Obtaining the required amount of Diablo Immortal’s legendary gems, and “awakening” your gear to create one of the best Diablo Immortal builds, could cost you around $540,000 in microtransactions, claims one player, who has shared their findings via Twitter and Reddit.
Andrew Dice, who uses the Twitter handle @SpaceDrakeCF, posted a thread claiming that in addition to the potential cost of upgrading five legendary gems to level ten, “awakening” these gems – which you do by purchasing a material called a dawning echo, and speaking to Vic the master jeweller in Westmarch – creates six more gem slots attached to each legendary gem, which then themselves have to be upgraded before your character is truly at max strength.
In order to obtain legendary gems, players have to complete exclusive quests called elden rifts. At the end of these quests, legendary gems are awarded with varying probabilities – Reddit user BullHorn7 previously speculated that the chances of getting a ready-made, fully upgraded five star legendary gem, at the end of an elden rift, is less than 1%. Players can increase their chances of receiving these gems, however, by using items called legendary crests prior to entering the elden rift. There are various ways to obtain these crests, but the most straightforward is to purchase them using real money. For a better chance of receiving a fully-upgraded legendary gem, you can equip ten legendary crests before an elden rift. Each crest costs $2.50, for a total of $25 per rift – if you want the best chance of one of those top legendary gems.
So, you spend $25 per rift, and that gives you an under 1% chance of scoring a fully upgraded legendary gem. Using these calculations, it was previously speculated that obtaining a full deck of five maxed-out legendary gems would eventually cost around $100,000.
But with the awakening mechanic, which adds six more upgradable gems to each of your legendaries, Dice speculates that this amount would be greatly multiplied. Based on the percentages viewable in-game, they estimate that with average luck, one would need to spend between $300,000 and $600,000 before obtaining six legendary gems. Dice links to a Reddit post, by user ShiftYourCarcass, which attempts to break the numbers down further.
“The figure was initially thought to be around $100,000 due to the cost of needing six 5/5 star legendary gems,” they write, “which would be around $16,660 per 5/5 star gem with average luck.
“When you upgrade a 5/5 star gem to level 10, that is attached to a piece of gear above rank 6, that 5/5 star gem would undergo a process called “awakening”. When a 5/5 star gem awakens, it gains an additional five slots around it, which allows an additional five legendary gems to be slotted into it, which have to be individually upgraded again to rank 10. If you’re to be lucky and average around $15,000 per 5/5 star gem, for 36 gems, that alone would tally up to $540,000.”
It is notable that many of the figures involved in players’ calculations of the cost of Diablo Immortal are derived from an online rift simulator, which uses percentages and statistics from within the game itself to recreate the likelihood of receiving items like legendary gems without having to play or pay for Diablo Immortal.
Players were previously aware of Diablo Immortal’s awakening mechanic, but this represents the first time that someone has attempted to place a dollar value on potentially pushing your character all the way to max strength. Remember, buying legendary crests and entering an elden rift does not guarantee that you will receive a fully-upgraded legendary gem – one Diablo Immortal player, Quin69, spent $15,000 running rifts before receiving one legendary gem, which he promptly destroyed before uninstalling the game. Since rifts do not guarantee maxed-out legendary gems, and since the probability of getting them is only increased through legendary crests, there is the possibility that a player could continuously make in-game purchases and grind Diablo Immortal without ever getting the desired reward.
But if you want to see if you can beat the odds, you can try the online rift simulator for free. Either that, or head into Diablo Immortal, and see how long it takes before you get one of these coveted legendary gems.