Should I buy Ascended Salvage Kits?

[Omnicron.2467]

Becasue I am flooded with these ascended rings from daily fractals and I only ocassionaly get a single salvage kit from the chest :cold_sweat:

[Blocki.4931]

If they just sit around unused then sure. You might even get some dark energy from them which might be useful in the future for you

[Cyninja.2954]

The berserker ones (RoRD and CB) can be useful for power builds. Give them to alternate characters.

Solaria and Lunaria are useful on some WvW builds. Give them to characters who currently have good builds with those stats in mind, keep 1 spare set (1 of each).

Salvage the rest. You are likely sitting on a ton of pristine frelics for purchase of future rings. 10 pristine frelics are often worth less than a bank slot.

The weapons you need to consider. Always good to keep 1-2 spare of each type. The amulet looks like Sun, Moon and Stars from HoT achievements and as such I'm not sure you can salvage it and/or it might not reward any loot for salvaging. Marauder stats are useful for WvW characters. I'd consider keeping it.

[Omnicron.2467]

Well the question was not really wheather I should salvage them, but whether I should buy the salvage kits. I was always told it is a waste of gold and just to wait for the salvage kits to drop. I have already distributed the rest to my alts, this is what is left

[Glider.5792]

Dont buy them. A plain ring will most likely only drop 3 matrices. Ofc some will give more, but imo you should wait to get some salvage tools for free.

[borgs.6103]

It's almost always a loss unless you get lucky in the roll and get 6~ matrices. An ascended ring has up to 3 rolls for matrices when salvaged btw. (Normal, Attuned, Infused)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

tl;dr no, not worth it to buy kits.

If you think that you're getting at least 2 matrices per 'roll', then it's worth it for pre-infused rings that you attune (that is, you expect to get 6 matrices, on average).

If you're out of free kits from fractals

• Vendor the uninfused rings
• Save meta stat infused ones (per @Ayrilana.1396 above), if you have a need for them.
• If you have some room, can also save infused ones for when you do get some kit drops.

As a side note, it is always worth attuning rings before you salvage them. On average, you can expect an extra few silver (3-8s).

edit: fixed an important word: worth attuning; never worth infusing, unless you have mist essences coming out of taimi's ears.

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Doing the Math

A 20-use Fractal Ascended salvage kit costs 20 gold plus 40 relics. The other versions cost 20 PvP League Tickets or 25 WvW Skirmish tickets.

As @borgs.6103 mentioned, different versions get 1, 2, or 3 rolls for matrices. Data on the wiki is... not very helpful, because it only distinguishes infused versus not infused; it's unclear how it treats attunement. So, we'll take its estimate of infused results (6.74) and subtract its uninfused data (3.99) to get a rough estimate of 1.5 matrices for infusing. So that would be 1.5 for unimproved, 3 for attuned or infused, and 4.5 for both.

Over the last 6 months, matrices have been worth 26 to 39 silver. So best case scenario is maybe 33 silver after fees. That means (rounding) 50s, 99s, or 149s (on average) from salvaging. If we think the wiki's data is wrong and there's an average of 2 matrices per roll, then it's 66s, 132s, or 198s.

However, attuning isn't free. And not all rings come infused and is otherwise not free (unless you happen to have tons and tons of each type of mists essence). Attunement costs ~25s silver. That changes the amounts to 50s for plain rings, 74s for attuned. If your rings are pre-infused, it's 99s for infused, and 124s for attuned & infused. Again, assuming 2 matrices per 'roll', we'd net 66s or 99s for attuned. For pre-infused, it's 132s for infused alone and 174s for rings that have both upgrades.

If you have to infuse (and lack the mist essence), expect to spend ~40-50s to convert Shards to Globs of Mist Essence, the former being available in bulk from fractal frequenters, the latter being in short supply. So we can rule that out as being worthwhile to do.

Putting it altogether, you should expect to lose coin if you buy ascended salvage kits to break down rings if we get 1.5 matrices per 'roll' on salvages. If you think we get closer to 2 matrices per ring and 4 for attuned or infused and 6 with both upgrades, then it would be worth the gold to salvage if you attune pre-infused rings. I don't think the odds are good enough for rings that are pre-infused only, because the extra value is too little for the extra effort plus the risk of having bad streaks.