Guides/Trading Post
The gem store: what is worth buying and what is not
Gems are bought with money and exchanged for gold. What in the store changes how the game feels, the order to buy it in, and why no purchase makes you stronger in combat.
On this page
Gems are the premium currency. They are bought with money (the standard bundles start around 400 gems for $5) or exchanged for gold inside the game.
So the game itself can pay for them. The rate floats, and the current one is always visible on the exchange page.
What is sold
Five sections:
Style: armour and weapon skins, outfits, glider and mount skins, emotes.
Utility: consumables, character services such as name, appearance and race changes, boosters, gathering tools.
Toys: miniatures, instruments, novelties.
Upgrades: account improvements, slots, tabs, character slots.
History: your purchases.
🔴 There is no combat advantage here
This is a deliberate position and the game holds to it: the store sells no weapons, no armour, no buffs that make you stronger.
Everything on offer is either appearance or convenience. The best gear in the game is earned by playing (what a legendary is).
So “is this pay-to-win” has a clean answer: no. “Is this pay-to-skip-annoyance” has a different one: yes, and that is what people pay for.
The order to buy in
If you have some gems and no idea where to start, this is the order players themselves recommend.
1. Shared Inventory Slots
700 gems for one, 1,890 for three, 2,800 for five.
What they are: an inventory slot visible to every character on the account at once. Put an item there and everyone has it.
The maximum is 32: 26 purchased, plus 6 that arrive free with the expansions, one each.
What goes in them: the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic, unlimited gathering tools, lounge passes, travel tomes. Everything you would otherwise shuttle between characters through the bank.
This is the purchase after which the game feels different.
2. Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic
An unlimited salvage kit at 3 copper a use. It lives in a shared slot and works for years.
3. Bag slots and bank tabs
Space runs out constantly in this game: materials, skins, consumables, a second set of gear for a second build. More inventory registers more than any skin.
4. Character slots
Worth it once you want to play several classes. Remember that hero points are gathered again on each new character.
5. Unlimited gathering tools
Expensive, and permanent: you stop buying picks and axes forever. The payback is slow and the irritation ends immediately.
What to skip
Black Lion Keys. Keys to chests with random contents. The maths works against you exactly as it does in the Mystic Forge, except with money. Keys drop free from the story now and then, and those are enough.
Experience boosters. Levelling here is quick without them (how to speed it up). Spending gems to skip the part of the game you paid for is a strange trade.
Home instance nodes as a first purchase. They take years to repay (the arithmetic).
About the gold-to-gem exchange
The rate is set by player demand and moves daily. The two directions carry different numbers, so converting back and forth immediately always loses.
The practical takeaway: if you plan a purchase, watch the rate here for a few days. On a large sum, the gap between a good day and a bad one is visible.