only grabs 1:5 runes to salvage, whereas the RC kit salvages 100% of them.

The thing is, that's such a low rate that you aren't going to see many charms drop from masterwork gear even if you started with a full inventory (of a typical player). A lucky streak with the Copper-Fed might generate a charm or two from 100 masterwork in your inventory; an unlucky streak with RC might only generate one or two. Without actual data, it's impossible to tell.

@Ashantara.8731 said:Hey folks,

Thought you might be interested to learn that Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic appears to have no visible impact on the droprate of Symbols and Charms.

I had used the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic since release to salvage Greens. These past few days, I put the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic into my bank, since I already have 2,000 Motes in my storage, and went back to using the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic for all Greens - and lo and behold, the droprate of Symbols and Charms remained the same as before. (I.e., yes, you can get Symbols and Charms out of items without using the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic.)

My conclusion is that the Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic seems to only serve the purpose of reliably salvaging contained Runes and Sigils into Motes, with Symbols and Charms dropping independently of those. :)

While your findings seem to be proven incorrect, I highly appreciate your honesty and your motives. I have learned a lot of things about the salvaging, the kit-effects from this thread. A lot of things remained mysterious after the rune & sigil patch and even more question-marks appeared when the runecrafter-kit was released. The thread ended up as a nice collection of information, compact and easy to read & understand. I will bookmark this thread for later uses.

Thank you for bringing up the topic and @Illconceived Was Na.9781 for clearing things up.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:[...]The thing is, that's such a low rate that you aren't going to see many charms drop from masterwork gear even if you started with a full inventory

While I appreciate your numbers, I would love to know why I received a good dozen Charms and Symbols throughout the past four days using the Copper-Fed on Greens, which is about the same number that I used to receive using the Runecrafter's? Coincidence?

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:[...]The thing is, that's such a low rate that you aren't going to see many charms drop from masterwork gear even if you started with a full inventory

I would be happy to offer an explanation, just as soon as you provide the exact numbers and sources of your greens. "About the same number" doesn't inspire confidence that you were keeping careful track. I don't mean to suggest for a second that you personally need to always be paying attention, as a player trying to enjoy the game as best you can. I do mean that one needs to do things like that if one wants to make statistical claims or PSAs or FYIs about which kits are better or worse or not worth it.

RNG cannot guarantee that RC will always be 5x better than Copper-Fed; you are going to have good streaks and bad streaks. It wouldn't be "coincidence" exactly, even if the numbers are exactly the same (and again, without knowing how many we are discussing, it's hard to say).

If you got "a dozen charms & symbols" from greens, I would expect that you salvaged 600-1000 greens, with each kit.I spend a lot of time keeping track of data for myself (because I happen to like that sort of thing) and I find it tricky to carefully separate out loot at that scale as carefully as required. I've thrown out data because it didn't pass my sanity checks (i.e. I hadn't been careful enough). @Silveress.5197 has some nifty tools to help, allow folks who don't like managing data to get it done.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I don't mean to suggest for a second that you personally need to always be paying attention, as a player trying to enjoy the game as best you can. I do mean that one needs to do things like that if one wants to make statistical claims or PSAs or FYIs about which kits are better or worse or not worth it.

Of course, for exact statistics, this is absolutely required. But I am too lazy to do that, so everyone decide for themselves whether they want to try this or not. I, for once, will continue salvaging with the Copper-Fed instead of the Runecrafter's, because it's cheaper and I am extremely satisfied with the results. You even get the occasional Mote out of it (very rarely, though), and since I don't have need of Motes ATM, this method seems perfect for me.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I don't mean to suggest for a second that you personally need to always be paying attention, as a player trying to enjoy the game as best you can. I do mean that one needs to do things like that if one wants to make statistical claims or PSAs or FYIs about which kits are better or worse or not worth it.

That's your choice and I really don't mean to suggest that you do otherwise.

I do mean that it's not a fair to make claims about the efficiency without doing the research (whether directly from your own salvages or indirectly via other people's data).

Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic appears to have no visible impact on the droprate of Symbols and Charms.That's inaccurate based on the evidence that we have.

A more reasonable statement for you to have made would have been

I have decided to stick with using the Copper-Fed salvage kit. For the amount of salvaging that I do, I am not feeling enough a difference to make it worth the extra expense to my wallet.

We all play the game for fun and feeling good about our choices is more important for most of us compared to extracting every last bit of efficiency. There's nothing wrong with deciding to ignore the Runecrafter's... just as long as one does't make claims about its efficacy that are unsupported by the data.

@casualkenny.9817 said:I feel cheated.

I wish I'd come here before I just bought this. :(

I use crude salvage kits on all common and fine gear. Since there are no runes or sigils, why pay extra to them?

I use copper-fed on all masterwork (except those few masterwork items that don't have runes or sigils).

I use runecrafters for all rares, and black lion for all exotics. My silver-fed is gathering dust since the runecrafters came out.

@Daddicus.6128 said:I use runecrafters for all rares, [...] My silver-fed is gathering dust since the runecrafters came out.

Well, that's up to you if you want to waste your gold on it.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:I use runecrafters for all rares, [...] My silver-fed is gathering dust since the runecrafters came out.

I'm not sure I understand. Silver-fed is better by 20% to 25% vs Runecrafters for rare mats. It is DOWN from 100% to 80% on upgrade salvages, and it costs twice as much per use.

If you don't have a Runecrafters (I don't), and just have the Silver and Copper, what should you do then? Should I get a Runecrafters?

I have always struggled with using the Silver on greens myself. I finally came down on using the Copper when my 'Alts' are salving blues and greens, using the Silver on 70+ rares, but my main still uses the Silver to salvage greens, even though it costs me some of my profit. Worse now that ectos are starting to drop in price (presumably temporarily).