In a previous Developer Livestream, the team discussed the topic of Gems, and how they took up so much inventory space. With each quality of Gem taking up its own inventory slot, players would quickly lose out on a very large portion of Stash space. In order to somewhat remedy this, players have been forced to condense all of their Gems to the higher qualities in order to save space, which makes socketing gear for lower-level characters more tedious.
Merch: You Know You Want It
