The crafting materials you get from disenchanting magic and rare equipment are tied to the difficulty level you're playing. Is it possible to convert the leftovers from the previous difficulty to the new ones? If so, how?
Diablo – Is it possible to “upgrade” the crafting materials
diablo-3
Related Solutions
Take a look at the Apprentice Leather Doublet
Underneath the stats, you will see Salvages Into section. This will show you your chances of retrieving crafting supplies. For this item, you have a 100% chance of getting a Subtle Essence, and a 15% chance of a Fallen Tooth. This information is not shown in-game; as far as I can tell, only the website has these references.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find stats on dropped magical or rare items, so I have no concrete proof that they conform to these standards.
However, crafted items work as follows (and I believe dropped gear would work similarly):
- Magical: 100% chance of "magical" (blue color) salvage, 15% chance of "rare" (yellow) salvage.
- Rare: 100% chance of both magical and rare salvage.
- Set: 100% chance of 3 rare salvage.
- Unique/Legendaries:
- Below Level 60: Treated as Set items, so 3 rare salvage.
- At level 60: See below
I was poking around the blacksmith's recipe's, and realized: Inferno has an extra salvage! Using the same source, Inferno class gear results in the following:
- Magical: 100% chance of "magical" (blue color) salvage, 15% chance of "rare" (yellow) salvage, and 0% of Legendary salvage.
- Rare: 100% chance of both magical and rare salvage, and 0.1% of legendary salvage.
- Set/Unique/Legendaries: 100% chance of 2 rare salvage, and 1 legendary salvage.
UPDATE: As of 1.0.3, Blizzard reduced the chance of salvaging Fiery Brimstone from magic items from 0.8% to 0%.
If you're looking for non-Inferno rare salvage (Fallen Tooth, Lizard Eye, Encrusted Hoof), your best bet is to either:
- Salvage rare gear found in the appropriate difficulty.
- Buy the material you are looking for from the auction house. This is the probably the cheapest option for Normal and Nightmare currently.
Since set gear doesn't drop before Inferno difficulty, and any crafting of said set items will take more materials inputted than received, this isn't very viable. You can salvage any uniques you find, though, if you don't want them anymore. You'll get more return selling it on the auction house and using that cash to buy what you're looking for, though.
Now, the tiers of materials. The general idea is that each difficulty has it's own salvage materials, magic and rare. In practice, it's not quite so clear cut. I've salvaged items found in Nightmare and received Normal difficulty materials. Testing has revealed the following results:
Armor/Weapons:
- Normal: 1-29
- Nightmare: 29-49
- Hell: 50-59 (Exclude max level relics)
- Inferno: 60+
Jewelry:
- Normal: 1-26
- Nightmare: 27-47
- Hell: 48-58
- Inferno: 59+ (Max level relics are included)
Source: My testing
So, when salvaging an item, make sure to see what the required level is. If the item has a reduced requirements affix, then add that to the required level to get the true item level. Since 1.05, and the introduction of Monster Power, Reduced Level Requirements affects the materials gained. So for inferno salvage, your items cannot have a reduced level requirements affix.
The AH is now offline, so there's no way to check what crafting materials go for anymore. New ones are also Account bound, so you can't even trade them even if you wanted to.
It depends on what crafting material you are looking for. If you're looking for Subtle Essence and Fallen Tooth, your best bet is to farm as much gold as you can, and buy it from the auction house.
Currently, the crafting materials are selling for 20 and 45 gold, respectively. That is drastically cheaper than buying shop items, or even farming them yourself.
Source: this answer.
So, the answer fluctuates. In the event that the crafting material cost on the auction house rises above the cost of buying an equivalent magical item you can salvage, buy it from shops. In either case, gold find helps you.
For magic find, it will also depend on how long it takes you to find and gather magical items. The time investment will fall somewhere between the other two scenarios. It will take less time to find items you can salvage than it would to gather 1000 gold, but quite a bit longer than to gather just 25 or 100 gold.
The only time you want to really find magic items is when crafting material cost on the auction house goes above the cost of shop items. Which, at that point, becomes a stable economy for you on it's own. Buy magic items from shops, salvage, post crafting materials on auction house. Repeat. Use extra gold to buy items to salvage materials for yourself.
So, short answer, from least to most time investment, using Subtle Essence as an example:
- If: Crafting materials are dirt cheap (Costs less than you would get from selling magical items): Sell magic items and buy from auction house.
- If: Crafting materials are more expensive (more than selling your magic items) and less expensive than buying items from shops for salvage:
- If: Gathering requisite gold will take longer than finding magical items: Find magical items.
- Else Gather gold and buy from auction house.
- If: Crafting materials are more expense than buying magical items from shops: Buy items from shops, salvage materials, post on auction house for profit until price drops below viability.
Credit to LessPop_MoreFizz for the original information and inspiration.
Best Answer
As of the 1.05 patch, the Blacksmith can now upgrade crafting reagents as well as tomes at a rate of 10:1. So 10 blue materials from Normal level will become 1 blue material from Nightmare level. The option is available under the Craft Weapons tab, under a section called "Crafting Materials".