This is the best guide about how gems work and what gems should you get in Lost Ark, so how to boost your damage and utility! A complete gem guideas well as best Lost Ark gold is for you.

Gem Progression

There's been some debate between people playing at current endgame who are looking towards future raids, the issue is pushing gem levels and general confusion about where to stop, here’s some information that hopefully clears that up and helps you decide how to move forward.

Misconceptions

First, we want to clear up some widespread misconceptions about gems and help you better understand their role and how they work.

Blind Focus on Gems

It's really important to understand that high level gems are an element of absolute endgame, many players will keep upgrading them while ignoring other, significantly more important aspects of their characters, which in turns ends with them getting denied from parties.

Here are a few things to focus on before turning to gems, these will all improve the way your character functions and its appeal in party finder for less than gems would cost.

Gatekeeping

Level 8+ Gems are mostly used as an arbitrary gatekeeping mechanism in order to try and get mains for content on release, with the assumption that alts stop at level 7 due to high cost efficiency and only mains go further for the majority of players.

This ideology made its way over to our region from Korea, and while it may be relevant there, please keep in mind, we will always be clearing content using detailed guides, after it’s already been through adjustments and fine-tuning, as long as you character is on par with other requirements, all content in the game can be comfortably done with Level 7 Gems.

Real Value of Upgrading Gems

Most people think the damage increase from upgrading a gem is the flat difference in percentage between the two gems, this is false, and we’ll be going over a few reasons why.

Values calculated using this formula: [(100+New gem%)/(100+Old gem%) - 1]×100

The easiest way to understand this is that the percentage you’re adding to a skill by upgrading a gem is added to the base value of the skill, and not the number you’re currently seeing, which is already boosted by a gem.

The actual damage increase is the percentage increase between the values of the two gems, which is calculated using the formula from above.

Values calculated using this formula: [(100+New gem%)/(100+Old gem%) - 1]×100×Skill DPS Contribution

Upgrading a single gem will only increase your overall DPS in relation to how much that specific skill constitutes in your DPS distribution.

In this example, Surge constitutes around 60% of a Surge Deathblade’s total DPS, this is only an example and other classes’ DPS distribution may very greatly compared to this.

CDR Gems have linear scaling, which means that beyond Level 8, the cost to efficiency ratio goes down, this is not the case with DMG Gems since there is also a spike in percentage increase.

Almost every class in the game can comfortably play their rotation with only level 7 CDR, and going higher only allows you to recover more easily from mistakes. If you’re unsure whether you would benefit from certain CDR gems being higher, consult the community guide specific to your class.

What Gems Should You Get and When

Now that we’ve cleared up how gems function and what their real value is, let’s take a look at what normal progression looks like for the majority of players.

-Level1 to Level 4: Not worth playing attention to, even for alts.

-Level 5: Starting point, can play any class at a base level.

-Level 6: Generally skipped in favor of level 7.

-Level 7: Functional rotation and can clear any content in the game, expected standard for properly geared characters.

-Level 8: Generally skipped in favor of Level 9 due to cost efficiency.

-Level 9: End-game goal for the majority of players, not required to clear content.

-Level 10: Incredibly bad cost to damage ratio, generally not worth chasing, acquired through hardcore dedication or using the cash shop.

Exceptions

Here are a few cases where going for higher level gems makes perfect sense.

Sometimes upgrading CDR Gems unlocks new combos or makes it easier to perform them, double doomsday on Igniter Sorceress is a good example of this scenario.

Some classes, like Shadowhunter or Scouter, have most of their damage focused on a single gem, upgrading that gem to level 10 while ignoring the others is a good long-tem progression goal.

Some people opt to play several characters of the same class. If you fit into this category, the value you get from upgrading your gems increases exponentially as it applies to your entire roster, and this becomes a very efficient damage boost.

Conclusion

As you can see, in most cases upgrading gems beyond level 7 is not worth the price tag.

-CDR Gems rarely provide good value and for the most party they only help your rotation become smoother, without impacting your damage output too much.

-DMG Gems can be a great way to increase your DPS, but they become incredibly expensive and should be treated as min-max upgrades for dedicated players.

Lastly, not having top-tier gems will never be something that prevents anyone from clearing content in the current state of the game, and there’s no reason to panic over it.

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