The new epic crafts from Gnomeregan is a big source of value, today we will look at the economy behind turning in Grime-encrusted salvage and whether or not it is worth it.
The basics
Once you’ve done the quest line which begins by trying to salve one Grime-encrusted salvage at the salvageomatic you unlock the ability to salvage for 30 silver per salvage. You can buy the Grime-encrusted salvage on the AH, which leads to the situation where it is possible to turn these in for a profit. Turning in a salvage gives you a box which rewards BoP materials needed to craft the profession specific intermediate materials. All the epic crafts use materials from at least 3 professions, so most players will have to turn to the AH to get their epic crafted.
Materials gained
You gain materials for any professions you have 200 skill in. The materials only have value if you have the recipe to craft the intermediate material, which will cost you 15 gold per profession. In general engineering is usually the lowest value one, simply because so many players have engineering combined with one of the other professions. The best combinations are usually tailoring/LW, but it depends on realm. You gain 3.5 BoP materials per profession on average, as well as some 3.5 piles of random parts. These vendor for 25 silver or can be turned into a mystery box or sold on the AH.
The math
To calculate the profitability we need quite a few material prices. I’ve made a spreadsheet which calculates the value of each profession combination, as well as how many salvages you would need to do to make back your profit. Simply input all the materials from your realm, and pick your professions from the drop down menu.
Price trends
Price on salvage and thus the finished materials is falling very rapidly. We just unlocked the full 3 day reset cycle, so more salvage is being generated than ever before. Prices will probably keep trending down, so it’s very important to not overstock, you need to sell out when things are cheap. This is particularly true for blacksmithing and engineering where you need very expensive truesilver bars to finish the material craft.
TSM settings
To set up correct pricing here we need a slightly more advanced setup than normal. You will need to set a new material price for each of the BoP materials you use. You find it under crafting reports → materials. The string you want to add in is simply dbmarket(i:213427)/7, as you get 7 materials on average per salvage. Since you get two different materials and the total profit is what matters this can lead to incorrect results, particularly in cases where it is profitable, but one of you professions has a much lower price than the other. If that is the case you should swap to a different operation for that profession.
The materials do not have a vendor price, which means that there’s no deposit cost, so camping the AH and canceling to repost as soon as you get undercut is absolutely the play. Particularly as you need to sell out while prices are at the level you are aiming for. Prices on Grime-Encrusted salvage is quite volatile though, so if you find that the market value is too high above the current price you can swap out the dbmarket string for just a hardcoded gold amount. 1g35s/7 for instance would be good based on current prices on my realm.
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