If you don't spend any money on the game, you can just get one legendary crest every month. Even purchasing a battle pass will only bring you the equivalent of two legendary crests per month. In addition, you'll need to purchase them directly. Legendary crests cost between $2 a
In the Diablo Immortal's myriad of upgrades, currencies, and reward Diablo IV Gold mechanisms, legendary gems are where the business model bites the most. Blizzard and NetEase aren't so crass as to sell directly through a loot boxes or gacha system, however, what they've created is, to put it in perspective, more disturbing. Legendary gems can only be found in the bosses that are randomly placed in Elder Rift dungeons, and you can only ensure an infamous gem drop by applying an iconic crest modifier to the dungeon before starting it. Other than that, drop rates of legendary gems are incredibly low.
If you don't spend any money on the game, you can just get one legendary crest every month. Even purchasing a battle pass will only bring you the equivalent of two legendary crests per month. In addition, you'll need to purchase them directly. Legendary crests cost between $2 and $3 per piece.
The sheer amount of gems that you'll need for your character's best equipment and abilities, particularly when you consider the low drop rates for five-star gems, is one of the reason why the price of maxing your character's abilities in Diablo Immortal has been estimated between $50,000 and $100,000 or more when you dive into the system of gem resonance. (Rock Paper Shotgun offers detailed cost breakdown that falls on the moderate end of the scale.)
Diablo Immortal has been given an extremely rough ride this business model (perhaps disproportionately) given that popular free-to-play competitors like Genshin Impact and Lost Ark are not without similar gacha mechanisms to draw in huge-spending "whale" gamer. Diablo's fame and reputation with its core PC gaming community, accumulated over a quarter of a century, is certainly a factor. However, it's also true Diablo's system is extremely problematic and the Diablo 4 Gold buy nature of Diablo games may have something to do with it.
