Gem Strategy for FtP

Everyone who plays CC, FtP or otherwise, gets a gem income.  This post is about how to get gems, and how to spend them.

Getting Gems

It's good to be the king.

The primary source of in-game gems is your daily might bonus.  I am a "King", which gives 100 gems per day.

You should always be considering going for that next level of might.  Generally, I would say don't push real hard to get there.  Once you get within about 10% of the next level, then you might consider going for it.  Raising your might means you face harder enemy bases for raids and expeditions, etc.  But if you are getting enough bases you can beat, then you can probably afford to raise your might.

To raise might, raise hero levels, raise hero skills, instantiate new heroes, give your heroes higher level talents, etc.  Obviously most of these things are expensive, and anyway you're already doing them.  The exception is filling up your hero altar with new heroes.  This is the main thing you can do to jack up might.  Instantiate a bunch of heroes -- blue heroes are fine -- and level them up to 60.  Give them otherwise useless level talents you roll in talent refreshes.  Once you've achieved the might level you're going for and are moving beyond it, you can gradually re-absorb extra heroes.  Or just leave them if you're content with the raids and expeditions you're getting.

Earn Gems

The second best source of gems is the "Earn Gems" board.  You get 30 gems a day assuming you log in, fight 10 times in the arena, and steal sufficient gold and mana in raids; these are all easy to get and you should be getting them every day.

The third best source of gems is quests.  You get a free quest every 7 hours, so you can do three per day if you can arrange the time in real life.  In addition you can get Quest Refresh cards from the Warehouse, and certain subgames; these are always worth getting.

Only certain quest items give gems, so you may get none with any particular quest.  But an average quest might give perhaps 50 free gems.  Always be on the lookout -- meaning, check daily -- for Talent Refresh Cards in the Warehouse: every one of them can be turned into 300 gems with the now common Talent Refresh quest.

Achievement not unlocked!

One final way that a FtP can get gems is via Achievements.  This is a finite source, and most achievements tend to go fairly early.  Even so, I still have achievements to complete.  It's just not that many gems compared to daily sources.


Spending and Saving Gems

Generally, you'll want to spend almost all gems on hero rolls.   (I have spent a handful on other things, but really the limiting factor for anybody FtP is going to be getting good heroes, and evolving them.)

Since you can do gem rolls at any time, and sometimes IGG offers bonuses for gem spending, you should only do hero rolls when it gets you some sort of bonus.  More on this below.  Obviously, there's one exception: always do the quest item hero roll since it costs nothing on net.

The most obvious need for saved gems is that you always need a reserve of 300 gems in order to do the Talent Reroll quest item.  Since you get these gems back, it's not really spending them.  Beyond the 300 you also need a handful of gems to spend on quest items you cannot accomplish, typically only "Challenge a Boss".  But this amount will be less than your gem income, so you shouldn't worry about it.

One other reason to keep gems reserved for is crest buying from a merchant in the Lost Realm.
There is always a chance that a nice level 2 crest is offered, so you want to keep a further reserve for that.  I'd suggest keeping your reserve at no lower than 1000 gems just in case you get a really lucky series of merchants.

Only buy crests you will use, and only to help fill gaps in crest sets you're working on.  For example, if you have 16 each of level 1 Life Drain I, II, and IV, but only 8 Life Drain III, you should buy a level 2 Life Drain III if you find one.  You don't need to buy the other Life Drain crests.

You should never buy an ordinary crest of any kind, even Slow Down (which are useful), since you'll get far more from Crest Bags than you can use.  (Red crystal is the limiting factor.)  Most Rare crests are also not that useful due to the lack of red crystal; I find myself only wanting Scatter (which is a good all around crest, and necessary for Scatter teams), and War God.


Gem Roll Strategy

Uncover Treasure

As I mentioned above, you should never do gem rolls except when there are bonuses on offer.  For a long time now, IGG has been doing "Uncover the Treasure" specials as part of the "Events Carnival".   For every 2000 gems you spend (on anything), you can collect a small bonus.

I suggest not doing "Uncover the Treasure" spending any more, unless you have a lot of gems and you're trying to spend them now (i.e., not FtP).  Instead, you should hoard your gems aiming for a newer bonus IGG has started offering as part of its "Bazaar" (you know, the place where they sell the Phantom King pack).  It's called "Spend Gems and Win".

I don't have any screenies for "Spend Gems and Win", but here's a video I found that shows the rewards.  Note that this guy obviously bought gems to spend on it, so you can also see the higher-spending rewards than I suggest for FtP:

If you spend 300 gems, there's a bonus that offers some moderately valuable stuff.  At the 2500 gem level, there's another bonus which includes 3 Talent Refresh card -- worth 300 gems each, so, about a 36% bonus in effect.  But if you go all the way to 8000 gems when one of these specials is running, you can get a Legendary Hero Card.  You also get some other moderately valuable stuff. That's well worth saving for!  (There are also higher bonus levels, but these do not appear to be worthwhile, compared to waiting for the special to run again.)

So, normally you should never do gem rolls except for single rolls for quests -- just save your gems.  When there's a "Spend Gems and Win"special, on that day, when you've completed your last quest, then you spend just enough gems to just exceed 8000.  You can see how many you've spent on the special itself.

UPDATE: as should be obvious, if you can't benefit much from LHCs, then they are not worth much.  In that case don't save for the 8000 level; just go with the 2500 level.

UPDATE Feb 2017: here's some thoughts regarding gem spending on pets.