While wearing armour protects a player from physical attacks, wearing jewels protects them from all kinds of magical attacks.
There are two kinds of defence from magical attacks:
- protections, which decrease the amount of damage you take from the 7 kinds of elemental damage.
- resistances, which increase your chances of resisting a spell directed at you.
Good jewels will give you both. However, it's impossible to maximise them all, so you'll have to chose carefully whether you want the best possible defence against some specific spells, or mediocre defence against all spells. A player can wear 10 jewels, and unlike with armour where each piece only protects a specific bodypart, the protection from all jewels you wear adds up into a total protection. Thus players need to combine jewels to obtain the total protections they want.
In some cases, players also wear jewels purely for the stat bonuses they can give, caring not about the magical defences. Most harvesters have a set of jewels that give extra focus, and fighters who aren't expecting to take magical damage usually wear a set of jewels just for the extra health.
Since jewels don't give any malus, and they don't actually show on your character, there's really no reason to ever go without them unless you don't want your jewels to decay.
Jewel Set
There are 6 different jewels, each with their own crafting tree. A player can wear 10 jewels however, since they can wear two of some pieces. A completely set of jewels consists of:
- 1 diadem
- 1 necklace
- 2 earrings
- 2 bracelets
- 2 rings
- 2 anklets
Protections
The first way jewels can defend you against magic is by giving you protections against the 7 kinds of elemental damage. The 7 kinds of elemental damage are:
Protection against the elemental damages is measured in %. 50% protection means you'll only take half damage, 10% protection means you'll take 90% of the damage, and so on. You have a separate protection stat for each of the 7 damage types, shown in your Identity window under "Protections".
Without jewels, every player character has a standard 10% protection against Acid, Cold and Rot, and 20% protection against their racial damage type (Fire for Fyros characters, Shockwave for Tryker characters, Poison for Matis characters and Electricity for Zoraï characters).
A single jewel can add a few % protection to at most 3 different damage types. How much % and to which 3 damage types depends on how the jewel was crafted. Thus you'll need to combine different jewels if you want to raise your protection against more than 3 damage types. The game prevents you from ever having more than 70% protection against any kind of elemental damage, even if adding up all your jewels would give you more than that.
These protections decrease all damage you take of a specific type, regardless of how it's inflicted. For example, 50% Electricity protection will cut in half both the damage received from Electricity spells and the damage received from a Kincher's electric attacks, even though the later aren't magic.
Max. Absorbed
The Max. Absorbed stat determines how much your damage protections can absorb. Your protections can never decrease the damage you receive by more than the Max. Absorbed amount.
For example, if you have 70% Acid protection, and get hit by an Acid spell doing 1000 damage, your protection would reduce that to 300 damage. But only if your Max. Absorbed is 700 or higher. If your Max. Absorbed is 400, your protection can only negate 400 damage, and you'd still take 600 out of the 1000 damage even with 70% Acid Protection.
Without jewels, your standard Max. Absorbed is half your highest combat level. Every jewel you wear increases your Max. Absorbed by half the jewel's quality level. (So a quality 250 jewel would add 125 to your Max. Absorbed.) Unlike the protections, this is not a variable stat on jewels; every jewel will always add a number equal to half it's quality level to your Max. Absorbed.
Resistances
The second way jewels can defend you against magic is by increasing your chances of resisting the spells that get thrown at you. Resisting a spell means to completely ignore it's effects.
Resistances are measured in level. When a spell is cast on you, the level of the spell is compared to your resistance level, and the higher your resistance level is to the spell level, the greater your chance to resist the spell. You have a separate resistance level for each of the 5 domains of magic, shown in your Identity window under "Resistances".
The domains are named after the 5 ecosystems of Atys, and each domain includes 3 spells:
- Desert Domain includes Fire, Blind and Madness
- Forest Domain includes Poison, Sleep and Slow Move
- Lakes Domain includes Cold, Shockwave and Stun
- Jungle Domain includes Electricity, Root and Slow Attack
- Prime Roots Domain includes Acid, Rot and Fear
Thus, your resistance level in the Desert Domain determines your chances of resisting Fire, Blind and Madness spells only. It will not help you resist any other spell.
Without jewels, every player character has all of their resistances at a level that's 26 below their highest combat level, except their home domain which will be 10 levels higher (Desert for Fyros characters, Lakes for Tryker characters, Forest for Matis characters and Jungle for Zoraï characters). Also, the domain corresponding to the ecosystem you're currently in will be decreased by 10 levels (so if you're in the Prime Roots, your resistance level for the Prime Roots domain will be decreased by 10).
A single jewel can add a few levels of resistance to at most 3 domains. How much levels and to which 3 domains depends on how the jewel was crafted. Thus you'll need to combine different jewels if you want to raise your resistances against more than 3 domains. The game prevents you from ever having any of your resistance levels higher than 50 above your highest combat level, even if adding up all your jewels would give you more than that.
It's important to remember that resistances don't help you resist effects, they only help you resist spells. For example, a higher resistance level in the Jungle Domain will increase your chances of resisting Electricity spells, but will not increase your chances of resisting the Kincher's electric attack. It also will increase your chances of resisting Slow Attack spells, but will not increase your chances of resisting a Slow Attack effect caused by a critical hit.
Jewel Crafting
For how crafting in Ryzom works in general, see the article on crafting.
Jewel crafting is quite unorthodox. Firstly, it requires only two kinds of materials: jewels, like ambers or eyes, and jewel settings, like seeds or nails. The jewel materials used in the crafting determine solely the protections the jewel will give, and the jewel setting materials used determine solely the resistances the jewel will give.
The other odd quirk about jewel crafting is that every jewel starts out with protection stats for all 7 damage types and resistance stats for all 5 domains. But once the crafting is made final, only the highest 3 protections and only the highest 3 resistances will remain on the jewel.
It can be quite an undertaking finding the right combination of materials to produce a jewel with exactly the protections and resistances you want. And even more so to create a whole set of 10 jewels that, combined, give you exactly the total protections and resistances you want. Thus there is far more to being a good jewel-crafter than just being level 250.
For jewel-crafters trying to figure out recipes, BM's list of materials is a great help.
Looted Jewels
All primitives on Atys drop jewels when killed. Normal cutes, gibbaï and frahar drop jewels that are almost completely worthless, but some of the jewels looted from primitive bosses have stats that come close to good crafted jewels. These jewels can sometimes even be the best choice to wear for specific situations, but are never better than the best possible crafted jewels.