Revision as of 23:57, 5 December 2012

Gems are small objects that grant bonuses when socketed into items. There are four types of gems in Diablo III; Amethysts, Emeralds, Rubies and Topazes, which are found in 14 levels of quality. Only the first seven levels can be found from monsters or chests, with Flawless Squares the highest quality (and the only type that drops in Inferno as of v1.05) to drop. Higher levels of gems can only be crafted (for a price) by the Jeweler, and the costs grow and accumulate impressively.

Creating a level 14 gem is quite a chore. The total costs, assuming a starting point in Inferno where Flawless Squares drop, is 729 Flawless Squares, 15,400,000 gold and 1631 Tomes of Secret, for each Radiant Star gem.

As of patch v1.05, there is no way to create or add sockets to items. During development the Jeweler was set to add sockets to items, but this ability was shelved pre-release, leaving players able only to hope for socket finds. It's often hoped that socketing might come back as a quest reward or for a price, in a patch or more likely in D3X.

Gems are a very useful item to twink to new characters, as gems have no level requirements. Items with sockets are first found around level 15, in late Act One or early Act Two, and it's quite easy to add a gem with a bonus much larger than that of the item itself. Low level weapons with a high level Ruby in them become wildly overpowered, but that's the whole fun of it for many players.

• See the Diablo 2 Gems page for details on that game's seven types of gems (skulls, diamonds, and sapphires do not appear in Diablo 3) and their bonuses.

Diablo III Gems

Early D3 gem.

Earl version of Sapphires.

Gems in Diablo 3 have evolved during the game's development. Though the concept of 14 levels of quality has remained constant, the types of gems, their names and graphics, and the materials and costs to upgrade them have evolved repeatedly.

• See the gems archive info further down this page for full details on their development.

Using Diablo 3 Gems

Post-release, gems are popular and essential, and sockets in items are very valuable.

Weapons: A socket in a weapon is considered almost essential, at the end game. While a ruby in a weapon is a very useful way to boost damage in the early-going, for high level characters the only serious option is an emerald for the bonus to critical hit damage. So popular is this option that socketed weapons command vastly higher prices, and emeralds sell for considerably more than other gems in the Auction House. Knowledgeable players often request[1] big improvements to the other gems in weapons to make for more variety.

Helms: Sockets in helms are even more desired than in weapons, to the point that virtually no end game helm is considered viable without a socket.

• Rubies are the most popular for the +%experience per kill. This bonus was irrelevant in the end game until the debut of the Paragon system, at which point it became the most sought after.
• Amethysts are popular, especially for Hardcore characters, since the +%life bonus is a huge source of hit points, leveraging already high vitality bonuses.
• Topaz are also sought for the Magic Find bonus, while gold farmers may enjoy Emeralds for that bonus.
  • The Topaz vs. Ruby debate is an interesting one, since high level players mostly seek paragon levels for the 3% bonus to Magic Find and Gold Find per level. Yet an affordable Star topaz grants 25% Magic Find, which is equivalent to more than 8 paragon levels, which will take weeks to gain given normal play time. Yet the instant gratification and bonus of a Topaz is seldom chosen over the long term growth of the Ruby.

Other: All other items are given the "other" designation. Sockets are found in rare and magical pants, chest armor, off-hand items (such as quivers, mojos, orbs, shields, etc) amulets, and rings, but not in shoulders, bracers, belts, or boots. (A few legendary and set items add sockets to other pieces of armor, such as the socket in Ice Climbers boots.)

• These various armor sockets are almost always used to gain vitality from amethysts, but more commonly players boost their main stat for more damage
  • Emeralds for dexterity for Demon Hunters and Monks.
  • Rubies for strength for Barbarians.
  • Topaz for intelligence for Wizards and Witch Doctors.

Upgrading Gems

Gems can be upgraded by the Jeweler, for a price. First of all, the Jeweler needs to be trained to his maximum level in order to craft the highest level gems. Even then, he can only upgrade gems to the 11th quality level, and just be taught the 3 highest tiers in each gem type by Plans that drop. These drop quite rarely and only in Inferno (high Magic Find seems to help their drop rate) are fairly difficult to obtain. They can be purchased from the GAH, and as of v1.05 their prices had come down into the 200k range, after costing many millions each earlier.

All gem upgrades cost gold, and most require some materials as well. Lower level recipes are quite cheap in terms of gold and materials, and only require 2 gems to upgrade to the next level. Higher level gems require a lot of gold and materials, and it takes 3 gems to make 1 of the next rank. At the 2 > 1 upgrade ratio introduced in v1.03 (prior to that all upgrades were 3 > 1, plus much higher gold prices), it would require 256 chipped gems and 570 gold to create 1 Flawless Square (which is the highest gem that drops), though no one actually collects that many chipped gems since higher quality gems can easily be found.

When considering upgrade prices, bear in mind the cumulative costs, which are listed in the last column of the table below. For example, the price to make the highest gem, a Radiant Star, is 400k gold and 20 Tomes of Secret. That doesn't sound so bad, until you consider that a Radiant Star requires 3 Perfect Stars, or 9 Flawless Stars, or 27 Stars, and so on, down to the Flawless Squares that form the base of the gem economy. The highest gems thus have a huge cumulative cost.

It requires a total of 729 Flawless Squares, 1631 Tomes of Secret, and 15,400,000 gold to make a single Radiant Star, not counting the gold required to upgrade the Jeweler in the first place, or to obtain the three highest level plans for each gem. Even assuming you had all the Flawless Squares, Tomes of Secret, and over 15 million gold in your stash, creating a Radiant Star would still take you 243 clicks on the Jeweler's upgrade bar. At 3 seconds per click, that's 729 seconds, or close to 12 minutes doing nothing but upgrading gems.

Full List of Gem Properties

All gems and their bonuses, with game data pulled directly via the Database database.

<item type="list" mode="misc">Gem</item>

Gems Info Archive

The info below covers gems during development and the beta test and is preserved here as an archive of the game's development. Much of the following information is not current in the final game.

Gem Types

A graphic was shown at the Crafting Sanctuary panel at Blizzcon 2010 that displayed six types of gems: Rubies, Sapphires, Emeralds, Topazes, Amethysts and Diamonds. Skull gems were not shown. Diamonds and Sapphires were removed before the beta, and the planned item bonuses reapportioned to the four remaining gems.

Upgrading Gems

Gems were set to upgrade all along, but initially the developers planned on a 3 > 1 ratio for all levels.^[1] (This was eventually lowered to 2 > 1 for the first seven tiers, which also had their gold costs cut dramatically in Patch 1.03.)

Gems are upgraded by the Jeweler, rather than players doing it themselves with a Horadric Cube, as in Diablo 2.

Gems stack up in Diablo III, making them take up less stash space. Initially they were set to stack to 10 high^[2] in a single inventory space. This was later raised to 30 for launch, and increased again to 100 in a later patch.

Initially, gems were only going to be found at level 1-5, which would have made upgrading them all the way to level 14 quite a task. At the 3 > 1 ratio, that would have required 1,594,323 level 1 gems to make a single level 14 gem (3^(14 - 1)). The length of that becomes absurd when you consider it would have taken 664 hours of nonstop clicking simply to upgrade that many times, at one upgrade per second.

Earl version of Sapphires.

The maths isn't quite as daunting going from level 5 gems. In that case it only requires 19,683 level 5 gems to make one level 14 gem. Happily, Jay Wilson said that they're were open to tweaking the formulae, and in fact the developers did, though in reverse of the Diablo II system of rune upgrading. In that game high level runes became cheaper, and only required 2 to combine to the next level. Diablo III took the opposite approach with gems and lowered the upgrade costs in gold and just 2 > 1 for the lower 6 levels, while the top 7 still require 3 > 1.

In August 2010 Bashiok spoke on the design theory behind high level gems taking so long to create.^[2]

Creating and Spending Gems

According to the official Caravan FAQ it sounds as if the Jeweler will have a way to create gems.

The Jeweler crafts gems, amulets, and rings. The jeweler can also remove gems from socketed items and can combine gems to improve their quality.

But in the official Blizzard Jeweler page ^[3] his three services do not include crafting anything.

• Combine Gems
• Add Sockets
• Remove Gems

That does not rule the use of gems in other things. Bashiok alluded to other gem purposes, in a forum post in August 2010.^[2]

Unsocketing Gem

One key fact to consider is that in Diablo III, gems (and other socketables) can be removed from sockets, by the Jeweler, without losing the gem or the item. (Though this may grow quite expensive ^[4] with higher level gems.) This was not the case in Diablo II, where runes, gems, and jewels were in an item forever, or were destroyed by the unsocket recipe. This change fundamentally alters the upgrading project, since instead of gems sitting useless in your stash until they are all the way to the top level (as they did in Diablo 2), characters in Diablo III will be using their highest level gems all the time, and gaining considerable benefits from the gem before unsocketing it and combining it to create the next higher level gem, which then goes back into the item.

Twinking Gems

Gems do not have a Clvl requirement to use, and they are intended to be very useful as twinked items. ^[2]

There may be some interesting complications with this though.

Changing Gem Bonuses

L3 Emerald bonuses.

Until the beta, little was known of the bonuses gems will provide. It was assumed that the higher level gems would grant very high bonuses, to make the huge costs of upgrading worthwhile. This turned out not to be the case, with higher level gems generally just adding another few points to various stats, but players value them anyway as every stat point helps.

What particular bonuses gems would provide varied during development, as Jay Wilson detailed during an interview at Gamescom 2010:

Early Known Gem Bonuses

The first sighting of gem stats came from the Artisan Video from Gamescom 2010 ^[5]. That gem was socketed into a shield (shields do not have sockets in the final game) and the hover text showed its potential bonuses:

• Weapon: +4% Casting Speed. (This bonus was changed to Critical Hit damage before release.)
• Helms: Attackers take 7 damage.
• Other: +7 dexterity

In the Diablo 2 expansion, a level 3 emerald grants:

• Weapons: 17 poison damage over 1 second
• Armor & Helms: +6 dexterity.
• Shields: +22% Poison Resistance
  • Clvl 12 required for all

The numerical bonuses (but not the type of bonus) from gems changed from D2C to D2X, but clearly there are major differences in more than the numbers. Diablo 3 grants entirely different types of bonuses, and categorizes the socketable items differently as well; helms/armor no longer share the same bonuses.

These changes are largely due to the game's different combat mechanics and character requirements, but were also somewhat required by the different itemization issues. For instance, Sapphires in helms/armor grant +mana in Diablo 2, but +mana isn't a viable bonus in Diablo 3, since only the Witch Doctor has mana for a resource. Even considering that, the changes to the Emerald are quite large. In Diablo 2, most gems provided resistance in shields and elemental damage in weapons. Emeralds in D3 do neither of those things.

More Gem Stats

More gem stats were seen in ninja photos from the Blizzcon 2010 demo. At that point the current version of the game had a whole new (and short-lived) system of attributes, so the stats were out of date, and then later came back in-date.

Gem stats from Blizzcon 2010.

Chipped (level 1) Ruby granted:

• Weapon: Spells deal 10% more damage
• Helm: +2% Chance to Block
• Other: +2 Strength

Flawed (level 2) Amethyst granted:

• Weapon: +0,03 Attacks Per Second
• Helms: +3% Movement Speed
• Other: +2 to all Attributes

As you can see, a Chipped (level 1) Ruby grants +2 Strength, while a level 3 Emerald (as seen in the Youtube video ^[5]) grants +7 Dexterity.

It is possible that it is always the bonus granted from the gem a level below it + the level of the current gem that decides how much bonus a given gem gives to an attribute. So a Emerald would give 4 (the bonus to an attribute granted from a Flawed Emerald) + 3 (the level, 3 out of 14, of the Emerald) = 7.

Another example would be a Flawed Ruby would give 2 (the attribute bonus from the Chipped Ruby) + 2 (the level of the Flawed Ruby) = 4.

A more complete formula to discover any attribute bonus simply from the level of the gem is (n * (n + 1) / 2) + 1, where n is the level of the gem (from 1 to 14).

If this theory holds true, then a maxed out Radiant Star (level 14) Ruby (or any gem that increases an attribute would give +106 Strength if it was socketed into something other than a weapon or a helm, which is a upgrade from the Flawless Star (level 13) Ruby that would give 92 Strength. (This estimation proved incorrect, with highest level gems only granting 58 attribute bonus.)

References