Craft Component Degradation & Material Salvage

I suppose this COULD go under the Crafting Brainstorm thread but I really think it deserves its own discussion. The concept of salvage has been brough up a few times but hasn't been truly discussed yet in the context of crafting. SO.. here we go.

Item degradation for crafted items (and loot).. is a reality. We know it's going in with reasonable certainty. "Soft" items as coined by Chris Spears describe crafted items that degrade with use includes everything from tools to weapons to armor to pretty much anything that sees regular abuse at the hands of players.

Well these items are all made from materials that will all likely fall into one of 4 catagories. Wood, metal, leather and gems. Most or all of these items will likely be made of multiple components. They get used, beat up, repaired, beat up again.. well eventually some of these items are going to break. What then?

If item degradation supported damage to individual components for an item rather than just the item as a whole then salvage becomes very interesting.. and it wouldn't be that hard to do. As a sword takes damage upon use for example.. let's say the blade's "health" is at 80% and the crossguard is at 95% and the handle/pomel which doesn't see much direct abuse is 98%. What's likely to always break on a sword is the blade..

Now let's take that same sword and break it down. 1 broken blade, a crossguard, handle and pomel are all reusable. The broken blade you can melt down. The rest you can reuse to make a new sword. So you end up with a sword with a new blade but old crossguard and handle.

So you have an axe with a wooden haft? That haft gets pretty beat up.. only way to repair this axe is to put a new haft on it. What happens to the old one? Well I'm getting kinda peckish and want to fry up some eggs, I could use a little extra firewood. Problem solved. The new axe might have an head with 95% health and a brand new haft.

Different axe, metal haft. Axe breaks.. melt it down for metal.

Your leather armor beyond repair? You can cut it up and maybe have enough useable leather left for a pair of gloves or armor straps.

You get the idea?

Now I know what some people are thinking.. this cuts into harvesting.. and.. yes.. yes it does. But it also brings value to chaff loot as a source of crafting material. Keep in mind also that some material should always be lost when salvaging. This is would be primarily a means of supplimenting a crafter's supplies and not a replacement for harvesting raw material. For your BEST crafted items you'd want to start with raw material also.

This serves as a means of desposal of chaff and broken items also. Rather than simply having them disappear. Additionally it gives crafters more to work with.