I would really love to hear the perspective of elder players when it comes to the best use(s) of gems, both overall and in my specific case. Is there a generally agreed upon best usage? Like Celestial Armor, then Gem Chests, and nothing else?
And for me specifically, here’s my quick background: I have 675 gems and I’m not sure what to spend them on. I’m currently level 76, have the Assassin Armor, and my legendaries are Shadow Dragon & Crimson Bat. I’m, ashamedly, running a goblin team (though I don’t have Hobgoblin). I get to PvP Rank 1 weekly but otherwise play pretty casually (e.g., I have 6 kingdoms at level 5, the rest at level 4, and I still have 5.5 kingdoms to do the quest lines for), and I’ve dropped enough money to get to VIP 2 (Starter Pack plus Daily Gems) but don’t plan to spend more for now.
Do I:
Spend it all on 50 Event Chests. Originally I was going to wait until the Event Chest had some very desirable Ultra Rares in it since the limited pool of troops seems to make it the best way to get Mythics. Then I saw the Sheggra in there and thought maybe now is the time since she seems like a game-changer. (I could also be patient and wait until more attractive Ultra Rares appear, which is where I’m leaning currently.)
Buy the Celestial or Dragon Armor (and spend the remaining on Gem Chests or something else). Since I already have the Assassin Armor I’m not sure the added value is there, but this seems like the best value if committed for the long haul. Originally I would’ve assumed Celestial was a no-brainer, but now I’m not so sure with the sudden need for Gold. However, I’m still relatively early on so there are basically no troops I have at max level. Souls would certainly be more beneficial in the short run, and Gold is the easiest resource to come by.
Spend it all on Gem Chests. Just go for the spray and pray and hope for the best, particularly b/c my collection isn’t that far along and there are a number of “core” troops I don’t have (main ones are Aziris, Green Slime, Herdmaster, and Hobgoblin) and some I could use more copies of for deck building, not to mention ascending (e.g., Soothsayer & Boar Rider).
The first thing I would buy is the Dragon Armor. The extra gold is worth it, tenfold!
With gold you buy gold chest, which contain: valor, gems and troops. The extra troops can be transformed to souls.
Then, I would then buy a few event chest until you get Sheggra.
Once I had it, I would wait for next week event chest and get that legendary.
Armor is always the best thing to put gems towards until you have both of the 500 gem armors. Currently, and pretty much always in this game’s history, Dragon Armor is much better.
Thanks for the feedback @MrSammy and @Tacet. A few follow-up questions:
Why is it that Dragon armor is considered much better than Celestial? Isn’t a Soul worth 20x a Gold (based on the Gems conversions)? Is it just b/c the Gold Chests are so generous whereas you grind for Souls much less easily/regularly? And why would you want both sets before anything else given that you can only equip one at a time? Seems like a very inefficient use of 500 gems unless you swap between them routinely for some reason?
All soul gains in this game that Celestial armor effects have been reduced recently while gold has remained high.
Getting level 10 kingdoms is more important than getting level 15+ troops.
Guild contributions. Don’t buy gold keys, but use the gold for guild glory keys and gems.
50% gold > 50% souls
The reason for both is to farm challenges and Arena with Celestial. There are still instances whem Celestial is much better, like those, but top guilds usually require Dragon Armor for contributions.
The dragon armor and celestial armor are on par, in my opinion.
However, at your level, you probably want gold more than you want souls…
Gold is required everywhere: PVP cost, leveling your kingdom, paying your guild tuition, buying extra chests,…
Eventually, you will want to harvest souls, and you’ll be glad to have the celestial armor.
You’ll want your troops to be at level 20… but eventually, you’ll top all your troops and want more gold.
Dragon Armor is superior in almost every way - but for quest lines and challenges, which have basically no gold, Celestial is excellent.
For standard fare gameplay - invades and so forth - your armor will significantly multiply the gold reward. The thing is that you have to pay the entry fee of half the base reward. So if you’re paying 100 and getting 200, you net 100 gold. If you multiply it by 1.5 (Celestial), you pay 100 and gain 300, which is a net of 200 - twice that of no armor. However with Dragon Armor’s 2x multiplier, you pay 100 and gain 400, netting you 300 - which is 3x the net earnings of a battle with no armor.
By comparison, the souls will only ever be increased by the multiplier, since there isn’t an entry fee. 4 becomes either 6 or 8. Even with a dedicated, heavy-duty soul-farming team, if you’re using it in PVP then Dragon Armor will be the better option.
Not counting the fact that souls are only usable for leveling troops, whereas gold can be used for quite a few things - some of which end up generating souls anyhow.
Back in time I bought the 50 gem armor for +50% souls, then the 250 gem Pirate (75% gold, ??%xp).
Bought celestial much much later sitting on ton of gems when arena rewards were good and I played a fair deal. And dragon armor only when the 1.07 patch hit and the ton of gold needed for kingdom upgrades while gems were sitting there unused.
For best investment you need to estimate your play patterns and gains, also what resources you need really fast. For me the cheaper armor served well enough.
For chests i’d probably wait a little, we were complaining about legendary drop rate, devs may tweak it a bit up, and it may count. But at your level you probably find most of its drop useful. I’m not sure about event chests, the info is vague at best, the few I opened dropped utter crap only. And at high price.
So my suggestion is to decide one 250 or 500g armor then 50-packs of gem chests, nothing else.
Makes sense on why Dragon is optimal, and why you’d want both (I wasn’t thinking about Soul farming with Challenges since that seems so far off).
I also think it makes sense to get Dragon, spend the rest on event/gem chests, and then bank all my future gems until I one day need Celestial (and I can toss the devs a few more bucks to close the gap, if need be). Since grinding Challenges is a ways off, I think I’d end up sitting on Celestial for a while whereas troops from chests would be useful immediately.
I think the only remaining question is Gem or Event chests. It seems like the added cost of the Event chests is offset by the fact that your seeking Sheggra vs one of 30ish legendaries, many of which are kinda useless. Still, a part of me feels like I should wait until I see hobgoblin in the event chest, even if I could use more troops now, and hope it also has a good legendary.
FYI, I ended up getting Dragon armor + 10 gem chests so I can have a start toward Celestial. Ended up dropping Herdmaster and Hobgoblin, precisely the 2 non-legendaries I wanted!