You get crown gems when you get duplicates of certain items (mounts, pets, any cosmetics). Those items are permanently unlocked for your account and available to every character once you acquire it, so there is no reason to get a second one. So it just gets turned to gems. Otherwise getting a second item does nothing. You can also turn any consumable or furniture item into gems if you don't want it.

Gems are used to trade in for any item in the crown crates that you might want (as long as you have enough of them to trade it in for). If you select the crown crates in the in game store, and look at the top of the menu you'll see the ability to select different currencies to purchase individual items in the crown crates with. These currencies are:

Seals: which can be earned in game.

Gems: which are earned purely from getting duplicate certain crown crate items or turning certain unwanted items into gems.

These currencies allow you to select individual items in the crates to purchase... in case you really wanted a certain item and had terrible luck. You don't need to use either currencies on a single crate type either. You can save them and use gems or seals on any crate type. I've used seals for a few radiant apex mounts, and gems when I had really terrible luck and use them to get the stupid legendary item I was actually after lol

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

You can also get gems by converting crown crate items you got but didn't want. When you're in the regular Crown store, you should see both your total crowns AND total gems listed, and you can purchase items using either. Not sure if you can combine them if you're a bit short, though.

Nope. Crowns are used for purchasing crown store items that don't drop as loot from crates. Crown Gems are only good for purchasing items that can only be obtained from looting crown crates.

[edit] Though there may be exceptions on minor items like potions/scrolls.

Kendric5 wrote: »

I know how you get the gems but I can't find anywhere to spend the gems now!!!!

Also I got the same item twice in the same box (I had already gotten the item!) but it didn't give me the gems for it instead!

what was the item?

Kendric5 wrote: »

Also I got the same item twice in the same box (I had already gotten the item!) but it didn't give me the gems for it instead!

You'll not get gems if the item wasn't collectible (outfits, pets, marks, etc...). If it is some furnishing item or scrolls or potions, you can get them several times, but if don't need them - you can deconstruct them from Gem Extraction menu (by default - F from Pacrooti's UI)

To purchase items for gems go to Crown Store -> Crown Crates section, there is the list by rarity with gem's icon in front

Kendric5 wrote: »

I know about how you get gems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't find the location that offers items for gems!

Thanks for the info as I found then where JavaRen indication to look.

Yep, it's a little bit counter-intuitive that to spend Crown Gems, you must select the option used to buy Crown Crates, which then lets you select different reward tiers to see the items you can buy with your Crown Gems.