Gems are a very important item in Diablo III. Not only can you socket them into your gear to enhance your character’s stats, but they are also a required material for Augmenting your gear in Kanai’s Cube.
You will need a bunch of gems to fully socket and augment your character. Most gems you find at level 70 will be at the Marquise quality, with the occasional Imperial gem (the next tier up). To make a Flawless Royal gem (the highest quality), you will need a total of 81 Marquise gems. Luckily, there are ways to make gathering these gems a bit quicker.
Broken Crown
- The Broken Crown has a chance to get you an extra gem every time one drops.
- The gem dropped will be the same color as the one currently socketed into your Helm.
- The Crown drops like any other Legendary, so there is no single sure way to get it, however.
- Since the effect of the Broken Crown Emanates, you can give it to your Follower and put the gem color you want to drop in your own Helm for a passive chance to get it.
- Note that this effect does not work with Legendary Gems.
The Vault
The Vault is a special level that is easily the best place to farm gems, as well as other crafting materials. This area has plenty of Treasure Goblins, along with Gem Hoarders (a Treasure Goblin variant that drops gems).
- To access The Vault, you will need a Puzzle Ring. This Ring has the same chance to drop from enemies as a typical Legendary piece of gear.
- You can increase your chances of getting these Rings by spending Blood Shards at Kadala.
- Using a level 31 character, there is a 1 in 3 chance (33.33%) for a Legendary Ring bought from her to be a Puzzle Ring.
- Once you have a Ring, use it at Kanai’s Cube (no recipe) and a portal will open to The Vault.
- If you use an Ancient Puzzle Ring, you will get an enhanced version of The Vault.
- This version has a massive amount of Treasure Goblins and their variants, giving you an even bigger haul of gems than the normal Vault.
Converting Gems
If you happen to have an excess of one gem color while needing another, you can take advantage of the Darkness of Radament recipe at Kanai’s Cube.
- This will convert 9 chosen gems of the same color into 9 of another. They will be of the same quality.
- The Essence material is required by the recipe and will need to be purchased. It will also let you choose the gem color you want to get.
- There is an Essence for each gem color (for example, get an Essence of Ruby if you want more Ruby gems).
- To get these Essences, simply buy them from Squirt the Peddler at the Hidden Camp in Act II, for 500,000 Gold each.
- Make sure you only convert gems of the Flawless Royal quality if possible, so you won’t have to upgrade your new gems.