Patch Notes: Gem Sockets

Weapons with real gem slots

Weapons now carry sockets you can see: round wells under the item's picture on its card, and small pips along the top of its tile in your pack.
A weapon's size sets how many sockets it can have: one on a short blade (dagger, tanto, shortsword, wakizashi), two on a one-handed weapon, three on a two-handed weapon, a bow or the Thunderlock. Armour and jewellery keep their single socket.
Socketed weapons drop far more often. Magic weapons can now have one socket. Rare and Legendary weapons can roll extra sockets, up to their size.
Set gems yourself, right in your pack. Click an empty socket to pick a gem from your pack, or open a gem's card and choose Set in.... Setting a gem is free (the gem is spent), and you can do it on a weapon you're wearing.
Click a filled socket twice to shatter its gem. To get a gem back whole, go to the Mages Guild's Reforge, which extracts it for gold based on the gem's grade.
A piece that holds a gem is never salvaged (extract or unset the gem first), and a set gem adds its own worth to the piece's price.

Each of the eight classic gems now comes in five grades: Chipped, Flawed, regular, Flawless and Perfect. The better the grade, the stronger the bonus. Socketed in a weapon, a gem adds fire or frost damage, life leech, extra damage or an attribute; in armour or jewellery it adds a resistance or an attribute.
Gems now drop from bodies, dungeon treasure and tavern or guild caches. Deeper, deadlier places drop better grades.
World bosses drop gems. The Oblivion Gate's Warden drops one, Sethrakul drops one to every player who dealt their share of the damage, and the Brass Remnant drops two. All are Flawless or Perfect, and the bosses' weapons and armour can now come socketed.
Fair stacking: a weapon's gems of the same kind together give at most one Rare line's worth (for example +6 Fire damage at most). Mixing gem kinds pays more than doubling up, and the item card shows when a weapon hits that limit.

Monsters are now tougher depending on where you meet them, using the same grading that decides how good a place's loot is. Mines, natural caves, cemeteries and towns add nothing. In a Crypt the strongest foes have up to a third more health, in a Vampire Haunt up to 70% more, and in a Dragon's Den or the Volcanic Caves up to double health, hitting up to 25% harder and with more skill.
The wilderness is a little tougher by day and more so at night.
The weaker the creature, the less it gains: rats, bats and imps gain nothing. Offline, turning off Loot rarity turns this off too.

With the Physical Combat and Armor Overhaul on (the default), an enemy's weapon skill now helps it hit exactly as much as yours helps you. Its critical strikes land as often and hit as hard as yours.
A weapon in top condition no longer strikes up to 30% harder, and fresh armour no longer lets 15% less damage through, unless you turn on the overhaul's Equipment Damage Enhanced module (Settings > Combat > Rules & armour > Physical Combat And Armor Overhaul). That module wears gear down fast enough to make the bonus something you earn by maintaining your gear. Worn gear still hits weaker and blocks less, as before.

Elite enemies now appear offline while Loot rarity is on: about one foe in twenty in the wilds, and sometimes one in a dungeon. An elite is never a creature below level 3, and offline a level-1 or level-2 character meets no elite among a dungeon's bandits and knights.
Enhanced AI is now on by default offline, as it already was online. You can switch back to the classic enemy AI in Settings > Combat > Enemies (Enhanced AI). If you had pressed All off in the features list, it stays off.
Dying offline now costs gold. When Project Legacy raises you after a death, you lose a tenth of the gold you carry, as online. Gold in the bank is safe. The death screen shows the amount and now says Rise instead of "End the journey".

GEM1-GEM3 + BAL1-BAL4: weapon gem sockets and graded gems; a harder world without a band-aid by @Lattymoy in #741

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.7506...app-v0.1.7524