Gems and what not
 

Does anyone happen to remember what all the old gems looked like or have images? I was just curious. I believe the ones changed were Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Coal too if I'm not mistaken.

I remember the diamonds, they were just a generic shape like <> but up and down. :O

Where do you use Emerald and Ruby?

Emeralds and Rubies can be used to make "Water of Emerald" and "Water of Ruby" respectively. "Water of Ruby" is the more commonly used of the two.

Emeralds are used to make craftable Forest items. Such as the Forest Dress and Forest Bow. They are also used in some other obscure alchemical recipes other then dusts.

And if I Forest ever gets it's own craftable kingdom only item set, it would most likely be used in that as well.

The gems could use some utilization.
They're supposed to be somewhat rare items but they just end up being converted into plat weather from alchemy or just sold outright.

I've never seen any use for Emeralds or Pearls on all my years. There's a rare item now and then that will require 30 Emeralds and you can get them in a few minutes... but there are thousands of Emeralds farmed from t-rexes and HHs that just go to waste.

Ruby is the only one that's used for a purpose (to level Mental) but this in-itself should be corrected... it's more or less just an anomaly of a certain ability giving outrageous amounts of experience. I'd like to see people writing/reading non-level 107 scrolls and actually trying out different recipes to get their experience; rather than hot-keying '/drop ruby'.

There is a Jeweler skill that could actually be used. Add a chisel to the blacksmith and let people carve jewels (I think it's a personality or phys based skill) to give different quality gems. Then those could be sold/used in crafting for different things (actual jewelery? instead of empty-banded rings). We have those great gems; make a couple different types and we have a whole new ability to utilize/keep people involved instead of just throwing these items at shop NPCs.