#Weapon gems discussion

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

warm kraken
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first

tame cedar
burnt veldt
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Is the worst second is the best and now i guess i have a hairy chest

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Since im third whomp whomp

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I’d love to see more rotational abilities and skills! Melee combat feels like click spam. I wanna have to have a proper rotation of skills/abilities mixed in with my melee combat.

hazy viper
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Overall, I felt like gems were a great idea but just had the wrong direction when implementing how their obtained and how they work in general.

Feels like the developers balance the game like its a live service where if you're too powerful you hurt other players experience in the game. Enshrouded should be about us gaining more power not 1% increase from levels 1-40 on a gem.

warm kraken
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you're fired

burnt veldt
hazy viper
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Gems being obtained as monster drops is great. Them dropping from only major enemies isn't great. They should have a lower chance to drop from every enemy, especially boss enemies.

The fact that you have a finite amount of enemies to fight in specific areas means you're either forced to wait 30 minutes for a chunk/area to respawn or leave the game/reset the server to respawn them.

next stratus
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why is the Greater Necro gem in that survey again? :3

hazy viper
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Same reason lycanthropy is in there despite being removed.

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Majority of the gems seem like they're either focused too much on melee combat and not enough on varieties for ranged and mage. There's also enough healing options that we don't need 3 gems that offer that as well.

The other niche gems have interesting mechanics but are either balanced to where they activate under miniscule scenarios or don't help much at all to the point where I'd just never use it entirely.

next stratus
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And yes, im with Prim there. although i personally dont even look out for dmg gems.
Im more about utility Gems, because well, lets face it, we already do more than enough dmg without any gem socketed whatsoever, so additional Dmg Gem wouldnt change anything, just shorten the fights generally, and well that then ties into the whole "moooahr dps" meta bla bla - which doesnt reaaaly belong into a Game like this (those who enjoy, go ahead, its just an opinion of mine after all)

So yeah. More versatility when it comes to actual Utility (hope of embers, Ice Ward, eavsion Stam regen - those are Gems that actualy have some real impact)

Also, kinda was dissapointed Gem`s didnt have any visual effect on the weapons whatsoever, which was a bit of a bummer honestly, i was hoping they would add some kind of magical effect depending on their elemetal affiliation or something like that, VERYS big missed opportunity there.

quaint chasm
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"Gem of meteoric impact"... I'm so conflicted about how it makes me feel, the effect looks cool but I triggered it by accident in my base and had to repair things 😅

Overall, the gems are hard for me to use in either of my builds. Mage being the worst. Focused light sounded cool but trying to actually use it... nah. I can throw 2 fireballs in the same time and deal 10x the damage.

Another major issue is that the values are flat. 29 bonus damage is a rounding error for larger attacks 🙂 (on that note, I'm not petting my animals for 25 hp, should be 5-10% or something)

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One additional note regarding finding the gems! Having them area locked isn't exciting. Sure that some gems are more common in certain areas but come on, I don't need another gem of cold composure

tame mica
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I mean, I feel weapon gems should do a thing, in any case. Right now it's either a passive +gain in stats overall (like, you dodge: You now get with ur next attack more stamina) etc.
Also, to see the values increase in level by 0,1 makes gems early on very strong and decrease in strength drastically as we level on / get to beefier enemies.
I get the approach to not make them necessary, but at some point everyone has one per default.
I still feel the cost to upgrade could be lowered by 10% just to annoy prim so he has to update the table.
Though, that said, the best I could get out of the gem of burning for example was over 6s a ~180 burn. That's not feeling very much for 2k hp enemies, neither.
Gems should contribute (I feel) either a easen in the fighting style (by regaining HP/Stamina etc.) or help with taking things out. Our damage values endgame being waaay too high (and the dragon boss also has also too much HP as a direct result of this)
But yea. I smash enemies with a 2k hit, killing them, throwing off bone spikes for 50 damage...
Or, throw a 1,6k fireball and have enemies burn for 180 damage in the aftermath.
For ranger, the gem that added piercing damage was not working somehow, so no real numbers here... but you get the idea.

We deal too much damage and the gems barely do anything except in the support category.

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About finding the gems:
I agree here with ettkatthej: Make a loot pool for enemies of the same faction so they can drop in every biome with a chance, also make them rarer from regular enemies and elites, have bosses the highest chance (and especially the dragon) to drop some.
That feels better because it'd have a more direct impact on the curve of progression than a blue rando item we drop off the boss
(Or the legendary wand a 2h warrior gets)

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Right now in later biomes you get them thrown at you (because how much elites there are)
Early on you struggle to even find one.
Also, I feel "chapter end bosses" should have a signature gem they drop.

hazy viper
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Gem Acquisition

Gems being drops from enemies instead of looted from chests is probably the preferable way to obtain them since loot pools from chests are already so inflated with random items, consumables, weapons and armor. However, the fact they only drop from "Major" enemies and with a fairly low drop rate seems like a negative to me. You're already forced to target a specific enemy which are fairly few and far between in some areas, now you're forced to wait 30+ minutes for that enemy to respawn or just restart the world to force them to respawn.

Changes I'd like to see in regards to acquisition:

  • Drop from all enemies, at a lower chance not just from the major types.
  • Increase drop rate from major enemies.
  • Add gems to boss enemies at a higher drop chance.

Gem Types

Support Gems

Support gems don't feel very support like, most have niche or hard to activate effects. Like Hopeful Embers only activating when your Shroud Timer is under a certain threshold, you already have two options on increasing your timer by finding the shroud capsules or just outright leaving the Shroud. Gem of Battle Mania requires you to use the Elixir (something you're asked not to do) and you gain regeneration on health, stamina and mana but then if you're not attacking something you're left in a state where you just flat out don't regen anything? Meteoric Impact sounds amazing until you actually use it. Then you wonder why you invested the resources in upgrading it.

Summoning Gems

All of these seem somewhat useless, the Gem of Skulls requires you to do a merciless attack. So, if you're using a bow or wand/staff you just cannot make use of this gem. Even more interesting is that it's not a 100% chance even at max level. The rest of the summoning gems are just, there. I don't see any particular reason to use them over anything else. Would like to see more varied gems and not jsut summoning Hollow. Maybe a Vukah healer or berserker to tank for you?

Movement Gems

These felt fine, they do still feel like you're being shoehorned into a specific playstyle though.

Healing Gems

No. We have so, so many different ways to heal already from skills, leech, potions, bandages, spells etc. We do NOT need more healing options. I'd rather see more damage effects or speed buffs, jump buffs etc. Something.

Damage Gems

Point blank, the damage increase from these gems feel pitiful. I saw little to no difference on these gems using them than I did not. Majority of these gems being melee focused or forcing you into specific playstyles felt terrible. Gems like the gem of burning only affecting one enemy despite me throwing a fireball into a crowd of 50 undead and only one thing catching fire wasn't great. If you have to keep it one enemy, make it spread and deal less damage to the ones it spreads to. Negatives from some of these gems felt weird to have.

The gems that require you to hold block or aim on an enemy felt clunky at best.

Gem Upgrading

Going into a Shroud Lair to go pick mushrooms felt odd, and the fact that it seems like its the only use for these POIs gave the same idea.

The cost of upgrading and unsocketing gems feels fair, though on the higher end I think the scaling could be reduced.

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Final Thoughts

Gems are an amazing idea, the fact we can upgrade them as we go instead of having to leave behind a personal favorite because it stops being relevant is awesome. The fact that you have to play a certain way, or the gems end up making no difference in my playstyle is not fun.

Some gems made me think to myself "When would I ever do that?" or "Oh, so I just have to play like this now.." when I should really be thinking "Oh! That will work awesome with this build!". Make us feel powerful, create better cohesion with skills and create new synergies and variety. I want to jump higher, run faster, stun or root enemies as a mage. Feel like I'm a walking one man army as a tank etc.

I love Keen and know that from past updates that you can do a lot better than this. I have faith, and I know the rest of the community feels the same.

sturdy roost
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allow DoT effects to stack up and increase in effect as new debuffs are applied
eg. hitting the burning effect on the same mob twice would refresh the duration, but increase the damage per tick

and apply this to poisons from daggers too ❤️
would fit so well with a more evasive playstyle, constantly zipping around and building up dots

hazy viper
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Right now if you have it on a staff and send a fireball into a crowd one enemy is affected, and by the time they die or its ready to refresh you're probably done with the fight or thrown two more fireballs that didn't proc the effect due to the cooldown of the gem.

sturdy roost
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why not both 👍

hazy viper
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Personally I don't feel like it needs ramping damage. If the damage itself is tuned higher and spreads you don't need it to refresh or ramp. Fills a DoT role perfectly then.

sturdy roost
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fair. I just think theres something oddly satisfying about ramping damage ticks

hazy viper
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Nothing has enough health that the dot would matter much, most enemies aren't surviving the few ticks it does

sturdy roost
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but obviously yeah with a high enough base damage it would be redundant / overpowered

hazy viper
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Maybe on bosses but, a lot of them are just sponges anyway

sturdy roost
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Well, it would open up more room for daggers to play well. Or other fast weapons to be potentially released in the future

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Since as you say, alot of the options right now are bursty enough that it wouldnt matter much

hazy viper
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The only room I want to open up for daggers is the trash can lid.

sturdy roost
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It would be something everybody could utilize, but perhaps something the dagger could excel at - which it kinda needs

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And it fits with the whole rogue poison dmg rpg archetype

jaunty cave
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Gems feel soo underwhelming 😢

hazy viper
jaunty cave
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Bro, that is a general feedback about how they are. Gems where you have to first obtain by killing specific enemies
Second u have to farm materials aswell as reach a specific point to enhance your weapon of choice with said gem
3rd you get to enjoy a gem which has either an extremely underwhelming effect or a super niche trigger mechanic so you barely get to enjoy its effect

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And the thread is called Discussion so i am willing to discuss the gems feeling underwhelming

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Like at this point even gems just giving +1 or more in a stat would probably feel better than what most of them are giving at this moment

hazy viper
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Right, and the sky is blue.

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I'm gonna leave this be, don't wanna hurt feelings.

jaunty cave
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you didnt fill out the survey i guess

next stratus
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Note to Devs: Dont waste your time with this, this is an explanation for somebody, and has nothing to do with Feedback for Gems.

Useless Information is useless.
If you want to see change, then form cohesive words about WHAT you want to see changed, or what exactly feels wrong to you.
General feedback isnt just "feels bad - make good" its "WHAT feels bad, and HOW YOU would like to see changes to be implemented. Otherwise its just another fillertext Dev`s have to skim through, read it, be non the wiser than before, and WASTE time on it just like they already have to do with double and tripple posts elsewhere about shit either been talked about already a hundret times, or doesnt even BELONG there.

jaunty cave
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If you completed the weapon gems survey and would like to talk about weapon gems specifically, feel free to do so in here

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was said by the dev

wind shuttle
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they are underwhelming , which is just sad cuz we want them to feel good to use. I didn't take that as brute criticism, that was constructive. Gems atm sadly feel too minuscule in effect to warrant the cost to use.

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We want the game to be as awesome as possible I think

jaunty cave
crude hatch
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But yes, being able to articulate exactly what it is you like or dislike is a lot more useful for sure

jaunty cave
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Man i feel like having some toast atm

wind shuttle
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We're in this discord cuz we love the game 🙂

jaunty cave
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where is the constructive criticism

jaunty cave
crude hatch
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They are more meant to spice up your playstyle than be a massive power boost. Enhancing certain playstyles, opening up new ways of engaging with combat, etc.

Some gems are more simple than others obviously, and are basically just minor stat increases, but in general they were meant to enhance builds and give you more options to customize your playstyle to your liking

jaunty cave
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I mean i love having the elemental dmg on them to help out specific builds, i am running a fire build but atm the only gem working out is the gem of burning which does a very low amount of dmg

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The gem of meteoric impact is fun but soo niche it barely has an effect

autumn vault
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Honestly I love them. I dont feel they NEED to be a big power increase. They spice things up a bit the new effects are fun to play around woth and some combos are downright devastating if used correctly. They create a synergy with certain playstyles that wasnt there before. The only issue I have is that I think the grind to level them is a bit... much

thick sandal
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The system's fine overall, in my opinion. There's a good flow to looting > using > leveling that leads you back to more Shroud Lairs and Gem Forges, which in turn usually contain the enemy types that drop more gems, so if there's new ones you like that feeds back into itself. However, the effects themselves feel a bit weedy playing an archer - the damage over time ones do so little that I don't think I was even saving on arrows, the support ones drop pickups in melee where I don't want to be, and stuff like Cold Composure or Meteoric Impact require you to invest time in their use but just spending the same amount of time doing normal combat stuff would probably do much more damage.

autumn vault
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Also love summoning the Skelly with the gem of necromancy. Just plain fun

wind shuttle
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oh yes!

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but the debuff gems feel a little boring in comparison D;

jaunty cave
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meteoric impact to become much more usefull should legit also have the effect that gem of burning has. I mean if it also has the apply a fire dot every 19 sec it would be a decent power boost aswell as adding a nice amount of spice for a melee build

wind shuttle
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oooh not a bad idea!

jaunty cave
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like that is a way of making them have tiers actually

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like gem of burning turns into something then into meteoric impact later

karmic crescent
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Corruption was a neat concept, but it doesn't donate when things die. And it's shroud damage, so all the new cool stuff in the shroud patch is just immune to it anyway.

compact thunder
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a lot of triggering mechanics are just ... bizarre and looks like playing with scripts. Like, lightning gem: does additional damage to additional enemies - yay! - if the target is marked -ok...- only to other marked targets -??? fell_cry who does that? Why just simple chaining damage wasn't enough?

karmic crescent
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It makes... light bust marginally more effective? I dunno.

compact thunder
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otherwise what others say, a lot of effects are negligible, mages are mostly ignored, physical damage selecting is too restrictive (only cutting! no, nothing else!), a lot of them too niche (shroud damage mostly sucks in general and things like activating only at night aren't fun; if this is in the game)

thick sandal
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Got my hands on Lesser Necromancy in the mean time, and that one at least feels nice. There the issue is mostly my skeleton buddy getting himself stuck in a corner and therefore not contributing anything except preventing me from summoning a new one.

snow fulcrum
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A lot of gems have the "damage on tuesdays" problem that a lot of legendary powers had when Diablo 4 first came out.
To explain what I mean: Some of the gems require such specific, niche actions to trigger that you'd have to rework your entire combat style around triggering said gem.
This on its own isn't neccesarily a bad thing, the problem is that the power of the gem is not nearly enough to justify changing out how you fight.

Why would I aim at an enemy for a few seconds before attacking, then I could just attack them several times in that same period of time?
Why would I use a gem that lets me crash land into enemies with my glider, applies a DoT on a backstab, or lets me summon a minion when I do a merciless strike, when I could use a gem that gives me a chain lightning effect or an aoe explosion effect just from attacking like I normally would?

I think that using gems to "change up combat gameplay" isn't the best use of the gem system. That should come from skills and the weapon types themselves. IE: Jump attack skill changes how you approach combat by giving you a new option, and since it's a skill you're not "losing out" on having a different skill.

Because you can only have 1 gem per weapon, once you install a gem you're locked into using that and only that gem on that weapon. Maybe if these ultra niche gems had a secondary effect, like mentioned previously if the gem of burning and meteoric impact were combined I think that would feel better than having to pick one or the other.

snow fulcrum
karmic crescent
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Still not going to bother with it. Light Burst + Storms eye is my go to combo. Which, contrary to the stated design goal: Didn't change my playstyle or approach at all.

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I carry.... A bow with Meteoric Impact; for flares since mages don't have a light spell. And the meteor effect looks cool - but it's not useful. (And infact harmful if you accidentally use it in your base.
Pyro wand; with the burning dot gem. Which again; doesn't really do anything because the targets are all dead before the gem matters.
Ice wand; with the skeleton. I just like having the skeleton. It still doesn't change my gameplay.
Helix; with the corruption gem - I'll have to test the hotfix, if people are saying this works now. But it's been unnecessary.
Tempest; with storms eye. Because there was nothing else worth putting in it.
And a Storms eye for my staff. Lightburst spam to clear piles.
So I guess... some of the effects are kinda neat? But none of them have any impact on how I play.

snow fulcrum
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Yeah and that's my point too, if there's going to be gems with such niche activation requirements then they need to be powerful enough to warrant such restrictions, but I think those types of things are better off as skills.
Problem with making gems so niche is you can only put 1 on a weapon at a time. Maybe if gems were split up into like "offensive" "defensive" and "utility" and you could use multiple ones like offensive ones go on your weapon, defensive on your shield, and utility on your helm or something it might be worth it.
But if gems are going to be one per weapon, I'd rather use the gem that works based on my standard combat, rather than one where I have to fiish for procs by doing weird things.

jaunty cave
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If you need to go out of your way to proc a gem then the proc needs to be worth the effort, currently no gem proc is worth that effort. So it comes down to design philosophy.

I personally think having gems combined like the suggested gem of burning + meteoric impact. Problem however is still that unless you are fighting a boss the dot will most likely not get it's duration used at all.
That could potentially be fixed though by having the CD of the dot be reduced if an enemy affected by the dot dies before it's full duration is used up for example

quaint chasm
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Oooh, imagine if the battle mania gem was a "gem of meditation", that triggered after sitting for 3 seconds (and without the 10 sec debuff)

hazy viper
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I tried out battle mania on my hard playthrough, since I was already using elixir 24/7 and felt a bit odd disabling regen due to me being inbetween pulls of enemies

supple gate
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i like the idea procing stuff on skill and parry is the best way for skills to proc it rewards timing at the moment i feel alot of the gems are well not cool nor flashy ether i do think that they should do diffrent things depending on what weapon type its in example bow,heavy melee ,light meele ,dagger heres an example of a gem that could be good for heavy meele gem that turns that weapons slam into a aoe around the slam into a elemental fire/lightning aoe around you that does dot damage and some damage from the burst.bow can be area of denial slow with burning/stun and light mele can have same as big meele just smaller and daggers can be verry agressive dot that spreads with that element. the gems aren't verry cool or flashy it doesn't make me say yay a gem its o a gem ok. i also agree with .primoris on there big post about gems. also i like being rewarding for skill but dont make it tedious to do make it flow naturally.

thick sandal
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A lot of gem triggers are also just outright impossible in any sort of boss fight. Anything that's on kill, Merciless Attack, or backstab won't happen; blocking takes too long to be viable and Meteoric Impact takes a specific sort of arena to work. Which leaves mostly the Agility (actually pretty useful when dodging around), Battle Mania (haven't used, but I can see the point), Swiftness (reasonably simple to trigger and might actually happen when fighting normally) or the DoT ones that just generally trigger.

sturdy roost
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Agility giving infinite stamina is quite OP compared to the 0.001% dmg increase from other gems

thick sandal
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Yes.

supple gate
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reading the gem

thick sandal
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You dodge, and then you attack, and you get enough stamina back from the gem that you can dodge again and repeat.

supple gate
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i think thats a neat one its not that bad tho

jaunty cave
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yeah but it is vastly powerfull compared to other gems

quaint chasm
jaunty cave
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got it on my 1h and shield

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so now i can just zoom about and never run out of stam

karmic crescent
hoary mirage
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For me I messed around with quite a few gems and the only one that I really enjoyed was retaliation. I liked corruption on paper but the fact its useless in a big portion of the content just is blah. Feel that way about poison as well in general.

Retaliation letting me knock things around or off edges definitely made my big 2hander setup feel thematic and cool. I tried corruption on daggers just bouncing between targets and burning on bow with explosive. The damage across the board for all gems is so low I don't think I would ever socket a damage gem over something else.

rocky slate
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So, I've been ignoring gems... they're such an out of the way hassle to get, find the right crafting components, find a gem forge, equip, upgrade, all while away from the comfort of my home base... they never seem like they're worth the trouble, and almost none of them feel like they tangibly increase my stats or survivability. I don't really care about character builds or damage or combat much since I'm normally only going out to forage for stuff to make my home prettier. Are they going to make gems for armor and shields at some point that are more crafting and survival focused? Because if that's the case then maybe I could see myself roaming out into the shroud if it mean I got more resources or could take more of a beating from mobs.

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Or I guess a better question would be "is there a gem that I should care about that is more focused toward my interests?" and keep in mind I'm still exploring the Kindlewastes. 😅

supple gate
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i do think the damage over time gems should use a portion of the upgraded base damage or base damage of the weapon as part of the damage it deals and a way to increase it as a melee player

devout vigil
jaunty cave
rocky slate
# jaunty cave what weapons you use

Whatever has the biggest number at the time? Right now I just use a sword and shield and a bow. My skill tree doesn't focus on anything special, just a little bit of everything, mostly stamina and constitution so I can run away and not die. 😄

thick sandal
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The Gem of Cold Composure is still broken. Not because it's too strong or too weak, but because any use of it plays the sound effect for it to everyone on the server as if they were the ones using it.

tame mica
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It's that way so everyone at the server can say "Who did use the Gem of cold composure?!" and point fingers at each other.
It may take time to fix it. We will see when it happens.

jaunty cave
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unlimited stamina

jaunty cave
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Anyone know a good spot to farm Gem of Storm's Eye?

devout vigil
# sturdy roost And it fits with the whole rogue poison dmg rpg archetype

Except that the current poison dagger are trash compared to other dagger options. Skills points to make poison dagger possibly useful are alot as well and despite that I mostly fight with a dagger and evade-attack+backstab heavy style, I dont use a poison dagger as in the end, the dagger that is most useful is all out damage perks as that seems to considerably out damage any combination of poison dagger perks and poison backstab gem etc despite having a combat style that probably suits poison + backstab near ideally. There are many more related issue as well. I do think daggers and dagger skill need a bit of a rethink. I also think that dagger should be high crit chance builds too, so dagger with 3xcc on them instead of just a sword, and a cc skill that isnt way down the warrior tree etc.

delicate mulch
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After looking at what the gems do, I dont think I care if I get one or not. Think I'd be more excited for a gem with +1 STR. Not gems that will dictate how I fight mobs, when the effects are almost a non factor or will never even get triggered at all. Gem of Corruption seems like it might be useful, otherwise I'll just leave the slot empty.

neat geode
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Was talking with my buddy about the game with Gems having dropped:

We’re both of the opinion that these weren’t impactful enough to bother with, and just doubles down on the problems we see with the game. Server Reset Farming and obscene farming gates.

Now the solution we had for Gems mostly goes towards our gripes with Weapon Customization, Chest Farming, and Required Weapon Traits.

Change the Weapon System to be upgradable cosmetic shells, and the Gems to be how we acquire, trait, and upgrade our weaponry.

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As for feedback on this actual update:

I hated it, but I am in the unenviable position of having to refarm 5 (4 wands and 1 staff) weapons, enough essence for upgrading gems, and then the gems themselves. It was 8 hours of the core gearing loop of this game that I hate the most: Chest Farming.

Then, on gems themselves: the only one I found worth using was one that’s not even actually in the game (Soul Phials) because its not had a balancing pass yet.

Damage Gems are basically non-existent (less than 50 damage when they trigger against enemies with 2k+ HP) and do nothing when the health is scaled high enough for me to not one-shot enemies.

Defensive Gems, the only one that’s even applicable to me (Mage) is more stamina, which i have 6 rings of — I don’t run out of this even on 400% HP dragon.

Utility - I get nothing from these.

river pewter
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any faq for gems?

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looking to socket a burning gem, wondering if i can loot a high level one

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or if i need to level the one up from the early banshee

supple gate
broken hound
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not sure if its been said, id like to see the puncturing gem be for any arrow, doesnt work with eternal ice one

river pewter
thick sandal
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None that deal pure bonus damage like the burning one does. Other options that I like for a mage so far include the Gem of Lesser Necromancy (chance to summon a Hollow buddy when you kill something), and Cold Composure (aiming at a target slows you, but also increases your defenses and causes an ice explosion on the next hit that slows enemies).

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Also interesting and possibly unintended: Gems that you socket on an equipped item in the ranged slot apply their effect regardless of which weapon you're using on your hotbar. So the Gem of Lesser Necromancy on my bow will still summon skeletons even if I'm killing stuff with daggers. It doesn't work the other way around; the Gem of Soul Reaping on my daggers will not apply to my bow kills even if I have them selected at the time.

hazy viper
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That is definitely unintended

tame mica
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It also does not work with for example the meteor gem

devout vigil
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TLDR - make damage gems scale identically to a damage perk (per level, stat and skill multiplier etc).

The biggest problem with gem is their scaling per level which quite honestly seems broken right now. Weapon damage scales at around 0.15 per level. Gem of Bleeding damage (for eg) seems to scale at around 0.026 per level - under 1/5th of weapon scaling.
Relatively, a gem of bleeding at level 8 is FAR more useful aty level 8 on a level 8 weapon than it is at level 40 on a level 40 weapon. I argue that by level 40 it is become more or less irrelevant due to poor level scaling of gems.

IMHO damage properties of gem should scale identically to weapon damage just as perks do as that is sort of what gems are - enhanced perks. Doing so would keep gem just as relevant at level 40 (and above in future) as at level 8. With such poor scaling, it is no surprise people are finding fully levelled gems relatively useless for all but utility functions (Gem of Agility for eg).

Other properties on gems seem to have even poorer level scaling, but for timeouts, resource amounts etc that is reasonable.
For reference, each damage perk (fire, ice, shroud, pierce etc) adds 20% of weapon base damage - always (unless target is resistant). Perks should aim to roughly add the equivalent of a single perk depending on how frequently it is activated (cooldowns, difficulty of circumstance around activation etc).

An apparently additional reason for such poor scaling of gems at higher levels is they do not appear to scale with your damage stats (dex/str/int). Weapon damage (and their associated damage perks) scale with your primary damage stat (dex/str/int) and associated skills etc. Gem do not appear to. The multipliers of you primary stats and skills add a huge amount to basic weapon damage numbers as you progress. However such progression does not appear to apply to gems, further making them seem irrelevant.

thick sandal
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One solution would be to make gem damage scale with whatever your highest damage stat is, to keep them flexible. Others could scale with one specific stat to fit them to a specific build. Or they could simply scale better with pure gem level, assuming damage values that are roughly consistent with player damage output at that level.

devout vigil
river pewter
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I'm gonna suggest something in the other direction and say let gems socket into armour.

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Give lesser/alternate effects, but more stackable

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Everyone else's point is just a lot of words for "more damage"

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And when you do that, you just force optimized play and builds on casuals

hazy viper
river pewter
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They are a cherry on top damage wise to most builds, adding like what, 5-10% if used right?

hazy viper
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It's like 1%

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Some of them don't even work period. But, it seems like you haven't really looked very deeply into this and are just sort of giving opinions.

river pewter
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I'm commenting on the numbers of the gems I've obtained

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If stuff doesn't work it doesn't work

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But the numbers on the gems I have in my world, seem fine

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I will admit a little low

hazy viper
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Ok, bye

river pewter
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But people are mighty self righteous and wordy when they're just begging for more damage

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"players ask devs to make item deal more damage" more news at 11

hoary mirage
hazy viper
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All I'm seeing is you've only read about problems from gem effect scaling, and are ignorant.

hoary mirage
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The gems dont scale outside of their own level so your own weapon/spell stats just go through the roof and gems stay at a level where you wouldn't even notice if you forgot to socket one.

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Retaliation is the best gem just cause you can knock people off cliffs with it fell_giga_chad

hazy viper
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But since you keep going on and on about damage, tell me that's fine?

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Especially after investing several hundred archaic essence into the gem

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While you're at it tell me how this is beneficial to run and not a niche effect. Because all people are complaining about is damage scaling and not how the effects work.

image.png
river pewter
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Seems like that gem is designed specificcally for proccing multi shot?

hazy viper
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Lol bye, not going to discuss this with someone who is defensive and incapable of any thought beyond "damage bad"

river pewter
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Damn that utility gem is good tho

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For it's use case

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Oh wait, It procs when you stop hitting lol

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Not when the elixir runs out

hoary mirage
hazy viper
river pewter
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Yeah, you're right, that number is pathetic

hoary mirage
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The last thing we need is more self healing options imo lol

hazy viper
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Agreed, there's zero use for any healing gem

river pewter
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Unless they give you a more reliable way to spam minihits

hazy viper
river pewter
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Dog, if you think I'm gonna read messages from 5 days ago when you've repeatedly told me you're not interested in talking to me and my opinion is invalid you are mistaken

hazy viper
hoary mirage
# hazy viper I feel the same about the gem of skulls, and the lesser/necromancy gems. You can...

They didn't feel very effective when I messed with them. Im not a fan of how build isolated some of them are.
But it just comes down to not really noticing the gems in general. Yea I summoned a skelebro but now he is going to stare at the wall for 5 minutes while I do the same thing I was doing last patch.

I wish that the gems were not as focused on specific damage types/builds, and were a bit more universal. The only one that really "changes" anything it feels like is agility and I think the amount of stamina you gain is a bit silly. Its cool if you want to make an evasion attack build but having pretty much infinite stamina is meh.

hazy viper
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I wish that the gems were not as focused on specific damage types/builds, and were a bit more universal

Yep that's a massive issue, they're benefitting from cutting or any physical damage when they could just be flat damage increase and some proc effect.

river pewter
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Putting more oomph into the basics of the gem and less scaling would probably help

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(what scaling)

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Not everyone is gonna want to go though multiple runs of different level shroud lairs to effectively use a gem

strange night
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The current iteration of gems feels high effort low impact. There's a lot of hoops to jump through: grinding the right enemies to get the drop; collecting enough archaic essences from shroud lairs to level and socket it; going to a gem forge (inside a night sanctum) to finally use it. All that for mostly niche effects.

Obtaining
They're too hard to obtain in a normal playthrough and shouldn't be totally locked behind random drops from rare enemies. There should be more sources to encourage varied gameplay:

  • quest rewards
  • drop from chests in night sanctums
  • drop from high end bosses like the hollow cyclops, fell wispwyvern, and fell dragon
  • if they were actually useful, a jeweler npc to craft them

Shroud Lairs
Besides grinding archaic essence, lairs feel like an unrewarding, redundant version of elixir wells. Most have no bosses or objectives so there's no incentive to explore them. They also aren't a good source of shroud resources (anything other than archaic essence) so with the gem system being ignorable there's no incentive to interact with them. And while I like the design, layout and environment of the nomad, kindlewastes, and albaneve lairs, the springlands and revelwood lairs are kind of boring, which is not a good initial impression since they're the first ones.

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Collecting archaic essences would feel less grindy if the lairs were more rewarding and interesting to explore. Lairs should have more content like:

  • more bosses! the fell critter queen could be in more lairs starting from revelwood, not a one-of in a kindlewastes lair.
  • an ancient device that we can defend from waves of fell. if we beat all the waves, we can loot the device for archaic essences and other materials
  • harder versions of the hand spawners that spawn multiple high tier shroud enemies
  • more shroud resources to gather: veins of active mycelium or shroud sand, the mushrooms that drop shroud mushroom or enshrouded ice (this would also help my next point about the boring environment)
  • make the springlands and revelwood lairs feel more like lairs and less like a nondescript caves. make their designs more biome specific like the albaneve lair ice cave. the blackmire lair should have mud pits inside the lair, not just at the entrance

Effects
Agree with other posts that gem effects are too niche. Some effects I'd like to see:

  • chance to cast a 0 mana cost fireball/ice bolt/chain lighting when dealing fire/ice/shock damage
  • ranged attacks apply a dot and slow enemies
snow fulcrum
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At a minimum the damage of gems should scale with the perks and attributes that also affect the weapon and damage types the gem does in some way.
Having more int should cause a gem on your wand or staff to do more damage for example. Having the fire damage perks should cause a gem that deals fire damage to also do more damage.
The problem is if gems do not scale with any or most of the scaling of the player, they get into a situation where they are either OP at lower levels, or worthless at higher levels.

Flat scaling based only on gem level is a horrible way to scale gems.

devout vigil
scenic wing
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Question on Gem of Agility. Is s blink an evade action?