Bloodborne Gem Farming Guide

Bloodborne Gem Farming Guide by Voidinsanity

Gems in this game at present are very random in their usefulness. I suspect them to be rebalanced/changed in the future so hang on to all your high value gems even if they are presently bad. For now though the best gems in the game are anything with a % value on it, all flat attack gems are worthless with ONE exception, flat arcane damage gems for Burial Blade / Blade of Mercy (their numbers are 3-4x higher than any other gem making them actually useful, physical % is still better though).

Finding good gems

You may have noticed that a gems rating doesn’t seem to mean much, you can have a highly rated gem that’s poo and a highly rated one that’s great. This is because a gems stats are determined by the difficulty of the area you are in, what you are killing and the rating is only determined by where you are. In short –

• The level of the gem (the number at the end) is from the area you are in. The harder the base difficulty the higher the base level. The highest you’ll find outside of chalice dungeons is (5).
• The rating is based on the base difficulty of the thing you killed. Chalice bosses will typically drop gems with a high rating for this reason with the last one in the dungeon having a chance to drop an Abyssal gem.
• A Gems type (its name/shape) seems to be based upon your location and what you killed. Certain types (cold, fools, radiant, etc) only appear in chalices with cold only appearing in Isz.
• A gems quality (How good the stats are for its level/rating) are based on the actual difficulty of what you just killed in that area. This is why you can end up with low level gems that outclass higher level/rated ones.
• A Cursed gem will have increased quality and at least 1 negative effect. Some negative effects are more negligible than others.

Story Gem Farming – Nightmare of Mensis.

After the middle loft lamp there is a hidden path on the shortcut back down that leads to the choir bell / a special switch. On the way down this path you’ll encounter a bunch of lovely brain men, 4 in total (3 on path, 1 after spiders next to the bell). Killing these things drops cursed droplets of 19-19.8% physical attack. At this point in the game and without getting lucky in a depth 5 chalice, these are the best gems you’ll find anywhere. Thankfully their droprate is pretty high so you’ll have a +59-59.6% attack increased weapon in no time.

Depth 5 Chalice Farming

Anything lower than depth 5 will be worse than the cursed gems you got from Mensis and even then the ones from depth will most likely still be worse. On my quest to kill the Queen I did not find a single gem better than the ones from Mensis. On average the gems I got were about 14.6-15% physical attack, a good 5% lower than the cursed Mensis ones. Without additional rites you’ll be hard pressed to get good gems from chalice dungeons outside of being very lucky on a boss roll.

Remember – Using other players dungeons is free

• If something drops a (5) gem it can drop a (6) gem. If the quality of its (5) was high then its (6) gem will be higher, so consider farming it.
• If something drops Ritual Blood (5) or a rare chalice material (yellow backbone, infected organ, etc) it has a gem on its loot table.
• Any boss that spawns as an enemy (Giants in a swamp, hunters) have gems on their loot table but are extremely rare.
• Gems that are found within a chest are fixed. If you find a really strong gem in a dungeon chest you can share it with others by sharing the dungeon.
• Dungeons with additional rites will have better gems from the buffed mobs (ones with auras on them).
• A cursed dungeon drops entirely cursed gems and is the only way to get a cursed abyssal gem.

Gem Database

Feel free to post additions for this list. This is based purely on recent memory.

• Hunters seem to drop gems based on their loadout. Keeper of the Old Lords that has a flame weapon will drop fire gems, ones that use Kirkhammer Blunt/Striking, etc. Need to hunt more to confirm, their droprate is very low.
• The Tall Witches drop +health regen gems for your gun / Bloodtinge gems with a rare chance for Radial.
• Witch Summoners drop Physical gems, typically waning.
• Witch Casters drop ??? (I forgot sorry, been getting lots of Ritual Bloods from them atm).
• Watchers drop Physical gems, typically radial.
• Celestials drop Blot gems,
• Celestial Casters drop Arcane gems.