Gems Category: general information
Gems
Gems are an extra source of power for your crabs. In terms of game lore, we presume them to be the "crystals" that have the radiation power that makes your crabs stronger and mutated into the beasts they are. You can see your number of gems by viewing the Gems panel from your game menu.

Gem Bonuses

  • Every gem you collect will add a base 10% damage bonus to any damage of that colour.
  • In the Gene Tree are Gem Crystallization genes that further increase this bonus by 2% per gene up to an extra 10% per gem bonus.
  • In the Gene Lab are Gem Specialization upgrades that further increase this bonus by 1% per upgrade level, with no maximum.
  • The monthly Jade Scarab Event may have Gem Power runes that further increase this bonus by 2% per rune.
Gem Sets
  • When you get at least one of every gem in a colour, you complete a coloured Set.
  • When you get at least one of all gems, you complete a Full Set.
  • Each coloured set provides a 5x multiplier for that gem colour's bonus.
  • Each Full Set provides an additional 5x multiplier for ALL gem colour bonuses.
  • It is a common misconception among beginners that Full Set 5x is multiplied to the single set 5x for 25x. This is not true - they are added together. 5x + 5x = 10x.

Gem Sources

  • The daily boss / wildebeast / can give you 4 gems per week (2 each on day 4 and day 7 of his rewards).
  • Tournaments give gem rewards of various quantities depending where you place in the tournament. Tournaments happen on Wednesday and Saturday starting at midnight GMT.
  • Watching 100 advertisements will earn you a gem. Look under your Achievements to collect it. If you are not getting ads and you think you should be, reset your game.
  • Flitter (the blue butterfly) has a 5% chance of dropping you a gem if you have the Treasure Butterfly gene. Flitter can appear during any butterfly wave, but once he appears you will not see him again for at least 10 minutes. Having both butterfly mutations (Viridian Pincers and Red Devil Walkers) will maximize your chances to see Flitter.
  • Completing the Rune Board each month for the Jade Scarab event will reward you with several gems.
  • Lastly there are special events that happen around holidays that can reward you not only several gems but a set of your "lowest quantity" gems which will help a lot towards filling out full sets.

Gem Assignment

  • Gems are selected randomly.
  • Gems are selected from the entire field of 30 gems, not just within a specific colour.
  • There is a cap on the number of any single gem that you can have. This is the game not being sadistic and allowing infinite growth of one gem and never ever filling up your sets.
  • The cap per gem is equal to your (Next Full Set) times 3. Meaning if you have 0 full sets, your stack cap is 3. For 1 full set, the cap is 6, etc.
  • Only Full Sets matter when calculating your gem cap.
  • Having capped stacks increases the probability that the other gems will be selected. With none at cap you can presume each gem in the field has a 1/30 chance of being received. Cap one stack and each gem then has a chance of 1/29. Two full stacks = 1/28, and so forth. There's a little more to it than that, but for all intents and purposes you can go by this presumption.
  • The worst case in the world (fill 29 stacks) puts the next gem received at a 100% chance of appearing where you really, really want it to appear.
  • Flitter (the blue butterfly) has a 5% chance of dropping you a gem if you have the Treasure Butterfly gene. This is 1/20 chance of getting "a" gem.
  • That means every Flitter you see, you have a 1/600 chance of getting any ONE SPECIFIC gem in your gem list. This drops by 20 for each full stack you have, so one filled stack drops to 1/580 for each specific gem.
  • Knowing all of the above, we can say with certainty by which point in your gem life you are GUARANTEED to get that next full set. So if you're at 87 gems but still haven't completed your first full set, take heart. The next gem will make your day.
  • For a bit of light reading, there's a fan fiction of all this. Flitter's Boxes
  • There is a Worksheet available to play with your gem probabilities and explore a little What If to see how gems impact your game.
To Full SetWorst Case SetsPerfect WorldGuaranteedAvg
10/3/3308880
21/6/660176130
32/9/990264173
43/12/12120352227
54/15/15150440276
65/18/18180528322
76/21/21210616366
87/24/24240704409
98/27/27270792452
109/30/30300880493
NOTE: "Worst Case Sets" is just an example - 0/3/3 could be 3/0/3 and 3/3/0 also. Just demonstrating that one could be the lowest while the other two sets could be completely maxed out before you advance.

For the "Average" we ran several million simulations and took the average number of gems to reach that full set.

Gene Lab Abilities

  • 1.5.0 Brought the Gene Lab which contains two abilities to shift your gems around some.
  • Gem Restructuring will let you exchange one of your highest-quantity gems for another random gem for the cost of 5 Gene Points.
  • Gem Refining will let you exchange one of your highest-quantity gems for one of your lowest-quantity gems for the cost of 30 Gene Points.