Skill gem

An overview of skills

Active skill gems and support skill gems are usually referred to as skill gems and support gem in in-game item mod and passive skills. In item filter and gaming community they are still refer as Skill gem.

Gems must be equipped in item sockets before their use. Active skill gems grant an active skill for the player to use and are further augmented by linked support skill gems. There are currently 274 different active skill gems and 177 support skill gems in the game, for a total of 451.

Skill gems are not to be confused with passive skills, which provide constant stats and are mainly earned through character levelling. To avoid confusion, some players simply refer to both types of these items as "gems". The "Skill gem" in in-game modifier also refer to Active skill gems exclusively.

Obtaining gems

There are several methods of obtaining skills and support gems:

• Earned through a quest reward (see List of skill gems rewarded from quests).
• Purchased from town vendors once a certain quest is complete (see List of skill gems rewarded from quests).
  • Vendors in Acts 1-4 towns sell leveled skill gems. The available gems are based on the character's class and quest progression.
  • Siosa in Act 3 sells all unleveled skill gems that can be received as quest rewards for quests you've completed, across all classes.
  • Lilly Roth in Act 6, 10, Epilogue and in your hideout sells all unleveled skill gems after completing the Act 6 quest Fallen from Grace.
• Vendor recipes (see vendor recipe system).
• Random drop from monsters, chests and strongboxes.
• Vaal skill gems are obtained from Vaal Vessels in corrupted areas or by corrupting a regular skill gem.
• As a reward for turning certain sets of divination cards.
• beastcrafting recipe

Gem levels

Experience

When a gem is close to levelling up, a bar pops up at the right hand side of the screen, showing the experience progress of that gem.

• Socketed gems gain 10% of the experience your character earns, calculated before any level penalties.
• The number of gems you have equipped has no effect on the rate of experience gain.
• Gems do not lose experience when you die.
• Items with +experience% gain do affect gems.
• Gems socketed in inactive weapon slots do gain experience.
• Gems may be traded like normal items and they will retain their experience.

Once a gem has enough experience to level up, it will stop gaining experience and a level–up icon will appear on the right of the screen and in the inventory menu. Left–clicking it will level up the gem, right–clicking the icon will hide it on the side of the screen, but it will still be accessible in the inventory menu. Not levelling up a gem is useful in some situations.

As gems level up, the abilities they grant get better, but the requirements to equip them also increase, as well as the mana cost for active skills. Each gem level, the exile must have both the attribute corresponding to gem colour and a character level high enough to meet its increased requirements. If a gem gains enough experience to level up, but the exile currently does not meet the requirements, the level–up icon will appear greyed out and not be useable until the requirements are met. For specifics, see the lists of active skills and support gems below.

Exceeding the level cap

Each gem has a cap beyond which it can not gain any further experience and can not advance any more levels through experience; for most gems this cap is at 20. There are, however, ways to increase the level of a gem beyond 20.

They can be placed in items with modifiers such as the or certain Corruptions, or certain unique items such as . They can also be linked with the support gems , , , , , , and , and corrupting a gem can raise its level permanently (ignores level cap, suggest corrupting when the gem is at level 20).

Attribute and level requirements no longer increase when using any of those methods with the exception of corrupting the gem itself.

For example, by combining these three methods, the level of a skill gem can get as high as level 32. One way to do this is to have a with two additional instances of the and modifiers via corruption, then socket a corrupted level 21 gem in to the Frostferno item. This is now a level 29 Elemental Hit. Now support it with a corrupted level 4 Empower Support, increasing the Elemental Hit's level by 3 to bring it to level 32.

Unique items

See List of unique items increasing socketed gem level

Gems with a level cap below 20

These gems don't follow the regular experience curve.

Quality

A can be used to upgrade a gem's quality. Adding quality to a gem will add an additional effect to the skill. The exact modifications quality gives to the gem are displayed in the detailed view (hover over the item and hold Alt).

The effect of quality scales with the base quality effect, however, only whole numbers will be granted (and thus the effect will always be rounded down); for example 3% quality on a gem with 0.5% effect will only grant 1% effect and not 1.5% effect. Effects that have some degree of fractions naturally are rounded to their natural bases (i.e. seconds will be rounded to milliseconds, etc.).

Gems with alternate quality effects can be found in Grand Heists. They are prefaced as "Anomalous", "Divergent", or "Phantasmal" instead of "Superior".

Corruption

Like most items, gems can be corrupted using a . Corruption on gems can potentially lift the level or quality percentage of a gem above the maximum of 20. Corruption can also convert a gem into its Vaal skill equivalent, if one exists. It's suggested that you apply Corruption to a Skill Gem when the Skill gem is at level 20, 20% quality or both in order for corruption to potentially exceed the cap.

After the release of Incursion league, it became possible to achieve "double-corruption" of a gem by using the Lapidary Lens device in The Temple of Atzoatl. The device corrupts a skill or a support gem twice, which makes possible to apply two different effects of corruption at once. This allows to receive a level 21 gem with 23% quality.

Gem types

Active Skills

Main page: Active skill gems

Active skills have requirements based on each of the three main attributes, and can be easily identified by the attribute colour.

For a list of active skill gem, read List of active skill gems excluding vaal skills

Support Gems

Main page: Support skill gem

Support skill gem, most commonly known as support gem in-game, can argument the supported active skill gem.

You cannot support active skill gems with more than one copy of each support gem. If you place more than one of any support gem linked to skill gem, only the support gam with the highest level will work. Note that Awakened support gems cannot stack with their non-Awakened variant. While gems such as LMP and GMP are effectively two gems which they can stack.

For more information on support gems, please refer to that wiki article. For a list of support gems, read List of support skill gems

Vaal Skill Gems

Main page: Vaal Skill Gems

These skill gems can be acquired in vaal side areas or by using a on a normal skill gem. These skills are similar to their uncorrupted versions but have new effects that radically change their utility in combat.

Vaal skills must be charged before each use by collecting souls. Each slain enemy gives one soul to each equipped gem, similar to the flask system. Collected souls do not transfer between zone instances - changing zones or resetting the instance will start a new soul counter, but returning to a prior instance will restore the souls you left with. Vaal skill gems in a second weapon set do not receive souls.

Vaal Skills have requirements based on each of the three main attributes, and can be easily identified by the attribute colour.

For a list of vaal skill gems, read List of active skill gems granting vaal skills

Related divination cards

The following divination cards can be exchanged for gem:

See also

• List of skills
• List of drop-only gems
• Vaal skill
• List of active skill gems by gem tag
• List of support skill gems by gem tag