Cost of Gems

[Archon_Wing]

I only buy gems for the convenience-- don't really want to collect all those mats

Are you kidding me? I have over 500 Tomes of Secrets, and I have about half a dozen Radiant Square gems. Tomes fall like rain. The biggest problem I have is running out of Tomes of Jewelcrafting. Even the gems fall fairly often, to the point that gold becomes the only limiter for crafting gems.

Really? I have a stack of 30 Flawless square Amethysts and no designs to get the best ones. I could get more by cubing up the lesser ones but I can't be bothered to get Tomes of Jewelcrafting. Those are too expensive on the AH, and farming hell is a waste of time. I did combine a few to get Perfect Star things to put in gear.

For example, I bought the Star Amethyst to put into my weapon for 300 life on hit. It costs 500ish k to make. It costs ~600k to buy. I could run around grabbing 50 more flawless squares , but I just couldn't be bothered especially considering designs and leveling the jeweler more. I don't really planning to get any more star gems since the stat boosts from most of them is too marginal to justify gemming my current gear. These days I'm pissing away 100-200k to equip my enchantress and real upgrades to my gear will cost millions, so 100k extra markup for gems I'll rarely need to use saves me time. I'd rather get upgrades ready now to advance to better places and now that I can comfortably do Act 1/2 with MF and offensive mantras I think that getting the star gem right then was more important.