The bulk of your crafting materials in GW2

Newly created characters in Guild Wars 2 are able to begin crafting immediately following the brief intro instance for each race, though you may want to wait until you’ve got at least a few levels under your belt before diving in. As you’ll learn in this guide, this is due to needing some materials to craft with, and enough coin to purchase various components from NPC crafting vendors.

The bulk of your crafting materials will come from gathering while out in the explorable zones, or breaking dropped items down using salvage kits depending on which crafting disciplines you choose to train. Both methods will require you to purchase and use associated consumable items that can be found on all crafting NPCs, and many NPC vendors throughout the world.

Salvage Kits

Salvage kits will allow you to break certain items down into crafting materials, and have a chance of returning any upgrade items slotted in any armors, weapons, or accessories you salvage. The kits are a stackable item that’s stored in your normal inventory, with one kit consumed each time you salvage an item.

Beyond any equippable items dropped by creatures, many also have a chance to drop items labled as Salvage Item. These will return a number of components, but unlike armor, weapons, and accessories, they will not provide you with any item upgrades when salvaged.

There are currently five (5) types of common salvage kits that can be purchased from vendors, or may be earned as rewards from certain activities such as personal story missions. As a general rule, the more expensive the kit, the better chance you have of yielding rarer components or salvaging upgrades from items.

• Crude Salvage Kit – 32c per stack of 15
• Basic Salvage Kit – 88c per stack of 25
• Fine Salvage Kit – 2s 88c per stack of 25
• Journeyman’s Salvage Kit – 8s per stack of 25
• Master’s Salvage Kit – 15s 36c per stack of 25

There are also two additional types of salvage kits to be aware of:

• Black Lion Salvage Kit – these are purchased primarily through the gem store, though you may occasionally obtain them from reward chests or very rarely as drops. They differ from common kits in that you are guaranteed to retain any upgrades when salvaging gear.
• PvP Salvage Kits – These are purchased with glory from vendors in the MIsts, and are used to break down any unwanted PvP rewards you accumulate. Instead of returning normal crafting materials, salvaged PvP items will return a number of components used in the Mystic Forge instead.

Gathering Tools

Unlike salvage kits, gathering tools will not take up inventory space, but instead can be equipped in your Hero [H] window, or by right-clicking and selecting to “equip item”. As you can see in the image to the right, there are also different tiers of gathering tools, with each allowing you to gather metal, wood, or plants from progressively higher level zones:

• Rough – used for gathering in the level 1-15 maps, no level requirement
• Iron – used for gathering on maps up to level 30, requires level 10
• Steel – used on maps up to level 45, requires level 25
• Darksteel – used on maps up to level 45, requires level 40
• Mithril – used on maps up to level 60, requires level 55
• Orichalcum – used on maps up to level 80, requires level 70