Runes of Magic US / AU

That is normal. If you look at teh description on the jewels they will state they have a chance at failure. Now do not get discouraged, failure with the CS jewels is not a deal breaker. Sometimes the + will drop and sometimes it will not. But the jewels will state at the lowest they will drop the +ing to. The lowest jewels will not go below +1 while the next ones will not go below +7.
There are what is called Perfect jewels that have no failure rate. You can get some in the Ruby section of the Item Shop if you have enough rubies.
Now ingame you can purchase some jewels from a vendor. I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO THAT. The vendor jewels have a chance to DESTROY your gear.
Everyone has gone through this but just read the description on teh jewels before you buy to make sure you are getting what you want.

your fine, general rule of thumb is 100k per + to +2

we've all gone through this? name one person that has "destroyed" their gear with the vender gewels

I have never had this happen.

Quoted from "MegaMouseSEC;545045"

Now ingame you can purchase some jewels from a vendor. I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO THAT. The vendor jewels have a chance to DESTROY your gear.

The ingame NPC jewels are fantastic for getting gear to +1 and can usually be done somewhere between 6-10 jewels to get just that +1.

For anything higher, I would always just go for Cash Shop jewels.

Don't worry about the jewels destroying your gear though - only the advanced Jewels for +7 to +12 have a chance of doing that and I'd really not be wanting to use NPC jewels on anything I've managed to get to +6.

For any gear you use for questing & levelling up, that +1 is the tiny bit extra that is useful. Only if you want to start doing instance runs will you need to consider purchasing the jewels from the Shop.

Currently, I'm still levelling myself up & so I'm just making my gear +1. I have got a nice staff though (Root of Nightmares) and made it +6 to quest with.

Quoted from "alexanderiiv;545048"

we've all gone through this? name one person that has "destroyed" their gear with the vender gewels

What I meant is everyone ahs gone throught eh jewel upgrade/downgrade game. I managed to purposefully destroy a purple sword jsut to see if it would happen. Took 3 jewels to do it. But I will not say the odds are 33% destruction, the odds may be way lower than that. I was just unlucky/lucky, who knows.

Yes this is normal to spend all you gold trying to attempt to plus your gear. Just wait to you spend real money to use casp shop jewels. You will spend all your money and probably still not get plus 16. The rate of success is ridiculous and one day when people figure it out and quit giving Frogster money to support a broken system, it may get better....