Hoard the add-ons ( especially Tormented Souls, Rubies, essences, Tenebrium, scale fragments, sextants and sinews), sell the weapons. Add-ons stay good until the end of the game and scale up with level, weapons become obsolete in just 2-3 levels. I know swords can be melted in the forge to go back to iron bars large and small I assume axes can be melted into steel bars, both just the reverse process of making one, I have not tried to do it with anything else. Once an add-on is placed on a weapon it is gone for good. But you can usually get more as loot or by buying them at merchants, last game I had 5 tormented souls at one point, I was saving them for end-game weapons.
In Torchlight2 there is a cool function called a "gembreaker" and a "gemsaver"...
basicly (and this may be around in some other games as well), one function takes the add-ons off the item but destroys the item and saves the add-ons. the other destroys the add-ons but saves the item so you can place new add-ons into its slots. Really cool feature.
I kind of wish there was a merchant or a chest or a blacksmith who could do this in D:OS, but it isnt as necessary since items rapidly become obsolete when you level up. Probably just a Gem-saver would only be needed.
