Gems questions

Hello
With all the different gem abilities you can have. Is it best to just focus on one or two combat abilities? I'M new and just having fun trying things out for now. And can you upgrade a gem to a point where you can't use it? Seems as I play I have to upgrade them a lot.

Hi there!

Welcome to Wraeclast, friend. :)

The primary way of improving skill gems is linking them to support gems. As only two-handed weapons and body armours can contain six sockets, usually you'll put your main skill in one of those and other skills will be used as buffs / debuffs, movement speed increase, utility set-up, defensive cooldowns and that sort of thing.

There's exceptions to the above due to the addition of Shaped and Elder items, however it's best to try learning the rules before learning the exceptions. I'm mostly just typing this to dissuade people who simply have to argue with anything not technically correct on the internet. :P

Usually you'll want your skill gems to be as high level as possible. An exception is a very powerful defensive set-up where you link the gem Immortal Call to Cast When Damage Taken, which is a support gem that'll trigger linked spells as you take damage. The more you level CWDT, the more damage you'll need to take for it to activate - which often makes it less useful. If you're going to link spells to CWDT, you'll want those to be relatively low level as well.