Diablo 4 gems will be moved out of the inventory
In a future update, gems will be treated like a resource instead of an inventory item, but it'll be a while.
"Pleas give us a gem pouch," pleads a highly-upvoted Diablo 4 subreddit post from January, and a gem pouch we will get.
During the first Diablo 4 Campfire Chat stream today, game director Joe Shely acknowledged that Diablo 4 gems, which are slotted into gear as upgrades, cause "inventory tension"—they take up a lot of space, more or less—and said that they will be removed from the inventory in a future update.
"The idea is to change the way you acquire gems so that they show up in your materials or currency tab, rather than your inventory," said Shely. "And then the way that will work is you go to craft your gem in the same way that you do today, and you just use a certain amount of that material, similar to the amount of equivalent, actual gem inventory slots that you're using now, but as materials."
Diablo franchise GM Rod Fergusson noted that the change will save stash space as well as inventory space, but don't expect gems to unburden your storage slots soon. Shely called the change a "longer term" fix that the developers hope to implement sometime during Diablo 4's second season. The first season is scheduled to start in mid-to-late July, and will last around three months, so we're looking at the end of October at the earliest for this change.
A different storage-related concern will be addressed earlier, however. Shely said that the cap of 10,000 Veiled Crystals is arbitrary, and will be increased. (Other resources will presumably get cap increases too, but Veiled Crystals were the only example given.) That change is coming before the first season starts, so sometime in the next few weeks.
"Inventory Tetris" is one of the core Diablo experiences, but Diablo 4 already makes the term a misnomer by getting rid of differently-shaped and sized items—everything's one square, whether gem or sword. If I had a stash full of gems right now, I'd probably feel relieved by this news, but I also feel a little sad whenever old genre-defining stressors like inventory clutter get smoothed out in the name of efficiency. What will replace mopily dropping a bunch of gems on the ground so you can pick up a new sword?