Raid weapon upgrade question

[Abilbo]

So i have a raid Xbow, the hollow splinters, and I have upgraded it twice, to get the Purple Slot and so that it makes the Everstar returning bolt, I have the weapon slotted with a sentience gem and it has 100K exp on it. If I want to take the weapon and upgrade it to the 3rd tier, to add the .5W upgrade, do i need to unslot all of the filigrees and gem? Just didn't want to do the upgrade, if there was a chance it would erase the filigrees.

[Stoner81]

I don't think you need to remove the sentient gem but I would probably do so just in case type of thing.

Stoner81.