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I've recently found out, that price on gems on the market is MUCH lower than cost of upgrading gems with Artisans:

I can buy the Square Topaz (+30 intelligence) for around 150, but even flawless topaz crafting cost 500 gold...

What is logic here and why is such a big discrepancy? Is that because high level player sell GOOD gems for the low price and that affect the price of other gems? Or there is another reason?

In any case, with such prices the only use of artisan i see is to extract gems from the items and there are no any reason to try to use it for gems crafting (at least now).

Budda
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  • Interestingly, as of this morning, the best gems (radiant star) in game sell for about 25 million a pop. I'm not sure if these actually drop or not, though I doubt it. For low(er) level gems, I totally agree though. – Matthew Scharley Jun 07 '12 at 06:04
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    @MatthewScharley - IIRC, flawless square is the highest tier that drops naturally. – Shinrai Jun 07 '12 at 06:09
  • @MatthewScharley Radiant stars are selling for 25 million a pop? Those cost in excess of 50 million to create. I'm surprised they even exist yet. – Mr. November Jun 07 '12 at 06:10
  • @Mr.November: I checked the AH just this morning (~8h ago). I may have misread 25 billion for 25 million however. They were definitely there though. – Matthew Scharley Jun 07 '12 at 06:11
  • @Mr.November: Just checked the AH again. Definitely 25m a unit for radiant star gems. – Matthew Scharley Jun 07 '12 at 07:02
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    @MatthewScharley Seems i was wrong about the cost. It's more like 15-17 mil to craft them. – Mr. November Jun 07 '12 at 07:22
  • Is this topic a duplicate of http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/68929/is-combining-gems-worthwhile ? – Coomie Jun 07 '12 at 08:44

2 Answers2

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I would say it's just supply and demand at work.

While the lower level gems drop regularly in game, especially if people are farming for gear, the higher level gems either don't drop, or drop rarely. Personally, I'm just starting Inferno and I have a bunch of gems just lying around (around a dozen of all the square gems and a half dozen or more of each of the flawless square). I also have an entire stash tab devoted to gem storage for all the gems I've picked up along the way. If every player has this sort of stash, you can see that there is a large supply at work. Conversely, there is very small demand for any particular tier of gems. Think about how many you actually use compared to how many you pick up regardless of quality.

From this, you can see that the jewelcrafter much like the blacksmith is really intended for higher level characters. These people:

  1. Have a large disposable income. I'm just starting inferno (reads: getting my face smashed pre-Leoric), and I can still make ~100k within a relatively short amount of time,just vendoring items. The Auction House can inflate this further very quickly.
  2. Want and need the higher level gems which don't drop.

This leaves these people with two options: get their own jewel crafter leveled, or buy gems at vastly higher prices on the Auction House. Keep in mind that the last three tiers of gems are only available via recipes which drop. These recipes are individual gems also, so there are a total of 12.

For everyone else, there's the Auction House which has large numbers of gems of lower quality that other people no longer need. These are usually gems that have dropped, not ones that have been combined using the jewel crafter, which explains the lower cost.

Community
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Matthew Scharley
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Here is an interesting link from Blizzard http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262208/Patch_103_Design_Preview-6_6_2012#blog (scroll down to the "Just Three Two Easy Payments" section).

It looks like the price will be ajusted in 1.0.3 patch. That answers the question...

Budda
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