Cut gems. Socket gear. Bend the rules.
Jewelcrafting adds eight colours of gemstone to Valheim. You mine raw formations, cut them into Simple, Advanced and Perfect gems, and socket them into weapons, armour, tools and jewelry. Each gem grants a different effect depending on the slot it sits in.
This wiki also covers the EpicJewels add-on, which adds six more gem colours. Its content is tagged and can be hidden.
All numbers on this page are the mod's default values. Servers can change almost everything through the config file and the YAML files.
Gemstones
Every colour exists as a raw formation, an uncut gemstone, a shard, and three cut tiers. Higher tiers give stronger effects.
Where formations spawn
Gemstone formations appear in groups of 2–6 across every biome. Each biome strongly favours one colour (43% weight) and spawns the others rarely (1%). Formations have 20 HP, drop one uncut gemstone, and respawn after 100 in-game days. 3% are giant formations that are scaled up and drop 2–10 gems.
Special gems
Cutting gems
Gems are cut at the Gemcutters Table. Every attempt can fail. A failed cut destroys the gem and gives you a shard of the same colour.
Skill bonus is multiplicative by default: chance × (1 + skill/100 × 15%). The Careful Cutting synergy adds +2% on top. Each attempt raises your Jewelcrafting skill.
Recipes
- Simple: 1 uncut gemstone, or 5 at once (each rolls separately).
- Advanced: 1 Simple gem, or 5 at once.
- Perfect: 1 Advanced gem. Needs a level 2 Gemcutters Table.
- Bad-luck recipes never fail: 12 shards make a Simple gem, 35 shards make an Advanced gem.
Astral Gemcutter
A smelter-style station. Load uncut gemstones or Simple gems and it cuts them over time. It uses the Jewelcrafting skill of the player who loaded it. A failed cut comes out as a shard.
Vanilla Ashlands gems
At a level 4 Gemcutters Table you can craft the vanilla Bloodstone-style gems: 2 Perfect Emerald / Ruby / Sapphire + 10 Eitr make 1 green / red / blue vanilla gemstone.
Gem effects
A gem's effect depends on the slot it is socketed into. Find a colour and slot below, or browse the full list.
All effects
Boss gems
Each main boss drops one unique gem. It works in any slot and fires on a timer.
- By default (Truly Unique) the first kill of each boss in a world drops one gem. Servers can switch to a drop chance (30%, one per player) instead.
- Only one unique gem can be equipped across all your gear at a time.
- Each power announces itself with a 4-second Impending… status before activating, then repeats after a random cooldown between the listed minimum and maximum.
- Boss powers do not fire while you hold a build tool. Servers can also block them inside player bases.
- Boss gems cannot be fused with coloured gems. The Time Warp synergy shortens their cooldowns.
Synergies
Synergies count every gem you have equipped, including your weapon. Merged gems count both of their colours. Active synergies show in your inventory.
Sockets
Add sockets to equipment at the Gemcutters Table's socketing tab. Every item can hold up to 3 sockets by default.
Success chances
Uses the skill slider from Cutting gems. Sockets 4–10 only matter if the server raises the maximum.
What happens on failure
When an item breaks you recover 50% of its base crafting cost and 100% of its upgrade costs. An Orb of Misfortune blessing saves the item once. The Sturdy Spinel Ring comes with every socket already added.
Socket costs (when the server uses item costs)
Costs depend on the biome the item comes from. Each later socket costs more.
Socketing rules
- Open an item's sockets by hovering it in your inventory and pressing the interact key. You can also use the table.
- You cannot put the same gem (same colour and tier, including merged gems that contain it) twice into one item. Different tiers of the same colour are fine.
- Gems can be removed again for free by default. The server can add break chances or forbid removal.
- Hold Left Alt while hovering a socketed item to see exact effect values.
- With the Azu Extended Player Inventory mod, rings and necklaces get their own slots. Otherwise they use the utility slot. When you wear several utility-type items, their sockets are split between them.
- Item names and backgrounds are coloured by how many sockets the item has.
Merged gems
Two gems of the same tier but different colours can be fused into one merged gem, such as a Perfect Ruby-Sapphire. A merged gem gives both colours' effects in a single socket. See Fusion boxes.
Fusion boxes
Put two gems of the same tier into a fusion box and press Seal. The box fills up as you play. At 100% the fusion succeeds or both gems shatter into shards.
How progress fills
- Activity: once per minute, if you moved (more than 30 m when sailing), a random sealed box in your inventory gains its activity reward.
- Boss kills: killing a boss within 50 m adds a lump of progress to a random sealed box.
- Upgrading boxes: put two empty, unsealed Common (or Blessed) boxes into a third box of the same tier and seal it. When it finishes you get one box of the next tier up. On default settings this always succeeds (Merge Chance 100%), so nothing is lost. Only if an admin lowers that chance can it fail, and then both boxes turn into two random shards.
- Boxes drop from creatures. Chance = 1 / drop rate × (creature max HP / average HP)⅓, so tougher creatures drop more.
Boss kill progress
Jewelry
Rings and necklaces are crafted from a Perfect gem and a vanilla Chain. Necklaces need a level 3 table, rings level 2. Most can be upgraded to quality 4 for 500 Coins per level and gain +1 armor per level.
Luck (Necklace of Onyx Luck, Sulfur Ring of Luck)
- Each kill while wearing it adds one stack. Unequipping resets the stacks.
- Every stack raises the chance of each creature drop by +2%. Drops over 100% roll extra items.
- Stacks cap at 25 + your Jewelcrafting level (up to 125 stacks, +250% drop chance).
- Each stack lowers your damage by 1% (to at most −80%) and raises damage taken by 3% (to at most +300%).
- Stacks above the cap hurt you every 5 seconds. Necklace and ring keep separate stacks, and their luck adds up.
Orbs, frames & mirrors
Drag one of these onto an item (or a gem) in your inventory to use it.
With default settings, only the Orb of Misfortune drops. The Orbs of Divinity, Whimsicality, Finality, Corruption and Prophecy reroll or randomise gem power ranges. The default gem config gives every gem a fixed value per tier (a Perfect Ruby's Fire Starter is always 15%), so there is nothing to reroll and these five orbs never drop. Frames of Chance and Chaos also have a 0% creature drop rate by default and only come from Mystical Gemstone prizes.
How to make them drop. Both steps are server-side; with Lock Configuration on, only an admin can change them.
Step 1: turn on power ranges (pick one option):
- Option A, quickest: in BepInEx/config/org.bepinex.plugins.jewelcrafting.cfg, section [2 - Socket System], set Effect Power Deviation to a value from 1 to 75 (for example 20). Every non-boss gem then rolls within ±20% of its normal value. That alone makes the five orbs start dropping.
- Option B, more control: give at least one gem effect a value range in the gem effects YAML (admins can edit it in-game with the Edit Socket config YAML button in the config manager, or in a Jewelcrafting.*.yml file in BepInEx/config). Replace a fixed list with ranges, for example:
fire starter:
slot: [ weapon, elementalmagic ]
gem: red
power: [ 3-7, 8-12, 13-17 ]
With either option, Random Power Ranges (default On) makes each effect on a gem roll separately.
Step 2 (optional): tune the drop rates in section [7 - Other]:
| Item | Needs step 1 | Setting | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orb of Divinity | Yes | Divinity Orb Global Drop Chance Divinity Orb Drop Chance (dungeon chests) | 1% 5% |
| Orb of Whimsicality | Yes | Whimsical Orb Global Drop Chance Whimsical Orb Drop Rate (per Leviathan) | 1% 3 |
| Orb of Finality | Yes | Finality Orb Global Drop Chance Finality Orb Drop Multiplier (at night) Finality Orb Reroll Amount | 1% ×3 3 |
| Orb of Corruption | Yes | Corrupted Orb Global Drop Chance Corruption Orb Drop Chance (Surtlings) | 1% 66% |
| Orb of Prophecy | Yes | Prophecy Orb Global Drop Chance | 0.1% |
| Orb of Misfortune | No | Misfortune Orb Drop Chance | 0.1% |
| Frame of Chance | No | Chance Frame Drop Chance | 0% |
| Frame of Chaos | No | Chaos Frame Drop Chance | 0% |
The frames only need step 2: set their drop chance above 0% and creatures start dropping them.
The Corrupted Gem's own −10 to +10 range does not count. The orb descriptions below are for servers that enable ranges.
What corruption does
An Orb of Corruption picks one of four outcomes with equal chance, then locks the item. Corrupted items and gems can no longer be changed.
| Outcome | Result |
|---|---|
| Quality shift | Item quality goes up or down by one level (minimum 1). |
| Socket shift | Either a random socket is removed, or a socket with a random corrupted gem is added. |
| Full reroll | Quality becomes random (can exceed the normal maximum by one) and the item gets 1–4 sockets filled with random corrupted gems. |
| Corrupted Gem | A Corrupted Gem is added in a new socket. Its effect rolls between −10 and +10 (see Berserk, Defender, Sprinter, Pain Tolerance, Raging). |
An Orb of Prophecy fixes the outcome in advance: you can preview the corrupted result by holding the advanced-tooltip key, then use an Orb of Corruption to make it real.
Stations & storage
The Gemcutters Table goes up to level 4 with three extensions. Two of them only count under a condition. Storage for gems and jewelry is listed separately below.
Storage
Finding gems
Every kill has a 1.5% chance per colour to drop that uncut gemstone (8 colours, so about 11% for any gem).
Up to 150 caves spawn 1–10 km from the world centre in most biomes. Their Crystal Golems (600 HP) drop 4–6 of every uncut gemstone colour, making caves the richest gem source in the game.
See Gemstones. The Humite Necklace of Attunement pins nearby formations on your map.
Loot systems
Servers pick one or more loot systems. Gem Drops is the default.
| System | What drops |
|---|---|
| Gem Drops | Uncut gemstones from creatures (default). |
| Equipment Drops | Socketed equipment with gems already in it. By default you can only get items whose recipe you know. 20% drop chance, 7% from low-HP creatures. |
| Gem Chests | A chest with 2–3 gems; take 1 and the chest disintegrates. Blessed and Celestial chests have better tiers. |
| Equipment Chests | A chest with 2–3 equipment pieces; take 1. |
World bosses & the Mystical Gemstone
Every 2 hours of world time a Crystal Reaper appears, frozen in a crystal cage somewhere 1–10 km from the world centre. A timer on the map shows the next spawn.
The Crystal Reapers
- Break the cage to release the boss. It despawns 60 minutes later.
- 10% of spawns are the Frozen Triumvirate event: all three reapers at once.
- Their explosions apply a vulnerability 5 seconds after the hit: fire, frost or poison damage taken is doubled.
- Each kill gives every player within 100 m 5 Celestial Coins and adds fusion box progress.
- Celestial weapons deal +10% damage to them; celestial shields block 10% more.
The Mystical Gemstone
The Mystical Gemstone stands in the Meadows, 1–3 km from the world centre; its map icon appears once you have explored it. Offer up to 15 Celestial Coins at the gemstone, then open the chests around it. Each coin is one roll:
- First the current event's main prizes are rolled (2% each for most celestial gear).
- Otherwise you get a consolation gem: 2% Perfect, 3% Advanced, 15% Simple, 80% a random shard.
- Events rotate by real date, one per day, in a 10-day cycle.
Event prizes
Celestial gear
Celestial items cannot be crafted, only won. Upgrade them at a Forge for 5 Celestial Coins per level. Stats below use the default Ashlands balance; servers can choose Plains or Mistlands presets instead.
Unused items
These ship inside the v2.0.11 DLL but nothing in the code makes them obtainable or gives them an effect. You will not find them in normal play.
The Stealth Archer gem effect is in the same state: it is written in the default gem config but switched off (see Stealth Archer).
EpicJewels
EpicJewels (v1.1.2 by MidnightsFX) is an add-on for Jewelcrafting. It adds six gem colours with 54 effects, six synergies and a set of gem-lit decorations. Its gems are cut, socketed and fused like the base gems, so the rest of this wiki applies to them too.
When this is on, the six gems also appear in Gemstones, the formation spawn table, the effect matrix and cards, and Synergies, each tagged EpicJewels. Turn it off if your server does not run the add-on.
The six gems
Weapon effects work in melee weapons, elemental magic staves, bows and crossbows. Values on the cards below are shown for the tier you pick in All effects.
Where they spawn
EpicJewels adds its gems to Jewelcrafting's formation table for each biome. They share the roll with the base gems, so with the add-on installed each biome's own base gem is a little rarer. None of the six spawn in the Deep North. See the formation table for the combined chances.
Effect notes
- The Expert skill effects add skill levels. The tooltips for Sage and Hard worker say "%", but they add levels as well.
- Burning Guard and Freezing Guard tooltips show their two numbers the wrong way round. The cards on this page use the values the code actually uses.
- Coin Hoarder, Water Frenzy, Burning Frenzy and Eitr Fused raise all damage types, including fire, frost, poison and spirit.
Synergies
Crystal Lights
Nine light pieces in each of the six colours (54 in total), found in the Crystal Lights build tab. Each light and its particles glow in the gem's colour. All costs are refunded when you deconstruct a piece.
White crystal lights unused
The asset bundle also has a white (Diamond-coloured) version of every light, but EpicJewels never registers them, so they cannot be built.
Configuration
Settings live in org.bepinex.plugins.jewelcrafting.cfg. Gem effects, synergies, socket costs, loot and gacha prizes live in the Jewelcrafting.*.yml files and can be edited in-game by admins.
- Set [2 - Socket System] Effect Power Deviation to 1–75 (or give gems value ranges in the gem effects YAML). This enables the five orbs.
- Set [7 - Other] Chance Frame Drop Chance and Chaos Frame Drop Chance above 0 to make the frames drop.
- Tune the other … Orb … Drop Chance settings in [7 - Other] if you want them more or less common.
Console commands (admin)
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
| Jewelcrafting generate | Generates raw gemstone formations in an existing world. |
| Jewelcrafting worldboss | Spawns a random world boss immediately. |
| Jewelcrafting spawn SwordSilver green 3 blue-red 1 empty | Spawns an item with sockets. Each gem is a colour and tier (1–3); a-b makes a merged gem; empty adds an empty socket. |
About this page
- Built by decompiling Jewelcrafting.dll version 2.0.11 (Smoothbrain, GUID org.bepinex.plugins.jewelcrafting), its embedded YAML defaults, its English translation file and its asset bundle (for icons and item stats).
- EpicJewels content comes from decompiling EpicJewels.dll version 1.1.2 (MidnightsFX, GUID MidnightsFX.EpicJewels): its embedded gem YAML, English translation file, asset bundle and code. Its gem icons are recreated the way Jewelcrafting tints add-on gems, using the colours set in the code.
- Jewelcrafting has no icon for the Humite Shard; this page shows the yellow shard recoloured to Humite.
- Descriptions use the mod's own in-game wording. Notes on effect cards come from reading the code.
- Five orbs and both frames do not drop from creatures on default settings. See how to enable orb drops.
- Assets that ship in the DLL but are not used are listed under Unused items.
- Content that only appears with the optional Groups mod (the Topaz gem, party effects, the Power of Friendship boss gem and the Never Alone synergy) is left out, because this wiki documents a setup without Groups.