Shadowgems are Shadowrealm’s premium currency. They can be bought, but the part worth documenting is that they can also be earned purely through play, and that there is a player-run market where gold and gems trade directly. Nothing gems buy is unavailable to a player who never spends money.
The through-line is that gems reward patience rather than payment. Every one of those sources is time-based, so a player who logs in regularly for a month accumulates a meaningful balance without ever opening a wallet.
The gem shop carries 52 distinct items. They fall into a few honest categories: instant restoratives and energy refills, gear crates, cosmetic items, convenience unlocks such as extra marketplace slots or a stronghold build queue slot, and respecs for the talent and Ascendancy trees.
Gear rerolls also cost gems, which is where most active players spend the bulk of theirs: rerolling the rolled stats on a good piece of equipment is the main way to turn a lucky drop into a genuinely best-in-slot item.
Gems can be cashed out to gold directly, at 98% of whatever the live player gem market is paying per gem, capped at 500 gems per day. There is no fixed gold-per-gem number to quote: the rate moves with the market, and the conversion simply takes a small cut of it. The cap is the important part: it exists so the conversion is a steady trickle rather than a lever anyone can pull to flood the economy in one afternoon.
The other direction runs through the player gem market, where players post gems for gold and gold for gems and the price is whatever the two sides agree on. That market is where the exchange rate lives, which is why the direct cash-out reads off it rather than setting its own: selling on the market yourself keeps the cut the conversion takes, at the cost of waiting for a buyer.