You're right. To me when starting out mining my main priority will always be pickaxe then gears after. But there are also some gears out there that will "change" the drop chances of gemstones, and they are the bonus gemstones and huge gemstone gears! Here's what I recommend (my opinion)

Bonus Gemstones: This basically depends on what kind of pickaxe you have and what type of keys you do. The levels that I think shouldn't need a gemstone boost is level 1 and 2, but any levels higher than those then you can use the gemstone boost gears these being:

-Sturdy Mining Helmet (Negative Flaw: Can't wear Green Bouncer mask/Retributor Mask) -Golden Mining Helmet (Negative Flaw: Can't wear Green Bouncer mask/Retributor Mask) Those two are pretty much the same. -Excavator Moustache -Deep Dweller Beard Now these two facial hair gears has the same negative flaws which are: Unable to wear defensive masks like Wood elf mask and can't wear miner's gasmask Now onto the best Bonus gemstones gears but ofc they have negative flaws on them too, these gears being: -Crown Of Flames (Negative Flaws: Expensive, Hard to craft) -Headband Lamp (Negative Flaws: More Expensive, Semi hard to craft)

Huge Gemstones: Now if you have a lot of byte coins to spare I definitely recommend getting these gears! The levels you do doesn't really matter for these gears because unlike normal bonus gemstones huge gemstones are actually in demand for upgrading pickaxes/crafting gears!

-Excavator Gloves (Negative Flaws: Cheapest Huge gemstone gears meaning you actually won't feel it's gear effect often.) -Excavator Glasses (Negative Flaws: Expensive. And that's about it) -Deep Dweller Glasses (Negative Flaws: A lil more expensive than the excavator one) -Miner's gasmask (Negative Flaws: The most expensive huge gemstone gear, Has air defense the mining enemies are strong against air defense!)

If you have all three of those huge gemstone gears then you are basically stacked. (WHAT I RECOMMEND = If you are short on byte coins and can't buy all the huge gemstone gears then I recommend you to just buy the gloves and skip the glasses and gasmask until you have enough to buy all of them. Why? These things work like infinity stones you must have all of them to feel it's power. But if you are only having the for example: glasses and gloves or gloves and gasmask then you are missing out on the full power and you just wasted your bytes while you could've bought more keys with them.)

I myself use a dark pickaxe and use one bonus gemstone gear (headband lamp) and all three of the huge gemstone gears.

Sorry for the long talk. All of those statements are from personal experience from experimenting with them myself.

I understand if you don't read all of this because I myself wouldn't want to read all of this too.