Glyphscape/Gems

Gems Overview
Occasionally in RS3, you will find an uncut gemstone, such as by defeating enemies or via mining. Just about every gem in RS3 has magical properties, most of them carrying combat benefits. Gemstones can then be chiseled into cut gems, which vary in three criteria: color, cut, and carat:


 * Color is what type of gem it is, as in RS3, each type of gem corresponds to only one color. Different types of gems have, as you'd expect, different effects.
 * Cut is the shape a gem is cut into. Different cuts enable a gem to be used in different places/jewelry.
 * Carat is the size and thus grade of the gem. The smallest size a gem can have is 1 carat, and the scale increases by increments of 1 carat, with no set upper limit. The greater the size (measured in carats) the gem, the greater is its effect, and the greater its value and rarity.

It is costly to change any of the attributes of a gemstone. There is a place where you may uncut a cut gem (turn a gem back into a gemstone) for 10% of the game's projected value of the gem (not the trade value).

The color of a gemstone is randomly selected, without much difference in their rarities.

On average players find 20 gems every hour of active game time, and this does not improve notably with increases in leveling.

Gems can be placed into the sockets commonly found on equip-able items. They are the most expensive means of improving a character's (usually combat) stats. Gems can also be made into jewelry for various other beneficial effects. Once socketed, gems can only be retrieved by destroying the item the gem was socketed into. For owners of the most valuable gems, this is barely a problem - gems can be just that incredibly valuable.

Carat
Every doubling of a gem's carat (size) doubles its effectiveness (though some effects compound multiplicatively).

There is no set upper limit to how large a gem can get, so theoretically there can be a gem of 1,000,000+ carats, but in practice as you go up the size scale the rarity of such gems increases exponentially so it is just about impossible for any player in the history of the game to get their hands on a really, really large gem.

When you stumble across a gem, its carat is determined by the following randomization schedule:

All pre-gemstones (a game-engine term used in calculating gem sizes) start at 1 carat. The chance that a pre-gemstone gets promoted (carat +1) instead of being finalized by the game into a gemstone is (1/75) ^ (2 / (Current carat of pre-gemstone x 2 + 1)). If the pre-gemstone is promoted, then it is not finalized and the promotion cycle repeats. (Players never see the pre-gemstone.) Thus a 1-carat pre-gemstone has a 5.63% chance of being promoted to a 2-carat pre-gemstone, with double the effects, while a 2-carat pre-gemstone has a 17.78% * 29.13% = 5.18% chance of being promoted to a 4-carat pre-gemstone which once again doubles its effects. Each doubling of carat size (and hence effect) averages out at a 5.0% chance. It's not easy to place a rarity score for any particular carat, since single-carat promotions for larger pre-gemstones are more common but less effective. But its trade value is, as with many trade-able items, a good reflection of its worth.

Since each doubling of carat size corresponds to a roughly 10-fold increase in value but 20-fold increase in rarity, a player's expected earnings per unit of time don't go off to infinity, but rather, converge.

Table of Gem Sizes
Values listed are for the average color, uncut gemstones. Each successive gemstone features twice the carat as the one before. An example of a "standard" gem effect when socketed in an item is "+6% to all resists (compounded)" (reduces all normal sources of damage by 6%).


 * Note: Gems larger than 100 carat are so rare they do not have reliable market values. For them, only estimates are provided.

Cut
A gemstone can be cut in several different ways depending on how it's meant to be used. Once cut, it is now referred to as a gem. Gems are used for jewelry and for socketing items. Once socketed, a gem's properties determine what magical effects it bestows on its bearer. An item, such as body armor, can be socketed once using the Metalwork skill; a particular socket variety holds gems of a particular cut. Players generally are able to get the following sockets when maxed out:


 * 1 socket on body armor, any size (A)
 * 1 socket on leg armor, any size (A)
 * 1 socket on shield, any size (A)
 * 1 socket on non-thrown weapon, any size (A)
 * 1 socket on a head armor, any size (A)
 * 1 socket on an amulet, up to 16 carat
 * 1 socket each on up to 2 rings, up to 8 carat (B)
 * 1 socket each on up to 2 bracelets, up to 8 carat (B,C)
 * 1 socket each on up to 2 earrings, up to 8 carat (B,C)


 * A: body, leg, and head armor, shield, and weapon add up to 5 but a player can only equip 3 gemmed pieces chosen from these.
 * B: Rings, bracelets, and earrings add up to 6 but a player can only equip 2 gemmed pieces chosen from these.
 * C: Only female characters can use bracelets and earrings.

This adds to a total of 6 sockets for characters of both genders.

Table of Gem Cuts

 * Note: Cardioid gems don't give stat benefits. Instead, they are the only gem types used for in-game marriage ceremonies. When a player uses such a gem, the game brings up a map showing the location and activities/stats/levels of that player's in-game spouse, regardless of the color or size of the gem. Players often go for larger gems in their in-game spouse's favorite color, however.

Color
Each color corresponds to a different type of gem. Each type is given equal percentage find rates, which means that two gems of different color (type) but otherwise identical have about equivalent market values.

Bejeweled Cube
The Bejeweled Cube is a unique item released at the beginning of year 2 of the game. Jagex staff gave just one power player, Its-(T)agic, the opportunity to buy this item in exchange for numerous pieces of well-positioned real estate that the player owned across multiple servers. At the time, Its-(T)agic was perhaps the game's wealthiest player, and its paramount landlord. Its-(T)agic agreed to the trade, which decimated the player's real estate holdings - valued at ~900,000,000 gp - and turned over those territories to Jagex staff. Hence one could say that the value of the Bejeweled Cube is nearly a billion gp.

The Bejeweled Cube allows you to transmute gems, that is, combine gems to get a different gem. Bejeweled Cube formulae are as follows:


 * Transmutation is always very expensive. You will only benefit from using the Bejeweled Cube if you know what you're doing.

Trivia

 * While most players get numerous 1-carat gemstones before getting any skill to level 50, they may have found perhaps 1-2 4-carat ("standard") gemstones by that time.
 * Given enough time, a power-player with several near-level-100 skills has a small but sizable chance of getting a 16-carat gemstone and, if they focus on buying gemstones at the expense of all else, the richest may have traded for a 32-carat or even a 64-carat gemstone.
 * 10 years after RS3's launch, over 100 billion gemstones have been found, of which 600,000+ are of 16-carat or higher.
 * The 2nd largest through 5th largest gemstones of any type found in the first 10 years of RS3's history are a 290, 272, 263, and 255-carat, none of which could be traded at even close to their true value due to a lack of billionaire buyers. Of these, none are still being actively used (they were all stuck in inventories belonging to players who are no longer playing).
 * The chance of any gem being of size 128-carat or greater is about 1 in 1.28 billion.
 * Runescape has a variety of unique and seemingly overpowered items. The most overpowered of these - and the single most potent/useful item in the game - is the Protector, the largest gem ever found in its history. The next-largest gems, considerably smaller than the Protector, are also highly overpowered items in their own right.
 * Merely two weeks into the launching of RS3 (and when there were only a few people playing), an unique, exactly 500-carat diamond was found. Named "The Protector", it remains the single most valuable gem ever discovered in RS3's history, with a rarity of 1 in 400 billion. The Protector remains a particularly salient subject of Runescape lore.
 * It is still active, always having been traded right before their ex-owners stopped playing the game (as they knew just how precious it really was).
 * Paradoxically, in its last 10 changes of ownership the average trade for it was a token 100,000 gp, with all exchanges being to give them to the owners' best friends in-game - about the same cost as a 7-carat. If not for this tendency, The Protector would be appraised at 185 billion gp!
 * Because The Protector is so overpowered, its owners have constantly participated in player-vs-player combat events, often winning battles straight-out. It has also thrown the economy off balance, since its owners were far much better at getting high-level loot.
 * The Protector is generally used as a defensive gem. In such a capacity its stat boost when socketed is "+6% to all resists ^ 125" compounded, or as it shows up in-game, "99.94% to all resists (compounded)", making the bearer take 0 normal-combat damage from all but the most powerful of attacks, hence its namesake. No other single gem affords as much and as broad an immunity. By comparison, a standard (4-carat) diamond used in a similar way would have "+6% to all resists".
 * The Protector's stat benefits are nearly equivalent to leveling up vitality another 220 levels. Thus, a player with The Protector equipped is roughly 220 combat levels higher than a player who doesn't.
 * In year 8 of RS3's history, Its-(T)agic, in-game billionnaire and owner of the Bejeweled Cube, managed to finally create a 275-carat gemstone. It is the largest artificially made gemstone in the game's history and is called The Kaleidoscopic.