Splitpaw saga tradeskill items as lootFollow

Haven't seen an ash item but the rule of thumb seems to be that you can use these in place of the foraged item with the same "root" name. For example, a "gaudy carbonite canteen" would replace a carbonite cluster to make a T3 metal bar.

So, you might try making ash lumber out of those shields.

My problem with using them is the same as using dog spit or farie blood in place of water... The problem is that since I only sell to other players and never to merchants, I can get more cash from a merchant for each unit of dog spit then each portion of water costs me... so the items have more value to me as vendor trash then as raw materials.

I have heard that if you are doing guild writs it works the other way round but I remain unguilded.

I have gotten these items too, and they replace the components you need to make a metal bar, cloth thread, etc. Just have them in your inventory when you are tradeskilling, and the computer will do the rest-using one of those instead of the standard harvested item.