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Lost Ark Gems Guide: How to get them and what they do

Power up your skills.

Gems in Lost Ark are equipable items used to power up your character’s individual skills. Each skill a character possesses (minus their Awakening Skill) can be powered up through one of these equipable gems. Therefore, it’s important to earn as many gems as you can to increase your character’s overall power.

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Gems unlock once your character reaches Tier 2 content (Item Level 600 – 1100). There are separate tiers of gems for Tier 2 and Tier 3 characters. Tier 3 gems are not usable by Tier 2 characters, and Tier 2 gems are weaker on Tier 3 characters.

How do gems work?

When you receive a gem, you can find it and equip it in your inventory. Each gem has a specific effect and corresponds to one of your abilities. For instance, the gem below increases the damage of this Artillerist’s “Forward Barrage” ability by 12%.

Screenshot by DoubleXP

Right-click the gem in your inventory to equip it. It will appear in any open slot above and will grant you the effect passively. Once you equip it, there’s nothing else you need to do. There are two different types of gems. A circle gem reduces the cooldown of one of your abilities, while a triangle gem increases the damage of your abilities.

Gems also have different levels. The higher level your gem is, the stronger the effect of the gem will be. Currently, gems can go as high as level 10, which is extremely rare. Typically, higher-level gems are obtained by upgrading lower-level ones. You can do so by clicking the following button to enter the gem upgrade screen.

Screenshot by DoubleXP

Once you click the screen, you can insert three gems into the empty slots above. The gems need to be the same level, or you cannot upgrade. Upgrading three of the same gems will upgrade them into a random gem of a higher level. This means you cannot know what ability or type of gem you’ll get.

This makes upgrading gems a rather tedious and random process, so it’s best to find strong Level 5 gems and then upgrade them periodically to higher gems slowly. You can also opt to buy stronger gems from the market, but these higher-level gems will cost you tons of gold.

For convenience’s sake, you can choose to Auto-Fuse gems. As you get gems, the game will automatically upgrade them. You can turn this on in the “Auto-Fuse” setting on the upgrade screen.

Where to get gems

You can get gems in a variety of ways. The most consistent way you’ll obtain gems are running through Chaos Dungeons. These will net you tons of gems in both runs, usually giving you enough for at least one gem upgrade.

Other ways you can get gems are through Boss Rushes, Field Bosses, and Auction House. Events also often grant gem chests, so keep on the lookout for any active events to see if you can grab any gems from them.


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Author
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Joshua Chu
Joshua Chu is a Contributing Writer at Gamepur and is known for fantastic guides on Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. They cover a variety of interesting tips and tricks to succeed in the games, and how best to tackle each world. Joshua also has writing at Kotaku and PCInvation.