Gemcutter’s Prisms are a crucial currency item in Path of Exile (PoE) that serve a very specific but highly beneficial purpose—they increase the quality of skill gems. Each Gemcutter’s Prism raises the quality of a gem by 1%, with the maximum quality for any gem capped at 20%. This boost in quality directly enhances the effectiveness of that skill gem, typically improving damage output or other key properties depending on the gem. For many players, managing Gemcutter’s Prisms alongside other resources like poe 2 currency becomes an important part of progression.
Using Gemcutter’s Prisms properly can significantly maximize the damage potential of your character’s skills. Quality upgrades increase the base stats of a skill, such as physical damage or elemental damage, making your attacks more potent. For example, increasing the quality of a physical damage-based gem by just a few percentage points can noticeably augment the damage dealt. This makes Gemcutter’s Prisms highly valuable to any player looking to optimize and push the limits of their build.
The way to apply a Gemcutter’s Prism is straightforward—right-click the prism and then left-click the skill gem you want to enhance. It’s best to prioritize the quality increase on your main skill gems first to get the most out of your damage sources. Support gems that boost main skills can also benefit, but the gains in damage are more noticeable on active skill gems.
Once a gem reaches level 20, you can use a vendor recipe involving a Gemcutter’s Prism and a level 20 support gem to create a level 1 support gem with 20% quality. This recipe is commonly used to get 20% quality gems faster, especially for support gems that might be harder to find at high quality. It’s a clever way to effectively "reset" gems while retaining that high quality, allowing for further leveling and subsequent use.
Balancing quality and experience levels of gems is part of the strategy. When you upgrade a gem’s quality to 20%, the gem’s experience can drop if you use the vendor recipe, requiring some re-leveling. A common practice is to level alternative weapon sets with copies of your skill gems, so you always have gems being leveled to 20 with high quality without hindering your main set during play. This method also makes it possible to create several high-quality level 20 gems ready for swapping into your main setup for maximum damage output.
You can obtain Gemcutter’s Prisms as drops from monsters, from strongboxes, or by vendoring multiple gems with a total quality value above 40%. Players often keep mid-quality gems found during gameplay to vendor for more prisms, ensuring a steady supply without much waste. In trading, Gemcutter’s Prisms are sought after because they are a direct path to upgrading and optimizing a build’s offensive capabilities, much like when players look to buy poe 2 currency for faster gearing solutions.
Gemcutter’s Prisms matter in PoE because they directly increase the quality and effectiveness of skill gems, enhancing damage and overall skill utility. Smart use of these prisms—through applying them to main skill gems, leveraging vendor recipes for 20% quality gems, and managing gem leveling on secondary gear—can give players a solid edge in maximizing their damage output in both PoE and PoE 2.
