Gem

Gems are high-risk, high-profit commodities intended for traders and found on all oceans except the Crimson and Jade oceans. There is one type of gem per archipelago, where the gems may be sold for profit, and only one island in that archipelago will purchase gems. Event gems are the exception to this, but are rarely seen.

Obtaining Gems
Gems are foraged from uncolonized islands, pillaged from brigands and other players, and purchased from markets throughout the ocean. Foraged gems are found five at a time, though gems have been pillaged 1–30 at a time. Foraged and pillaged gems are rare.

Market gems are spawned randomly at islands with a palace and islands buying gems outside their respective archipelago (see Gem Price Guide below for details). These gems appear for sale at the commodities market in lots of various sizes. Only one type of gem will spawn per day (Pirate Time), and the daily gem types rotate in alphabetical order (this restriction does not apply to foraged gems).

Initially when gems spawn, they will have a price as high as 1,000 PoE, with that price declining through the day to as low as 100 PoE -- see Gem Price guide below for the lowest price each may reach based on the spawning island. The gems may be purchased at any time when available, and a new lot of gems of that type will not spawn until the existing gems have been purchased. Obviously waiting longer for the price to decline results in a larger profit, but judgment must be exercised as to at what price you're willing to purchase gems, as waiting for the price to decline to 100 PoE may result in a lost opportunity.

Foraged gems follow the same archipelago restriction as market gems: you will never forage gems to be sold in the same archipelago in which you are foraging. For example, if you are foraging on an island in the on Meridian, you will never forage Jasper gems.

Trading Gems
Traders may buy the gems and sail them to the purchasing island, but there are risks. If you abandon your ship for over fifteen minutes with gems in the hold, the gems are stolen by mysterious forces, never to be seen again. If you have 25 gems or more aboard, gem thieves will come aboard and take off with some of them. The sea has its risks as well, for gems are stolen at twice the rate of other contents when you lose at sea battle.

Gems may not be sold to shoppes.

Event Gems
Gems without home archipelagos are sometimes used for special event purposes. Event gems can rarely be sold after the conclusion of the event, and they disappear from the hold like any other.
 * For the Endurance Scavenger Hunt, Tedv bought amethysts from players.
 * Jasper gems were used to track racers during a race around Midnight.
 * A jade gem was used to claim a special prize in a Christmastime event on Midnight.

Gem Price Guide
These tables show the lowest expected sale prices for the various gems at each ocean's islands' marketplaces.

Historical Notes
The introduction of the foraging puzzle with meant that gems became a little more challenging to obtain. This release also brought with it gem thieves, in an attempt to prevent pirates from having too many gems aboard a single ship. The buy prices for gems were adjusted to start off high and gradually decrease.

Gems were added to the Cobalt and Viridian oceans in bugfix, and to Sage shortly afterwards the next day. Originally, markets on "capital islands" (named after Greek letters, on Midnight) would purchase gems. On newer oceans, without capital islands and with less consistent naming schemes, purchasing islands were chosen more or less centrally located, with an easy to remember name. On Viridian and Cobalt, the type and color of the gem match with the island and archipelago names, i.e olive and jade are shades of green; charcoal, onyx and jet all black; and crimson, garnet and jasper are red.

Gems were made a forageable commodity with.

Gems were introduced to the game with.

Certain gems not available on a particular ocean have occasionally been used as special event commodities. Because of this, it is possible (but very rare) to win an unusable gem from brigands.

Note also that on the Midnight Ocean, amethyst gems can still be sold to the market, for 100 PoE per unit, up to a maximum of 10 units. Although this is not the intended behavior, those that pillage an amethyst gem on Midnight can still sell them.

There once was an opal in the hold of Hercuweaves on, but it had to be removed due to a bug.