[LintMan]

Originally posted by PhilD:
In my case, I rarely have all researchers decked out in misc items, but I don't agree that the research bonus items are that much cheaper. Gems are a limited resource, while Gold is easier to find. Unless you're playing the Fever game, of course, but then upkeep and costs get more and more irrelevant.

I don't think it's necessary to load researchers down with research booster items, but having some seems nice.

It guess it depends on what you'd be doing with those Fire/Air/Death gems otherwise, and how averse to upkeep costs you are (and whether cheap researchers are available to you). In my current game, I had lots of extra fire and air gems, because I lacked any mages of those types (except for a couple of sages with a single level in them), and also could only buy 1 sage per turn, so spending those gems to ramp up research power seemed like a pretty good deal.

-LintMan

PS - I know you can alchemize fire gems to gold; can you go the opposite way and convert gold to fire gems? Then you'd be able to buy the fire gems to build the lightless lantern.