Did you know that? (Dominions trivia)

[Rysith]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Well, in practice generally 1 gem with no hammer is better than no gems with a hammer by the point of the game you're putting up forge of the ancients, etc.

The point isn't so much that you can get free items, but that it's possible to exceed the 80% cost reduction cap, which I had previously thought was a hard limit. As I mentioned, with the same set of bonuses they forge 40-gem items for 6.

I suspect that the key is pushing the bonus to 80% before the site bonus is factored in, and then the site bonus ends up pushing it beyond 80% reduction (and truncating, so items costing fractional gems are free).