As more players push deeper into Lord of Hatred’s endgame, it’s becoming clear to many that the real final boss, when it comes to grinding, will be acquiring the best gems.
If you’re already working toward a full set of Flawless Horadric Gems, you know that the struggle is real. If crafting these new, ultra-powerful gems isn’t something you’ve thought about, or perhaps aren’t even aware of, then I’m sorry to tell you, but you have a long road ahead of you if you want to slot the shiniest gems in the game into your gear.
Gem Tiers in Lord of Hatred
There are six tiers of gems that can be crafted by the Jeweler. Let’s look at Topaz for example:
In addition to these old familiar gems, Lord of Hatred also introduced two additional gem types: Horadric Gems and Flawless Horadric Gems. These two extra tiers have changed gems from ‘kind of important,’ to ‘absolutely vital’ for players looking to maximize their power.
These two new gems aren’t crafted by the Jeweler; they are crafted using the Horadric Cube.
- Five Grand Gems must be placed in the cube, then amalgamated to create one Horadric Gem.
- Five Horadric Gems can then be amalgamated to create one Flawless Horadric Gem.
Gems Work Differently in Lord of Hatred
The reason why gems now have so much impact on the strength of a character isn’t just because of the extra two tiers, but because LOH also changed what a gem actually does when slotted into a weapon socket.
Previously, gems gave additive damage bonuses to different damage types, or +Life on Kill for skulls. Now, they all give multiplicative damage bonuses. If you’re reading this, you probably like Diablo 4 enough to know what that means, but just in case … that’s the good kind of damage bonus. That’s what we want.
Let’s look at a Flawless Skull. Prior to LOH, it gave us +8 Life on Kill. That’s worse than meh. Now it gives x20% Physical Damage Multiplier. To say that is better is like saying pizza is “better” than cold boiled cabbage.
The additive damage bonuses of the other gems were at least useful, but not ‘slot a couple of Grand Gems and suddenly push an extra few Pit Tiers’ useful.
Where things get really wild is that you can also roll ‘Gem Strength’ when transfiguring an item to boost the power of your gems. Add Masterworking into that mix, and things can escalate quickly. The image below shows how Gem Strength, plus Flawless Horadric Gems is adding x196% lightning damage to this two-handed weapon!
The Problem with Horadric Gems
All this potential extra power from Horadric Gems is very exciting, but until they’re crafted and safely slotted into your gear, these magnificent gems are just that — potential.
Creating just one Flawless Horadric Gem requires 25 Grand Gems. If you’re playing as any character other than Barbarian, you have seven gem slots to fill. That’s 175 Grand Gems you’re going to need if you want a full set of Flawless Horadric Gems. If you’re a Barb, you have eleven slots to fill.
That’s 275 Grand Gems.
And each Grand Gem requires a million Gem Fragments to craft.
The Best way to Grind for Gems
Just northeast of Temis is a dungeon called Seer’s Reach. The boss here will always drop at least three Royal Gems on any Torment difficulty, and occasionally, it will drop a Grand Gem.
This isn’t a scoop. Every Diablo 4 YouTuber has made a video about this, and if you make your way to the dungeon, there’s always a crowd outside the entrance.
If this information is new for you, however, what you want to do is:
- Enter the dungeon
- Make your way directly north and kill the boss
- Loot gems
- Open your action wheel and select ‘Leave Dungeon’
- Open your Quest Journal and select ‘Reset Dungeons’
- Re-enter dungeon
- Repeat until your eyes bleed
I’d like to say that with this optimal farming method you’ll have your Flawless Horadric Gems in no time, but assuming your character is fast enough and strong enough to zoom straight to the boss and one-shot it, this loop will still take around one minute on average.
Let’s do some math:
A full set of Flawless Horadric Gems = 175 Grand Gems
175 Grand Gems = 1,750 Royal Gems
If 3 Royal Gems per run = 583 runs
583 runs = 583 minutes = 9.72 hours of solid, back-to-back dungeon runs
If you’re a Barb, it’s 15.27 hours
Obviously these equations are simplistic and ignore variables such as whether you’re lucky enough to get a few Grand Gems to drop, how fast you can run this loop, and how often you need to take a break to touch grass and question your life decisions.
Overall, opinions seem divided as to whether Blizzard has made the acquisition of gems too difficult. Some players are clearly unhappy about the time commitment required; others see these top-tier gems as aspirational content and are happy to earn them as Season 13 progresses.
Either way, top-tier gems combined with Gem Strength Transfiguration seem to be the ultimate power spike for Diablo 4 players in Lord of Hatred’s endgame, but, as has always been the case, with great power … comes great amounts of grinding.
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