Rare salvage and you.

[Ukase]

Many, by now are aware of a multitude of ways to get rare salvage. 

Farm or just play for it - the drops do come eventually. But if it's a specific rare you need...that may take some time. AE allows the use of 540 AE tickets for a specific rare salvage of your choice. It seems easy enough, but the ticket cap in AE prevents this from being anything but tedious, as you have to restart each mission within a couple of minutes if your farm character is fairly quick at dispatching the mobs. 

Spend a reward merit - the servers are still down, so I can't be specific, but the merit vendor does let you exchange reward merits for random rare salvage. I just can't recall if it's 1 reward merit or an even more heinous 5 reward merits. EDIT: Per the HC Wiki, it is indeed 5 reward merits. No thanks. But the option is there. 

Brain Storm Ideas: 20 per random rare. You can buy these, the current price on the AH is 25k each. I've gotten them as cheap as 15k before. But with the current demand, either real or artificially ramped up by some market manipulators, they're selling now for 25k easily enough. 
These can also be acquired through Winter and Super Packs. Thanks to Bopper sharing Faultline's data, we know they average 19.7 BS ideas per pack. And, since Hero/Villain packs are only 10M, it's probably the best path to take, if you've the mindset for picking through all the packs and monetizing each goodie you get. 

But - this is frankly what I've been doing. It's not like I won't eventually use the ATOs in these packs. Eventually. I mean, sooner or later I'll either convert some of the lesser used ones like the Sentinels, but eventually. Sure. The dilemma for me is the endless seconds wasted between clicks. But, when the player or players that are driving up the cost of rare salvage to 800k or so, it helps me get a nicer return on each pack. 

And, the easiest thing is to just bid your fair price, whatever that is for you - and just wait. I'm doing that too. Lots of bids in at 420K for rares in the tier I like to craft in. 

So, the point of this post isn't to boast, but to ask - is there something I'm missing? I have an SG for my lowbies; they stash rare salvage in it when they don't need it. These items are sometimes useful, but it's the marketing characters that really go through them. Some days, I think I'll need an SG to hold just one tiers worth of salvage to do the crafting I need to do on certain days. 

What's your method for getting around the higher prices of the rare salvage? 

Remember - it's not like I don't have it. But every inf I save in my "manufacturing" adds up. When enough add up, it's one less item I need to sell to make the same amount of inf. Or, cheaper prices on the AH. 

 

[tidge]

I put rare salvage in the personal vault of each character. I have two racks in the SG base for rare salvage... I keep this 'buffet' stocked. If I need a specific rare piece that I don't have, I just AH some pieces that I don't need.

[Hedgefund]

Brain storms drop from a day job as well.  I don't even know which day job it is (and don't really care) but they pile up.  These are an asset I just drop off in my "misc" salvage storage for my banker to swoop up periodically.  As said in OP they rain in from packs as well.

 

So actually just a couple of hours ago I noticed that my normal bid for rares had gone unfilled for a few days now.  I don't monitor the market but seeing that there's a clear trend up made me think of my brain storm stash so I just plowed through a few thousand to up the supply (at a fair, but not a bargain price for current conditions).  If the trend is continuing tomorrow I'll repeat.

 

As for the unfilled bids, whatevah.  They'll eventually get filled and I'm very, very patient.  I purchase my purple recipes at level 1 and don't PL so I've got weeks before I'll need them crafted.

 

 

[tidge]

10 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

So actually just a couple of hours ago I noticed that my normal bid for rares had gone unfilled for a few days now.  I don't monitor the market but seeing that there's a clear trend up made me think of my brain storm stash so I just plowed through a few thousand to up the supply (at a fair, but not a bargain price for current conditions).  If the trend is continuing tomorrow I'll repeat.

 

The influx of new level 50s (from Mapserver, from ToT) usually signals more market activity.

[Hedgefund]

57 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

The influx of new level 50s (from Mapserver, from ToT) usually signals more market activity.

 

 

[The Trouble]

I'm cheap and lazy in wildly inconsistent ways.

 

"500k+ for rare salvage?!  No way am I paying that much!  Time to spend hundreds of millions on booster packs to get some more Brainstorms..."

 

Now at least half of my base storage is dedicated to rare salvage the RNG dumped on me while I was waiting for one Hamidon Goo.  It's convenient for those purple recipes, but I would have a hard time recommending my method.  At least whatever ATO I might want is readily available!

[lemming]

1 hour ago, The Trouble said:

I'm cheap and lazy in wildly inconsistent ways.

Glad I'm not the only one. I'll convert tons of stuff to avoid spending a few million on enhancements.  I mean it kinda seems to be fine since I'm still building up influence while fully outfitting characters.   Some of this is from retiring characters and selling off their basic IOs and such that cost more to craft at the time.

 

I rarely buy rare salvage.  I almost always have enough on hand somewhere.

[Yomo Kimyata]

To each their own.  I don't see the point in storing rare salvage in base or on character at all, because there is always more coming in to the market.  So when I notice one of my characters has a few rares, I'll post them on the /AH at a price that won't sell immediately, but probably will soon(tm).  That said, I've got a handful of mules with a thousand+ in storage in case the grid goes down and the zombies take over, so I can always sell them to myself if need be.

 

And if I need a lot of specific rares?  Well, then I'm going to weigh price versus timeliness.  I don't particularly want to pay the seeded cap (1mm), but I've done it (not bloody recently).  I'll bid creep until I find a large enough block.  But generally, I'll sell a single rare and note the highest outstanding bid.  If I find that a reasonable level, I'll put in all my bids at a slightly higher price and check back later.  You may be shocked to hear that it generally fills very quickly depending on how many you are looking to buy.  Thirty?  Very quickly.  Three thousand?  Well, then you run the real risk that someone else does the exact same thing and marginally outbids you.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

To each their own.  I don't see the point in storing rare salvage in base or on character at all, because there is always more coming in to the market.  So when I notice one of my characters has a few rares, I'll post them on the /AH at a price that won't sell immediately, but probably will soon(tm).  That said, I've got a handful of mules with a thousand+ in storage in case the grid goes down and the zombies take over, so I can always sell them to myself if need be.

 

And if I need a lot of specific rares?  Well, then I'm going to weigh price versus timeliness.  I don't particularly want to pay the seeded cap (1mm), but I've done it (not bloody recently).  I'll bid creep until I find a large enough block.  But generally, I'll sell a single rare and note the highest outstanding bid.  If I find that a reasonable level, I'll put in all my bids at a slightly higher price and check back later.  You may be shocked to hear that it generally fills very quickly depending on how many you are looking to buy.  Thirty?  Very quickly.  Three thousand?  Well, then you run the real risk that someone else does the exact same thing and marginally outbids you.

I basically do the same. I also convert my brainstorms from Superpacks into rares, and post them for sale at a pretty high, uncommonly reached level. These for a reserve for me to buy from myself if I get desperate, and sometimes they eventually sell to other people at huge profits. Every now and then, prices of rares reach right up to the seed price of 1 million each.

 

I also try to bid for rares at least a day in advance of needing them. It's amazing how many you can get at a fair price if you are patient.

[lemming]

I think it matters on how much crafting one does.   I'm pretty low volume I suspect in comparison.  I might sell a dozen enhancements a week that I just know tend to go for decent amounts on the AH, but they're just ones that pop out of a conversion roulette.  (and then I tend to use part of those proceeds to buy the cheaper alternative that I was actually going for)

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

I think it matters on how much crafting one does.   I'm pretty low volume I suspect in comparison.  I might sell a dozen enhancements a week that I just know tend to go for decent amounts on the AH, but they're just ones that pop out of a conversion roulette.  (and then I tend to use part of those proceeds to buy the cheaper alternative that I was actually going for)

That's a good point. I'm presently taking a break, but when I'm active I'm going through an easy thousand or more rare salvages per week.

[Ukase]

On 4/23/2025 at 11:39 AM, lemming said:

Glad I'm not the only one.

So, time for me to confess. You and The Trouble aren't the only two. From all the winter packs I had, I spent literally over an hour claiming my brain storm ideas and burned through all of them. I stashed the ones I use frequently (by tier) and dumped the remaining (Tiers I don't craft in generally). 

I even took a farmer for a few ticket runs...but damn, that's tedious. I'm such a dork sometimes. If I just afk farmed, I'd make passive inf without even sweating the price of salvage for market income. But market profit margins are kind of worth it - when the rare salvage is what I deem reasonable. And by reasonable, I mean for sale at the price I'm willing to pay to buy it. For me, that point is 500K. Not one inf more. 

I even burned through about 500 reward merits which only gave me 100 pieces of salvage in the specific tier and origin I was looking for. 

Most of you who've read my early posts from a few years ago know the niche I am mostly in. And there's a specific IO set that uses the exact same recipe for all 6 IOs in the set. So, those get used up a lot more often than any other. Like 6x as much as the others I would need, roughly. 

So, despite having brain storm idea bids in, they're not coming in fast enough. And, I recall @Yomo Kimyata suggesting that a reward merit was worth roughly 1M inf. So, clearly, I've gone off the deep end to keep my inf out of the greedy marketers pockets! For me, merits are generally only for converters, but converters are super cheap now, compared to the price they were a few years ago. So, maybe the reward merit isn't worth a full million now. 

I know I can use about 15 converters to turn 50K inf recipe + salvage and crafting cost and net about 2.5M with it. I don't know that I can make 1M inf with 3 converters. Maybe I could if I were super lucky. Maybe I'm missing something. Probably brain cells. Yeah, definitely missing those. 

What's a Reward Merit worth to you folks?  

Edited Tuesday at 05:21 PM by Ukase
oopsie

[The Trouble]

56 minutes ago, Ukase said:

What's a Reward Merit worth to you folks?  

There are a handful of agreeable recipe sets that I can rotate though, but Converters are unique in that they are always necessary.  My Converters come almost exclusively from Reward Merits, and keeping me insulated from any wild market fluctuations make those Reward Merits priceless.

 

Gotta keep that profit margin higher than Cheech and Chong.

[tidge]

On 4/29/2025 at 1:21 PM, Ukase said:

What's a Reward Merit worth to you folks?  

 

I don't have an unending stream of alts, and I only have a limited number of multi-builds... I write this because it means that I don't need that much Inf. As I play a lot of content that rewards Merits, I usually end up spending the merits on things like ATO or Winter pieces, Purple recipes, and converters or unslotters when I'm out of them (or forget to claim them from email).

 

This isn't me trying to keep Inf out of the market, it is more like me not wanting to bother with the market (to get specific items) at certain times. There are certain things I buy with merits that I know I could get for less (inf, assuming I convert merits->converters and sell those) and I'll keep an eye on some of those... but mostly by using outstanding bids at the prices I've pre-judged to be worth my time and effort.

[Troo]

On 4/29/2025 at 10:21 AM, Ukase said:

For me, that point is 500K. Not one inf more. 

 

I do 425.

Crafting lots of purples requires these. Happy to buy bunches over time and craft as crafting discount coupons fill up.

 

Storing rare salvage.. no thanks.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 4/29/2025 at 1:21 PM, Ukase said:

What's a Reward Merit worth to you folks?  

 

Hmm, well one way to approach this would be to say that on average a 10mm investment in a hero pack gets you 9.7146 merits according to @Bopper, so about 1mm still seems to hold pretty firm...

 

Now, converting one merit to 1mm inf is going to be a lot more difficult...