Why the new Gems will mess up gear choices…

citrine gemOne of the most popular articles on this site is the Best Sets article, describing which sets of gear are most useful for attacking, defending, and for campaign/CHS. At the moment, this article is still very useful, but pretty soon, it will be completely rendered useless. Why? The new Gems. In this article I will explain why this is the case and how gear will be chosen in the near future…and why this makes me think the new Gems stink….

  1. The new way of selecting gear
  2. Why will gear selection change? The old situation
  3. The new situation: The new Gems
  4. The new “best” gear
  5. An example with Replenish and Void gear
  6. Does diminishing returns not factor in at all anymore??
  7. What did I leave out

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City Buildings: the Sage Tower

headerThe Sage Tower acts as the event center of your cities. Uniting your cities, only one center can be constructed, serving all your four or five cities. Items won in special events can be exchanged in the Sage Tower, while other items such as gear and Gems can be exchanged for materials acquired in campaign primarily. As there are a large number of Sage Tower trades, this articles is meant to give an overview of these for less-experienced players.

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Hero Equipment: How and where to Embed Gems

Gem Embedding enables players to make their gear perform even better in war, enhancing attack, defense, and/or march sizes. But the higher level runes are difficult to acquire, as it takes to 1 year and 8 months to just farm one level 6 Gem from scratch with the picks regenerating for free. Although we are helped by Gem Shards and Gems in chests and tournaments, it’s still inefficient to just start combining them to level 6 Gems, so choices have to be made.

In this article, I will look at what the Gems do in each gear piece type, what gear should be Embedded first, and how to most efficiently upgrade Gems along the way.

  • 1. Buff types and Gem effects
  • 2. Diminishing returns
  • 3. Best Gem Embed gears
    • 3.1 Offensive
    • 3.2 Defensive
    • 3.3 Campaign
    • 3.4 All-round set-up
  • 4. Efficiently upgrading Gems

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Hero Equipment: Embedding Gems, all you need to know

headerWith update 10.3, a new system of enhancing gear has been introduced, besides upgrading and enhancing, namely Embedding (Gems) So what does this feature exactly do and what do you need to do this? As in the article about upgrading and enhancing, I will try to combine everything you need to know into this one article. For a run down of what gears to embed with Gems, see this article.

  • 1. What is Gem Embedding?
  • 2. Where can you find this function?
  • 3. What is needed to embed gems?
    • 3.1 Gem Shards
    • 3.2 Gems
    • 3.3 Combining Gems in Forge
    • 3.4 Embedding gems and unlocking more sockets
    • 3.5 Removing Gems from gear
  • 4. Gem Pouch research
  • 5. Available Gems and levels
    • 5.1 Artamir Gem

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