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Blacksmith Upgrade & Salvage

Last Updated: January 7th 2024

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The Blacksmith repairs your broken gear, salvages any useless items for valuable crafting materials and upgrades your gear's Item Power to increase their stats! You are going to spend a lot of your down-time at the Blacksmith, clearing out your piles of loot while upgrading any new pieces of gear you come across in your adventures. Your gear also takes a Durability hit whenever you die, so coughing up a bit of Gold gets everything back in working order!

Unlocking the Blacksmith

When your character reaches level 10, you receive a Priority Quest objective to go and see Zivek the Blacksmith in Kyovashad. You're given the task of upgrading a piece of gear, and in return you're awarded experience.

But the true reward is meeting the NPC you very well may spend the most time with as you progress through the world of Sanctuary. Upgrading your gear and salvaging extra loot for materials are core progression loops.

With every death, you lose 1/10th of your gear's Durability. Once this hits 0, your item's bonuses are partially disabled, making you are significantly weaker. Keeping your gear in good condition is important. But! If you're a Hardcore player, you never need to worry about this part of the game.

Blacksmiths can be found all throughout the world in various outposts, towns and cleared Strongholds, so you don't always have to come back to Kyovashad for these tasks.

Meet Zivek: The Blacksmith of Kyovashad

Salvage

Salvaging a piece of gear gains you an amount of crafting materials that are needed to upgrade that item type. Higher rarities typically award more rare materials. Salvaging upgraded gear also recoups some of the upgrade materials used on that item. If an item was socketed with a Gem, the Gem is returned to your inventory. Potentially the most important thing of all, salvaging an item unlocks that item's Transmog.

You are able to quickly salvage all items in your Inventory, but it ignores legendary, unique and all items that were altered in any way (enchanted, socketed, transmogged). In addition, you have the option to mark individual items as "Junk" with a hotkey and then salvages all of those with a single click once you visit the Blacksmith, with the same restrictions. Good inventory management can save you a lot of time between adventures.

Weapons

  • Common gives Iron Chunk
  • Magic also gives Silver Ore
  • Rare also gives Veiled Crystal
  • Legendary/Unique also gives Baleful Fragment

Armor

  • Common gives Rawhide
  • Magic also gives Superior Leather
  • Rare also gives Veiled Crystal
  • Legendary/Unique also gives Coiling Ward

Jewelry

  • Common and Magic gives Iron Chunk
  • Rare also gives Veiled Crystal
  • Legendary/Unique also gives Abstruse Sigil

Upgrading

The items you find on your adventures are only the beginning of your character's gear progression. Every piece of gear can be upgraded a certain amount of times, based on the rarity, with increasing Gold and material costs. This increases the Item Power by 5 every time. While you can upgrade common and magic items, this is only a waste of time and resources. Rare, legendary and unique items are the only bases worth upgrading.

The benefits of upgrading cannot be overstated. Not only do most of the affix stats increase at every Item Power increment, but the base Armor and Weapon Damage increase as well. These are critical for decreasing incoming damage and increasing your Skill damage. See the list below for each upgrade material and what they're used for:

  • Iron Chunk Tier 1 - Weapon, Jewelry
  • Rawhide Tier 1 - Armor
  • Silver Ore Tier 2 - Weapon, Jewelry
  • Superior Leather Tier 2 - Armor
  • Veiled Crystal Tier 3 - Weapon, Armor, Jewelry
  • Baleful Fragment Tier 4 - Weapon
  • Coiling Ward Tier 4 - Armor
  • Forgotten Soul Tier 5 - Weapon, Armor
    (Sacred, Ancestral)
Upgrading a Legendary helmet to maximum!

Upgrade Breakpoints

When upgrading your gear, there are actually important "breakpoints" to be aware of. Seen to the right: If this piece of gear would upgrade from Item Power 339 to 344, the Swift/ of Swifttness affix has a new range the item can roll between.

  • You could previously roll between 1.4% and 3.0% when the item was generated.
  • At the next item level breakpoint, you can roll between 2.1% and 4.5%.
  • When the item is upgraded over a "breakpoint" it REROLLS that value, and sometimes the new value can actually be lower than the value you had previously. In this example, a perfect roll of 3.0% could be replaced with the new low-roll of 2.1%.
  • Typically when upgrading, every stat is increased by 10%. But once you hit a "breakpoint" all bets are off.
  • The blacksmith screen shows what values the item rolls with, so you can decide to NOT upgrade over the breakpoint, if it results in lower stats for you.
Custom Graphic to show Item Power Breakpoints

Repair

Your mighty hero eventually dies. When it happens, your Armor and Weapons lose 10% of their total Durability. Once that value reaches 0, your gear is considered broken and must be repaired. Every 10% Durability increases the Gold cost, which also increases with Item Power. When your gear becomes completely broken, you don't lose all of their stats and Aspect bonuses. You lose a massive percentage of their bonuses, but at least you can continue using your Skills.

Video

Wudijo's video on the topic of Upgrade Breakpoints

Summary

  • The Blacksmith is can salvage your unused gear for crafting materials, upgrade your gear to max their stats and repair your broken gear to keep you in the fight!
  • Salvaging Weapons, Armor and Jewelry get you crafting materials needed to upgrade the items you find on your adventures.
  • Every time you die, your item's Durability drops by 10%. When it hits 0 you need to get it repaired ASAP!

Credits

Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by Rob, wudijo

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