Is the normal-magic-rare set vendor recipe even worth it?

I'd like to interrupt your regularly scheduled level 90+ discussion with a relatively new player's perspective, who is still levelling through act 3.

I've been wanting to move beyond just haphazardly vendoring everything, and looked at the available vendor recipes on the wiki. The one where you trade in an unidentified rare, an unidentified magic, and a normal item of the same base type for two augmentation orbs seemed to be the least painful to work with, as I've only got so much stash space, and access only to low-level and almost entirely zero-quality drops. As it is, I'm having to dedicate three of my four tabs just to storing items and waiting for matching parts to show up.

Still, it works. It feels good getting so many orbs, too. But... I've just finished comparing and visualizing for myself the vendor value of various basic currency items. And now I wonder: is two augmentation orbs really a good deal for a rare and a magic item with additional caveats?

It's the equivalent of 10 alteration shards. So if selling the two identified items yields 10 shards or less, then the orb recipe is better - even at 10 shards, since you pay two scrolls to identify, and get only a fragment back for also vendoring the normal item. How likely is it to get 11 alteration shards for two identified items? Fairly unlikely, if my limited experience is any indication, even when rares are involved.

However. Some modifiers on identified items yield alchemy shards, too. And those are almost two orders of magnitude more valuable than alteration shards. The difference is so big that, even if you only get an average of 5 alteration shards per set trade-in, you will still come out ahead of the two-orbs-recipe if you get just a single alchemy shard every twelve trades. I've seen single items giving me four, at times - and one such trade would put you ahead for over 50 trades of not getting any others.

It just seems to me that identifying and selling the individual items will yield more total value over time, thanks to alchemy shards being a thing. Plus saving all the effort in collecting and tracking multiple dozen half-finished sets at any given time. Nevermind the stash space.

Is my analysis correct, here? And if so, why do we even have those vendor recipes...?

Most people don’t consider the time worth vendor recipes except for 1- item recipes. In your case it really falls down to a desire to eek as much out of each map as possible or the more profitable running maps faster but with less each time. I’m not saying what to do, but most of those are designed to assist SSF players who target currency for their use rather than trade value.

most vendor recipes are there from the very, very early days of the game. they are not worth bothering with now.

Later in the game, the 'chaos recipe' can be a decent way to accumulate some valuable currency, but right now, you should just focus on levelling. The only items you should bother picking up while levelling fall into 4 categories:

1) r-g-b linked items, to sell as is, for 1 chromatic orb.
2) 4 linked items WITH YOUR COLORS that you might wear
3) rares of the correct defense type for your character (as a duelist, this means armor and evasion types, ignore energy shield items)
4) actual currency (including scrolls)

This game throws an absurd amount of garbage loot at the player. Even the devs know this. It has gotten to a point where even the default game has a loot filter that HIDES items from you.

Later on, when you get to zones with more magic/rare monsters, and especially in maps where you can get a % item quantity bonus, you will pick up much more raw currency. An average tier 1 map will drop 1-3 of each : transmutation, augmentation, alteration, chance, whetstone, armourers scrap. with 10+ scrolls of each type.

Alright, thanks for the input. I shall use vendor recipes when looking for a specific currency, not all the time.

Yup, you can check the wiki for a full list of recipes. Personally I look for:

1 Chromatic
- Any gear with linked RBG sockets

7 Jewelers
- Any 6 socket item (not 6 linked)

1 Divine
- Any 6 linked item

2 Exalted Shards
- Full set of influenced gear (must all be same influence and yields 4 shards if all are unidentified)

1 Glassblower’s Bauble
- Cumulative 40% quality on any flasks (just pick up/save flasks with quality)

1 Gemcutter’s Prisim
- Cumulative 40% quality on any gems

If you're ssf and you're just starting out, these recipes have real value.

In trade league often guilds will assign one or two members to cook trash down to a manageable currency flow.

This is especially valuable at the beginning of league when alterations sometimes sell 3:1. You can flip alterations very profitably during the first 2 weeks of any league. Even to the point of scouring delve nodes for magic items and vendoring them.

During Legion the chaos:exalt exchange rate went absolutely nuts, and for a brief interval, people were grabbing white items and throwing alchemy on them to make up chaos sets. And the following week the exchange rate went in the other direction, and exalts topped 200c, and nobody would make change for you.

Being aware of these recipes and how currencies are valued can make life easier for you.

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crunkatog wrote:

If you're ssf and you're just starting out, these recipes have real value.

In trade league often guilds will assign one or two members to cook trash down to a manageable currency flow.

This is especially valuable at the beginning of league when alterations sometimes sell 3:1. You can flip alterations very profitably during the first 2 weeks of any league. Even to the point of scouring delve nodes for magic items and vendoring them.

During Legion the chaos:exalt exchange rate went absolutely nuts, and for a brief interval, people were grabbing white items and throwing alchemy on them to make up chaos sets. And the following week the exchange rate went in the other direction, and exalts topped 200c, and nobody would make change for you.

Being aware of these recipes and how currencies are valued can make life easier for you.

Sorry. I'm aware that you are speaking English, but I have absolutely no idea what you just said. =P My takeaway here is that it might be relevant to highly experienced people who routinely and competitively play new leagues - and none of those descriptors apply to me, so that means it's not relevant to me.


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For what it's worth, I gathered some empirical data these past two days, comparing what I got for identifying and individually vendoring normal-magic-rare set parts compared to what I would have gotten for the set vendor recipe. I managed to get 22 data points, which wouldn't normally be a statistically significant number; but the bias lies so heavy on the side of individually vendoring items that it's practically pointless to collect more data.

Across 22 sets of three, vendoring the individual parts yielded a value equivalent to 20,809.2 wisdom scrolls for zero sorting effort and stash space investment, while turning in the set via the vendor recipe would have yielded a value equivalent to 3,969 wisdom scrolls for a massive sorting effort and stash space investment. Ouch. Note to self: stay the *bleep* away from those vendor recipes unless a specific currency type is needed and no other way presents itself.

The average yield per set was 12.77 alteration shards and 0.68 alchemy shards. The total yield was 281 alteration shards and 15 alchemy shards. About 75% of the total value was generated by the alchemy shards alone, but even the alteration shards by themselves would have beaten the set vendor recipe.

Actually you can generate lvl 60+ unidentified full set of items really fast when you know how. With just lets say single quad stash tab - you store all unidentified rare belts, amulets and rings. Once you have enough of this, it's easy to find gloves, boots, 2H weapons and body armors.

Either throw some in too, or pick them up, add stored amus, rings, belts and sell for 2C.

Let me make it clear following things to you:
1) No amount of just rare items vendoring would make such amounts of currency
2) If you know market and value of mods on items, you are likely gonna earn more by identifying and selling items. You can do 1C recipe then. But:
a) You really need to know market and you also need to know what to pick-up at which map tier level - or it will be enormous waste of time
3) Top tier players will not use (except for the start of league) any chaos recipe at all - it's deemed too slow - for example even on HC now, I have shutdown my 1C trade store (it's a waste of time to sell item for 1C), minimal amount I sell items is for 2C and if I'm not in mood, your whisper may still be ignored! Like 5C+ sells for me make more sense atm.

Therefore you must always weight time taken to gather and manage items versus time spent finding those items. For good player who knows what to do, this always tilts to picking up quite minimum of items.

P.s.: At this state of league I vendor all 1C and also 2C uniques. That's how I get alchemy orbs to roll maps. :-)

I play a self imposed SSF and never trade for anything so I do the vendor recipes. I don't think the augment one is worth it because as you sell higher tiered rares you will get a lot of them. The ones I do are the Armourer, Whetstone, Alchemy, and Chaos recipes. The reason is, I use the currency to try to upgrade my gear. You need the armourers and whetstones to add quality to un-id'ed gear for the alchemy recipe. I use the Alchemy orbs on high level whites and pray for good rolls. If I don't get good rolls sometimes I re-roll with the chaos orbs. I also use the chaos orbs to craft on stats that I need at the crafting bench.
It's a slow and tedious process but it works for me. I'd rather do this than deal with pricing and haggling with traders who, from what people say sometimes don't respond or lately try to scam you. If you must trade, forgive me if i yell: MAKE SURE YOU SLOWDOWN AND CHECK WHAT YOU"RE TRADING FOR. Do it multiple times if you have to.