Blood Gems Terminology Bloodborne Wiki » Upgrades » Blood Gems » Blood Gems Terminology

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Basic Information

There are a lot of resources about blood gems out there, but one thing it took me a while to understand was all the details of how gems are named. There are a lot of words that go into it — cursed, odd, abyssal, warm, nourishing, arcane. And then there are numbers at the end? But there’s also a different number listed when you look in your inventory? Gem terminology can be confusing. Let’s try to break it down. If the naming of blood gems is something you’ve wondered about, by the time you’re done with this primer hopefully you’ll be able to decode every part of a gem’s name.

Rating: First off, let’s start with numbers. Every gem has a rating from 1 to 20, with a higher number being in principle a better gem. (In practice, it doesn’t always shake out that way!) You can see the rating when you look at the gem in your inventory, as the number sitting next to the icon of three horizontal lines in the shape of a triangle. If you know all the effects of a gem, the rating doesn’t tell you anything additional about what it does, but it is a summary of how good the game thinks your gem is. As you progress through the game to tougher areas, gems will drop with higher rating. For a discussion how how the rating is determined in chalice dungeons (depending on depth, layer, enemy, and other factors) check out the “Gem Values” page of the Arcanist Cookbook here. Level: Next, gems have ANOTHER number, their level, which actually appears at the end of the name of the gem, in parentheses: Blah Blah Blah Blood Gemstone (2). The level is entirely determined by the rating and so is fundamentally redundant. The level is a coarser measure of gem quality, with several different rating values corresponding to a single level — for example, any rating 1-4 will have level 1. This goes up to rating 17-19, which is level 6: Level 1: Rating 1-4 Level 2: 5 -7 Level 3: 8-10 Level 4: 11-13 Level 5: 14-16 Level 6: 17-19

Rating 20 has no level value associated to it, and the name of the gem has no number at the end. Instead rating 20 gems have a special name, which we describe next. Regular, Damp or Abyssal: The rating determines one more thing about the name of the gem. If the rating is between 1-10 (level 1-3), no special word is added, and the gem is called “Blood Gemstone”. If the rating is between 11-19 (level 4-6), the word “Damp” gets added: “Damp Blood Gem”. And the rating 20 gems, which have no level, are called “Abyssal Blood Gem”. So here are a few examples of gem names, including the level, and a rating that could correspond to each gem: Fire Blood Gemstone (3) rating 8 Tempering Damp Blood Gem (5) rating 15 Cold Abyssal Blood Gem rating 20

Primary Effect

You’ll notice in the examples above we had modifiers at the beginning of our example gem names: fire, tempering, cold. These tell you what kind of primary effect the gem has. We can divide gem effects into four “classes”: 1. Percentage up. A certain kind of damage is increased from what it would have been without the gem by a percentage. The damage types that are affected can be physical damage; the two subcategories of physical damage, blunt or thrust; blood damage; or the three types of elemental damage, fire, bolt or arcane. It is also possible to get just % ATK up gems (Nourishings), which increase any and all of these. Physical up gems increase blood damage, as well. There are also gems that raise the percentage damage in certain situations: when the opponent is a certain enemy type, beast or kin; when you’re at full or low health; when you execute a charged attack; or when your enemy is “open”. 2. Flat. Instead of increasing a damage type by a percentage of what it was to begin with, flat gem effects just add a fixed amount of damage. This is an advantage if your starting damage is low, while percentages are often better when your starting damage is high. Flat damage can also be beneficial on weapons that hit multiple times quickly, since the bonus is added on each hit. Flat can add any of the damage types physical, fire, bolt, arcane and blood. 3. Attribute scaling up. The values of the player attributes (or stats) Strength (STR), Skill (SKL), Bloodtinge (BLT) and Arcane (ARC) can all increase the damage done by weapons. STR and SKL increase physical damage, BLT increases blood damage and ARC increases the elemental damage types. How much of an increase occurs depends on how well the weapon scales off that attribute. This attribute scaling for a given weapon is denoted by a letter, from best to worst S, A, B, C, D, E. These letters are really categories standing for a range of numbers. Attribute scaling gems improve how well the weapon scales with a particular stat, increasing this number. This is particularly advantageous when you are high in that particular attribute. 4. Everything else. This category includes adding poison, changing the stamina cost/durability of a weapon, increasing how much HP you earn back from the rally mechanic, or making HP replenish directly. Having said all that, each one of these effects is associated with a word that appears in the gem name. Those names are: Tempering — % Physical ATK UP Nourishing — % ATK UP Adept — % Blunt ATK UP OR % Thrust ATK UP Fire — % Fire ATK UP Bolt — % Bolt ATK UP Arcane — % Arcane ATK UP Bloodtinge — % Blood ATK UP Odd Tempering: Add physical ATK (flat) Odd Fire: Add fire ATK (flat) Odd Bolt: Add bolt ATK (flat) Odd Arcane: Add arcane ATK (flat) Odd Bloodtinge: Add blood ATK (flat) Heavy — STR scaling up Sharp — SKL scaling up Cold — Arcane scaling up Warm — Bloodtinge scaling up

Murky — Add slow poison effect Dirty — Add rapid poison effect Beasthunter’s — % ATK vs beasts UP Kinhunter’s — % ATK vs the kin UP Finestrike — % ATK vs open foes UP Striking — % Charge ATKs UP Fool’s — % Phys. UP at full HP OR % ATK UP at full HP Poorman’s — % Phys. UP near death OR % ATK UP near death Radiant — Reduces stamina costs Pulsing — HP continues to recover Dense — WPN durability UP Lethal — Boosts rally potential I personally have never seen a Dense Blood Gem, but the name is mentioned in the official strategy guide and the effect is pretty common as a secondary. Beware: the word “arcane” is used for two distinct (but related) things in Bloodborne. One of them is the stat Arcane, often abbreviated ARC. The other is the kind of elemental damage, also called arcane. The elemental damage types fire, bolt and arcane all get scaling bonuses from the stat Arcane (ARC). Cold gems increase the scaling of the Arcane stat, while Arcane gems add a percentage to the arcane damage type. Also confusingly, “Bloodtinge” gems do not provide scaling for the Bloodtinge stat. Instead they add a percentage to the blood damage type. “Warm” gems provide scaling for the Bloodtinge stat. A little note while we’re talking about Bloodtinge gems: generally gems have the words “Blood Gemstone” or “Blood Gem” in them (Tempering Blood Gemstone, for example). When the gem is also of Bloodtinge type, the usual pattern for naming the gem would have the word “blood” in there twice. To avoid this, the game modifies the usual syntax for Bloodtinge gems so the word “blood” only appears once. So instead of “Bloodtinge Blood Gemstone” we see “Bloodtinge Gemstone” and instead of “Bloodtinge Damp Blood Gem” we see “Damp Bloodtinge Gem”. If you’re not suffering from semantic satiation with the word “blood” by now, you’re a better reader than I. For a few examples, let’s consider the game’s three unique gems. These gems all have story significance and come with special names, but using their primary attribute and their rating we can reconstruct what they would be called if they had normal names. Red Blood Gem — obtained from the Red Brooch found on the body at Tomb of Oedon. This droplet gem is rating 4 with primary effect Physical ATK up +2.7%. From this we can deduce this is a Tempering Blood Gemstone (1). It has a secondary effect of boosting rally potential +1.8%, but this does not go into the name. Gold Blood Gem — obtained from the Gold Pendant dropped by Vicar Amelia. This radial gem has rating 7 and primary effect ATK vs beasts up +12.6%, and so this is a Beasthunter’s Blood Gemstone (2). Tear Blood Gem — obtained from the Tear Stone you get from giving the Small Hair Ornament to the Doll. This droplet gem’s rating is 8 and the primary effect is HP continues to recover +2. Thus this is a Pulsing Blood Gemstone (3). Tell me hunter, could this be joy?

Secondary Effects

Some blood gems also have secondary effects. These fall into the same categories as the primary effects, and the existence of a secondary effect on a gem will generally mean the primary is not as good (for a given rating). But although these secondary effects are present and useful (or sometimes not), they do absolutely nothing to the name of the gem. For most gems, bonuses to physical, fire, bolt, arcane and blood damage will only occur as secondary effects when they are flat bonuses, not percentage increases. The exceptions are Odd gems, which have flat physical, fire, bolt arcane or blood bonuses as the primary effect: for these, any secondary bonus in these five damage types will be a percentage increase. Thus for almost all gems, these five damage types can only contribute at most one percentage increase and one flat increase between the primary and secondary effects. There are rare exceptions. Note also that other percentage increase effects outside these five (like % ATK vs beasts UP or % Phys. UP near death), which never occur as flat bonuses, can occur as percentage secondary effects even if the primary effect is percentage.

Gem shape: Gems come in five shapes: radial, waning, triangle, circle and droplet. Each of the first four can only fit into the corresponding shape slot on a weapon, while droplet gems fit into any slot. Circle gems are characteristic of blood effects and are often Bloodtinge or Warm, with blood-related secondary effects. Other gem shapes have particular characteristic types as well: for example Arcane triangles are common, while Arcane waning gems are much rarer. For chalice dungeons, radial gems come primarily from Pthumeru dungeons, waning gems from Loran dungeons, and triangles from Hintertomb and Isz dungeons; there are exceptions, as some enemies drop the same shape no matter where they are encountered, and off-shape drops are always possible. Waning gems also come from farming Silverbeasts in the Nightmares, and Droplet gems from Winter Lanterns. For information on which enemy drops which kind of gem, again see the Arcanist Cookbook. While gem shape is a very important attribute of the gem, it is not reflected anywhere in the gem’s name. You will see it in the gem picture, and it will be named if you look at the gem on your inventory screen. Curses: Many gems have curses as well; in fact the best blood gems are cursed. In this case, in addition to whatever primary and secondary effects the gem has, it will have a negative effect as well, called a curse. There are six kinds of curses, sorted from my least favorite to my favorite:

ATK DOWN HP gradually depletes WPN durability DOWN ATK vs beasts DOWN ATK vs the kin DOWN Increases stamina costs Each of these six curse types is the opposite of a primary effect: Nourishing, Pulsing, Dense, Beasthunter’s, Kinhunter’s, and Radiant, respectively. That said, curses themselves do not have one-word names, and regardless of what kind the curse is, the name of the gem is modified simply by having the word “Cursed” added at the beginning. The End: So, there you have it! A number of things go into the name of a gem: whether it is cursed, what is its primary effect, and what is its level. More details like the shape, rating, secondary effect, and kind of curse are important but are not reflected directly in the name. Hopefully, this primer has helped make the naming of blood gems a little less confusing!