Thread: Are yellow/uncommon drops useful nowdays?

As I leveled up my warden to 30ish, whenever I got a yellow/uncommon gear drop, I just sent it over to an alt for storage and got by on the quest reward gear. As my crafting grew and I began getting skirmish points, I found that more often than not I was in purple/rare gear anyway. Now that alt is running out of bag space and I'm looking to dispose of dozens of pieces of lvl 5-25 yellow gear.

Is there any value to this gear? Anything I should keep an eye out for preserving rather than auctioning or flat out vendoring? My main concern is that I don't want to toss out something which is valuable, either in stats or cosmetic appearance.

For a while, I was auctioning the drops for a trivial price, usually 1 silver per item level, and only about one third to one half sold. My feeling is that most players, like me, aren't feeling the need to upgrade to anything more than the quest and skirmish rewards, but I'm not very experienced at the game, so I'm asking you more experienced players for some guidance. Thanks.

Most yellow gear is vendor trash. Occasionally you'll find something you can use, and some of my low-level metalsmith recipes even crit yellow, but not past level 15 or so.

If you want to keep it for cosmetic reasons then do, but there's no reason at all to hold onto it other than that.

Turbine did try and make yellow gear from 65-75 be more worthwhile. And it is a lot better then, but for most people who've done all the epic quests or spent significant time in Moria or Mirkwood they're still not much. They're better if you've been skipping lots of quests and crafting.

Only time yellow drops are useful is level 6-18. After that, they are always, always inferior to other stuff easily available on-level. Dunland yellow gear is fine for leveling, but it comes from quest rewards, not landscape drops.

Some of the Dunland yellow gear has good enough stats to use, especially pieces with Finesse. Otherwise I put them on AH for very low prices and most sell.

Thank you all for the helpful advice. It's comforting to know I'm probably not missing out on any hidden gems as I dispose of most of this gear.

Originally Posted by Malachi108

After that, they are always, always inferior to other stuff easily available on-level.

True, but... Remember that what is easily available for one person may be very difficult for another who plays in a different way. Ie, you may think crafting is easy but others may want to craft stuff for themself only and not buy gear from auction house or beg for some from a kinship. Others may have missed some quest hubs withe the decent rewards or may be skipping quests and leveling in other ways (ie, they're f2p and saving points for higher level zone). Some players may not even know about better rewards.

Low-level warden shields may be worth auctioning if you've come across any of those, as they're notoriously hard to find until the level 15 class quest that gives you one. That I did notice when I was levelling my first warden - I think she had the starter instance shield until that class quest!

While skirmish gear is far from wonderful, even when it's purple (there are a few exceptions), it is very good for low-level (20s) shields for minis and a few other items like that that it's notoriously difficult to find recipes for.