Buying and selling gems will be among the first ways to make gold I will evaluate. As most people know there are 14 different tiers of gems, each being combined in 3s to make 1 of the next quality tier. Each type of gems starts with ‘chipped’ and works its way up to “radiant star” which will be the most sought after gem quality in the game. Exactly how many will be exist and how much they will be worth is still unknown but we can bet on them being extremely rare considering how much players will want gems. In order to calculate gem values efficiently I’ve created a pretty kickass gem calculator which will tell you everything you need to know about the values of gems.

It gets even better, the only gems that will be found from doing dungeons will be the first five tiers of gems. The qualities that I call L6 (level 6) through L14 will only be obtainable by combining the gems found in the real world. To figure out how many gems you need to make a single L14 gem we’ll take 3 to the power of levels you want to span. To create a single L14 gem from L5 gems we’ll need 3 to the 14-5 power or 3^9 which is 19,683. That means it will take nearly 20,000 gems to make a single Best in Slot gem. The value of each gem will increase by 3 as you go from L5 to L14, ,so good luck getting one of those.

Valuing Gems

Pulling out your calculator every time you see gems for sale on the auction house isn’t the only way to calculate how much gems are worth. I’ve created a gem calculator that will tell you whether it’s cheaper to buy low level gems to make a high level one and it will tell you how many and what value the gems are that you can create from a certain amount of lower level gems. Hopefully it will help auctioneers figure out whether they can buy and resell combined gems.

Combining Gems

To combine gems you will need to visit your Jewel and he will need to have a level appropriate to combine gems. You’ll also need to fork over 50 gold for every combination. This may seem like chump change but it adds up as you span the tiers of gems.

They won’t always be rare

As players get more and more experience playing Diablo more and more gems are going to drop. There is currently no way to consume a gem, it’s not an ingredient in any craft yet so there is virtually no way for one to be disappear. This means that the number of gems in circulation will continue to climb until they are practically worthless. There are other things to factor in, though. The more gold in circulation will go up so its possible the ‘value’ of gems could flat line or even go up at times.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.