Sell or deconstruct? Which one gets me better gear?
Emily Wong
When I get gear from drops should I sell or deconstruct the items I don't plan on using? Is it a viable strategy to deconstruct everything in case I get a good blueprint or should I sell my gear and get whatever's best from the vendors at that time?
14 Answers
Patch 1.8
- Optimization Station
- Normalized PVP
Optimization Station & Division Tech
When deconstructing gear/weapons you have a chance of getting division tech now. It takes 50 to improve the stats on your gear via the Optimization Station.
Normalized PVP
The values of your stats are normalized in the two matchmade PVP modes (LastStand and Skirmish). This means you can have crafted lower tier gear with the right stat types but with bad values for these modes.
Money vs Gear
Ultimately it comes down to a choice between money and crafting materials. I would suggest going with crafting materials (deconstruct) unless you need money (which usually is only needed for re-rolling the stats on a piece of gear). One thing to note is that money can be converted indirectly to phoenix credits by purchasing the crates at regular vendors for 400K each which yields somewhere in the vicinity of 10-20 (not exact numbers; going from memory) phoenix credits.
Summary
Deconstruct unless you need Money or Phoenix Credits.
P.S. Always deconstruct Mods and Attachments. They don't have a high sell-value and electronic and tool parts are more likely to be used than the other two types of crafting materials.
I haven't played The Division in a while, but when I was playing crafting wasn't really a thing at all - it is better to just run missions to get better gear.
What I did was to deconstruct blue and purple gear, and sell yellow gear I didn't want. This gave me a good balance of materials (useful for some of the daily and weekly missions) and money to buy better items from the vendors.
3It all depends on what you need it for, for example, thanks to how the Division have drastically buffed drops and crafting pieces such as cloth, electronics and so on i personally tend to sell any gear set pieces (if i don't need them) and then deconstruct anything high end, this was my go to method of making materials and a good sum of in game currency.
Eventually you'll run into a problem of too many materials as eventually you'll have what you need both weapons and gear wise so from that point just keep an eye on your materials whenever you need or want to craft anything but you shouldn't run into this problem as the materials you collect from bosses and generic enemies will typically compensate any time you spend crafting over time you spend doing missions.
NOTE: when doing this just a little heads up make sure you lock any items you think you'll never plan on selling.
As of patch 1.8:
- Optimization requires golden div tech (and a lot, 50 per optimization)
- Recalibration of gear requires money
- Recalibration of guns requires Phoenix creds
Given that you're probably mostly after Classified gear you'll have little use for electronics or fabric, as Classifieds cannot be crafted. Thus I see no point in deconstructing gear and mods.
I do following:
- Sell all gear and mods (yields money)
- Deconstruct all weapons and attachments (yields weapons parts, tools, and random drop of div tech)
What is money good for:
- Ð400,000 gets you common cache, which gives you on average 20 Phoenix, and random high-end or teal gear/weapon/attachment/mod
- 200 Phoenix credits gets you gear-set cache from Special Gear Vendor. This cache has 1% chance of dropping Classified gear
What weapons parts and tools are good for:
- if you still haven't got good high-end weapon, you can try getting a god roll (see Shelby's point about normalized PvP if that's your cup of tea)
- if you already got it, you can then use parts to construct as many Damascus exotic pistols as you can. Deconstructing them (or in fact any exotic) gives you guaranteed golden div tech.
Side note:
Best use of DZ funds is currently buying consumables cache, which sounds useless, until you realize that it contains 0-3 DZ keys. DZ keys are necessary to open locked crates located at landmarks. These locked crates have 5% chance of dropping Classifieds.
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