Remember gems? You know, those highly under-powered, easy-to-find sparkly things that made that pleasant PING sound when they dropped? In case you haven't been around for the last two years, gems are making a comeback in Diablo III, but with a major twist. Instead of the old set of five gem grades, Diablo III will feature a jaw-dropping fourteen grades of gems, not to say all the different kinds of gems that will be featured in the game.
Sounds impressive, eh? However, considering that only the first five grades can actually drop in the game, that leaves more than half of them just out of our button-mashing fingertips. A fan over at the official Diablo III forum board decided to do some simple calculations, and, if his math is anything better than his spelling ("monsereus"?), this is what he got:
Quote fromit takes 3 gems of each level to create one gem of the next level... that comes to 19,683 level 5 gems of the same type to make just one level 14 Gem, assuming you get all gems of the same type...
The concern that follows is not without merit, I'd say. He came up with a few answers to why we may not have to worry, or solutions to what may be a daunting system (paraphrased:
- Simply increasing the grade drop by one tier (from five to six) would decrease the number of required gems by more than half (19,683 to 6,561).
- Allow higher-end items to be salvaged for these higher-end gem grades.
- Combining gems of different levels could result in a higher-grade gem.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Yeah, that's about right. I mean keep in mind none of this has been proven through actual testing but the current design is that yeah, it's going to take a lot of lower level gems to reach the very highest high end.
The gem-to-gem upgrade intent is not to have these huge gaps where you feel like you're lame unless you have level 14 gems in every slot, but as a long term goal for the hardcore min/maxers and PvPers who are going to be playing for a long time and be able to work toward those goals. It's something you can put a little time into just by upgrading the gems you pick up during normal play, so you're constantly able to keep working toward the goal of crating a level 14 gem.
Also the trading game and millions of people playing for months is going to make them a lot more attainable than they may seem when throwing out numbers like 19,000.
It's possible it may feel crappy or we need to add something to help jump gaps, or, who knows. It's all very unproven at the moment, but we think provides a nice long term goal anyone can work toward just by killing monsters and picking up gems.
So, there you have it: the conundrum of the gems in a nutshell. What do you think could help alleviate the enormous gaps between lootable and unlootable gems? Is the system fine how it is? Other thoughts?
The whole concept if lvl 14 gems is to give players a way to push their equipment just a little further than the rest. I'm guessing that, without trading, you might run around with level 8 gems in your gear when you finish Hell. And that'll be fine, because that's how it's meant to be. The extra levels are there for those people who wish to spend a lot of extra time to perfect their characters. Everyone's not supposed to have all 14 gems in their gear. Just like everyone originally wasn't supposed to have an Enigma each for all of their characters.
Yes
In addition to that, "tramsmuting" gems to a higher level could be like, you just transmute the 200x stack and get 1x lvl 10 gem and 1x lvl 9 (or whatever lvl it would go to). It would take the hassle out of transmuting thousands of 3x gems.
Totally agreed. If gems are going to be this ridiculous to collect, they should stack to high heaven. Esp if you have to return to town to XMute them!
JUST SAYING!
This is the kind of thing that encourages duping and cheating.
Ah, okay
The difference being that Zod's, and everything in between, can drop from monsters, but gems level 6 and up can't
Makes a huge difference when you can drop a rune that's worth 5 million l1 runes, and everything in between. The issue is that it takes 20k gems just to make one...it's insane.
What about Ruby Soho?
Yeah, and since nothing from 6 ~ 12 gems will drop, you have to craft or trade all of them, unlike runes, which makes it much tougher, which is exactly what I said numerous times.
I loved cubing gems. For no reason whatsoever. Although I hope they stack the gems better and maybe a better cubing interface...