Blizz Blues: Horadric Trash Compactor

I'm not sure if I approve of the Salvage Chest thing, Blizzard. Torchlight had a similar mechanic, the pet, that encouraged the player to pick up every item they found, no matter how low quality. It greatly de-valued items as a whole becuase it meant players didn't have to be choosy about what they took and what they left. The pet became a big item toilet for flushing out items when your inventory was full, and after a while it felt like everything was crap. The only drawback to doing so was the loss of your pet for a minute or two and a reduced sell price. Since the pet was useless in combat anyway, it didn't matter at all.

Now to compare the Salvage Chest (as I'm calling it). Again, you can take any equippable item and salvage it into materials like essence, scraps, or bone. The drawback is that the newly produced item has to sit in your inventory until it can be used. This is dangerous territory, because based on what you've shown in the video, even normal items can give up one piece of scrap and the player is able to stack at least thirty in one square. Not only is it tempting to grab every normal item, but they must also be processed six at a time.

The other drawback appears to be that the item can no longer be sold for gold. Seems like a valid penalty, if gold is going to be valuable. But then you have to decide if the salvage is more or less valuable than the gold you'll get for the item. It seems that under the current system, the fact that salvage can be stacked and carried in such high quantities will give it the edge.

As for solutions, a quick fix would be reducing how much salvage stacks. Or even if it stacks at all. At the very least, converting an item to salvage will Halve the amount of space it takes in the inventory, but if it still accumulates it will discourage hoarding. I thought of having Scraps salvage drop only randomly from normal items, but then it would make the problem worse.

Or hell, why not just circumvent the problem completely and have salvage not take up inventory space and give some other way of aquiring it. If you need salvage to level up the artisans, maybe have it accumulate automaticaly based on what you're fighting.

Maybe I'm missing the concern, but you seem to be pointing out that the player will now have interesting choices on how to deal with the items they find. Either vendoring them, salvaging them, or trading. This is a good thing.

Personally I think if it means that people have a reason to pick stuff up and not leave a trail of lower quality items littering their games... that seems like a win.