Can we all agree on that the Daemonic Portal gem is the most useless, annoying, unnecessary special gem in the game so far?
Like really who thought this was a good idea to have even more luck based stuff in the game that makes fights even longer then needed? All that while a summoning glitch is still not fixed either. So the timing couldn’t be worse either.
Anyway if more see this as the most stupid special gem or got another contender feel free to reply with your thoughts.
I also want to throw in Mana Potions which extend a battle to an eternity, unless you have access to Freeze.
Entangle Gems would like a word. Used against a full team with no immunities, they do functionally nothing 75% of the time!
If there was not the bug that spawning will buff the AI than it wouldn’t even be close to the most annoying Mana Potions.
Since the cheating AI always try to kill you with skull matches raining in from outside the board on its turns Entangle gems are much more useful than other AI friendly gems.
Entangle gems may be useless but at least it doesn’t make battles way longer then needed or can turn the tide in favor of opponent. It’s not as annoying as the Daemonic Portal gems. They can even be matched for mana and to get rid of them.
Freeze doesn’t help that much since they also prolong the turns of the player way to much. Even after the enemy is already fully dead they go on forever.
most useless: Ghost Gems. as useless as Booty Gems, but supported with terrible troops with low % chance to even make one with traits. Bomb Gems are probably second, but more likely to be less useless at lower level ranges with gambling destroy spell effects…
most annoying: Mana Potions. strong effect, but needs a fast forward button.
most unnecessary: Lycanthropy Gems. Does nothing to improve the game quality of Gems of War, but makes it more annoying to play regardless of which team/troop gets transformed. Daemonic Portal Gems are a close second, only saved by not always being activated every match…
Imagine if Daemonic Portal gems could be matched with red gems…
I think that would get closer to beating lycanthropy gems. The horrors of the wolf campaign with the moon flask till haunt me to this day. It actually surprised me that they didn’t throw those gems in the game for the week of Halloween.
I’m glad they didn’t.
I don’t mind the Portal gems outside of PvP.
They’re annoying in Frenzy because of the bug that gives enemies giant stat buffs when they summon, but that’s a different issue.
Outside of PvP, they help the player more than the AI, since they summon level 1 troops. The player gets a lot of stats from kingdom and renown bonuses. The AI troops come in with such low stats that a light breeze can kill them.
The only one that I really loathe is the Lycanthropy Gems.
A special gem that summons level 1 troop can be of great use in PvE environment, especially in modes where you don’t have access to other summon spells/effects, such as pure faction delve.
For example, before arrival of daemon portal gem, I could not pass Hell Gate’s pure faction delve at level 350 (with hoard level 100 and kingdom level 17) for almost a year. Dozens of failed runs had convinced me pure Hell Gate delve was impossible (with hoard level 100, at least). Now, just one week after portal gem’s introduction, I’ve already passed pf run at level 450 and will start attempt level 500 tomorrow.
Played arena today (cus it’s arena weekend and one round through gets a free key, plus I need pets and arena offers sometimes include them), and was surprised to see summon gems appear. Annoyingly, so did doomskulls, making them a big danger, due to all troops being weak anyway. Meant I had to play a little smarter, but I did lose a troop and use them to summon a new one. Wasn’t needed, but it did make me realise that modes like arena actually make a lot of the useless hero gems a lot more useful or interesting. That level 1 summon can be a lot more impactful when you’re playing with low level troops yourself.
Beyond that, many of the gems are a waste of time, or actively annoying to see in battles.
I played arena this weekend for giggles, and the enemy summoned Wrath. Needless to say, a level 1 legendary troop can have quite an impact, and I barely survived.
It’s probably a glitch that troops higher than epic can be summoned in arena, but I will wait for a developer to confirm it.
How long will you wait? 
Maybe I will wait for a response in 2030, when this game is only being played by people paid by the developers, AI, and other botting software…
LOOK AT ALL OF THESE NUMBERS! THIS GAME IS SO SUCCESSFUL!
Why is there no one in the forums?
Once upon a time, arena received a rework. In that rework, the devs put in a feature that allowed them to create a weekend Arena event where players may have a preset Troop. In the one time we saw the feature used, we got a Legendary Imp.
It’s amazing. The Arena Weekend Event doesn’t have to be bad. It could be something people played, if the dev team took any effort to adjust it.
Instead they spent money on dev time to change it … then never followed up to make sure any remaining pain points were fixed.
You know what’s even better? It feels like yesterday since we got the Arena Rework.
It was actually the 5.2 update back in 2020. 5.2 Update – Gems of War
It’s just a nice reminder of what’s been added to Gems of War and how much has been accomplished in 4 years . . .
Thank you for the arena history lesson, Keeper of Knowledge.
I knew that they did touch up on arena, but then it was forgotten as the game kept getting new content and updates. It is a game mode that is similar to guild wars because team compositions and decisions make much more of an impact. It’s meant to be difficult so that you learn how to actually play the game.
We have all just been empowering our Hero, Stellarix, and other powerful troops, not really caring about what it was like to construct weak teams or worry about gem matches. It’s a shame because I learned valuable lessons from arena, but the rewards are horribly outdated and the troop selection needs to be revised along with other things.
I just don’t know how to reach out to the devs anymore. There is a lot of negativity on the forums maybe because we know that hardly any of our feedback gets considered. Yes, they did give us the option to get guaranteed dragons from the dragon egg roulette, but that took about 2 YEARS ever since diamantina was released.
We have been waiting for arena and treasure hunt reworks for how long? I will probably be an old man, sitting on my porch saying, "By golly they finally gosh darn done it! Those foggies gave us the skippy! Me can durn now do the thingin’ I was sayin.'"
have you forgotten about lycanthropy?
Samsies!
I just finished Werewoods PF 500 and it was so much easier with the Daemonic Portal with the following as my team going into the final battle. Kerberos was hungry!! Hehe.
Next targets are Hell Gate, Fang Moor and Wyrmrun. Going to knock out as many PF 500 as I can during this Campaign!
Oh nice! I guess you can use those new gems to your advantage if you can survive long enough to get powerful daemons on your side.
I remember having nightmares for weeks trying to get Lyrasza’s Lair done. You can try exploding doom skulls with chaos hound, exploding the board with lyrasza, or destroying rows with the pandazerker to open up those portals.
If you could get a powerful summon like the Scourge of Honor, it would be pretty epic.
