Gem Calculator

Updated on 6/22/2012 for Patch 1.0.3

<< Click here to see my Jewelcrafting Leveling Guide >>

Gem Progression

All 4 types of gems have 14 different qualities ranging from ‘Chipped’ to ‘Radiant Star.’ Their effect is increased slightly each tier. The trick is to know what each gem is worth at each level, for example of a chipped gem is worth 10 gold then a flawed gem (the next tier) would be worth 80 gold (30 gold to buy/find the 3 flawed gems and 50 gold to combine them). Also, if you want 1 flawed gem and they cost 950 gold on the auction house you can calculate that you would be paying 300 gold for each chipped gem. Doing this math from tier to tier might be easy, but doing it across several tiers is pretty rough.

Gem Calculator

In order to quickly calculate how much your gems are worth and how much you should pay for gems off the auction house I’ve created the following gem calculator. Check the examples below to figure out how you should use it.

I want to combine gems from the auction house and resell them

If you want to do this, pick the lowest gem level you want to start with and search for the number you want to buy. It’s good to buy in powers of 3, such as: 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, 2,187, etc. For this example we’ll evaluate buying 81 chipped gems to turn into 1 perfect (L5) gem. Search for 81 Chipped Gems and enter the quantity 81 and price per item (on the auction house) into the calculator below.

It will show you how many of each of the next several tiers you can combine from these 81 chipped gems as well as how much you could sell them for to break even. This calculation includes the gold cost to combine each group of 3 gems (500 from chipped->flawed, 750 from flawed->Regular). You can compare that price to the one on the auction house to determine if it’s a good idea to buy the chipped gems, combine them and resell them. If you use the value of 1 gold per chipped gem you’ll see that a perfect gem still costs 26,761 gold to combine (including crafting costs)!! This calculator also takes into account the Pages of Jewelcrafting, Tomes of Jewelcrafting and Tomes of Secrets that are needed at each tier to craft.

I want a Radiant Star but want to know what the cheapest way to get one is.

This is the second way you can use this calculator. To calculate the cheapest way to get a radiant star enter the quantity 1 in radiant star and then the auction house price for that gem under the price / value column. It will spit out how many of each low quality gem you would need to buy and the most you should pay for each lower tier gem. You can scan your auction house and compare prices and find the one that has the largest savings margin.

Not all Jewelers are created equal

Keep in mind that not everyone can combine L14 gems. You need to have leveled your Jewel to exalted before you can combine L10 gems. In order to combine L11, L12 and L13 gems you need to find their associated designs. Each row has the required jewel level to the left to determine who can and can’t combine into that level of gem. Also keep in mind that only L1 through L5 gems drop in the world, so it might be possible that L1 gems are worthless because no one can afford to combine them to L5 gems.

Cost of Page of Jewelcrafting:(34 minimum)
Cost of Tome of Jewelcrafting:(54 minimum)
Cost of Tome of Secrets:(64 minimum)

Req. Jewel Level Quality Quantity Price / Value each Post Price (before 15%)
L1: Chipped
1 – Appentice L2: Flawed
2 – Journeyman L3: Normal
3 – Adept L4: Flawless
4 – Master L5: Perfect
5 – Grand Master L6: Radiant
6 – Illustrious L7: Square
7 – Magnificent L8: Flawless Square
8 – Resplendent L9: Perfect Square
9 – Glorious L10: Radiant Square
10 – Exalted L11: Star
10 – Exalted + Design L12: Flawless Star
10 – Exalted + Design L13: Perfect Star
10 – Exalted + Design L14: Radiant Star

Not only can you make gold buying gems, combining them and reselling them but you can also buy gear off the auction house with sockets, gem it and resell it for slightly more. Knowing what gems are best for each piece of gear is critical as well as the value of each tier of gem. The above table should help you calculate how much gems are worth or how much the gems you have should be worth.

Leave a comment

66 Comments.

  1. Very nice job on this calculator. I’m writing an article about gems and I’ll definitely feature your calculator in it!

  2. WOW 41,500000 GOLD for a lv14 gem if lv1 gems are worth only 1.02 gold each!!!

    I think these numbers will change before release as it sounds like a crazy amount of gold is needed to get just one lv14 gem.

    Could the calulator have a field added for price of gold to convert to next tier gem (currently 50 gold but this may well change in retail release).

    Thanks for the calculator very handy :-)

    Justin

  3. Is the 50 gold combine cost at each level confirmed to be fixed all the way up to level 14 gems?

    I checked a couple of wikis quickly but I couldn’t find anything definitive.

    • No confirmation yet. There are a few sites reporting a progressive price to combine opposed to a fixed price. I haven’t seen anything official though. If you see something please let me know.

  4. hmm, i realized something when checking the calculator, the cost to combine if only using chipped would be (3^13)*50 = 79 716150, and adding the price of gems: (3^14)= 4 782969 * gold price
    means at the cost of 1 gold you would need 85 million gold to make one radiant, 80 million is the minimum, no matter what.

    • That doesn’t seem right to me Andres. Otherwise I don’t understand what you’re saying. I don’t think you can calculate the cost to combine the way you did.

      • well, to combine 3 gems costs 50, to combine 9 gems costs 50*3, 27 gems 50*3*3 etc, combining 3^14 gems costs 3^13*50 so yeah, its a minimum of 80 million, no matter how one looks at it, if combining costs is 50 gold

        • You are not combining 3^14 gems to get 1 radiant star. You need 3^13 (1,594,323 chipped) for one radiant star. to calculate the cost of combines is more complicated than you’re describing

          Consider:

          27 chipped -> 9 flawed takes 9 combines for 50*9 = 450 gold
          9 flawed -> 3 flawed takes 3 combines for 50*3 = 150 gold
          3 regular -> 1 combine for 50 = 50 gold

          so 27 chipped -> 1 flawless requires 13 combines which cost 650 gold total

          as the calculator says, it costs about 40 million to combine 1.6 million chipped into 1 radiant star. not 80 million

          • ah, sorry guess my calculation would give 3 of the last one too … then the permanent combination price is 3^12*50 and not 13. 26.6 Million plus price of the gems. 3^13 = 1.6M*gem_price would be the variable.

            meaning 10 gold for 1 chipped would be 27+16 = 43 million gold

            meaning the economy is 3 times as cheap as first calculated.

            hmm, should add a variable on combining price on calculator just to check the gem prices without combining price etc too.

        • Andreas, no it’s not 26 million gold either. Read what I typed to you yesterday

          • Clearly, I am joining this conversation too late, but perhaps I can clarify.

            Andreas, you have calculated the cost to make the number of flawed gems only required to combine a radiant star. After that, those must be made into normals, and those into flawless, and those into perfect, and so on and so on.

  5. Great work, great addition to the community.

    The figures state 80 Million GOLD for a single Radiant… sounds a little dramatic. Let’s hope that’s aren’t the final numbers. That really equates to what… hundreds of hours of play time, gaining equitable gold, to for a single Radiant Gem. Hmm..

    By the way, can we get your permission to use this gem calculator on our own sites?

    • Feel free to use the calculator elsewhere. You can nab the javascript from the source, I put it all right into the header of my site and in one place. All I ask is that you include a non-nofollow link somewhere to my main site.

      I’ve heard others mention that combination prices are higher as you level. If this is true the radiant star is going to be ridiculously scarce.

      Thanks!

    • If you think that’s dramatic look at the datamined patch 15 combine costs on diablonut. Using those numbers a couple of examples are:

      554,403,000 gold to turn 1,594,323 Chipped gems into 1 Radiant Star.
      42,645,000 gold to turn 19,683 Perfect gems into 1 Radiant Star.

      PLUS large quantities of Tomes of Secrets, Tomes of Jewelcrafting and Pages of Jewelcrafting.

      And that’s just the costs to combine.

  6. found a bug on calculator, L3 gem should be 159, not 209

    • (when setting chipped price as 1)

      • Each L3 gem costs 209 gold because:
        each L2 gem costs 3 L1 gems at 1 gold each and 50 gold to combine (53 gold * 3) = 159

        PLUS the cost to combine those 3 L2 gems is another 50 gold for a total of 209 gold. It’s correct

  7. I know I am late to the party, but Holy Cow you need 19,683 of the best gem found in the game (not to mention all of the same color) to create a gem of the best quality in the game. And the stack limit is ten . . . can you alter that the way you do with blacksmithing materials and the AH? (4 stacks of 20 does not sell and returns in a larger stack of 80 to your inventory)

    Regardless, it is close to 40 slots needed to just hold variously sized and colored gems as you progress towards a Radiant Star. Which is about 1/4 of your total inventory with a fully upgraded stash.

  8. probably a stupid request, but can you put a “.” or “,” check box ?
    instead of 629180690, to show : 629.180.690 or 629,180,690.
    cheers.

  9. Yesterday Jay Wilson corrected himself by saying, “we drop gems up to tier 8″.

  10. The price to make a perfect square gem is now 3 Tomes of secrets and 30,000g

  11. Also be careful if you’re combining and auctioning because the AH will take another 15% for the transaction fee.

  12. Meldora, Beautifully done. Accurate and Simple. For reference, perhaps you could include fields that list the combine prices for each tier next to the row. What is your opinion of this new information? Do gems seem to cost too much? I absolutely think so.

  13. Why all i get is “impossible” in the Price/each?

    • That means the value of the preceding gem is less than zero. For instance, let’s say that 3 chipped rubies cost 500 gold to turn into a single flawed ruby but the flawed ruby is only worth 400 gold. when it tries to calculate the value of the 3 chipped rubies it comes up with a negative number so it just says “Impossible”

  14. Nice job on the calculator!

    Maybe this will help you during the game. Use your iPad to check on the Jeweler Gem stats: http://diablo.mobiscroll.com

  15. you’ve probably already read this, but they released the new planned gem recipes for 1.0.3
    http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262208

    Assuming vendor prices for pages and tomes of JC, and Flawless squares worth 3-4K it will make combining normal or better gems more profitable than vendoring them, and for rubies, which were selling for 8-9K, even chipped will be worth above vendor price.

    • unless they make it nearly free, below flawless square will still be worthless. Only emeralds are above 500g right now. L8, L9, L10 are selling at a loss on the AH too, so no point combining them.

  16. Is there anyway you could add a little check box to the calculator so we can choose to include the 15% AH cut to the final total?

    I have been looking through the AH and currently if I was to buy 9 Flawless Square Topaz at the current value 1750 and combine them into 1 Radiant Square I would need to sell it for 161,630 to break even (according to your calculator).

    1 Radiant Square Topaz is currently selling for 185,000 gold so you would assume a profit but because the AH takes a 15% cut (27,750) you are actually only getting 157,250 gold which ends up being a loss of 4,380.

    In order to ACTUALLY break even I would need to sell the gem at 190,153.

    I made this mistake once and now I take the price from your calculator and divide it by 0.85 to get the AH break even price but having this option built into the calculator would be really helpful and convenient.

    Cheers.

  17. Rasmus Jørgensen

    Hey have you added the 15% gold off what you sell on AH?

  18. You forgot to add the 15% AH fee in your calculator I think.
    I lost money because of that :(

    • Damn. No it’s not added in the calculator (obvious now eh?). That would require me to know what you’re selling and what you’re buying.

      • Just add a second column that includes the 15%.
        OR place a check box to the right of each price display so we can turn it on or off.

        I’m no programmer but wouldn’t it be pretty easy?
        If the box is checked then divide the result by 0.85.

  19. thanks for adding the AH cut minimum price for breaking even. It is much easier to gestimate 85% profit above look at the minimum cost including fees.

  20. Very nice addition. It’s a little odd if you set value in row 6, and then set value in row 7, it doesn’t update the row it was added in.

    I think replacing the first few lines in function update(row) with the following would fix that:

    var quantityElement = document.getElementById(‘quantity-’ + row);
    var priceElement = document.getElementById(‘price-’ + row);
    var sellForElement = document.getElementById(‘sellfor-’ + row);
    quantityElement.style.fontWeight = “bold”;
    priceElement.style.fontWeight = “bold”;
    sellForElement.style.fontWeight = “bold”;

    var delim = ‘,’;
    sellForElement.value = addCommas(Math.floor(priceElement.value / .85 * 100)/100, delim)

    I can’t easily test it, and it may not do what you want, but I think you’ll be pleased with these slight additions.

  21. I may be wrong, but I’ve done a few experiments with red gems in weapons.

    Tooltips in the AH ignore the effect of a red gem
    the DPS in the search window ignores the red gem
    If you sort by DPS, it INCLUDES the red gem in the order of the sort, but ignores it when reporting its value.
    Any search you make includes the gem when it decides whether or not to show it.

    I am hopeful that in some future patch, they will ignore gem values in the search if the search includes “Has sockets” so we could search for helms that have both 9% life and a socket, instead of reporting any helm with a +9% life gem.

    When I ask for a breastplate with over 100 vitality and 3 sockets, I don’t want to have to look at page after page of things with blue gems in it.

  22. I just noticed the following line hadn’t been changed since the Beta

    > Also keep in mind that only L1 through L5 gems drop in the world, so it might be possible that L1 gems are worthless because no one can afford to combine them to L5 gems.

    It should be L8.

    I must have skimmed that text a half-dozen times in the last month and didn’t spot it.

  23. This is really attention-grabbing, You are an excessively skilled blogger. I have joined your rss feed and sit up for in quest of extra of your great post. Also, I have shared your website in my social networks

  24. “Doing this math from tier to tier might be easy, but doing it across several tiers is pretty rough.”

    Man thanks for the calculator! I think that ^ sums it up pretty good. I started trying to do it across 5 tiers…Sadly I was really close on my first run at the numbers not really trying. but started 2nd guessing, and double checking. Longer I tried the more confused I got lol!

  25. Maybe I’m stupid, but I can’t figure out how to use this calculator based from the description. When I enter the prices of the gems as I’m going down the list it erases them and puts impossible.

    I don’t get it =(

    • hmmm.. here is how I use it:

      Enter quantity 1 for the gem you want to craft. Go to the gem you want to buy to create it and enter the auction house price. now it’ll say the amount it would cost to buy the materials to make the gem you entered 1 for.

  26. This is really neat! I recently created a simplified calculator here. Check is out and see what you think :)

  27. Do you plan on making a field that shows the amount of tomes/pages that are required for crafting each level of gem?

    Or a way of setting the price of tomes to zero to reflect already having them?

  28. Can you also place how many tomes it would be required to complete a certain gem in a row with the other data? So I know how many tomes I need to buy to make a certain gem?

  29. you misspelled apprentice :)

  30. At a higher level (exalted) it only takes 2 radiants to make a Square and only 2 squares to make a Flawless square. Still 3 Perfect Squares to make a Radiant. Haven’t checked backwards but I am sure the gem requirement is less than the calc uses.

  31. This calculator is awesome! Thanks for sharing it

  32. awesome calculator, thanks!

  33. I сoulԁ not reѕist commеntіng.
    Very well writtеn!

  34. just to let you know there is a little errore with this claculator. L7 to L8 crafting only takes one Jewelcrafting tome and not two as this calculator seem to think. Try it with a small numbers and and dont forget to set the cost for the tomes as well, you will notice it doubles the costs for Tomes and sometimes that is actually more than half of the profit one would make when spending around 1m (i make 50k from 1m and it takes 9 minutes). Considering 50k profit and 25k is lost.

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