Timeless Jewel Guide (PoE Scourge 3.16)

Introduction

In the 3.7 Legion update, GGG introduced one of the most unique item types ever seen in the game, the Timeless Jewel. They take the randomization of gear to another level, with randomized seeds that modify the surrounding area of the skill tree. If you are not familiar with the mechanics of these jewels, they can be hard to evaluate, or even make basic use of. This guide is a brief look at how to use Timeless Jewels to improve your own builds.

If you are interested in looking at what stats a jewel provides without respeccing your build to do so, a quick and easy way to do so is to create a PvP-only Scion with a fresh tree, letting you quickly access any jewel socket on the tree. This can be particularly useful when spending Divine Orbs to attempt to find a powerful jewel roll.

In 3.11, one keystone from each Timeless Jewel was moved to the passive tree, and were replaced with new keystones on the jewels. Prior to the patch arriving, we do not know the names of the generals, but this guide will be updated as soon as that information is available.

Mechanics

With one for each legion, Timeless Jewels each function quite differently. The one constant is that for every Timeless Jewel, there will be a number and a character name. For example, a Glorious Vanity may have “Bathed in the blood of 2536 sacrificed in the name of Doryani.” The number (2536) is the seed, which determines how non-keystone nodes in radius are modified, and the name (Doryani) determines what the keystones in radius will be transformed into. Remember that keystones are boolean, and you cannot acquire the same keystone multiple times to gain its benefit more than once.

Keep in mind that each Timeless Jewel has the “Limited to: 1 Historic,” which means a character may only have one of these unique jewels equipped.

Acquisition

The only way to acquire Timeless Jewels is from their respective legions in the Domain of Timeless Conflict. This means using the splinters you find from Legion encounters to form an emblem, and putting them in the map device with at least one other emblem, then defeat as many enemies as possible once inside.

As of the 3.8 update, Legion has been added to the lineup of core content, so Timeless Jewels are still attainable, but are noticeably more rare than before.

If you goal is to maximize the time you spend in Legion encounters, be sure to keep Vagan in your syndicate, as he has been upgraded as of 3.8.0 to offer Legion themed rewards, including incubators, splinters, and scarabs!

Trading

While the Timeless Jewels can be traded freely, they have unusual implications for trade. Because of their random nature, you cannot see their full effect before buying one. Some streamers have made themselves available to show off and auction especially powerful rolls, and some players have shown off their own rolls on reddit or forums. Certain seeds can be searched for, but if a powerful one becomes publicly known, it may be hard to pick one up before flippers or others looking to move in on a powerful build buy up as many as they can. It is generally recommended that, unless you are trying to emulate a build making use of required powers from a jewel, that you simply buy the cheapest and use Divine Orbs, or buy several cheap ones that offer the keystone of your choice.

The Five Jewels

Lethal Pride

The first jewel comes from Karui legions, and is generally considered to be one of the easiest to fit into builds. Lethal Pride adds stats to nearby passive points. On traveling nodes, it will always add 2 Strength, while minor non-traveling nodes will gain 4 strength. The seed on this jewel adds random stats to nearby notables, and does not replace anything, meaning you run no risk of losing out on valuable damage or life nodes. Useful modifiers include chance to deal double damage or 4% increased maximum life. A well rolled and well positioned Lethal Pride can add more than 30 strength, and lots of other useful stats.

The keystones on this jewel are granted by Kaom, Raikiata, and an unknown general, and can all be great assets to builds designed to take advantage of them. However, a build not designed with them in mind will get very little benefit from them.

Kaom grants Strength of Blood, which disables recovery from life leech, and grants 1% less damage taken for every 2% recovery per second from life leech. If your build has other powerful recovery sources, Strength of Blood can provide a powerful source of mitigation.

Raikiata provides the Tempered by War keystone, which causes you to take 50% of Cold and Lightning damage as Fire damage instead, while also giving 50% less Cold and Lightning resistances. On Righteous Fire builds, which stack fire resistance through the roof already, this is a powerful bonus if you can make up for the hefty resistance penalty.

In 3.11, the keystone added to Lethal Pride is Chainbreaker, with grants powerful rage bonuses to a build able to take advantage of them. It gives 3 rage regenerated per second, and causes increases and decreases to mana regeneration rate to instead apply to rage. In exchange for this, you lose 5 rage every time you hit an enemy, no more than once every .3 seconds. This keystone can be a great asset to any Warchief totem build, or to an invested heavy-hitting slam build, especially if you are making use of other rage generating abilities.

Overall, Lethal Pride is a powerful jewel when placed right, even without making use of the keystone it provides. Be on the lookout for useful passive improvements for your build, and this can fit on practically anything, though life based builds, fire builds, or Strength-stacking builds will usually get the best results out of it.

Elegant Hubris

The Eternal Empire’s Timeless Jewel is the polar opposite of the Karui’s. Elegant Hubris provides huge bonuses, at the cost of removing all benefits from the non-notable nodes in radius. It looks to make up for this loss with bonuses like 40% to critical strike multiplier, 15% chance to gain a Power Charge on critical strike, or “minions deal 80% increased damage”. If your build can handle the loss, Elegant Hubris can provide truly immense power to nearly any build.

The keystones on this jewel are granted by Cadiro, Victario, and an unkown general, and provide unique benefits that truly cannot be found anywhere else in the game.

Cadiro grants the Supreme Decadence keystone, which causes life recovery from flasks to apply to Energy Shield as well as life, at the cost of 30% less life recovery from flasks. This is a potent benefit for many hybrid Energy Shield/life builds, as well as any build that makes use of the Eldritch Battery keystone. Keep in mind that your flasks will still stop working when you reach your maximum life, so it is recommended that you use instant recovery life flasks with this keystone.

Victario gives access to the Supreme Grandstanding keystone, which causes nearby allies and enemies to share charges with you. Additionally, enemies hitting you have a 10% chance to gain an Endurance, Frenzy, or Power charge. While interesting, this keystone is generally not worth taking, as it is reliant on randomness and taking damage, two things that are generally best avoided.

Supreme Ostentation, added in 3.11, allows you to ignore attribute bonuses, in exchange for gaining no inherent bonuses from attributes. This means you could conceivably wield items with difficult attribute requirements, like Mjölner or Garb of the Ephemeral without having to warp your build around it. This drawback also plays well into the removal of benefit from nearby minor nodes, and can be a way to avoid having to gear for stats while using a large number of Cluster Jewels.

All in all, Elegant Hubris demands a delicate balancing act and a good roll to be worthwhile on a build. If you can find one with a powerful roll in a good spot, it is well worth your time to build around it, but it is generally much harder to make use of than others.

Glorious Vanity

Glorious Vanity causes every node within its radius to be transformed, with minor and notable nodes transforming into a wide variety of random modifiers. This makes it incredibly variable in terms of power level, with some synergistic rolls providing enormous advantages, while less useful ones can actively harm a build.

The keystones on this jewel are granted by Doryani, Xibaqua, and an unknown general, who offer unique, build-around mechanics that demand sacrifices from your build.

Doryani provides the Corrupted Soul keystone, which causes 50% of non-chaos damage to bypass Energy Shield, but grants 20% of your maximum life as additional maximum Energy Shield. This is a potent bonus on hybrid builds with similar amounts of Energy Shield and life, as well as for certain builds that want to make use of the Eldritch Battery keystone, as they are largely able to ignore or mitigate the drawbacks of the keystone.

Xibaqua offers the Divine Flesh keystone, causing all damage to bypass Energy Shield. In exchange, 50% of elemental damage is taken as chaos damage instead, and you are granted +10% to maximum chaos resistance. The jewel itself can also add maximum chaos resistance to notables in radius, and this can result in a powerful defensive bonus on builds that do not have Energy Shield to worry about being bypassed. This demands high investment on gear, but it is a powerful and worthwhile benefit.

The third keystone granted by this jewel is Immortal Ambition, the effect of which is not yet known. There is speculation that it may have to do with the unique affix on the Soul Tether belt, allowing for Energy Shield based over-leech. This will be updated as soon as we can confirm it.

It is recommended that you do not make use of this jewel unless you are taking an important keystone, or happen upon a powerful, synergistic roll for a build. That said, a powerful roll, especially with a useful keystone for your build, makes for an extremely potent addition for almost any build.

Militant Faith

The Templar Timeless Jewel offers completely unique mechanics, with Faith being added to or replacing minor nodes in radius, and notables gaining bonuses if you have 150 Faith. This requires allocating large numbers of points in the area, but can offer several powerful benefits, like +1% to all maximum resistances, arcane surge on hit, or 15% of physical damage converted to elemental. The jewel itself also offers bonuses based on the amount of faith the build has, such as “1% reduced cost of skills per 10 devotion,” or “0.6 mana regenerated per second pet 10 devotion.” These bonuses can potentially be more useful than keystone bonuses themselves.

Keystones from Militant Faith are added by Avarius, Dominus, and and unknown general, with bonuses ranging across defense, offense, and sustainability.

Avarius grants the Power of Purpose keystone, which converts 80% of maximum mana into twice that much armour. On a dedicated build, this can provide a huge amount of armour, but it comes at the cost of any other uses of Mana but reservation. It is generally quite difficult to actually make this node useful, even with a dedicated setup, thanks in part to the overall mediocrity of armour.

Dominus offers the Inner Conviction keystone, causing Power Charges to grant 3% more spell damage each, and causing you to generate Power Charges instead of Frenzy Charges. This can be an extremely potent bonus for builds making use of Shimmeron or Void Battery, as they already want to have a large number of Power Charges, and spell builds have a harder time maintaining Frenzy Charges already. This node can also be obtained on the reworked Voll's Protector, so keep that in mind when looking to incorporate this keystone to your build.

Transcendance is a new addition in 3.11, causing armour to apply to elemental damage instead of physical damage, and reducing your maximum elemental resistances by 5%. This is extremely powerful with the Loreweave armour, as this will allow you to completely ignore the drawback, while offering other potent benefits as well.

Overall, Militant Faith is powerful for a few specific niches. It is generally not recommended for use on a build that cannot take advantage of its keystones, because the investment to benefit ratio on the other passive nodes is quite low. When built around, however, Inner Conviction and Transcendance are quite powerful options for many builds to take great advantage of.

Brutal Restraint

Coming full circle, Brutal Restraint actually has quite a lot in common with Lethal Pride. It adds Dexterity to minor nodes, and unique modifiers to notables. While it does not provide as impressive of benefits as some of the others, Brutal Restraint is easy to fit into many builds, and offers some great damage bonuses when well-rolled. Some great effects to look out for are increased flask charges gained, increased non-curse aura effect, physical gained as extra cold damage, and chance to gain Frenzy Charges on kill. Because these are gained in addition to the base benefits of the nodes, they can provide a great boost to many builds, while never being harmful to pick up simply for the keystone.

The keystones for this jewel are granted by Asenath, Nasima, and an unknown general, with two providing powerful offensive benefits, and one providing useful defenses.

Asenath offers the Dance with Death keystone, which causes your critical strike chance and damage with critical strikes to be lucky, meaning you “roll” twice, and take the better result. However, it removes your ability to use a helmet, and causes enemies’ damage with critical strikes to be lucky against you. If your build does not have an important helmet enchant, and can withstand higher critical damage, such as with The Brass Dome, this keystone can offer a lot of damage to a build.

Nasima grants Second Sight, which causes you to be permanently blind. However, this blindness does not affect your light radius, and you gain 25% more melee critical strike chance while blinded. With a Lycosidae or weapon with crafted “hits can’t be evaded,” this is an immensely powerful keystone for raw damage, with functionally no drawback.

In 3.11, an unknown general offers The Traitor keystone, which causes you to gain 4 flask charges per empty flask slot, every five seconds. This means that for each flask that does not have any charges, rather than leaving several flasks unused to recharge flasks automatically, and the charges are split between each flask that is not full. This can be a useful ability in longer boss fights, and if you cannot take advantage of either other keystone, this one has little in the way of drawbacks.

Overall, if your build leans more towards critical hits, Evasion, or Dexterity stacking, Brutal Restraint is a potent offensive and defensive powerhouse jewel. It is likely the easiest of the Timeless Jewels to fit into a build, and has a price tag to reflect that.

Conclusion

While Timeless Jewels add powerful and exclusive benefits to your build, but they are not something that can simply be slotted into every build. Keep in mind what you are gaining from them when you look to incorporate them, and make sure you look at all the available options. If you happen to strike gold with powerful flask effectiveness, minion damage, or critical multiplier rolls, they can even enable builds that may otherwise be impossible or weak, like 1 soul cost Vaal Arc or interesting but off meta choices, like critical Spectral Shield Throw or Summon Holy Relic builds.

They have offered a near-endless degree of customization, and have been a big hit with build creators looking to do something new and unique throughout the league.