New (Official) information on the Gem Changes.

[Acidbaron]

Hello all, the developer was so nice to answer the concerns about what will happen to already cut gems, uncut gems and gems already socketed into items.

I do want to stress that "This is not set in stone", Things can still change and more details will be given later without a doubt.

Originally Posted by Ilaliya

I want to preface this post by saying the plan for the gem revamp is well finalized, but implementation and testing will always incur some design modifications, especially at the detail level. We indeed expect this to be true for the gem changes. Generally speaking, I think the right time to release detailed information about a new system is after implementation and internal testing is complete, and again, this not the case for the gem revamp. However, I completely understand players have concerns about the fruits of their labor, so I'll try to address them. But understand that until you see a detailed "official announcement" post, everything is subject to adjustment.

Also on a general note, I'm very excited about the changes we have laid out and I think gem crafters will greatly appreciate the new system if all goes as planned. This is my honest opinion.

That being said... in the case with alchemy, the sheer volume of resources that existed prior to update 1.03 didn't allow us to somehow exchange existing 'dead mats' in player's inventories with used ones. The gem changes differ from this in the case of uncut gems. Your Tier X uncut gem should remain a Tier X uncut gem. The name will likely change, and the color may change (since there will be less colors). That's pretty straightforward. The gem color will also be more meaningful, but that's something I'm not going to talk about that right now.

However, the changes to cut gems will be significant. The current plan is to remove the random element of cutting gems completely, and also greatly reduce the number of cut gems. By my calculations, there are 1,440 unique cut gems that can be created under the current system. Without unveiling the specific mechanics we will be introducing, our target goal has always been to reduce that number to around or under 100. As a side note, we also are investigating a couple of minor improvements, such as stacking cut gems. But there is simply no way to cleanly convert a set of 1,440 cut gems to a set of around 100 (given different numbers, and different mods on different gems), especially because the old gems simply don't fit with the new gem mechanics. Then we would have to get into varied approaches depending on whether the old gems were socketed or not. Should we go that route, it would take significant resources we feel better spent on the new system itself. We will most likely use a combination of vendor buy prices and simple methods to ensure players won't be left deleting all their old cut gems. But to be honest, we'll be announcing the details long before the changes occur. If we properly inform players, they shouldn't be cutting a bunch of gems right before the revamp gets patched to the live servers.

Old gems already socketed should be left alone (even if under the new mechanics socketing the equivalent gem would be invalid). I use the word "should" per my preface at the beginning of the post. But because the changes represent a proper "un-nerfing" of gems, players will naturally cycle them out for gems cut after this change, using the Gem Solvent we've created for update 1.04.

(highlighted the important bits myself)

Again "This is still subject to change"


So don't shoot me i'm just the messenger and don't shoot the developer for keeping an open debate and giving plenty of information about all crafting related changes.

Personally this is in my opinion the best route to take, some will not like it especially those with stacks of cut gems but can't please everyone.

[Savanja]

lol. Awesome. Luckily the biggest part of documenting the recipes is just leveling up the darned class.

Honestly, I see this as being insanely needed. I have now leveled up a crafter for every crafting class and none have given me the headache that gemcrafting has. There is so much variation that it makes it far too time consuming to get what you need when you need it.