by PunisherIntroduction
Gemstones can be added to your equipment and provide extra boosts. This guide explains how they work, how to add them to equipments, and considerations how to best use them.
Do not underestimate Gemstones and see them as just a minor way to improve the stats of your gear. From all different ways to get combat boosts the Gemstones can by far provide you the highest boost increase, your actual gear boosts are small in comparison.
The Basics
Gemstones are a way to give extra boosts to your equipment. Some (not all) equipments have one or more gemstone slots, which allow you to add a gemstone. The Forge building shows an overview of your available Gemstones and allows you to add them to your equipment. In the Forge you can also increase the boosts of Gemstones by refining them to a higher level.
Different Types (and Shapes) of Gemstones
For the basic Gemstones, a Gemstone’s name consists of two parts. The first part indicates which troops it applies to, and the second part which type of boost you get. The second part also influences the shape of the Gemstone, which determines to which shape (it should be identical) Gemstone slot you can add it to.
The first part of the name can be for example Air (Distance), Sentinel (Infantry), Stallion (Cavalry) and the second part for example Gem (Attack), Stone (Defense), Jewel (Health).
There are also Hope Gemstones that provide boosts for Bowmen, Infantry and Cavalry. These comes also in three types for Attack, Health and Defense and fit into the same slots as the corresponding basic gemstones.
The Justice Gemstones that were introduced in the game later have the same setup as the Hope Gemstones, but give higher boosts.
There are also Champion Gemstones, Victory Stones and Heroism Stones that have another unique shape for which only the higher level rings and necklaces have a slot. The Champion Gemstones come in the regular three variations with each a Troop Attack, Troop Health, or Troop Defense boost, and there is only one Victory Stone and Heroism Stone which has a Troop Attack, Defense and Health boost.
Different levels of Gemstones
Each Gemstone can be refined to higher levels, up to level 6. The boost amounts are not necessarily the same for each Gemstone at the same level, but the required refining points to upgrade to a next level are the same for each Gemstone (except for the step from level 5 to 6, this 8340 points for the standard Gemstones and the Champion Stones, but 17780 for the Hope Gemstones). Both Refining Stones and other Gemstones can be used to refine a Gemstone.
Refining Gemstones can be done in the Forge. If you ever have refined a gemstone that you no longer want to use because you have something better, you can always use it as an ‘ingredient’ for refining another gemstone, so you can’t really make a mistake.
Restrictions
There are some restrictions, but they are not really an issue.
You cannot remove Gemstones from an equipment piece for free once added, but the cost is very low (20 gold). Better to always pay the gold, because you can always reuse it as ingredient for refining another gemstone.
Once you have refined a Gemstone you cannot unrefine it, but if you don’t need it anymore, you can use it to refine another Gemstone. The points do not really get lost.
Getting Gemstones
Unfortunately up till now the good (Hope) gemstones are only available by spending real money. Once you spent some money the Shooting Gallery is available, where you can select a Gemstone field which could eventually get you a Raw Hope Gemstone (which is not even a guarantee for a Hope Gemstone, as it could result Refining Stone (V))
Spending more money will allow you to get through the Shooting Gallery faster and perhaps there are other ways to get the Raw Hope Gemstones, I haven’t paid attention to packs.
As long as you don’t spend just keep your eyes open for any other gemstones. You can still get some good boosts from it, but nothing like a big spender who is fully equipped with Hope and Victory Gemstones.
In Update 1.6 Raw Hope Gemstone (IV) Fragments were introduced. You need 100 of those to synthesize it to a Hope Gemstone of your choice.
So far I know of the following ways to acquire Hope Gemstone Fragments:
- Red Guard Raid (5-20 based on Alliance and Individual Point ranking, I understand additional for leaderboard rewards as well, but I don’t know details)
- Underworld Gate (3-8 for Victory Rewards (amount depending on level of Underworld Villain), none for Damage Rewards)
- Creation Arena (15 for the first point target)
- The Spirit Mines (up to 15 can be purchased for your credits during each reward cycle)
- Training Stage and Kill Stage of the gold event have second tier prize targets that give Hope Gemstone Fragments (I got 38 for Training Stage, this might depend on Castle level, not sure. Also not sure yet how much kill event will give)
Getting Hope Gemstones for all your regular Gemstone slots should be top priority and quite easy to achieve with above ways.
It is harder to get good Gemstones for the special Gemstone slots available on higher level rings and necklaces. Once you have spent some money on the game one way is to select a field with a Champion Gem in the Shooting Gallery, but I am not really sure whether that is worth it. Ideally you get a Victore or Heroism stone here which are a lot better, but I have not seen them in the Shooting Gallery yet and I don’t know of any other way (besides purchasing for real money). If anyone else knows, please share.
Scholar Gemstones
For spenders only there are a set of Gemstones that help with research resource cost reduction, the Scholar Stones. Useful for lower level research, but not that much for higher level, as the relative amounts are very low (2, 3, and 6%). When you start for example with Combat II research and you need 40,000,000+ wood, a 2% and 600,000 reduction are not going to make life much easier for you.
Considerations
Now that the Raw Hope Gemstone fragments are introduced it should be the main focus for everyone to fill up all available gem slots with the corresponding Hope Gemstones (unless you buy the Justice Gemstones of course). Focus on first getting them all to level 5, afterwards try for level 6 one by one, but this requires a huge amount of refining points.
Conclusion
Gemstones are cause of a great imbalance between large spenders and low/non spenders, although the availability of Raw Hope Gemstone fragments lessens the gap. In case you have any questions or tips, please share in the comment section.