ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Mainly thinking of gems and the crystaline gear, but for a lot of the game, it's way easier to encounter magical gear than it is to encounter white gear appropriate for your character (Finding some is likely). Outside of using gems, it really serves no advantage over even the simplest green gear.

So why not have some shops carry them? It helps flesh the shops out a little (here's gear for the average person), provides another early thing to toss money at (Oh, here's a way I can use that Something I'm carting around now), and gives the sometimes small shop inventories a couple more things to spawn.

Looks like someone is tired of troubles finding things to Crystalline

Yup. Also I pretty much am never making rings out of the tier <4 gems, both for general weakness but also because it can be non-trivial in some runs to even come across the ring part for it.

Of course, this is randomness. Other runs I swim in the appropriate gear.