[parone]

yeah, gem gathering can be a real bit** if you don't have a strategy.

if you are specializing in certain paths/magics, you might use recruitable mages to sight search for specific kinds of gems. it is more effecient to find the spell that searches(one turn to cast, 2 turns to move/search), but that is negated if your searcher has more than one path and you need both(say he was a fire/earth mage and you needed both-like me). of course the spells find ALL of the sights in that path, so you could uncover one of those whopper lvl 4 sights, which if your searcher were not level 4, you wouldn't get.

some guys use a rainbow pretender(all paths, or most) and just have him sight search from the word go.

im sure there are more strats, but for someone like me(who knows very little) these are the simplest.

like everything else in this game, it requires a lot of planning.