If you're looking for gems in Nightingale, you likely want to craft cards so you can start exploring new realms. While gems aren't actually part of the recipe, you will need them to craft glass, one of the materials required to build a Simple Enchanter's Focus—the crafting station that lets you make cards.
You may have picked up some gems already from inside chests or while mining other materials. I found Quartz the easiest to obtain in my Abeyance Forest realm, and it can be added to the Smelter to produce glass. With that in mind, here's where to find gems in Nightingale.
Where to find gems
Before you set out looking for gems, you need a Simple Mining Pick, or better, to mine them. If you're familiar with survival games, you might think gems are a by-product of mining other ores or are found when breaking down rocks. In Nightingale, gems have their own nodes—or Quartz does, anyway.
To find them, look for rocks that have large crystal formations on the outside, often located on cliff edges, or rocky outcroppings on hillsides, among other regular rocks and ore nodes. The screenshot above shows what you're looking out for. Don't forget to pick up the raw gems from the ground afterwards, as mined items aren't automatically added to your inventory.
It's also possible to find gems randomly in chests, either tucked away inside ruins or inside a Site of Power. As these are random, however, your best bet is to find a place to mine gems for a better, more reliable yield.
Once you've gathered all the gems you need, head back to your base and add them to the Smelter. You'll need two raw gems for each bit of glass you want to produce and you need five glass to build an Enchanter's Focus.
