I'd hate to be that guy asking a question every other day, but seeing as how these forums are relatively active, I thought I'd try and get an answer from experienced people on most of the questions that have been bugging me whenever I'd play this game.
So, what I want to ask today is, how likely is one to get a scroll during the smelting process, and how worth is it sinking money into it? On the fansite website, I've read it's roughly 5%, which seems like a good estimate; but assuming you smelt items with both a prefix and a suffix, that effectively makes it 2.5% if you only need either of the two; which is fairly low... leads to the question if it's worth it.
Now, for a bit more context, so far I've either been really unlucky with scrolls or it's simply how the game's supposed to be, but out of the -not many- that I've gotten, most were garbage which I couldn't make use of. It hasn't really bothered me until now, when I'm going through a moderate gear overhaul. I've slowly been getting the items I need from the AH or as mob drops, and after I make them Purple, I'm going to be more-less done.. except for a good sword.
Orange drops are an extreme rarity it seems, I'm near lv95 with only 22 total orange drops; none of which were worth keeping. This plus the lack of good scrolls means I'm still on a Purple sword and I can't really seem to move on from it... to make matters worse, the server I'm playing on is about as dead as it gets, so there's no other players around who might have the scrolls that I need.
So I decided to give smelting a try. I've been smelting items (first the suffix ones) religiously for awhile, and have smelt well over a dozen without a scroll in sight. It's not that big of a cash drain, though it's still a cost which could be better spent elsewhere. This made me wonder, is smelting generally worth it; if done for scrolls? Or is the drop rate too miserable that I have better odds of using the gold for other things while waiting for a miraculous good drop?