Diablo 4 salvage guide: How it works

A Diablo 4 character stands next to the Kyovashad blacksmith, who offers salvage services. — (Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

If you want to salvage your gear in Diablo 4, you'll need to find a blacksmith. You'll notice pretty quickly that your inventory fills up fast with all the loot you pick up from dungeons. And like the previous games, salvaging gear can free up valuable bag space so you can pick up even more gear.

Another added bonus to salvaging gear is that you'll receive materials that can be used to craft gear, so it's not going to waste. More importantly, you'll gain the appearance of certain salvaged weapons or armour, which you can then transmog to turn you into Hell's newest hotness. If you're ready to get started, here's how to salvage in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 salvage: How it works

You don't have a huge inventory in Diablo 4, so, like the earlier games, you need to get into the habit of freeing up bag space whenever you return to town. You can sell your unwanted gear to vendors if you choose, but the better option is to salvage your gear so you can collect crafting materials for use later on.

What you get from your gear will depend on the quality of the item being salvaged. Generally, you'll receive rawhide and leather, though the higher the quality, the better the reward. Once we have access to the full game in June, max-level gear should start rewarding materials that will allow the crafting of legendary items, for example.

Diablo 4 salvage window — (Image credit: Blizzard)

To salvage gear, you'll need to locate a blacksmith and you can usually find one in a town—look for the anvil icon on your map. Once you've found the NPC, interact with them, click the first tab at the top, and you'll be presented with the Salvage window. Here you'll find several options:

Salvage all junk: This lets you salvage the gear you've manually marked as junk in your inventory.
Common: Salvage all common (white) quality items.
Magic: Salvage all magic (blue) quality items.
Rare: Salvage all rare (yellow) quality items.
All items: This will salvage everything in your bags except for legendary quality items.

The pickaxe icon at the top of the list allows you to salvage individual items, and you'll need to select this if you want to salvage legendary weapons or armor.

Should you salvage legendaries in Diablo 4?

You should definitely sell or salvage all but the best legendaries in Diablo 4 unless you're planning to immediately wear them. In order to improve the legendary gear you actually like, you'll need legendary crafting materials which you'll find by salvaging legendaries you don't want. It's hard to scrap a high quality item, I know, but remember you'll get a fresh new wardrobe look from it. Make sure you turn on this tooltip that will help you decide whether a legendary item is worth extracting an aspect from instead of salvaging for materials.

So, in short, salvage any legendaries with aspects you don't need so that you can have the crafting materials. If a legendary has an aspect you like and is a particularly good roll of that aspect, extract it at the occultist instead and work on crafting a legendary of your own.

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Sarah started as a freelance writer in 2018, writing for PCGamesN, TechRadar, GamingBible, Red Bull Gaming and more. In 2021, she was offered a full-time position on the PC Gamer team where she takes every possible opportunity to talk about World of Warcraft and Elden Ring. When not writing guides, most of her spare time is spent in Azeroth—though she's quite partial to JRPGs too. One of her fondest hopes is to one day play through the ending of Final Fantasy X without breaking down into a sobbing heap. She probably has more wolves in Valheim than you.

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