Question about salvaging materials from different dificultiesder=0>

[Blackduck]

From what I understand, when items are salvaged they become materials of whatever difficulty the item was found in (Normal/NM/Hell/Inf).

Lets say I am at the end of Normal, and I find a blue Chain Mail (ILvl 17) that I don't want. Salvage for mats, right?

Two mobs into Nightmare, I find a blue Chain Mail (ILvl 17) that I still don't want... will this salvage into NM mats?

I guess my question is based on an assumption, that: a) all items of lower ILvl's can drop throughout the entire game, and b) the game will not be able to flag where I obtained said item.

Is salvaging based on ILvl vs. where it was found?

I hope my question makes sense and that someone can try and answer it.

Thanks

Edit* - can we also assume for this example, that the cut between Normal and NM is level 20.

[Goury]

Cut is at 30
I b-live that items tier matters not the diff it found at yet im not Willson nor Morhaime so i cant be sure
Yet i b-live so there must b a way to 60 char craft lowlevel items without leavin inferno
U can craft higher tier mats from lower tier ones so every non-white item is good

[Frosty_The_Snowman]

Yet i b-live so there must b a way

You should fix that "e" key on your keyboard...

[Gamekk]

It's based on the difficulty it was found, not the ilvl.

[Blackduck]

So lets take thouse same two blue chainmails, but not salvage them yet. I don't want mats anyway, I just want to sell them for cash on the RMAH... can I post the second one at a higher price, because that one will salvage into NM mats, and the first one will only salvage into Normal mats? People will wonder why the price difference, and there is no way to know what difficulty the item dropped in in the first place.

[MRR]

I don't think we actually have enough information about how drops work to answer this question accurately.

My intuition is that Gamekk is wrong and salvage materials are based on item-level, but that item-level is in turn tied fairly closely to the level of the monster that dropped it (i.e. that you won't actually see that lvl 17 armor dropping in Nightmare). This way you'd only get nightmare-level gear in nightmare because only nightmare-level monsters appear in nightmare. This would resolve your auction house question, and would be a more elegant solution overall. That said, when people want to buy salvage materials on the AH, they'll likely buy them directly as commodities instead of buying items to salvage themselves.

I'm not certain about this, I suspect that nobody else is either, and I welcome any hard evidence that would answer things one way or another!

[Blackduck]

I guess it something we will have to find out in game. I just find it hard to believe that once I jump to NM, I will never see a drop of the same ILvl that I just saw drop in Normal, and the same when I jump from NM to Hell.

The RMAH statement is never going to happen, as yes, people will buy the commodities long before they buy the item, but I had to get a point across somehow.

[MRR]

Yeah, it's definitely an interesting question - and it's part of why I suspect that salvage materials are determined by item level and not by where they drop.

With regards to the potential weirdness of never seeing lower-level items drop later on: In D2 you'd sometimes see crappy base items drop later on, but the enchantments on them would usually be fairly potent. The item was crappy overall, of course, and you wouldn't really give it much thought, but its item level was still probably fairly high due to the enchantment. I expect we'll see a similar situation in D3 - the stuff you'll see later on is generally going to be better, but so much of it is going to be crap that we won't really notice.

That's a lot of speculation, though.