Suggestion: Skill Gem Merchant or Skill Gem Reroll Currency Item

At the moment skill gem acquisition is semi-random. A new Witch is at the whim of the RNG as to whether she will get fire, ice, or lightning spells from monster drops. This is tempered somewhat by the couple of skill gem quest rewards. But, if you get some bad luck, you'll still end up with 5 Sparks gems, and no Ice Shard gems.

A skill gem merchant would smooth this out even more. This might be too much smoothing if it was a standard merchant, so it could be a gambling interface. You pick from a variety of mystery gems. Maybe the color is visible, and/or the level requirement/range. You pay for the gem, and then find out what it is once it's in your inventory. Maybe the price could be based on the level requirement/range of the gem, and leveled low-tier gems could be included as "decoys". So, you could spend an armor shard to buy a Lvl 6-8 blue gem, hoping to get Shock Nova, but instead it's lvl 5 Sparks.

Another possibility is a new currency item that rerolls a skill gem for a skill gem of the same color and/or level requirement/range. This way you just cut out the middle man.

This wouldn't remove dependence on the RNG, but it would give a new player more chances to force their character into the concept they have in mind (frost witch, necromancer, etc), at the cost of some non-trivial character resources.

agree, new players have such an unnesecary disadvantage here to new chars of old players

I even could think of the smoothest version of that merchant...u still have to invest some currency so u still got a disadvantage to the new char of old play...why make it more difficult then that?

Even the quest-rewards could be changed from "choose from this gem" into a "buy a gem for free"-thing...its so annoying when u choose between 5 things u have, but u cant take the 1 gem u saw last quest, because it's not in there this time

What they could do is you have to give 2 of your gems to get a new one back. And if you give 2 blue, you get 1 blue back, but if for instance you give one red and one blue you got 50% chance to get a blue or red gem.

What skill you get with that gem would remain random.

All gems you get should be lvl 1 just like if they would drop.

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Btah wrote:

agree, new players have such an unnesecary disadvantage here to new chars of old players

please explain?

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scorpitron wrote:

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Btah wrote:

agree, new players have such an unnesecary disadvantage here to new chars of old players

please explain?

In some older patch at some point quest gave you 4 rows of gems to choose from insted of 6(?) gems as it is today.

Then again people are giving away gems so there shouldn't be much of a problem if you just ask.

I admit the idea of a merchant to sell the more common types of skill gems is an appealing one.

It's less of an issue currently because we only have 30 or so gems available. when they have the 100+ gems they have planned all in place I think a gem merchant is going to be an essential feature.

I would just caution that some gems, should remain rare. Keeps things interesting if you can't just buy everything.

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scorpitron wrote:

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Btah wrote:

agree, new players have such an unnesecary disadvantage here to new chars of old players

please explain?

dunno how everyone else does but my stash is full of items and in that items are all the gems I found...when I start a new character, whatever class...I can pick from every possible skill gem I could use with that char...kinda big advantage versus the newbie ;)

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Btah wrote:

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scorpitron wrote:

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Btah wrote:

agree, new players have such an unnesecary disadvantage here to new chars of old players

please explain?

dunno how everyone else does but my stash is full of items and in that items are all the gems I found...when I start a new character, whatever class...I can pick from every possible skill gem I could use with that char...kinda big advantage versus the newbie ;)

Well yes, it is an advantage. But is that really a bad thing?

This is why I have somewhat mixed feelings on this one. Being able to come back after playing through once, but with some minor advantages (loot/gems) on a replay helps encourage people to replay more, and makes replaying less of a chore.

On the other hand . . . I've got most of a bank tab flooded with skill gems already, and there's only 30 types available currently. With over 100 types of gems the simple issue of storage space is going to become a problem.

I don't want to remove the concept of collecting and storing useful gems, that feels good to me. There should always be some gems you can never buy. There should always be that constant pressure to collect stuff no matter how much time you've put into the game.

So to me . . . A skill gem merchant just means an easy way to get the common gems. A merchant would make it unnecessary to store these allowing you to save space for more valuable gems and equipment instead.

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DoctorZuber wrote:

So to me . . . A skill gem merchant just means an easy way to get the common gems. A merchant would make it unnecessary to store these allowing you to save space for more valuable gems and equipment instead.

+1

I also agree that some gems should always have to be found rather than acquired from rewards or an NPC. However, I'd like to see some of the more uncommon gems also offered at the vendor. Most of the gems can all be obtained through quest rewards, but some gems may only appear once or twice across all four difficulties. I would love to see those available at a vendor and they would be, of course, more costly than your basic gems.

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FaceLicker wrote:

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DoctorZuber wrote:

So to me . . . A skill gem merchant just means an easy way to get the common gems. A merchant would make it unnecessary to store these allowing you to save space for more valuable gems and equipment instead.

+1

I also agree that some gems should always have to be found rather than acquired from rewards or an NPC. However, I'd like to see some of the more uncommon gems also offered at the vendor.

Works for me.