Gems

Diablo II Items [e]
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Axes • Bows • Crossbows • Daggers • Javelins • Maces • Polearms • Scepters • Spears • Staves • Swords • Throwing • Wands
Armor
Belts • Body Armor • Boots • Circlets • Gloves • Helms • Shields
Class-specific
Assassin Items • Amazon Items • Barbarian Items • Druid Items • Necromancer Items • Paladin Items • Sorceress Items
Other
Charms • Class Items • Crafted • Horadric Cube • Runes • Set Items • Uniques • Jewels • Sockets
Guides and Stats
Calculations • Gambling • Item Generation • Modifiers • Runewords • Quest Items • Potions • Ethereal • Gems • Base Item Levels • Misc

Functionless on their own, gems possess great power when utilized with a weapon, shield, or helm, bestowing potent magical enchantments upon the item and its wearer. Socketed armor is added in the Expansion, but all items have identical stats in either armor or helms. Gems, once socketed, add special bonuses to the items.

Gems return, much improved, in Diablo III. See the gems page in the D3 section of this wiki for full details.

Gem Varieties

There are seven different types of gems:

All have different effects depending on what sort of item they are "socketed" in. There are five levels of quality for gems: from worst to best they are:

Chipped
Flawed
Normal (simply called by the gem type in the game, i.e. "ruby")
Flawless
Perfect

Gems can not be bought, only found from monster drops, chests, and as a reward for some quests. Better quality gems are found as you progress in the game.

In Diablo II Classic the system is rigid: Chipped gems show up in Act I and Act II and Flawed in Act III and Act IV, with very rare exceptions of monsters (High Council usually) dropping Normals. In Nightmare and Hell all gems dropped are normal quality.
In the expansion there is more variety. Gem quality dropped is based on Mlvl, and though it progresses at about the same rate, you can find some Normal gems in Act IV and Act V, and can even rarely come across Flawless gems. By late Nightmare nearly every gem dropped is Flawless, and this continues through Hell, though some lower quality, usually chipped, will still drop from time to time. Perfect gems are never dropped, though one may be found as a reward for the Hellforge Quest.

Socketed Items

Only weapons, helms, shields and body armor can have sockets, with body armor being the new addition to the list in the Expansion. No boots, gloves, belts, or jewelry will ever be socketed, and this includes Uniques.

The number of sockets is fixed in Diablo II, all helms have 2, and all shields and weapons have 3, unless the item is only 2 spaces tall in inventory (bucklers, daggers) in which case it has two sockets.
In the Expansion items can vary in their number of sockets. Helms can have from 1-4, Body armor 1-4, weapons 1-6, and shields 1-4. Full details elsewhere in the Items section.

Once a gem is inserted into a socket, it is there forever in D2C, and can't be removed or upgraded in quality.

In D2X gems can be removed from sockets by destroying them with a Horadric cube recipe. This does not damage the item, but destroys whatever was socketed in it.

In Diablo II only normal items are socketed, and you can find or buy them.

In the Expansion you can only buy magical equipment, so you can never buy anything socketed aside from magical items with sockets from a modifier. Sockets occur randomly in normal or superior items, and can be made in magical, rare, unique, and set items, either with Horadric Cube recipes, or as an Act Five quest reward.

Maximum sockets in D2C: 1 in rares, 1-2 in Uniques, 1-3 in magical items. In D2X the numbers are higher since there are new modifiers and unique/set items with more holes in them.

Upgrading Gems

Three gems of the same type and quality combine in the Horadric Cube to upgrade one level of quality.

Gem shrines are found only rarely, but they are worth preparing for and using, as they'll upgrade one gem from your inventory one level. It's best to carry around a flawless gem of whatever type you want upgraded and be sure it's the only gem in your inventory when you click the shrine. If you don't have any gems, or only have perfect gems, one random chipped gem will be dropped.

Gem Effects

Gem effects vary, but are logical: Gems placed into weapons generally add damage, while gems in shields provide resistance, and gems in helms/armor add to hit points or other attributes. Exactly how much benefit a socketed gem provides depends on the quality of the gem.

You can see how gems look in an item here in this shot. The sockets display down the left side of the image for all socketed items, and if they are filled the gem is visible there, rather than an empty hole. Socketed items in the game appear brightly-coloured, and their appearance is based on the first gem socketed. An item with an Amethyst first, then two Emeralds will be purple, not green.

The bonuses from gems of the same type stack, so if you had two rubies in a sword, the fire damage would be added together. It is arithmetic, never geometric, so if you had say three sapphires, all of them chilling for 3 seconds, you wouldn't move up to freezing the monster, you'd just chill it for longer. The same goes for other gems. For example rubies add fire damage to your attack. Three perfect rubies would do a lot of fire damage, but they wouldn't create a small firewall under the monster.

Gems in shields do nothing for the Paladin's Smite attack.

Gem Stats (Expansion)

Gem stats were slightly improved in the Expansion.

Amethyst

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	+40 to Attack Rating	+3 to Strength	+8 to Defense	1
Flawed	+60 to Attack Rating	+4 to Strength	+12 to Defense	5
Normal	+80 to Attack Rating	+6 to Strength	+18 to Defense	12
Flawless	+100 to Attack Rating	+8 to Strength	+24 to Defense	15
Perfect	+150 to Attack Rating	+10 to Strength	+30 to Defense	18

Diamond

Diamond stats in the Expansion.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	+28% damage vs. the undead	+20 to Attack Rating	+6% Resistance to All	1
Flawed	+34% damage vs. the undead	+40 to Attack Rating	+8% Resistance to All	5
Normal	+44% damage vs. the undead	+60 to Attack Rating	+11% Resistance to All	12
Flawless	+54% damage vs. the undead	+80 to Attack Rating	+14% Resistance to All	15
Perfect	+68% damage vs. the undead	+100 to Attack Rating	+19% Resistance to All	18

Emerald

Emeralds are popular weapon sockets for their stacking poison damage.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	Adds 5 (5.9) poison damage in 1 sec	+3 to Dexterity	+12% Poison Resistance	1
Flawed	Adds 11 (11.7) poison damage in 1 sec	+4 to Dexterity	+16% Poison Resistance	5
Normal	Adds 17 (17.6) poison damage in 1 sec	+6 to Dexterity	+22% Poison Resistance	12
Flawless	Adds 23 (23.4) poison damage in 1 sec	+8 to Dexterity	+28% Poison Resistance	15
Perfect	Adds 29 (29.3) poison damage in 1 sec	+10 to Dexterity	+40% Poison Resistance	18

Ruby

Rubies are popular sockets in armor and helms for the +hit points. Mercs can often benefit from this boost.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	+3-4 Fire Damage	+10 to Maximum Life	+12% fire resistance	1
Flawed	+5-8 to Fire Damage	+17 to Maximum Life	+16% to Fire Resistance	5
Normal	+8-12 to Fire Damage	+24 to Maximum Life	+22% fire resistance	12
Flawless	+10-16 to Fire Damage	+31 to Maximum Life	+28% fire resistance	15
Perfect	+15-20 Fire Damage	+38 to Maximum Life	+40% fire resistance	18

Sapphire

Sapphires are little socketed by high level characters, but a sapphire in a weapon is hugely useful for a low level character, for the chilling property of cold damage.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	+1-3 Cold Damage 1 second Cold Time	+10 to Maximum Mana	+12% to Cold Resistance	1
Flawed	+3-5 Cold Damage 1.4 second Cold Time	+17 to Maximum Mana	+16% to Cold Resistance	5
Normal	+4-7 Cold Damage 2 second Cold Time	+24 to Maximum Mana	+22% to Cold Resistance	12
Flawless	+6-10 Cold Damage 2.4 second Cold Time	+31 to Maximum Mana	+28% to Cold Resistance	15
Perfect	+10-14 Cold Damage 3 second Cold Time	+38 to Maximum Mana	+40% to Cold Resistance	18

Topaz

Topaz are very popular sockets in body armor and helms for the Magic Find bonuses they provide.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	+1-8 Lightning Damage	+9% chance to find magical items	+12% Lightning Resistance	1
Flawed	+1-14 Lightning Damage	+13% chance to find magical items	+16% Lightning Resistance	5
Normal	+1-22 Lightning Damage	+16% chance to find magical items	+22% Lightning Resistance	12
Flawless	+1-30 Lightning Damage	+20% chance to find magical items	+28% Lightning Resistance	15
Perfect	+1-40 Lightning Damage	+24% chance to find magical items	+40% Lightning Resistance	18

Skulls

Skulls were popular sockets in weapons in D2C for the dual leech they provided, but with leech available on so many items in the expansion, skulls are seldom used any longer.

Quality	Weapon	Helm or Armor	Shield	Clvl Req
Chipped	Steals 2% life and 1% mana per hit	Replenish life +2 and mana regen. 8%	Attacker takes damage of 4	1
Flawed	Steals 2% life and 2% mana per hit	Replenish life +3 and mana regen. 8%	Attacker takes damage of 8	5
Normal	Steals 3% life and 2% mana per hit	Replenish life +3 and mana regen. 12%	Attacker takes damage of 12	12
Flawless	Steals 3% life and 3% mana per hit	Replenish life +4 and mana regen. 12%	Attacker takes damage of 16	15
Perfect	Steals 4% life and 3% mana per hit	Replenish life +5 and mana regen 19%	Attacker takes damage of 20	18