Hit area can also be useful to kill pixies and ninja mirror images.
Not sure about price, but at least you shouldn't smelt it.
I agree, I wouldn't smelt it. You'll eventually find someone who knows how to take full advantage of it and utilize it.
I have a 15% splinter, 70 hit lightning kryss with 70 Fire Area and 70% Elemental Damage (Which I will eventually experiment with enhancing to remove all physical damage). It absolutely destroys people in group and solo. In group I just wait for someone to drop a curse, then I just ride that target for the next 3 seconds into the ground, more often than not any xheals to that person get fizzled (paired with DP to Lethal, depending on the template I'm using).
Granted people generally want Dmg Increase and SSI on their Splintering Krysses, it's really not required with the right suit... Imbued suits you can get 190 stam and 50 Dmg Increase which works fine with an AI weapon. Pair that with 5-25 SSI you can get without a weapon at all if you just invest a little bit of gold, SSI jewels are really cheap atm. Some people also end up building dexxer suits that require HCI/DCI on the weapon, but again... With the same exact imbued suit, doesn't need it on the wep.
Hold on to it, eventually you'll find a buyer and if nothing else. Make a quick and easy suit to play around with it
(talking maybe 170m tops to throw such a suit together.)