Best Ways to Spend Gems in Clash Royale
By Do you really know how to spend Gems properly in Clash Royale? Let’s talk about this topic today!
I have received loads of questions about this lately. I hope this guide is good enough to satisfy you.
Best Ways To Spend Gems in Clash Royale
There are a lot of articles and posts about how to use your gems. Most conclude that you should use them all for Grand Challenges.
I’m here to tell you that for the average player that is incorrect depending on what you want to achieve.
Purchasing Chests In The Shop
First, let me repeat something that every Gem guide has said. Using your Gems for chests in the shop is a horrible idea if you want to maximize your value.
This is more true ever since the Gold in the Giant Chest has been reduced.
A Giant chest costs 520 gems and will give you 860 Gold and 287 cards. That means you are getting 1.6 pieces of Gold for each gem.
Comparatively:
- You get 20 pieces of gold for each gem if you purchase the 10,000 pouch of gold.
- You get 2.4 pieces of gold for each gem just by opening a gold chest with gems in your chest cycle.
- You get 13 pieces of gold for each gem if you enter a grand challenge and never win a game.
Buying a Magical Chest or Super Magical Chest in the shop is even worse, where you get approximately 1.3 pieces of gold for each gem.
If your goal is to get cards, a Giant chest will give you 287 cards, which translates to 0.5 cards per gem. This is, again, worse value than just opening a gold chest in your chest cycle and worse than entering challenges if you win at least 3.
Thus:
- You get 1.7 cards per gem by opening a Gold chest with your gems in your chest cycle.
- You receive 0.9 cards per gem if you win at least 3 games in a Grand Challenge.
The card per gem ratio for opening magical or super magical chests in the shop is even worse.
If you are looking for Gold
The conventional wisdom of playing Challenges is sound if your goal is to amass as much gold as possible.
First, however, let’s break down the chest cycle.
Opening chests in the cycle cost differing amounts depending on what kind of chest it is. Silver chests cost 18 gems, Gold chests 24 gems, Giant and Magical chests cost 72 Gems, and Super Magical chests cost 144 gems.
When looking at the gold per gem ratio, opening a Silver Chest with gems only provides 0.2 gold per gem, but opening a Super Magical Chest with gems, gives you a whopping 6600 gold per gem.
Thus, to figure out your average gold per gem for going through a complete chest cycle, you have to account for all of the different types of chests that will appear in your cycle and the differing gold per gem ratio.
Below is the amount of Gold/Gem you will receive for the chest cycle, purchasing gold in the shop, or completing a Grand Challenge.
| Name | Gold/Gem Value |
| Chest Cycle | 7.5 |
| Grand Challenge (0 Win) | 14 |
| Pounch of Gold | 16.7 |
| Grand Challenge (1 Win) | 19 |
| Bucket of Gold | 20 |
| Wagon of Gold | 22 |
| Grand Challenge (2 Wins) | 25 |
| Grand Challenge (3 Wins) | 32 |
| Grand Challenge (4 Wins) | 40 |
| Grand Challenge (5 Wins) | 50 |
| Grand Challenge (12 Wins) | 220 |
As you can see, going through the chest cycle with gems is the worst way to amass gold.
If you can win at least two games in a Grand Challenge, it will give you the best value. That is why all of the guides say Grand Challenges are the way to go.
However, getting Gold is not the only goal of using Gems.
If you are looking for Cards
Cycling chests is the best way the average playing can obtain cards.
That is because you have to win at least 4 games in a Grand Challenge to even equal the amount of cards you will receive by going through your chest cycle using Gems.
Thus:
| Name | Cards/Gem Value |
| Grand Challenge (0 Win) | 0.2 |
| Grand Challenge (1 Win) | 0.3 |
| Grand Challenge (2 Win) | 0.5 |
| Grand Challenge (3 Win) | 0.9 |
| Grand Challenge (4 Win) | 1.3 |
| Chest Cycle | 1.3 |
| Grand Challenge (5 Win) | 1.9 |
| Grand Challenge (6 Win) | 2.5 |
| Grand Challenge (12 Win) | 11 |
An average player at Clash Royale will win 3 games and lose 3 games in a challenge. Of course, sometimes you will win more and sometimes you will win less, but if you assume you will win an average of 3 games, the chest cycle is the way to go.
Note that you really need to win 6 games in a Grand Challenge to show a material improvement over the chest cycle.
Conclusion
In sum, if your goal is to amass gold, then go with the conventional wisdom and play Grand Challenges.
However, if your goal is to amass cards, then go with the chest cycle.
FunkyChicken
So, assuming maxing a few legendaries is your target, since those
cards matter the most for the end game, what should gems be spent on?
500 Gems – 1 Random Legendary
546 Gems – 1 Chosen Legendary For 40,000 Gold From Victory Reward
What’s the chance of getting a legendary for the chest cycle and chests from challenges below?:
Chest Cycle – 5,333 Gems For 40,000 Gold
0 Wins – 4,545 Gems For 40,000 Gold
1 Win – 3,226 Gems For 40,000 Gold
2 Wins – 2,353 Gems For 40,000 Gold
Wagon of Gold – 1,818 Gems For 40,000 Gold
3 Wins – 1,770 Gems For 40,000 Gold
4 Wins – 1,370 Gems For 40,000 Gold
5 Wins – 1,087 Gems For 40,000 Gold
6 Wins – 862 Gems For 40,000 Gold
7 Wins – 690 Gems For 40,000 Gold
8 Wins – 551 Gems For 40,000 Gold
9 Wins – 439 Gems For 40,000 Gold
10 Wins – 348 Gems For 40,000 Gold
11 Wins – 279 Gems For 40,000 Gold
12 Wins – 223 Gems For 40,000 Gold
I
usually get 5 – 8 wins in a regular challenge, but I’m not sure how
often the legendaries drop. The Victory Reward seems the best for me,
but I only saw it appear in the shop 3 times so far. I’m not sure how
often the Victory Reward will appear since it’s new. I have 6,500 gems
to spend. I’m trying to level up 3 legendaries to level 4: log (0/10
cards), ice wizard (2/10 cards), and miner (4/10 cards).
If you play a challenge game, then you need to take into account the gold that you could have earned while playing a regular 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 game. I get 28 gold per win for a regular game as long as I don’t win more than 20 games per day, which I usually don’t.
For example, if you play a challenge and get 3 wins and 3 losses, then that’s 6 chances that you had of getting 28 (or how ever many) gold with regular games. Let’s assume that you win half of your regular games. That’s 84 gold that you would have got if you played regular games. Since you would win 310 gold in a regular challenge at 3 wins and won’t get 84 gold from regular games, then you are actually getting 226 gold, or 22.6 gold per gem. When looking at only gold, you really need 3 wins, not 2, just to break even, assuming you don’t win more than 20 regular games per day.
Gold Per Gem When Taking Into Account That Regular Games Pay 28 Gold Per Win At 50% Win Ratio:
Chest Cycle – 7.5
0 Wins – 8.8
1 Win – 12.4
Pouch of Gold – 16.7
2 Wins – 17
Bucket of Gold – 20
Wagon of Gold – 22
3 Wins – 22.6
4 Wins – 29.2
5 Wins – 36.8
6 Wins – 46.4
7 Wins – 58
8 Wins – 72.6
9 Wins – 91.2
10 Wins – 114.8
11 Wins – 143.4
12 Wins – 179
I wonder what value each win might have when taking into account the cards obtained. I’m also wondering what formula would be best to use for this. Since maxing common and rare cards is extremely easy through requests, I would put a higher weight on epic and legendary cards. I get epic cards all of the time from regular challenges, but never got a legendary yet.
Epics can slowly be maxed through Sunday requests, so most weight should be placed on legendaries. I need about 25 – 30 legendaries of each type to max each card. With 9 legendaries now, that’s over 250 legendaries to max them all. Since maxing even one legendary would take years through only the chest cycle, the best way to max one legendary is to buy a specific one for 40,000 gold. Therefore, challenges still seems like the best reward for gems based on the gold.