Gemeralds have been probably the rarest gems in Bconomy, and until now there was really only one way to find them: the rare loot table. That made them hard to stock up on, especially with the Recovery Bay hungry for them. This update adds three brand new ways to earn gemeralds, spread across your loot, your fights, and your pets.
In short, new Gem Bags can be:
- found in Lunar Shards,
- looted from Minibosses
- found by Pets.
For more juicy details, continue to the full post.
Gem Bags from Lunar Shards
Green, Amber, Purple and Red gemeralds no longer drop straight out of rare loot. Instead, opening a Lunar Shard now has a chance to hand you a Gem Bag, which you open from your inventory to reveal a handful of gemeralds inside.
Bags come in three sizes, and the bigger ones are rarer:
- Tiny Gem Bag holds 1 gemerald.
- Small Gem Bag holds 2.
- Gem Bag holds 4.
The mix inside leans common to rare the same way demand does, so you will see plenty of Green and only the occasional Red. Pluperfect Gemeralds are unchanged and still drop directly from rare loot. Overall, a stack of shards now gives a little more gemeralds than before, just delivered in bags.
Minibosses
A smaller, faster cousin of the Boss can now appear at any time, separate from the big Boss. There are four of them, one per loot action, and only one is ever active at once: The Nibbler (Fish), Trash Bandit (Hunt), The Straggler (Explore) and Gloombat (Mine).
These minibosses have only a few ways to spawn:
- 1% chance to spawn every 5 minutes,
- 30% chance to spawn after killing the big boy boss.
Each Miniboss has its own health pool, a visible weakpoint weapon, and only 2 minutes on the clock before it flees. You attack it with weapons just like the big Boss, but the weakpoint matters for your reward: damage dealt with the weakpoint weapon counts double toward your bag, and every other weapon counts half. Reach 5% of the Miniboss health in that weighted damage and you earn a Small bag instead of a Tiny one.
Take it down in time and the loot goes out like this:
- The top 3 damage dealers win 3, 2 and 1 Gem Bags.
- A few more bags scatter to random attackers who joined in.
- One lucky attacker has a 75% chance to find Pluperfect Gemeralds.
- Everyone who attacked walks away with a 3x loot boost.
Let the timer run out and it flees instead: only a few Tiny bags go to random attackers, with no top 3 bonus, no Pluperfect and no boost. So it pays to pile on fast.
Pet Vein Prospecting
Your pets can now dig up gemeralds all on their own, with nothing extra to click. A pet that adventures on its specialization (Mine, Explore or Hunt) slowly builds Familiarity with its patch, shown right on its items bar. Fish specialists sit this one out, we are not aware of fish which can dig so deep into the ocean floor.
Once Familiarity fills up, the pet strikes a vein and starts digging. Its items bar turns into a dig bar that fills as the pet keeps working, and when it finishes the pet brings back exactly one thing:
- Usually a Tiny Gem Bag.
- Sometimes a Small or a full Gem Bag if the pet is strong.
- Once in a while, something far better.
It is entirely passive, so a big stable of hard working pets becomes a slow, steady trickle of gemeralds over time. Busier fleets dig a touch slower, so the gems grow gently as your fleet grows rather than piling up without limit.
In short
Between Gem Bags from your shards, Minibosses dropping in for a quick brawl, and pets quietly prospecting in the background, there are more gemeralds flowing into the game than ever. Go stock up.