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Throughout Normal, Nightmare, and now sadly even Hell I have found numerous Rare items that are completely worthless to me. Their stats are not even remotely worth selling on the AH, and they have been replaced by bigger and better things. Assuming I don't want to save them for a potential next character, and I have no other reason to hang on to them. What is the best way to dispose of them to make the most out of them?

Would it be better to sell them to the merchant, break them down for crafting components, or something else? I have not yet found any great advantage to the Blacksmith, but I hear he can be quite profitable by level 10.

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It's worth noting that in Patch 1.03 they're planning on rebalancing the costs of the Blacksmith - whether it'll make leveling and salvaging more viable still remains an open question, but it's something to think about. –  Ashel May 29 '12 at 14:11
@Ashel To be honest I haven't used the blacksmith once yet. To me he always seemed worthless, but someone told me at level 10 you can get legendaries out of him. I don't know if this is true or not. –  Emerica. May 29 '12 at 14:22
@Emerica If I have understood things correctly, you need to find a blacksmith plan which teaches the blacksmith how to make a legendary item. My guess is that these only drop in the later acts of inferno. Or you can buy them from the auction house. There is a separate tab for blacksmithing and jeweler plans. –  Alderath May 29 '12 at 19:40

4 Answers 4

up vote 12 down vote accepted

The issue here is not whether something will sell, (eventually, many things will), but rather is it worthwhile to keep your stash/bags full of items with mediocre stats, some of which require 2 to 3 AH listings to move?

Right now I believe it's more cost effective to vendor rares, but that may change in patch 1.0.3, in which Blizz has announced that they are "...looking to adjust the Blacksmith costs for training (gold and pages) and crafting from levels 1-59..." In this case I hope "adjusting" means "reducing."

My method for rare item triage has lots of room for improvement, but this is what I've been doing when I encounter a rare:

  1. Is it an upgrade for me? If yes, hooray! If not, then,
  2. Is it an upgrade for someone in my party? If yes, give it away. If not,
  3. Do I have an alt that can use it (sooner than later)? If not,
  4. Are the stats amazing? Does the item make you think "boy, I wish I had a [insert class here]"? If so, then list it on the AH for a lot. If not,
  5. Does the item have stats that are decent, AND the item has +magic find and/or +gold find? If so, list it on the AH. (I admit I have spent 15000-25000 gold on something 10 levels too low for my "gold accumulation" set.) Finally,
  6. If #1-5 don't apply, then vendor it.

All that said, I have trouble following my own advice sometimes. I'm good about vendoring rares with truly horrific stats. It's the items right in the middle I have trouble parting with.

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Very nice first answer on gaming.SE! Yeah, my stash is over filled with rares that for some reason I can't part with. –  Emerica. May 29 '12 at 18:50
Any insight post-1.0.3, now at 1.0.5? –  Jonathan Mabe Dec 23 '12 at 20:11

I think you should salvage everything. Currently, materials prices are low because everyone is selling materials, but when the commodities Auction House goes up and people start crafting more, then material prices will increase by anywhere from 3 to 5 times the current prices.

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I havent found a rare yet that hasn't sold for a minimum of 5k. It might not sell the first time (which sucks seeing as we have the cap of 10) but it WILL sell. 5k vs. 500g seems worthwhile to me, especially at the lower levels. Now that I am hitting inferno, it is getting a bit trivial but I'll usually give it one go around before I vendor trash.

Hopefully this will all change once we get our crafting update!

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You mean you were able to sell all the rares you found in Normal for 5K gold? That seems unlikely... I can certainly see higher level rares selling for that much though. –  bwarner May 29 '12 at 14:17
I have put multiple random rares up numerous times with a buyout of even less and nobody ever buys them. –  Emerica. May 29 '12 at 14:20
Yeah, Normal all up thru Hell. I often run friends thru normal, or achievement hunting and sell what I can find. I'll immediatly vendor trash blues though. Under 5k and I dont even see the point. (note that i set this as buyout and usually do 15-20x vendor sell price as starting price. Most people dont like to wait that 2 day period and will just BO) –  Joshua Dudash May 29 '12 at 14:23
I don't doubt that there's someone on the vast internet with this experience...but you should know that you've been ridiculously lucky if this is the case. Just consider that you find more rares than you use...and so does everyone else. You also find a lot more than you buy from the auction house. Ergo, it's not possible for everyone to sell every rare they find. –  Theodore Murdock May 29 '12 at 16:49
Definitly, I have sold to the vendor when I start to run out of space in my Chest. I also didnt realize that the OP specified only NORMAL mode rares. Not sure why im getting downgraded.. –  Joshua Dudash May 29 '12 at 17:13

It really depends on how much the materials you would get from salvaging the rare items go for on the Auction House. The commodities market is disabled so I can't check right now, but when I last checked the materials were selling for less than what the rare items sold for, so I was always just vendoring them and when I wanted to craft I would just buy the materials from the Auction House at 1/10th the price of vendoring a rare item.

Also keep in mind that the blacksmith is mostly a gamble mechanic, and you can generally buy much better items from the Auction House for far less than if you kept re-crafting the same items trying to get the stats you wanted by spending both crafting materials and gold.

Obviously this is entirely dependent on the market, but as it currently is it's much more cost-effective to just vendor what you don't want to sell on the Auction House and buy what you want from there.

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