The gem store: what is worth buying and what is not

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.

Wanting the numbers instead of the verdict? We counted every item in the store and priced the lot in gold: what the gem store actually costs.

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.

There is no bulk discount, and that is worth knowing.

The gem bundles look like every other in-game currency shop, where the big pack is supposed to be the smart buy. Run the arithmetic and something unusual falls out.

• 400 gems for $5
• 800 gems for $10
• 1,600 gems for $20
• 2,800 gems for $35
• 4,000 gems for $50
• 8,000 gems for $100

Every one of those is exactly 80 gems per dollar. The euro prices match one for one. There is no volume bonus anywhere on the ladder, which means the $100 pack buys you nothing that six $20 packs would not, beyond fewer clicks.

Sterling is the one place the pattern bends: £3.95 for the smallest pack works out slightly better than the £85 for the largest, so the cheap option is also the efficient one.

The practical takeaway is short. Buy the smallest bundle that covers what you came for. Nothing is waiting further up the ladder.

The gems you never paid for

The part of this store that matters most to a long-term player has no price tag in dollars at all.

Gold converts to gems, at a rate the game sets and that moves with what everyone else is doing (the current rate). Which means the entire utility half of this store, the bank tabs and the character slots and the unlimited tools, is reachable by somebody who has never given ArenaNet a cent.

It takes longer. It is also the reason people who have played for a decade without spending money still own the quality-of-life items, while the cosmetics they skipped are the ones they skipped on purpose.

That split says something about how the store is built. The things that make the game smoother are cheap and permanent and buyable with playtime. The things that make your character look extraordinary are the ones ArenaNet would like your money for. There is an honesty in that arrangement, and it is worth noticing how many games get it the other way round.