The Most Efficient Way to Spend your Soul Gems

    So you finally figured out how to earn your soul gems. You either played a lot of games, completed a lot of contracts or you wrote a lot of articles. Now that you've amassed your small fortune you have to figure out the best way to spend it. After all, when it comes to currency of any kind, you need to know how to spend it as well as how to earn it.
   If you still haven't gotten any soul gems, this article isn't for you (yet). Go take a look at one of the many articles about earning soul gems and come back. I'm going to tell you how to make the most of your soul gems.

   Welcome to one of the most boring, but most useful articles I will write here at gamehag. Unless of course you are an econ/finance nerd.

I'm going to leave an index so that you may skip around in case you are looking for something specific.
Just press Ctrl+F and search for one of the keypoints listed

Defining Potential Purchases
Utility vs Efficiency
The Price of Flexibility
The Best Use of Gems
Are Chests Worth It
Are Random Steam Keys Worth it
Hierarchy Of Gem Spending

DEFINING POTENTIAL PURCHASES

Before I get into anything it is important to categorize what you can get with soul gems (SG).
Typically with your Soul Gems you can redeem

Gift Cards: Steam Gift Cards, Visa Prepaid Cards, Gamestop Gift Cards
Game Subscriptions: World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, Playstation Plus
In Game Currency Refills: Robux, Gems
Game Codes: Fallout 4, Skyrim, Killing Floor
Chests
Random Steam Keys
CS:GO Skins

UTILITY VS EFFICIENCY

When spending gems it is best to balance between two things
How Much You Want Something vs. How Efficient The Purchase Is

How Much You Want Something
How much you want something is self explanatory. It is simply how much you want a specific item or your utility.
Utility is the usefulness or benefit level of something or someone.
For example:
I don't play Roblox and I probably never will. So buying Robux with my gems is a complete waste and I get 0 value
I get 0 utility. I don't even know to do with Robux!
    -or-
I play Roblox every day and I really want to buy that new Roblox body pillow. Buying Robux gives me a very high value.
I get high utility. That virtual robotic body pillow makes my insides smile.



How Efficient the Purchase Is
The efficiency of a purchase is a bit less intuitive.
Let us compare the four gift cards you can redeem for 5 USD:

    You can see clearly here that the Gamestop and Facebook gift cards are more efficient usage of gems if we are looking at this from a purely financial standpoint. If you just started thinking "So I should only buy Gamestop and Facebook cards?"  then you are very mistaken.
     You should not only think about your   Gem to Cash conversion.
     You should think about your                Cash to Product Conversion
      As well as your                                   Product to Utility Conversion
That sounded a bit strange so let me unwrap what I just said through an example:
While the Steam Cards are more expensive you have to consider the fact that often times Steam is cheaper to purchase games on than Gamestop. So even though you got more money for your gems, the money won't go as far.
   Lets say that Fallout 4 is 30 USD at Gamestop and that it is 15 USD at the Steam store. In this situation it is better to spend the extra gems on the more expensive steam card.
BUT the Visa Prepaid card actually might even get you a better price than either or those two

The Price of Flexibility:

    Now if everything were priced the same based on their cash value this article would be very simple. I would just tell you to go buy Prepaid Visa Cards. They can be used to purchase nearly anything you want. Go ahead and try paying for lunch with a Steam gift-card and let me know how that goes. But as you've seen sometimes with flexibility comes an increased price. And depending on the situation that increased gem price might be worth it.

    If Fallout 4 is 15 USD on Steam, maybe one of the hundreds of third party key sites might have it for cheaper than that. After searching you find that a key is for sale for 10 USD. Even though you paid more gems for the Visa card, its ability to be used at other vendors allowed you to get a much better deal on your game.

   Now if the game was the same price at all three places it would make more sense to get a Gamestop gift card.

The Best Use of your Gems

    As a general rule the most efficient thing to spend you soul gems on are Game Keys that you want. In the rewards store there are many keys. I'll once again use Fallout 4 as an example.
When the reward store has a very specific item with a very small population of buyers the gems required will go down.
The keys are likely bought by the reward store when these games go on sale.
As a result, oftentimes if you see a game you want in the reward store it is cheaper to buy it directly there.

Fallout 4 is worth 5299 gems at the reward store for direct purchase.
Take a look at past sales with a simple google search.
The record low for this game is 14.99 on Steam so if you were going to use gift cards it would cost around 7800 gems
You are paying for flexibility by buying the Steam Wallet Codes but you don't need the flexibility. You have a specific need and gamehag happens to have that specific need in stock.

If you want to be efficient look at Game Codes:
Just Make Sure to Follow these Rules
1. Look up the lowest price, and how often it goes on sale
2. Look at how many gems you need for direct purchase
3. Compare the direct purchase price to the price in giftcards that you need and only direct purchase if cheaper
4. Make sure the game is for a platform you want, there are many Origin codes on this site.
5. Make sure it is for a game you truly want.
6. Don't talk about fight club

Are Chests Worth It?


   To put it simply, no chests are not worth it. Chests are a gamble and it is a gamble that is not in your favor. Chances are you will get one of the worst prizes in a chest. In every chest there is a dud prize and this is the prize you will most likely get.

   But that being said, you can get lucky. There are some people out there with a crazy amount of luck and if you are one of those people go out there and grab all those chests. Compulsive gamblers will also have reason to grab the chests. There is something enticing about a mystery box, and sometimes the thrill of gambling is worth it. Maybe if you have leftover Soul Gems and you enjoy gambling you can give it a shot.


Are Random Steam Keys Worth it?
      In my experience I have not gotten a random steam game with anything that was of good quality. Usually I get 99 cent low quality indie games made by a dude in his basement. Unfortunately I cannot tell you what games are included in the random steam key draw, but if I had to guess it would be 10 low quality games for every 1 high quality game. My advice is the same as it would be for chests. Only if you like to game or you have a little left over soul gems.

Hierarchy of Gem Spending:
   Some will skip right to this section for a simplification on how to spend their Soul Gems. You will lose out on some efficiency but you will save a bit of time reading, so it seems like a fair trade-off. This is a general guideline to follow.

Top Tier Efficiency:
Specific Game Keys
i.e. Fallout 4, Assassins Creed, Killing Floor 2

Mid Tier Efficiency
Gift Cards
i.e. Steam Wallet Codes, Visa Prepaid, Gamestop Gift Card

Low Tier Efficiency
Chests, Random Steam Keys


No Tier:
Runes
Rune efficiency depends completely on how you use it. I personally don't care for runes because I don't know when I will be getting Soul Gems for the tasks or articles I have done so I would have to end up wasting a lot of runes to make sure I get the extra SG.


I hope you found this useful if you have any tips of your own please share them in the comments!
May Finance Be With You,
Vaaren