/gems-guide
How Gems Work in Trove
Gems are the single biggest source of power on a Trove character - and the most confusing. This is the whole system, taken apart piece by piece and made interactive. Scroll to build one up; poke at everything.
Build a gem, part by part
Every gem is the same five decisions stacked together. Scroll down - the spec sheet fills in and the gem takes shape as each part locks in.
- Tier
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- Type
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- Element
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- Stats
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- Ability
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1 — Its tier sets the ceiling
A gem's tier sets its ceiling - how big its stats get and how far it can level. Trove has more tiers than these, but the four worth building around are Radiant, Stellar, Crystal and Mystic. Leveling never changes a gem's tier - but a Converter can raise it a tier while keeping its progress.
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2 — Lesser or Empowered
A Lesser gem is locked to one damage school. An Empowered gem drops that restriction, rolls stronger, and carries a special ability. You slot far fewer Empowered gems, so they matter more.
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3 — An element gives it a home
Each gem is Water, Fire, Air or Cosmic, and only slots into the matching gem socket. Cosmic is the odd one out - it always carries Light.
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4 — Its stats, rolled
The gem rolls with two or three stats from a pool - damage, crit and health - each at a random strength. Three-stat gems are the only keepers; a two-stat gem can never catch up, so check the count before the rolls.
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5 — Level it, then perfect it
From there you feed it Gem Dust to level up - climbing Power Rank and unlocking extra rolls - then spend focuses to push every stat to 100%. That's the whole loop.
The tiers that matter
Gems come in more tiers than these, but only Radiant, Stellar, Crystal and Mystic hold stats worth building around. Each tier is a higher ceiling than the last, so late-game power lives almost entirely in Crystal and Mystic gems.
Converters — move a gem up a tier
Leveling never changes a gem's tier, but two Store items do - and they carry the gem's level and every augment straight across, so a maxed gem never starts over.
You never need a converter - higher-tier gems drop on their own. It's just a shortcut to carry a gem you've already poured levels and focuses into up a tier, instead of starting over on a fresh drop.
Lesser vs Empowered
Two kinds of gem. Lesser gems are restricted to one damage school; Empowered gems drop the restriction, hit harder, and carry a special ability.
Class Gems
Every class has one gem all its own. A Class Gem is a special Empowered gem, locked to a single class, that rewrites one of its abilities - a build-defining upgrade you slot like any other Empowered gem.
One per class
Each class has its own Class Gem, and only that class can equip it. Switch class and you swap to a different one.
Rewrites an ability
Rather than just stats, it upgrades one of the class's abilities - like Dino Tamer's Hunting Dart firing three darts, or Pirate Captain's First Mate cannons hitting twice as hard.
How you get one: take a Class Gem Key into the Shadow Colosseum in the Shores of the Everdark, clear it, and open the Everdark Vault that appears - it drops the Class Gem for whichever class you're playing at the time.
Gem elements
Element sets a gem's slot on your character and colors what it can roll. Water, Fire and Air behave the same way; Cosmic plays by its own rules.
Two or three stats
A gem rolls with two or three stats, each pulled from a pool at a random strength. Only three-stat gems are worth keeping - a two-stat gem can never catch up - and the rolls are what focusing later fixes.
The one rule that decides a keeper
How many stats a gem rolls is locked at level 1 - no dust or focus ever adds a missing one, so the stat count is the first thing to check. In practice only Empowered gems roll a random count - every Lesser gem from Stellar up already has all three.
3 stats at level 1 - the only gems worth leveling. It then picks up a boost at 5, 10 and 15, ending at 6 containers.
2 stats or fewer - automatic scrap. It can never catch a 3-stat gem, so don't spend a single dust on it.
Leveling & Power Rank
Feeding a gem Gem Dust raises its level, which grows every stat and adds to your Power Rank. Milestone levels give the biggest jumps - and unlock extra rolls on the gem.
Boosters — better odds each level
Every level-up is a roll: it can raise the gem one level, or double level for two at once. Gems no longer crack, so a bad roll only costs the materials, never progress. Boosters are one-shot items you spend on the attempt to tilt the odds - the stronger the booster, the more level-ups land and the more of them double, so the gem maxes out in far fewer tries.
Ninth & Tenth Life share the same numbers but never overlap - Ninth Life covers every tier except Mystic, and Mystic gems take only Tenth Life in its place.
Upcycling: farming Gem Dust
Loot-collect a gem and it returns Gem Dust based on its level - and a Crystal gem leveled to 25 gives back more dust than it took to get there. Leveling Crystal gems purely to loot-collect them for that surplus is called upcycling. A Gem Fixture trims the upgrade cost by 20%, or a Gem Fixture plus a Gem Day from Patron by 40% - both grow the net return:
Never level with boosters when you're farming dust. A booster costs more than the extra dust it hands back, so it only eats into the profit - level the plain way.
Level every Crystal gem you get to 25 - even ones you'll never equip - then loot-collect them for the dust. End-game gems burn through a lot of it, and this is the steadiest way to bank it.
Perfecting with focuses
A stat almost never rolls at 100%. Focus items push it up the rest of the way - three grades, each worth a fixed slice of quality. The trick is spending the fewest, most efficient focuses to hit the cap.
Apply focuses to close the gap to a perfect stat:
Focuses only add quality up to 100%; overshooting is wasted. The Gem Evaluator plans the exact, cheapest set of focuses for a real gem.
Rerolled wrong? Reshape it with Chaos
Focus fixes a stat's quality - but not which stats you rolled or where the boosts landed. Two items fix the layout itself:
Chaos Spark
Rerolls one stat's type - swap a stat you don't want (say Max Health) for one you do (Critical Hit). It picks a new stat at random from whatever's still valid.
Can't reroll a locked Light stat, duplicate a stat you already have, or give you both Physical and Magic damage.
Chaos Flare
Moves one boost container from one stat onto another. If a milestone boost landed on a throwaway stat, flare relocates that container to a stat that matters.
Only works on a stat holding more than one container (one that caught a boost); the container lands on a random other stat.Advanced Under the hood: how a gem really stores its stats
In-game a stat shows a single number, but underneath it's a stack of hidden containers - and that stack is what really decides how hard a gem is to perfect. Every stat starts with one container; each milestone boost (level 5, 10, 15) drops one more onto a random stat, so a maxed gem holds six containers spread across its three stats.
Containers overflow
Each container has its own random base roll (0–100%), fixed at creation - that's the RNG. Focus stacks on top (Rough +2.5%, Precise +5%, Superior +12.5% each). A stat's quality is the average of its containers, and a container can overflow past 100% to carry a low one - so 112.5% + 87.5% averages to a perfect 100% stat. The stat caps at 100%, so overflow beyond that adds no power; it just flattens out.
Why boosts cost you
Every boost is another container you must fill to reach a perfect gem. More boosts means more power but a pricier cap - and because they land at random, one stat can end up with several low-rolled containers that each eat a pile of focus. "How hard to perfect" = how many containers × how low they rolled. That's the exact sum the Evaluator solves.
Gem Builds
Once your gems are perfect, a "build" is how you spread their boosts across stats to squeeze out the last drop of damage. It's deep end-game min-maxing that most players never need - but here's exactly how a build code reads. Hover or tap any number.
What the "+" hides
A plain four-number code like 9/0 3/15 leaves the Cosmic gems out - in a damage build they always sit at + 0/0/3 0/0/6 (every Cosmic boost poured into Light), so printing them would just be clutter.
What a Farm build changes
A Farm build pulls Cosmic boosts off Light and onto Damage - you give up some Light to hit harder. That's the only time the + segment shows real numbers, like 3/0/0 1/1/4.
Bottom line: build codes wring tiny, hard-won gains out of an already-maxed set. Skip them unless you're chasing the very top of a leaderboard - and when you are, let the Gem Builds optimizer find the best layout for your class.
Every stat, every level - generated
The exact numbers under the guide. Pick a tier, type and how many boosts a stat carries, and read off what that stat is worth at a min and a max roll, level by level. This is the same math the game runs.
Each cell is the stat's value at a min roll (left) and a max roll (right). PD/MD = Physical / Magic Damage, CD = Critical Damage, CH = Critical Hit, MH% / MH = Max Health % and flat, LT = Light. Rows shaded are milestone levels.
Why it's worth the grind
A perfected gem set is most of your Power Rank
Perfect rolls, max level and full focuses stack a single gem into the thousands of Power Rank - and you run a whole set of them. Nothing else on a character comes close.
Now go build one
You've got the whole system: tier for the ceiling, type and element for the flavor, two or three rolled stats, levels for Power Rank, and focuses to perfect it. Take it into the tools.