A new gem sink

My tabs in my stash are filling up with gems, and like the hoarder I am, I decided to buy some premium stash tabs on sale instead of selling my precious collection of gems. However I have been growing increasingly frustrated when I spend hours farming and then see a lvl 1 cleave drop, no % Q.

We all know that GCPs increase the %Q by 1 level. But I'm not going to spend 20 to level up a normal gem, and I personally don't want to spend all my game time trading. Finding the exact gem I need at >15% Q is going to take a very, very long time. Screw you, RNG.

What I think would be a good idea is a new currency / orb that works similarly to a transmutation or an alc. Used on normal skill gems, it gives the gem a random quality from 1% to 20% (With scaled chances like jeweler's / fusings).

Why would this improve gems? Well, I pick up all white craftables - such as coral rings with +30 life, gold ammys with +20% iir, belts with +40 life etc etc, and I always use my transmutation / chance / alcs on them. Similarly, I now have incentive to pick up that level 1 cleave, because I can roll the dice.


Pros:
Makes %Q gems more accessible to solo players
Gives people that 'gambling' feel
Provides incentive for picking up and hoarding gems / making craft-able

Cons:
My main concern is that this might flood the economy and crash prices.


Comments / Concerns?

You just destroyed the GCP. Also, quality gems would become economically worthless. I think a better way to address this is to make it so that merging two of the same gem added a quality point. So two normal red gems with the same name would make 1 +1%Q of that gem. Then you would need 2 1%'s to get to 2%. Etc. It would take an astronomical amount of resources to make a decent quality gem, but it would increase gem demand and flow, and not horribly ruin the economy (except maybe for softcore because nothing ever leaves that place. Eventually 20% quality versions of everything will be floating around[but they are already, right?])

I see no problem with "destroying the GCP".

Right now GCP is like this "elite" item for use (basically only people with >15% Q gems use them) that only works as this mystery currency that's so valued.

I see no reason for this to be like that, so I have no problem with new ideas that improve gameplay even if they "break" GCP (in whatever way it could).


GCP should be the "highest" step of the "quality currency", but not as much as it is now in the way it is.


I don't really see why a +20% quality gem must be that rare. I don't know the intrinsic value it has over other gear that has quality, or flasks, etc.


Either way, yeah, the game does need a gem sink.
There have been several ideas floating around, as well as several criticisms.

I propose a vendor recipe that takes into account:
1)Current level of gem
2)Level requirement of the gem
3)Type of gem (Support vs Skill)
4)Rarity of gem (BM gets more value than Fork, etc)
5)Current quality of the gem

And gives a correspondent number of GCP shards.


At the same time, maybe buff the increase of quality (from GCPs) from +1% to +2%. Or make it scalable.
Maybe if it's below 10% it scales by 2-3%, after that by 1-2%, and after 15% just by 1%.
Just like other quality currency scales regarding rarity (white gives +5%, blue +2%, rare +1%, etc).


It could maybe be possible to make a vendor recipe that gives you another gem with quality on it though.
I prefer the shard version though, since that seems kind of hard to figure out without breaking the game and stuff

I disagree with this. It would break GCP as a good currency and GCP wouldn't be much worth anymore. I agree that we really need something for our spare gems, but it shouldn't effect the economy.

I think a neater idea would be a temporary +1 buff to a skill gem.here's how it could go,place a gem in vendor window will use any zero quality gem to buff a quality gem of same skill.Using another gem on a prebuffed gem will add a further 5th of the time but not increase the skill level further.

Another option could be to tie the buff to a single instance,whatever instance you use the gem in the buff will remain active for while your in it.As you would need a system to buff the skill in the instance there could be a recipe to convert a skill gem into a buff orb.Make the buff orb universal by making it take 2-3 of any skill(0 quality) gems to create.

Why not trade 5 red, green or blue gems and you get a new random one of the same type? You get the same roll on quality as you would if it was droped. All it does is increase the effective drop rate by 20% and gets rid of all unwanted gems. Dont need to mess with GCPs (might effect there value a tiny bit)

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1800dead wrote:

Why not trade 5 red, green or blue gems and you get a new random one of the same type? You get the same roll on quality as you would if it was droped. All it does is increase the effective drop rate by 20% and gets rid of all unwanted gems. Dont need to mess with GCPs (might effect there value a tiny bit)

I like this idea a lot, actually. This would be a really effective gem sink without totally killing the value of the GCP or other gems.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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1800dead wrote:

Why not trade 5 red, green or blue gems and you get a new random one of the same type? You get the same roll on quality as you would if it was droped. All it does is increase the effective drop rate by 20% and gets rid of all unwanted gems. Dont need to mess with GCPs (might effect there value a tiny bit)

I like this idea a lot, actually. This would be a really effective gem sink without totally killing the value of the GCP or other gems.

Specifying the colors is unnecessary. I think it should be:

Any 5 gems -> random gem of itemlevel equal to lowest input, quality possible (same chance as from monster drop)

Among other things, this would be easy for the devs to program: formula gives it itemlevel and general drop type (gem), the rest is just as if a monster died.

Still, +1 to the overall idea, best idea I've ever heard for a gem sink.