Gem


 * For other uses, see Diamond (disambiguation).

Gems are items in Plants vs. Zombies 2 used for boosting plants in the seed selection screen, purchasing gem premium plants, sprouts, Piñatas for upgrading plants, and (formerly) plant costumes in the store. They can also be used as an alternative way to speed up the time to boost plants and purchase extra pots in the Zen Garden. They can also be used to receive piñatas with plant seed packets to upgrade them.

How to obtain gems

 * Purchasing them with real money (Up to 1800)
 * Watching an advertisement (3)
 * Mystery Gift Boxes (Up to 10)
 * Gem Jam Epic Quest (No longer available)(50 for 1, 60 for 2, another 50 for 3, and 75 for 4) (Can be obtained 4 times in that order)
 * Found in piñatas (Up to 12)
 * Normal Travel Log quests (2 for claiming 2 Battlez freeplays, 2 of completing the day's pinata party, and 10 for completing all of the daily quests)

Purchasable plants
The following plants are always in the store, all costing 100 gems:
 * Squash
 * Jalapeno
 * Hypno-shroom
 * Pea-nut
 * Homing Thistle
 * Hurrikale
 * Fire Peashooter
 * Lava Guava
 * Shrinking Violet

The following plants are occasionally in the store, all costing 100 gems:
 * Ghost Pepper
 * Sweet Potato
 * Sap-fling
 * Electric Currant
 * Aloe

The following plants are normally in-app purchases, but have been put on sale for gems at one point:
 * Torchwood (179 gems)
 * Imitater (159 gems)
 * Starfruit (179 gems)

Usage recommendations
It is highly advised to use gems to buy premium plants, as some of them are available for a limited time only and you will not be able to buy them after the deadline. When you have brought all current gem premium plants, you can try to get more gems to be able to unlock new pots in the Zen Garden or for future plants.

It is best not to spend gems in the Zen Garden, sprouts, nor for costumes, as you can simply set your device's clock ahead several hours or use Bernie the Bee to bypass waiting, sprouts are overpriced and are dropped commonly in-game, and costumes do nothing except visually decorating plants, making it worthless. In addition, most costumes can be unlocked in Piñata Parties and Mystery Gift Boxes, although some ones are store-exclusive.

If a gem premium plant is not available for a limited time, there is a chance that the price will lower and if you spend your gems early and the price lowers afterward, your gems will not be refunded. If you plan to not lose excessive amounts of gems, you can wait until the price of the plant in question gets cheaper.

Another good usage of gems is to get piñatas for upgrading plants. These can make even the weakest plants powerhouses and can make some levels incredibly easy. Note that these can be bought anytime and that limited-time plants should be prioritized (unless you don't need them for your collection). Try and get to a decent league (such as iron and above) in Battlez, and then buy the '100' gem piñatas in the store, as 1)the league bonuses are very helpful (20 extra seed packets, dude!) and 2)the extra, free piñatas make it very worth it.

Update history

 * In the 2.1.1 update, gems were introduced along with the Far Future world. They are the replacement for diamonds.
 * Around October 2014, gems can now be used to buy gem-premium or limited gem-premium plants.
 * Starting from the 2.9.1 update onwards, gems can be used to buy sprouts.
 * Also in the 2.9.1 update, the rate of gem drops was heavily decreased.
 * In the 3.2.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased.
 * In the 3.2.2 update on March 11, 2015, gems can now be used to buy costumes.
 * In the 3.5.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased once more.
 * In the 4.5.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased once again.
 * In the 5.7.1 update, gems can now be used to buy piñatas for upgrading plants.
 * In the 6.1.1 update, gems were not available to be dropped from zombies.

Trivia

 * Before the 2.1.1 update, gems did not exist and instead diamonds took their place with the value of 1000 coins. In the 2.1.1 update, gems replaced diamonds and no longer had the value of 1000 coins, now being used for other purposes. It still uses the diamond texture in the Chinese version.
 * Gems however, still take a very similar form as the diamond.
 * There used to be a glitch that almost every zombie in a level would drop a gem when killed instead of only a few zombies. This was fixed in 2.8.1 update.
 * Gems in Plants vs. Zombies 2 look exactly like their Plants vs. Zombies Heroes counterparts, except for slight shading differences.
 * In Summer Bundle, there is a glitch that the gem will be replaced by "X" if the player does not have any sprouts yet.
 * All plants bought with these, including premium plants, are only shared for the current profile.
 * The maximum amount of these the player can have is 2,147,483,647 (231 - 1). Attempting to reach past this amount will result in the gem counter turning into the minimum negative amount (-2,147,483,648). This is usually only be done by hacking.
 * This happens because 2,147,483,647 (231 - 1) is the maximum value of signed 32-bit integer in computing, and attempting to reach a value higher than this results in an integer overflow.