Diablo Immortal gems: how to get the best Legendary gems
A comprehensive guide to Diablo Immortal gems
While Diablo Immortal gems may look like nothing more than beautiful ornaments, their true value comes in their functionality. By getting your hands on them, you can unlock the potential of your armor and weapons by granting your items massive bonuses.
Thankfully, Diablo Immortal is full of opportunities to bag yourself increasingly powerful loot. Gems, however, are a different story. They’re pretty rare drops, and you’ll sometimes go large stretches of the game without encountering any at all.
If we're talking about the meta, the Diablo Immortal economy currently places a heavy emphasis on gems, doling them out slowly to steadily increase a player’s power over time.
Grinding for gems is a whole metagame in and of itself, and is what you’ll spend the majority of your time doing in Diablo Immortal’s later stages. The gear you pick up will be full of empty gem slots, teasing you with a glimpse of the true potential to be unlocked by the best builds.
That’s why you’ll absolutely want to get your hands on the best Diablo Immortal gems - namely Legendary gems - once you reach the endgame. Here’s how gems work in Diablo Immortal, and how to get ahold of the best ones!
Diablo Immortal gems
Diablo Immortal gems: What are gems?
As you start to progress in Diablo Immortal, the gear you find will start showing up with empty sockets. Diablo Immortal gems are what you can use to fill those sockets up, and they reward you with bonuses to your stats – or in the case of Legendary gems, can even modify how your skills work.
Gems can be divided into normal gems, and Legendary gems:
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Diablo Immortal gems: Normal gems
Coming in three different color categories – red, yellow, and blue – normal gems are socketed into secondary equipment, which includes your rings, neck, boots, gloves, and belt. Much like older Diablo games, you can combine normal gems of the same type and rank to create one higher rank gem, with each upgrade increasing their effects. Once you get them to Rank 5, you'll also need to use an Echo Crystal, which you have to purchase for Platinum from the Jeweler NPC.
These are the kind of normal gems you can find:
- (Red) Ruby – gives +Life
- (Red) Tourmaline – gives +Damage
- (Yellow) Citrine – gives +Potency
- (Yellow) Topaz – gives +Resistance
- (Blue) Aquamarine – gives +Armor
- (Blue) Sapphire – gives +Armor Penetration
Diablo Immortal gems: Legendary gems
Legendary gems are powered-up versions of normal gems, that socket into your primary equipment, which includes the head, chest, shoulders, legs, and the main hand and offhand. While they still provide powerful stat boosts, they don't focus on just one stat, aren't upgraded by combining the same way as normal gems, and you also can't wear more than one of the same Legendary gem.
Instead, Legendary gems give both Resonance (which boosts the attribute bonuses of the item it's socketed in) and Combat Rating (which gives you both offense and defense). At Rank 5 and above, Legendary gems also start offering Magic Find (which increases your chance of getting better drops).
In addition, each Legendary gem offers a unique bonus just for socketing it – ranging from reducing damage, healing you on defeating enemies, summoning vines to root enemies, and many others.
Diablo Immortal gems: How Star Count works for Legendary Gems
Diablo Immortal certainly hasn't made it easy with Legendary gems. Unlike normal gems – which just have a rank – Legendary gems have both a rank and a Star Count.
All Legendary gems have a Star Count of either 1, 2, or 5 – which serves as a general measure of how powerful they are. Any Legendary gem which is Star Count 1 or 2 will always be that Star Count and can't have its Star Count modified. As an example, 'Berserker's Eye' is a Star Count 1 Legendary gem, so if you had one, the only thing you can do is upgrade its Rank. Similarly, 'Lightning Core' is a Star Count 2 Legendary gem, and no matter what it will always be 2★.
But, confusingly, Legendary gems with a Star Count of 5 can actually drop at lower current Star Counts. So any Legendary gems with a Star Count of 5 can appear as a 2★, 3★, 4★, or 5★ version. So a Star Count 5 Legendary gem like 'Blessing of the Worthy' is most likely to drop as a 2★ or 3★, so if you really want a 5★ version you're going to spend a long time waiting for it, since there's no way to change the Star Count on a Legendary gem that's dropped.
Diablo Immortal gems: How to upgrade gem ranks
When upgrading the gem Rank of a Legendary gem in Diablo Immortal, the process is the same for each Star Count of Legendary gem, but the materials are different. The Jeweler NPC will handle your upgrades, located in Westmarch or any other town.
The two ingredients are as follows:
- Gem Power – You can get Gem Power from Gem Fragments in your inventory, or from consuming un-socketed Legendary gems in your inventory. Star Count 1 Legendary gems are worth one Gem Power, Star Count 2 are worth four, and Star Count 5 is worth 32. If you use a Legendary gem that has already had its rank increased, its Gem Power counts as the base value plus total amount put into upgrading it.
- Legendary gems – Some higher Rank/Star Count Legendary gems require consuming duplicate copies of themselves for upgrades, with each specific duplicate at either gem Rank 1, 3, or 5.
These are the per-level requirements broken down by each Rank.
Star Count 1 Legendary gems:
- Rank 2 – Gem Power 1
- Rank 3 – Gem Power 5
- Rank 4 – Gem Power 10
- Rank 5 – Gem Power 15
- Rank 6 – Gem Power 20, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 7 – Gem Power 25, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 8 – Gem Power 30, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 9 – Gem Power 40, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 10 – Gem Power 50, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
Star Count 2 Legendary gems:
- Rank 2 – Gem Power 5
- Rank 3 – Gem Power 15
- Rank 4 – Gem Power 25, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 5 – 1x Rank 1 Duplicate, 1x Rank 3 Duplicate
- Rank 6 – 1x Rank 3 Duplicate, 1x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 7 – 1x Rank 3 Duplicate, 1x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 8 – 2x Rank 3 Duplicate, 1x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 9 – 1x Rank 1 Duplicate, 2x Rank 3 Duplicate
- Rank 10 – 5x Rank 3 Duplicate
Star Count 5 Legendary gems:
- Rank 2 – Gem Power 50
- Rank 3 – Gem Power 75, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 4 – Gem Power 100, 1x Rank 1 Duplicate
- Rank 5 – 1x Rank 1 Duplicate, 2x Rank 3 Duplicate
- Rank 6 – 3x Rank 3 Duplicate
- Rank 7 – 2x Rank 3 Duplicate, 1x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 8 – 2x Rank 3 Duplicate, 1x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 9 – 1x Rank 3 Duplicate, 2x Rank 5 Duplicate
- Rank 10 – 1x Rank 3 Duplicate, 2x Rank 5 Duplicate
Diablo Immortal gems: How to source gems
Getting your hands on Diablo Immortal gems is key to success, but each category is a different process. You'll need to fill up secondary equipment sockets with normal gems, and spend even more time finding Legendary gems to fill your primary equipment sockets.
- Normal gems can be purchased from the Hilts Merchant NPC, though there's a weekly limit to how many you can get from them.
- You can pick up normal gems on the Market from other players using Platinum.
- You'll find Hidden Lairs – which are a type of mini-dungeon – out in the world that you can explore, which drop normal gems.
- Diablo Immortal's battle pass gives you a few specific Legendary gems, more with the paid version.
- You can pick up Legendary gems on the Market from other players using Platinum.
- You can purchase one and two Star Count Legendary gems from the Fading Embers Merchant NPC on a weekly rotating stock.
- You can craft one and two Star Count Legendary gems using Runes and Platinum at the Jeweler NPC, and if you're really lucky using the Random Legendary gem recipe you may even get a five Star Count Legendary gem.
- Tackling Elder Rifts that have been empowered with Diablo Immortal crests, where Legendary gems have a chance to drop.
Just don't get too caught up in the grind for perfect Legendary gems, Diablo Immortal has made a pretty huge barrier to perfecting your gear. You can expect to wait a very long time to get even a few things maxed out.
Sarah (She/Her) is a contributor and former Senior Writer for TechRadar Gaming. With six years of experience writing freelance for publications like PC Gamer, she's covered every genre imaginable and probably a few she made up. She has a passion for diversity and the way different genres can be sandboxes for creativity and emergent storytelling, and loves worldbuilding. With thousands of hours in League of Legends, Overwatch, Minecraft, and countless survival, strategy, roguelike, and RPG entries, she still finds time for offline hobbies like tabletop RPGs, wargaming, miniatures painting, and hockey.