Salvage
What is Salvage in DAoC?
Primary and Secondary Crafting Skills
There are two types of crafts in Dark Age of Camelot: primary and secondary skills.
Primary skills allow you to craft actually useful items, from consumables to equipment pieces.
Secondary skills almost only craft useless items usually refer to as “trinkets” (with some exceptions, like furniture or mount armor). However, these skills also determine what level of item you can salvage or not.
There are four secondary skills: Woodworking, Metalworking, Leatherworking, Clothworking.
Salvage Items
Outside of some exceptions (unique items and the sort), almost all armours and weapons can be salvaged. Accessories, however, cannot be salvaged: jewels, accessories, rings, bracers, belts, cloaks, necklaces, mythirians.
When you salvage an item, you will receive metal, wood, leather or fabric based on the item itself, and your skill level in that particular type of item. While you can techncially salvage every single possible item at around ~800 in these secondary skills, but the higher you are, the more chances you have to salvage more resources.
Selling these materials will be a net worth gain over simply selling the item itself.
Trinketing
The useless items crafted with the secondary skills, the trinkets, are actually worth sold back at the vendor than simply selling the materials they are made of. Their recipe is always simple, either 1, 2 or 20 of a single resource, with some additional thread for leather and cloth.
If you also spend time crafting trinkets (often called "trinketing"), you'll maximize your profits from salvaging, with a massive ratio. While I can't confirm any number myself, I've read it ranges around 400%-1500% more benefits than simply selling the item dropped from mobs.
Cloth and leather trinkets require to buy threads from the vendor, and thus have a much lower return than metal and wood, and most people don’t bother trinketing these, instead simply selling the fabric and leather itself.
This being said, they still are worth more than their materials, so if you have the time and will to figure it out, you'll still make more money than if you aren't doing it.
Salvage Leveling Guide
All original credits for Hazefest for his document for salvaging.
This guide will take you from 0 all the way up to 1100 in all the salvaging skills.
You can technically salvage every single possible item at around ~800 in these skills, but the higher you are, the more chance you have to salvage more resources. With craft skills being shared amongst all characters of your realm on Eden and being saved between seasons, this is absolutely worth your time.
Before you embark into this journey, I highly recommend you get yourself a Crafting Suit. This will make the entire process twice as fast!
Craft Order
To optimize your time and money, you absolutely have to follow this order to level up your crafts:
- Alchemy: 1-380
- Clothworking: 1-380
- Leatherworking: 1-380
- Woodworking: 1-380
- Metalworking: 1-380
- Fletcher: 1-500
- Tailoring: 1-400
- Weaponcrafting: 1-380
- Armorcrafting: 1-380
First of all, we do Alchemy to 380 to be able to gain level in the secondary skills directly. Indeed, you can't gain levels in these 4 skill lines by crafting their items (trinkets) directly unless you have at least one primary skill at that or a higher level. Doing this with anything else but alchemy will fuck up the leveling order for the rest, so we start with that.
After that, here's the idea: when you craft an item with a primary skill, you will gain a level in your primary skill, but also in one or multiple secondary skills no matter the level you’re currently at for this secondary skill.
The secondary skills you get points for when crafting an item are determined by the required components for the item: if you craft something requiring leather and metal, you’ll gain a level in both metalworking and leatherworking.
This way, you level the secondary skills first when they’re using really cheap materials, and then you use the primary skills to get more levels while they’re still in their cheap and somewhat fast range.
What am I crafting?
Alchemy
See my Alchemy Leveling Guide for the list of best items to craft to level to 380 (and further).
Secondary Skills
For Clothworking, Leatherworking, Woodworking and Metalworking, simply craft the next orange trinket available. All trinkets basically cost the same per item, with few exceptions that don't matter that much at this level. The one exception is probably Metalworking, where Brackets are cheaper than the other items.
Fletcher
Only craft arrows:
- Start with the various types of Blunt Arrows up to ~90.
- Continue with Bodkin Arrows until ~400.
- Finish with Broadhead Arrows.
Tailoring
Only craft leather gloves and boots. There are three types of them, which you need to alternate between as you rise in skill:
- Albion: Roman, Cymric, Siluric
- Midgard: Mjuklaedar, Svarlaedar, Starklaedar
- Hibernia: Brea, Constaic, Cruaigh
Weaponcrafting
Alternate between the cheapest kind of weapons available. Round shields, for example, are available in all three realms, and way cheaper than the other shields. For the rest, they vary a lot between realms, and it's more up in the air between what is fast, what is cheap, what is easy, etc.
Armorcrafting
Only craft studded leather gloves and boots. There are three types of them, which you need to alternate between as you rise in skill:
- Albion: Studded, Boned, Lamellar
- Midgard: Stelskodd, Svarskodd, Starkaskodd
- Hibernia: Tacuil, Nadurtha, Caillocht
Salvage Tips
Darkness Falls Salvaging
The base info came from the Bysan UI crafting window. However, multiple discord users seemed to notice it was wrong, and the tables have been adjusted accordingly. This includes all the Diamond Seal items.
Basically, you want to always buy the cheapest metal weapon available.
It will give the most metal bar / seal, and thus maximise value.
Albion
| Type of Seals | Price | Item | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emerald | 21 | Emerald Dirk | ⤫ |
| Saphire | 32 | Saphire Breastplate | ⤫ |
| Diamond | 15 | Diamond Longsword | ✓ |
Midgard
| Type of Seals | Price | Item | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emerald | 20 | Avernal great hammer | ⤫ |
| Saphire | 21 | Spiked Axe | ⤫ |
| Diamond | 15 | Spinded Axe | ✓ |
Hibernia
| Type of Seals | Price | Item | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emerald | 26 | Emerald exceptional Avernal Hauberk | ⤫ |
| Saphire | 32 | Saphire Daemon-forged Hauberk | ⤫ |
| Diamond | 15 | Exquisite Infernal Malison Broadsword | ✓ |