To be or not to be a gem

[Herode_]

My current character (Dwarf, Cursed) has equiped Tirakai's Maul. Its description says :
"It can be used to imbue the hammer with a gem of your choice, costing 10 power out of 1/10"
I "used" the weapon to equip it with an opal, it worked.

Q1 : what does this "out of 1/10" mean ?

I have several tier 1 & 2 gems available in my inventory and I've just found the Crystal Focus, whose description says
"Type : gem / multi-hued"
and
"It can be used to combine with a weapon, costing 1 power out of 1/1".

I can "use" it again to equip it with other standard gems but I can't equip it with the Crystal Focus. Why is that ?

[Radon26]

items give you ability in a few ways
grant ability xxx:+Y - you get y points into talent, even if you don't have the ability to get the talent, for as long as you wear the item.
on xxx: y z% - when you hit something or cast a spell or nature power, or just hits something, the talent y will have z chance to be triggered.
activate to cast xxx putting all charms into yy cooldown - using one of those puts all of them to cooldown.
activate to cast xxx using x out of y/z - its an item that stores its own power, and if has enough can be cast multiple times.

"10 power out of 1/10"
Imagine it this way, the spell costs 10 mana, you have currently 1 out of 10 and you regenerate 1 a turn.
That's more less how you read this, although, they don't actually use mana. They all have their own non specified resource.
an item like that can store up to z power, and if less it will gather 1 resource every turn. once you get to xxx power, you can activate the item.
a good a good other example of this is also the nature infused fire glove artefact that allows you to cast flame spit. it has enough power storage to cast it a few times without cooldown. Also, rod of recall also works that way.

i have not used tirakai myself, but it is supposed to be able to swap gems so if you still have the ability there, it should either release the gem in it, or swap it for another. also, while t2 is default, the gem tier will decide or the tier of the item, meaning the better the gem, the higher base damage.
also, i think all gems also add to or modify the damage type, depending on the gem you pick.

[zsd]

10 power out of 1/10 means that the maul's ability (in this case, imbuing with a gem) takes 10 power to activate, you have 1 power now, and the maul holds a maximum of 10 power. Items gather 1 power per turn. So basically it has a 10-turn cooldown. A lot of items in ToME act this way, usually having a max power just high enough to use the item once. There are exceptions though, like the Rod of Recall, which holds 400 power but only costs 202 to use, so you can use it twice in fairly quick succession. The Eel-Skin Armor can zap your enemies with lightning nearly 3 times in a row before needing to rest, since it costs 18 to use but holds 50. http://te4.org/wiki/Eel-skin_armour

The maul is quite good with upper-tier gems http://te4.org/wiki/Tirakai%27s_Maul . I do not recommend imbuing it with a tier-1 gem however, as its stats will actually decrease.

You can't imbue the hammer with the Crystal Focus because the Crystal Focus doesn't behave like a normal gem. The only thing you can do with it is use it to combine with a basic weapon (one that doesn't have any egos like "flaming" or "of massacre" or whatever, they are the items with white text names) to make an artifact weapon. The new weapon will do arcane damage instead of physical, and has stats that get better the higher tier of weapon you use it on.

You might think, "Ah, I will just wait to find a white voratun weapon and use it then, because then it will be the most powerful!" That's one way to do it, but IMO not the best, because the highest tiers are already packed with good weapons and a Crystal Focus weapon might not be that useful by then. Plus, you may not even get that far (I know I usually don't). So don't be afraid to slap it on a basic stralite greatsword or even dwarven-steel.

[Coldbringer]

every ten turns you can swap in a different gem. Say you put in a tier 2 gem that converts the weapon to fire damage and run into a fire immune enemy. Then you can switch a different gem in for different elemental damage.

There are some gems that do not specify an element. in this case, you get several different elemental damage types at the same time, fire cold lightning ect with every hit. Plus you get the stats of the gem.

Regular gems tend to give a nova type effect. Light gem does light damage AOE and blind. Fire gem does fire aoe and fire shock, ect. Experiment with the t1/t2 gems to see the different things you do, you'll get tons of gems over the course of the game.

As others have said, the higher tier of the gem, the more damage the maul with do. If you put in a tier 5 gem, you get a tier 5 maul and equivalent damage.

[Danton]

The maul is quite good with upper-tier gems http://te4.org/wiki/Tirakai%27s_Maul . I do not recommend imbuing it with a tier-1 gem however, as its stats will actually decrease.

That shouldn't be happening. There's a line in the item code explicitly to prevent it from dropping below tier 2 quality.

[Stuntofthelitter]

That happened before 1.3. It no longer happens.

[grayswandir]

Also note that the power cost is reduced by your cunning/survival/charm mastery talent %age.

[Coldbringer]

Also note that the power cost is reduced by your cunning/survival/charm mastery talent %age.

Charm mastery lowers costs of item specific resources? Didn't know it worked that way. So if it's at 25% and Essence of Bearness takes 100 out of 100 power, it would instead take 75/100?

[grayswandir]

Yes. So like you can get eel-skin armour up to 5 uses in a row, if I remember right.