Jewel Affixes

Jewels are small one-space items that can be magical or rare and must be found, they are never sold by NPCs. Jewels have no function on their own, they must be socketed, and then you gain their benefits. Each Jewel has the same mods no matter what you socket it in, unlike Runes and Gems that change depending on what they are seated in. This is an advantage for jewels, as it allows you to add damage or IAS from your armor, helm, or shield, and add resistance from your weapon, something gems and runes never do. The mods found on jewels are pretty low, especially on rare ones, but some types are very useful.

Jewel Properties

Magical Jewels: Can have any Prefix with any Suffix.

Rare Jewels: Post-1.09, Rare jewels can have up to 4 total affixes (1-3 prefixes and 1-3 suffixes). Before 1.09, they could have up to three prefixes and three suffixes. None of the “magic only” affixes can occur on Rares.

Things you won’t find on Jewels: Mana or Life leech, Faster Cast Rate, Faster Walk/Run, Character or Skill or Skill Tree bonuses, Vitality.

• Clvl: The Character Level you must be to equip an item socketed with this Jewel, if this is the highest Clvl on the item. (A Clvl 30 Jewel in a Clvl 50 Elite item will still be Clvl 50.)
• Qlvl: Quality Level, this is often referred to as “Item Level” (ilvl). The Clvl requirement of a jewel will be 3/4 the highest Qlvl mod on it, and these are listed on this page. For a monster to drop something, the monster’s Mlvl must be equal to or greater than the Qlvl in question. Full list of Monster Levels found on Darkness.

Weapon Jewel Affixes

These are bonuses from Jewels that are useful to characters seeking to do damage with their weapons (as opposed to spell casters). They are grouped by type of effect, with prefixes and suffixes noted as such in separate tables.

Enhanced Damage

Adding enhanced damage is very good on weapons, combine one of these with Increased Attack Speed if possible. Obviously the bigger your weapon damage, the more improvement you’ll gain. There are reports of these being buggy when socketed in helm/armor/shield, but they work properly in weapons. The Ohm Rune (#27) adds 50%, but its very hard to find and a 40%/IAS or 40%/+damage jewel would be better.

The Prefixes and Suffixes can stack, adding up to Adding damage can be very useful, since it’s modified by all your Stats and skills bonuses. For example, +10 damage on a bow for an Amazon with 20 Strafe and 300 Dexterity would add 50 damage total. And Jewels can add damage from helm, armor or shield, as well as weapon.

Damage: Elemental

Icicle ranges from 2-6 to 3-10, and everything in between.

Passion ranges from 1-6 to 3-10, and everything in between.

Thunder ranges from 1-61 to 1-100, and all values in between.

You get the idea. Cold is the best, for the chilling/slowing effect on monsters, but it’s also the least damage total. Cold damage items (including Charms) are very nice in quantity, as the duration for chill or freeze adds up. Poison damage in v1.08 is great, stacking up enormously. You can get better damage in shorter time with a perfect emerald, but that’s only in a weapon. Adding some of these helps with Stone Skin and Physical Immune monsters, especially if you get it from non-weapons on top of your elemental weapon damage.

Increased Attack Speed

Probably the best mod to add if you are doing physical damage with your weapon. Even useful for Sorcs if they are using Lightning or Chain Lightning, since those rely on swing speed for their casting speed. The fact that this one can’t be found on Rare Jewels is probably the biggest strike against them for combat characters. Fervor vs. Shael: The Shael Rune (#13), adds 20% in a weapon and is harder to find. 15% or 20% will give you the same frame rate almost all the time, “of Fervor” jewels work in things other than weapons, and you can get a nice prefix on the same jewel, so in most cases an “of Fervor” will give you a better result.

Attack Rating

Attack Rating is a good thing for combat characters, and anything you add here is modified by your other skills, such as Penetrate, Fanaticism, and Weapon Masteries, so you’ll get more than the listed increase in those cases. However these aren’t very big bonuses, so it’s unlikely you’ll want to socket anything just for these.

Damage and AR Vs. Demons

Demons are one of the three types of monsters in the game, along with Undead and Animals (default type). These modifiers aren’t much looked for, and they don’t display in your Character window, but they can make a very noticeable differences. Many of the toughest monsters in the game, including the Act Bosses, are Demons, so big damage to this on a weapon switch isn’t a bad idea.

Damage and AR Vs. Undead

Useful bonuses since Undead are quite common, and often can’t be leeched from, so anything helps there. These bonuses do not show up in your Character window display. They stack with the inherent 50% bonus on blunt weapons.

Armor Jewels

These are bonuses from Jewels that are useful to keep you alive, such as +defense, resistance, hit points, etc. They are grouped by type of effect, with prefixes and suffixes noted as such in separate tables. Some of the bonuses in the Misc section are useful for this as well.

Resist All

Probably the best mods on jewels for armor/helms. Shields you can do better with a perfect diamond, and the Um Rune is 15% to all in helms and armor, but very hard to find, and you can get 15% on a jewel with another useful mod as well, or 10% on a Rare with a bunch of other good mods.

Prefixes: Elemental Resistance

Resist all beats individual resistances in most every case, but if you have a specific need, these can help, especially since they can occur on Rare jewels, while the best 11-15% resist all are magic-only. They are listed in order of importance, with Lightning definitely the most, and Fire the second most. How important Cold and Poison are depend on your character [combat characters hate to be chilled (items that halve freeze duration are good, not found on Jewels) while Sorcs can ignore it] and lowers poison duration mods (not found on Jewels) are as or more important than your Poison Resistance. There are more types of things that deal big poison damage than cold damage.

Faster Hit Recovery

More of this is always better, how much you need depends on how you play. Characters that are hit often need more, especially melee characters who need to keep hitting and keep leeching life to stay alive.

Hit Points

More hit points are always a good thing, but it’s pretty easy to add them with Charms, and perfect Rubies add a lot more in armor or helms than these Jewels.

Bonus Defense

Not a very useful bonus on jewels. In any high Defense item you’ll be better off adding +% Defense, and most characters don’t worry much about defense anyway. Possibly of use to a high Iron Skin Barb or a Defiance Pal, or in a Holy Shield Pal.

Misc Jewels

These are bonuses to miscellaneous stats, good ones and less so. Better ones are listed at the top.

Stat Bonuses

Yes, there same name applies to different values and Qlvls here. Adding to your stats is never a bad idea, both to boost your damage or Attack Rating, or to more quickly/easily meet the requirements to equip items.

Adding Magic Find is a very popular bonus, but the amounts from Jewels aren’t real impressive, even if you defy the odds and find a Jewel with it from Prefix and Suffix. See our [magic-find.shtml Magic Find ]page for more details about this very often-asked about topic.

Mana Bonus

Useful if you want mana, but much less than you can get from a perfect Sapphire in a helm or armor, and it’s pretty easy to get +mana on rare equipment or from charms.

Mana per Kill

Under-rated property, this one can be very helpful, especially early in the game, or even late if there are enough points in it. Try poisoning a bunch of monsters at once, and then waiting a few seconds and as they die watch your mana fill up. Very good for Sorcs and Necros too.

Lowers Requirements

A nice reduction, and much easier to find than a Hel Rune. Keep in mind that the lowered requirements are only for the Strength and Dexterity in the item you socket it in. There is no change to the item’s Clvl requirement.

Damage to Mana

One of the least-useful jewel modifiers, since this modifier (on all types of items, including uniques such as Nightsmoke) works only with physical damage from melee attacks, and does nothing from ranged damage or elemental damage.

Stamina Bonuses

Stats and items that boost stamina are largely ignored, but they are certainly helpful, though seldom essential since all they do is let you run a bit longer. Characters with low vitality/stamina will appreciate these more for the boost, but it’s not worth adding something specifically for more stamina unless your strategy requires a LOT of running, and even then you’ll generally use Vidala’s Fetlock or Treads of Cthon or some other boots with faster run and a lot of stamina bonus.

Thorns

Not worth using on purpose, the returned damage is a fraction of Iron Maiden or Thorns or even Spirit of Barbs. A perfect skull in a shield adds 20 thorns damage, dwarfing this. This ability is only of much use early on, when monsters have such low hit points, and the Clvl on this one is 28, so that’s out.

Replenish Life

A less than mandatory modifier, especially with such a low value. It takes a little over 10 life regeneration to give you +1 hit point per second. Helpful to keep your life full, especially for characters who can’t leech, but never enough of a gain to offset any real damage.

More Gold from Monsters

Nice to find more gold, but no one likes it so much to add it at the expense of other mods. +Magic Find is generally better, to find things to use, as well as sell for more gold than you can pick up.

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