Welcome to the Frostbitten Heart Gemma Leveling Guide. Gemma's Frostbitten Heart Trait specializes in Cold Skills, Frostbite, and Freeze enemies.
| The leveling guide is intended to take your character to Level 80. This is the last level with unlimited free respec points. Be sure to check the final section of the guide for recommendations on how to transition into the Endgame! |
- Beginner Friendly
- Smooth progression
- Very safe playstyle with freeze
- Must do Cold Damage
- Low Single Target Damage
- Difficult to Scale into endgame
Check out the Complete Story Walkthrough for tips on how to complete the Campaign.
Treasure Troves
Treasure Troves are a way to super-charge your leveling experience. They give vastly more experience than regular zones and yield exclusive Legendary items. You need to complete each of them once for a Talent Point. For an easier leveling experience, you repeat the Treasure Trove until you're 8-10 levels above the zone, then rush through the next few areas. Follow your side quest to find the Treasure Trove locations.
Keep an eye out for the following Legendary items as you clear Treasure Troves.
- New Ear Hills (L7): Look out for Elemental Whisper Belt and Rock Lizard's Skull.
- Nectar Valley (L16): Look out for Omniscient Prototype.
- Dawn Avenue (L27): Look out for Omniscient Prototype.
- Sanctuary of Solitude (L35): Look out for Omniscient Prototype.
- Silver Sands' End (L44): Look out for Chain of Resistance and Surging Inspiration - Prototype.
- Hall of Grandiosity (L54): Look out for Surging Inspiration - Prototype and Omniscient Prototype.
Leveling Tips and Tricks
- Your first active skill slot (top left in the Skills menu) is your "Main Skill," this matters because many items and Hero Traits have effects that only apply to the Main Skill.
- If you're ever in doubt of where to go, click the campaign quest on the left of your screen and a golden path shows you the way.
- This guide assumes you get most of your levels through Treasure Troves and rush to the objectives in other zones for maximum efficiency.
- When allocating Pact Points, prioritize Life first, then select Damage nodes until you fill the section. If you have leftover points, put them into Drop nodes as you begin farming the Netherrealm.
- Complete all 10 Levels of the Hero Forge to unlock all of your Hero Trait abilities and gain 6 additional Talent Points.
- All support gems become available from the Skill Shop at level 55. At this stage cross reference with the embeds to make sure you're set up for the Netherrealm.
- In Chapter 3 gear you find comes with varying amounts of Energy, after changing your gear, be sure to go to the Energy Menu under Skills to reassign missing Energy.
Equipment & Stat Priorities
Look for these Offensive stats on weapons:
- Fire/Lightning/Cold Damage to Spells
- Cast Speed
- % Spell/Elemental Damage
- Spell Critical Strike Chance
- Critical Damage
Look for these Defensive stats on armor:
- Max Life
- Life %
- Armor
Core Skills
- Ring of Ice unleashes a Cold AoE Nova around you, Freezing and obliterating nearby enemies. Whenever you kill an enemy with this skill, you have a chance to trigger another Ring of Ice, making this a great pack clearing tool! This needs to be in your FIRST Skill slot so your Illusion uses the skill!
- Mana Boil grants a large Additional Spell Damage multiplier whilst draining your current Mana.
- A Mana regeneration roll on your amulet completely mitigates that downside and allows you to have 100% uptime on the Mana Boil buff.
- Spiral Strike allows you to rapidly traverse stages. This requires using a melee weapon so equip Daggers as early as you can.
- Frigid Transmission is the best secondary movement skill option due to its cooldown being reset when you Freeze enemies. Support it with skills that increase your cooldown recovery speed and grant additional charges of the skill.
- Compound Source is your main way to quickly Restore Life and Mana whenever needed.
Leveling Progression
WARNING: The following levels are a guideline, you might complete the quest/unlock the Skill a few levels early, or a few levels later!
Move to slider at the bottom to interact with the Tool
Move to slider at the bottom to interact with the Tool
Use the Embed to the left to follow along with Support Skill progression!
Level 1: Support your Ice Lances with Multiple Projectiles.
Equip the following as you obtain them:
- Level 3: Support Compound Potion with Limber Stretch.
- Equip Frigid Transmission.
- Level 7: Switch Ice Lances with Ring of Ice.
- Switch Multiple Projectiles with Efficient Cast.
- Support it with Freeze Chance
- Level 12: Equip 2 Daggers, move Frigid Transmission to Slot 4, equip Spiral Strike in Slot 3.
- Level 17-25: Swap Efficient Cast with Psychic Burst
- Add Mana Boil
- Level 26-54: Continue filling out supports on your utility skills. After switching to Ring of Ice and Spiral Strike you don't need to switch skills. Instead the goal is to slowly add on Supports and Auras as you gain Energy and levels.
Level 55: At this point you have access to every skill in the game, continue to follow the embed shown as you gain more Energy.
You can use Concentrated with 2 Auras because Frigid Domain does not "affect" you!
Once you obtain Off The Beaten Track you can add significantly more Support Skills to your Auras. This is a large damage boost and comes towards the end of your leveling journey.
To learn more check out the Skills and Passives Guide.
Talents
Move to slider at the bottom to interact with the Tool
Goddess of Knowledge
Reaching level 12 grants Beacon. This is your first talent major, granting a huge multiplier through Spell Burst. Preparation gives you access to Focus Blessing and Cast Speed.
Magister
This tree grants an additional Spell Burst as well as strong Focus Blessing synergies.
Warlock
Is the best tree for quality of life, granting huge amounts of cooldown, Empower skill effect and an additional charge of cooldown Skills.
As you progress the build further, Off The Beaten Track combined with Precise: Seal Conversion allows you to run a lot more Auras. This should only be done late into the endgame once you have a good amount of Energy Shield so you can Seal more of your Life.
The Cast and Attack Speed penalty from Indifference slows your Spell Burst in exchange for significantly higher uptime on buffs.
There are tons of different Talent Trees to explore, if you want to learn more about this robust system check out our Talent Tree Guide.
Traits, Relics and Memories
Hero Traits
Level 45: Snowy Embrace increases your maximum Cold Energy and restores Cold Energy when you deal damage (up to 5/second).
Level 75: Frost Tides reduces the interval of Cold Pulse and cause it to inflict 100 points of Frostbite. This allows you to freeze enemies extremely easily. For more single target damage, switch to Frigid Infusion on bosses.
Level 90: At this point, you should have transitioned to an endgame build. Blooming Frost Flower is key for clearing zones in the Endgame as it casts Frost Pulse at the enemies location when you hit them with a cold spell every 0.1s. For endgame bosses switch to Bone-piercing Frost.
Relics and Memories
Look for any combination of the following stats on your Hero Relics and Memories;
| Hero Relic | Hero Memories |
| -Cold Pulse Interval | Freeze Duration |
| Cold Damage | Cold Pulse Inflicts Frostbite |
| Cold Penetration | Cold Pulse Cooldown Recovery Speed |
| Maximum Life |
To learn more, check out our Hero Relic and Hero Memory Guide.
Pacts
To learn more, check out our Pacts and Pets Guide.
The Netherrealm
Racing through your Netherrealm quests as quickly as possible results in you becoming under leveled for the required zones to progress further, stay within 3 levels of the zones you're completing to avoid a harsh experience penalty. Check out our How to Progress the Netherrealm if you're unsure of anything.
Here's a list of things to do while progressing the early stages of the Netherrealm;
- Level 60: the Trade House is unlocked. Be sure to read and understand our Trade House for Beginners Guide before making any big purchases.
- Higher item levels of gear come with higher quantities of Energy. Look to improve your current gear with items that have increased Energy so that you can use more Support Skills.
- Utilize Prototype Crafting and Enchanting to greatly increase the power of non-legendary gear you come across. It costs very low amounts of Flame Dust and Flame Sand to lock 1 good affix in place and reroll up to 4 new modifiers.
- Farm your Voyager's set for powerful bonuses!
Transitioning to Endgame
Weapon
Look for the following stats on your Sacrificial Daggers.
- Prefixes:
- + to Spell Skill Level
- Cold Damage, Elemental Damage or Spell Damage
- Cold Damage added to Spells
- Elemental Penetration
- Suffixes:
- Spell Critical Strike Rating
- Spell Critical Strike Damage
- Cast Speed
- Cooldown Recovery Speed
- If it is item level 70+, craft your weapon using prototype crafting until you hit several useful modifiers.
- Use Targeted Processing to add more modifiers from the above list until the item has 5 modifiers.
- Enchant your item with a 6th modifier.
Remaining Gear
Focus on crafting the remainder of your Armor and Jewelry with the following goals in mind;
- Cap all of your Resistances at the 60% maximum.
- Have a healthy Life pool.
- Scale Armor for additional defenses.
- Spell Burst Modifiers
- Increase your Cold or Spell damage.
- Increase your Cast Speed.
- Spell Critical Strike Rating, or Damage.
Legendary Items
Leveling
Keep an eye out for the following common items during your leveling journey:
- Elemental Whisper Belt is another common Legendary, and a good way to get damage early on.
- Grace Boots offer easy access to Movement Speed on builds which stack Focus Blessings.
- Chain of Resistance a great early game item offering much needed single target damage early on.
- Surging Inspiration - Prototype gives you a similar effect to a powerful endgame Legendary.
- Feline Gloves offers some damage scaling based off of your Blessings.
Set Items
As you complete the Netherrealm be sure to farm the following Voyager's Commemorative Set items.
- Voyager's Commemorative Cape
- Voyager's Commemorative Strap
- Voyager's Commemorative Boots
- Voyager's Commemorative Cufflinks
- Voyager's Commemorative Pinky Ring x2
Endgame
The following items may be expensive but offer powerful effects;
- Sky Devourer - Insight Armor is a good entry level endgame item offering defenses, area, and damage.
- Surging Inspiration provides a massive bonus to your Spell Burst in exchange for you losing Mana when you Spell Burst.
- Only use this when you have enough Mana recovery.
Continue the Journey
Congratulations on completing the Frostbitten Heart Gemma Leveling guide! To continue your Endgame journey check our Build Database!
Other Resources
Leveling Build Guides
Credits
Written by: Milkybk_
Reviewed by: Xtra37