Edit, will fix for next post

This post was edited by Koston on Aug 8 2023 10:53pm

Jewels, cont...

Wanted to say a few more things about jewels and get into the jewels I currently have

First, I believe I have ~5 really solid high-end LLD melee jewels at this time that I have plans to socket into stuff. I have a minimum of 5 sockets that I need jewels for: 2 for my armor, 2 for my helm, and 1 for my shield. It's possible I need more than 5 for other items, like different helm swaps and, potentially, an armor swap (more on that later). Tbh, I'm a little unclear on how many higher-end jewels I have currently, so writing these blog posts will help me work through that

A note on "hoarding" : I was told by a nice LLD dude that some people said "hoarding" the good LLD melee jewels is kind of frowned upon. I think hoarding items is frowned upon in every D2r pvp community (we deal with it to an extreme degree in HLD gm melee too). But when I first started LLD, one of the very very very first things I was told was that: I would get items that I really wanted after many months of looking and that I should probably think very hard about selling them, even if I wasn't currently using em. When I asked why and that it seemed silly to not sell stuff Im not using, they basically reiterated a much briefer version of my pt #1 above -- good LLD items are too scarce to give up, and good LLD jewels are even scarcer. The advice was basically that if I didn't use my lld jewels currently, selling them would put me in a situation where I would have to assume the possibility of never getting it back, and potentially never getting anything even similar back (at least for several months), which might put me in an annoying predicament. This obviously didn't sound awesome to me so I somewhat took this advice to heart and have not been willing to resell any of my higher-end jewels, even when asked by nice dudes and have been really tempted to sell/give to them just because they're very nice. That being said, I do have some very nice LLD melee jewels that I'm willing to sell very cheap or give away to new LLD melee guys (more on that later), but will definitely hang onto my ~5 or so very high-end jewels that I definitely plan to socket in stuff. Also, I want to add that my small "cache" of lld melee jewels is absolutely nothing to the true hoarding I've seen amongst the HLD melee community.... I think the hoarding there might be much worse lol

Although I posted my LLD melee jewel ISO a couple of posts back, I wanna clarify what the main perfect stats I'm looking for are in terms of the flat damage mods (which are basically +minimum and +maximum damage):

8-9 damage is perfect with two other mods (ex: 8-9 damage/60ar/9dex)
+18 maximum damage is perfect with two other mods (ex: 18max/60ar/9dex)
+12 minimum damage is perfect with two other mods (ex: 12min/60ar/9dex)
12-18 damage is perfect (cannot have any additional mods, perfect double min and max rolls)
8-18 damage is perfect with one other mod (ex: 8-18 damage/9dex)

When I first started lld, I was much less annoying about finding (near) perfect jewels and started to buy a few that would be consider "good" and probably bordering on "very good," and some that would be considered "very good" but are too many stats away for me to socket it in my current gear, picture here:



I haven't bought a jewel like this in months now since I have sort of set my sights on perfect or near perfect jewels only, but this is what I have from the beginning

Viper Talisman is missing 20 defense and 1 minimum damage (would have used if only missing 1 of those, but not both)
Death Whorl is missing 17 AR, 1 minimum damage, and 1 strength (just missing too much here)
Havoc Eye is missing 2 minimum damage, 2 defense, and 1 dexterity (this is pretty close, would have used it if it was 7-9 damage at least)
Rune Heart is missing 2 minimum damage and 16 AR (this is pretty close, would have used it if it was 7-9 damage at least)
Raven Talisman is missing 1 maximum damage and 25 defense (just missing too much defense here)
Grim Scarab is missing 1 minimum damage, 1 maximum damage, and 6 AR (missing too much damage, would have used it if it was 7-9 or 7-8 damage at least)
Stone Scarab is missing 2 maximum damage, 3 AR, and 3 defense (this is very, very close and I'm still considering using it)
Bitter Scarab is missing 3 maximum damage, 1 strength, and 1 dexterity (needs at least 17 maximum damage)
Doom Gyre is missing 1 maximum damage and 20 defense (this is pretty damn close too, if it had 30+ defense I would have used it)
Plague Eye is missing 1 minimum damage, 2 maximum damage, and 11 AR (just missing too much damage here)
Bitter Whorl is missing 1 maximum damage and 4 AR (this is pretty damn close too, but I ended up getting a better one so this one wouldn't be needed)

These are the jewels that I would consider giving for free to new LLD melee guys or potentially selling for a cheap price (depending on the jewel). Alternative I might just make a d2Jsp ft thread for em and let people bid normally, haven't really figured it out yet

Last of jewels...

Haven't posted here in a few days, figured I may as well finish it by posting the few higher-end jewels I do have that I plan on socketing in some of my items come ladder reset. Here are the jewel types I wanted to socket into each item type (my ideal goals):

Helm: 2x min/max damage with strength and dexterity (hypothetical perfects: 8-9 damage/6str/9dex, 18max/6str/9dex, 12min/6str/9dex)
Armor: 2x min/max damage with attack rating and defense (hypothetical perfects: 8-9 damage/60ar/40def, 18max/60ar/40def, 12min/60ar/40def)
Shield: 2x min/max damage with dexterity OR strength (hypothetical perfect: 8-18 damage/9dex, 8-18 damage/6str)

So, here are the jewels I have that I consider higher end that will eventually go into stuff (colored circle denotes color of jewel)



(So, this actually made me realize I probably have more than enough jewels for my stuff, so this was a good exercise for me. Interestingly, I was also able to get two identical jewels, Shadow Gyre and and Shadow Talisman, which have the same exact stats coincidentally.)


Beast Gyre and Ghoul Gyre will more than likely go into my 2soc grim shield.
Raven Eye and Doom Gyre will more than likely go into my 2soc Ornate.

For these two items, I'm pretty sure this is what I would like to do and it also allows me to color match the jewels in each.

I'm a little iffy on the helm as I can't color match with what I have. I no longer need strength on any jewels in my helm I realized, it would be a waste as I only need 5 strength after IK items to reach my strength requirement for my Ornate. The Ghoul Gyre jewel in my shield will take care of this.

There's a 9max/58ar/37def/8dex jewel on the market that now actually might be the last piece of the puzzle for me. If it were blue, that would be awesome as it would match Dread Heart and that would basically take care of all my jewels. Even if it weren't blue, I'm pretty sure I would use it with Dread Heart anyway and just call it a day because I feel like I'm at the end of my LLD journey. I think I will just buy it and call it quits on buying LLD jewels for now since this has been such a prolonged thing.

I'll post again maybe tomorrow about some -15 req jewels I have (excellent for a barb wearing an Ornate going for the low strength version of this build) and the #1 top ornate I sold to my buddy

Edit: I decided to buy the jewel right after I posted it, hoping to fuck it was blue. And...



Absolutely insane stroke of luck here (I bought it without knowing color first), I can now socket all of my items with color matched jewels. Pretty sure my journey to build the #1 LLD conc has officially concluded with this last purchase.

This post was edited by Koston on Aug 16 2023 12:30am

Other jewels...

Forgot that I'd like to do another post on some jewels I plan on selling and a small mention of an item that is, in fact, not mine (an eth rep Ornate). On another note, several ppl in the past day or so told me they found this blog and said some kind words, like it motivated them to perhaps explore making an LLD char (barbs, mainly). Many asked questions about LLD concs which I am happy to answer. Also, I am keenly aware this blog is nerdy as fuck - I really don't care, I did this for my own purposes to document a journey in the Diablo franchise that I've never done before (LLD), and to try to encourage others to do the same, which seems like it's working. The whole purpose of this blog is to showcase this LLD conc as a project that has, yes, taken an extended period of time but has been really rewarding and satisfying (more than my HLD char, in many ways and for reasons stated in earlier posts here). Say what you will, I really don't care

So, I wanted to mention two other very high-end GG jewels I acquired over the course of my LLD jewel hunting journey. As stated before, there was some time where I thought I might go with a low strength conc build. This means that you need to reduce the strength requirement of your Ornate plate, which normally has a strength requirement of 160. You do this, obviously, by putting into two -15 requirement jewels into the Ornate. Ideally, you want these jewels to be quite good if your Ornate is good. For conc, this means you want probably something like this (hypothetical jewels made in Maxroll):



There are a few things you can do different, such as 12 min instead of 18 max (kind of a niche option) or 9dex instead of 60ar or 40def. You definitely do not want strength on the jewels though, as the Ornate is likely your highest strength requirement gear, so having strength on it will not significantly benefit you other than adding some damage.

With those hypothetical perfects out of the way, here are the two I was able to get:



Eagle Scarab is 100% perfect besides 5 AR
Raven Eye is 100% perfect besides 5 defense

These two are nearly 100% perfect minus 5 AR and 5 defense, respectively, which is pretty minor. Obviously, they closely resemble the two middle jewels in the Maxroll images above. So these are pretty nice for an Ornate for conc barb, it would be difficult to get much better than this.

Since I've bought those, I have decided I won't do a low strength requirement build and will reach 160 strength anyway. So I'm not sure what to do with these two jewels. Ideally, I'd like to sell them to my buddy who I just sold what I believe is the #1 eth repair Ornate on D2r at the moment:



This Ornate is fucking insane - it beats mine by a few ED (same amount of life, however), so it has the nice 1300+ defense where as mine as 1257. It cost a decent amount but I felt like its asking price was pretty commensurate with how insane it is, and the fact that it has #1 Ornate bragging rights (I really don't know of a better one, and in fact, I think mine might be second). We'll see what he decides to do with this Ornate as he is new to LLD. More to come!

Just wanted to post this neat jewel I picked up today, probably one of my favorites. Just 5 defense off 100% perfect for LLD. Honestly not even a bad HLD jewel either.

At this point, I am strictly only buying damage/ar/defense jewels of some kind. And they must be damn near close to perfect. The minimum stats I would accept are:

8-9 damage, 50-60 attack rating, 30-40 defense
18 max. damage, 50-60 attack rating, 30-40 defense
12 min. damage, 50-60 attack rating, 30-40 defense

Basically nothing else would catch my eye right now

I have only seen one of these jewels which was sold to me many, many months ago. See above jewel called Raven Eye, which is amazing: 18 max. damage, 54 attack rating, 40 defense.

Surprisingly, the 2nd one I have ever seen on d2r appeared yesterday and I bought it today:



It is 4 ar and 5 def off perfect, which is honestly more than I can ask for, and it happened to match my other two dmg/ar/def jewels also. Couldn't have really asked for more here