Understanding Skill Gem Levels

Good Afternoon,

I'm currently building my character off of a guide I found, and so far I'm understanding most of the game. I'm having troubles understanding gem levels and what level the gems would be perfect for by build. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you ^-^

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RiftHazards wrote:

Good Afternoon,

I'm currently building my character off of a guide I found, and so far I'm understanding most of the game. I'm having troubles understanding gem levels and what level the gems would be perfect for by build. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you ^-^

Most of the time you just want to level the gems up all the way to max level, which is 20 uncorrupted. There are only a few specific cases where you don't want them at max level but need them at certain levels, such as in setups with the Cast When Damage Taken trigger gem.

Oh ok, so rarely will I need to worry about what level my gems are, and just max them out?

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RiftHazards wrote:

Oh ok, so rarely will I need to worry about what level my gems are, and just max them out?

yes, for most cases you just level them straight to the lvl 20, some of them "once" [pretty much all aura gems, arc spell (if you use crits) etc etc] ,some of them "twice"= you sell them to vendors together with 1x
once they hit lvl 20, which will make it 1lvl again but with 20% quality. You wanna do it for Physical to lighning support gem, Split Arrow and many others.

So in most cases you level them to the bone, sometimes once, sometimes twice.

Exceptions are CWTD setup gems, as you need to keep them on some given, low level. Otherwise CWDT gem won't triger them as it can trigger only skill or spell gems with level requirement equal or below its own. You may level support gems as much as you want, tho.
So, for example:
leveling Enfeeble or Immortal Call even 1 more lvl would stop them to work in this setup (they are both skills. Increased duration still works, tho, as it's support gem.
Second case is setups like this one:

You won't wanna have rapid decay and less duration too high because it's not changing much, besides rising STR and DEX requirements which are annoying when you are playing wich.

TL;DR and boring- you can break the system by buying gems already leveled and qualitied(is this english?). They are pretty cheap and avalible atm, partifculary on standard.

Pretty confusing, but I get the jest of it ^-^

Thank you for the help!

Id like to add that there are some rare cases where you only level a gem to certain point because of requirements. If a gem needs a ton of strenght and you are a caster youd probably wanna use a low level version of it to have the effect without having to invest points or gearslots into strenght.

Im wondering if Gem Exp gets like shared on all gems i wear or if its split up?
In other words, when i use little gems as possible do they reach lvl 20 faster?
Or do i fill any socket i have?

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Schmu wrote:

In other words, when i use little gems as possible do they reach lvl 20 faster?

No. All gems gain 10% of character experience before penalties, regardless of how many gems you have socketed into your gear.

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adghar wrote:

No. All gems gain 10% of character experience before penalties, regardless of how many gems you have socketed into your gear.

Ok i feared you say that, so the from 19 to 20 it does take forever and its not my fail.

there are only 2,5 ways to speedup the gem levelling process:

1) The unique map 'untainted paradise' boosts your xp up to 400%, which also increases the xp gems gain. Unfortunately, this map is only available as a Zana mission, so its only way to obtain (other then own luck) is to trade for slots in these missions.

1,5) there are also some items that give increased xp, but only some lowish percentages.

2) It can help (if you struggle on high content), to make use of fast clearing lower zones. Background on this is that the calculation of xp for gems does not include the penalty that the player is doomed with on too high gap between charlevel and area/monsters.