GemCraft Labyrinth
GemCraft returns with this latest installment in the popular series that blends RPG elements with strategy and classic addictive tower defense. Descend into the labyrinth for your greatest test, with more skills, more achievements, more abilities, and more of the classic action that GameInABottle has perfected.
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It really is quite good from first impressions, losing some of the grind of the first Gemcraft but keeping some of the new features and challenges of Gemcraft Zero... but do your eyes a favor. Turn on that high-contrast mode in the Options screen!
Although I find the story a tad weird, this game has much more of a new feel over it than gemcraft zero, from what I can judge from the early levels. Good job gameinabottle, really enjoyable game C: And whoa, 169 levels? Let's get to work!
"O cool the new GemCraft is out! Let's give it a try."
3 hours later : "grr... Detroy monsters... again"
It's a great game. Really
The series has always had it bad - "hahaha, no, you don't have any business trying level 4 before you've ground your way through 1, 2 and 3 hundreds of times for maximum XP" - but this is a new low. Grindgrindgrindgrind. Frustration and boredom. If there is such a thing as "not casual", this is it.
What I've Been WAITING for
I get a black screen after I hit play and the genie bottle (or whatever it is) trademark show up and fade away.
My computer is bad so this is most likely just me but I thought it worth noting about in case someone else get the same problem.
game does not load. i tried using a proxy but it says i can only play on the armor games website
For the "Premium" version, it would seem you need it if you want to get all the challenge medals. The only one I've seen so far required you to beat a wave number higher than possible with the basic extra wave settings.
The game has a bug. its just like a cheat so if someone wants to know it to read this :
put a gem in trap and press 'x' on it.The higher is the grade the more mana it will give.you can do that as much as you like that way you get unlimited mana!
I like most of the changes. I ran into a bug though. I played last night without problems but when I tried today when I tried to build towers or gems it would reduce my mana but would not create the item.
Don't read unless you're quite far in. Re:Field D10:
Epic Battle is completely right. I can't wait to find the others. Exploring the labyrinth just got a lot more interesting.
Oh, man! A new Gemcraft just makes my year!!! These are among my favorite games here.
I do have a question about the Premium version. Does it exist yet? When I click on the button on the main menu, it doesn't open another tab or window as it says it will. I'm curious to see what it costs--this is definitely a designer I would support monetarily.
@dsrtrosy Yes, it exists. The cost is about $5.
@mike I haven't had to replay any levels and have been cruising through the labyrinth with multipliers around 2. Grinding isn't necessary, but skill and tower/wall placement matter more than in previous GemCraft games.
@xxerox That bug has been fixed
It's great to have a new Gemcraft game (my favourite tower defence games), but I'm gutted that the option to save by cutting and pasting text from the save screen is gone. That's saved my life a few times when my computer's crashed in Gemcraft 0, and I hate the idea of having to have an account at a certain website in order to save progress on a game. If I lose my save file I can easily see myself just giving up, which would be a shame.
xxeroxx's glitch isnt present for me, and Im on the premium package.
gem advice;
red are currently massively overpowered. a grade 2 red, surrounded by amp towers with more reds in will be able to handle prettymuch anything as long as you slap 20/20 in +red skills.
map advice;
as soon as you can (again, premiums) persue the last-till-100-waves challenge medals. they're relatively easy to get compared to the others and reward ridiculous amounts of xp
more as I come across it, currently holding steady at #30 on armorgames leaderboards :D
The more I play it, the more I like it.
Way more variation than in previous two parts, and the first epic battle was just... epic? x3
Best gemcraft so far in my opinion :]
Here are my thoughts on the skills.
Focus. This allows you to buy better gems earlier on, unlock bloodbound, and reshape the battlefield to your liking. Early on, you'll want to level this up to 20, and a bit later to 30-40. It's pretty core. It's very expensive to level up so don't be afraid to drop a few points from it at times to level up more useful skills. Each point adds 24 mana.
Replenish. This means you generate mana faster, which is far too slow and useless, and that you get more mana per kill, which is very useful. You should pump quite a few points in here, more and more as the game goes on.
Construction, forge. Both incredibly useful skills as they lower the cost of buildings and gem crafting. You should max these out. Sometimes in earlier levels you'll have pre-existing towers in certain levels so you can put less points in construction but forge is always useful.
Various masteries. Mostly seless, except bloodbound mastery which should be maxed. Bloodbound gems are mathematically superior to all others.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where you compare a level 1 bloodbound gem to a level 1 yellow gem fully upgraded. Both do 4-11 damage with 18% kill ratio for the red and 14% triple hit for the yellow, or 7.5 damage on average, and 8.5 on average for the yellow. Each wave has an average of 13 monsters, and 13 mana per wave.
By level 5 the red gem will have killed 65 monsters and will have 6 more damage, or 11-17 damage. If you upgrade the yellow one up a size now it will do 8-19 damage with 19% double hit. 13.5 damage versus 16 damage (and some extra speed). So, the red gem at level 1 is close to being as good as a level 2 tower.
In early levels you can put a few points in them if you have nothing better to buy.
Flexibility. Lowers upgrade cost for mana pool, lets you buy bloodbound more cheaply. Very useful. You should max it out.
Resonance, recharge. They increase your damage and should be maxed out. Very useful. Recharge is more useful than resonance.
Radiance. No need, good tower placement removes the need for this.
Dual gem. No need, bloodbound works better on its own.
Wild gem. Max it out, rarely gives you useful gems but you can sell it on the forge for good mana early on.
Premium skills. Banisher can be useful for cheaper banishment, and resonance is good for enhancing towers. Spend in them as you wish. Demolision could be useful if it suits your playstyle with mazing.
Violent explosions is bad as it means you are wasting mana on gem bombs, triple gem is useless as bloodbound is the only useful gem so if you can make three gems you have no need for triple gems. Powerful shrines is useless as it means you are wasting mana on a single round of foes, deadly traps is useless as you can get more benefit from upgrading a gem mastery, readiness may be useful in some levels as you can move stuff faster, ritual is underpowered- I have gone halfway through the game and have 400 battle trophies. When I have 4000 I will get 100 mana, or the equivelent of 4 points in focus.
the bug with the 'x' spell on trapped gems still exists
no wait its gone now
There seens to a gameruining bug, at least for me. Whenever I buy anything I pay the mana but don't get the gem/tower/etc. Obviously this makes it impossible to play, which is too bad because it worked before.
Anybody else experiencing this?
Anyone have any tips for beating field M8? I'm at wizard level 37 and nothing I do seems to be able to take that sucker down. Thoughts? Hints? Help?!
Bloodbound is not the be-all, end-all. And, Endurance mode has an end. See below for how I did it.
You can beat Endurance mode by finishing all 1337 waves. It's not as hard as you think.
The first key is to get a gem that is Yellow-Orange-Lime... in a trap. You'll have to 8x-Amp a single tower for a while before you have a high enough gem, but once your YOL gem is about grade 12 or 13 you can put it in front of the entrance and instantly fill your mana bar with dead monsters.
The second key is to use Giants Only and summon as many as you can handle each wave. For me, it was 1 gem grade per 10 waves, so 1-10 is a grade 1 gem, 11-20 is grade 2, etc. You make a huge profit by doing this, since the giants are worth so much per kill.
Other important tips:
- Put a blue/purple trap before your YOL trap until you're comfortable that your YOL can kill anything (grade 20-21 or so).
- Don't summon after round 160 or so. You've been warned.
- Get your shrine amulets done early on in the battle. It takes about 4-6 grade 19s to kill off a monster with 3 billion HP, so save yourself the trouble.
I did this on H11, and ended up with a total multiplier of 7583.
What's the tiny crystal ball in the corner of the map for? It turns up numbers on the map when you float over -- it seems like there must be something really obvious this stands for, but I can't figure it out!
Those numbers are the highest multiplier you ever achieved for each field.
The multiplier is the combination of threee factors that you see at the end of each battle: the one you preconfigure, summoned creatures and badges earned.
trollface: If you're on Windows, flash cookies are stored in "C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\". They're sorted into directories corresponding to the site that serves the flash object. Gemcraft Labyrinth is in cache.armorgames.com, and it saves to giabGclPrefs.sol and giabGclSaveData.sol. Grab those and you're set.
Jay: since I'm thinking about it, would this make a good addition to the FAQ? "How to back up a flash game save file" is very useful advice for long-term, grindy games like this.
I realize this game is relatively new so what I'm looking for may not yet exist, but does anyone know of a walkthrough-esque guide to this game that provides hints or tips on specific levels? I'm finding some of the later ones incredibly difficult, even with a relatively high Wizard level. I feel like I'm missing some incredibly obvious tactical maneuver on level K3, specifically.
I cannot see any gems even though it is taking the mana from me. I tried updating the flash, but it still doesn't work. Shame, because I liked both other Gemcraft games. Does anyone know how I can change this?
A helpful Gemcraft FAQ formed by this site, forums, and experience. (mostly forums, and this site)
FAQ part 1:
General Info:
What is Gemcraft?
New to the game? Play Gemcraft 0 or Gemcraft 1 first. Then you will understand.
What is this Gemcraft about?
Behold, the mystical area of the labyrinth has appeared in your mystic map. As a loyal wizard, you HAVE to go check this place out, right?
The map:
What's the map?
Its the "level select screen" of this game. It is divide into areas, denoted by a letter and a number.
What are the hidden labyrinth fileds?
These are the places that can only be accessed by possessing the correct amulet. These are located at the 4 corners.
The different kinds of monsters:
What are the different kinds of monsters?
Regular, Swarm and Giant.
I know what Regular monsters are, but what are Swarm monsters?
Swarm monsters are easy to kill (usually one shot), and cheap to banish, but they come in very large numbers, and run very fast.
OK, what about Giants?
Giant monsters have high armor and lots of hit points, but they move slowly.
Bloodbound Gem:
What is a bloodbound gem?
A bloodbound gem is a gem that takes a portion of its total kills, then adds it to the damage. This is why the gem is powerful, especially in the areas with a long number of waves.
OK, I understand what it is, but why not mix it with other gems?
If you mix it with other gems, it will just pollute the bloodbound skill, rendering it almost useless.
So is it the best gem?
Well, mathematically, yes it is. The bloodbound is the best gem you can have. But the real answer is, "It depends." It all depends on the situation, of course. If there is a swarm wave use a chain hit gem. If it is a giant wave use a multiple damage gem. For general purposes, bloodbound is the way to go.
Poisonous Gems:
What are poisonous gems?
Gems that poison the monster, surely you know what poison does.
What does poison do?
Ugh. Oh well. Poison slowly damages the monster for a period of time.
Why not mix it with other gems?
Mixing pollutes abilities.
Assigning skill points:
What are skill points?
These skill points can be used to upgrade a wide variety of your skills, they range from Focus to Bloodbound mastery to Replenish.
So how do I assign them?
As quoted from Ytaker's post:
"Focus. This allows you to buy better gems earlier on, unlock bloodbound, and reshape the battlefield to your liking. Early on, you'll want to level this up to 20, and a bit later to 30-40. It's pretty core. It's very expensive to level up so don't be afraid to drop a few points from it at times to level up more useful skills. Each point adds 24 mana.
Replenish. This means you generate mana faster, which is far too slow and useless, and that you get more mana per kill, which is very useful. You should pump quite a few points in here, more and more as the game goes on.
Construction, forge. Both incredibly useful skills as they lower the cost of buildings and gem crafting. You should max these out. Sometimes in earlier levels you'll have pre-existing towers in certain levels so you can put less points in construction but forge is always useful.
Various masteries. Mostly seless, except bloodbound mastery which should be maxed. Bloodbound gems are mathematically superior to all others.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where you compare a level 1 bloodbound gem to a level 1 yellow gem fully upgraded. Both do 4-11 damage with 18% kill ratio for the red and 14% triple hit for the yellow, or 7.5 damage on average, and 8.5 on average for the yellow. Each wave has an average of 13 monsters, and 13 mana per wave.
By level 5 the red gem will have killed 65 monsters and will have 6 more damage, or 11-17 damage. If you upgrade the yellow one up a size now it will do 8-19 damage with 19% double hit. 13.5 damage versus 16 damage (and some extra speed). So, the red gem at level 1 is close to being as good as a level 2 tower.
In early levels you can put a few points in them if you have nothing better to buy.
Flexibility. Lowers upgrade cost for mana pool, lets you buy bloodbound more cheaply. Very useful. You should max it out.
Resonance, recharge. They increase your damage and should be maxed out. Very useful. Recharge is more useful than resonance.
Radiance. No need, good tower placement removes the need for this.
Dual gem. No need, bloodbound works better on its own.
Wild gem. Max it out, rarely gives you useful gems but you can sell it on the forge for good mana early on.
Premium skills. Banisher can be useful for cheaper banishment, and resonance is good for enhancing towers. Spend in them as you wish. Demolision could be useful if it suits your playstyle with mazing.
Violent explosions is bad as it means you are wasting mana on gem bombs, triple gem is useless as bloodbound is the only useful gem so if you can make three gems you have no need for triple gems. Powerful shrines is useless as it means you are wasting mana on a single round of foes, deadly traps is useless as you can get more benefit from upgrading a gem mastery, readiness may be useful in some levels as you can move stuff faster, ritual is underpowered- I have gone halfway through the game and have 400 battle trophies. When I have 4000 I will get 100 mana, or the equivelent of 4 points in focus."
Amplifiers:
What are these Amplifier thingies?
Place a gem in them, and they cannot shoot but the Amplifier gets a portion of his damage, range and firing speed, and carries it to all adjacent gems.
So it's useful to put powerful gems in Amplifiers?
If you can't find a good place to use it in a tower, then yes, it's useful.
Should I use it?
You probably can't in the early levels because of mana shortage, but you will use them A LOT later on.
Shrines:
What are shrines?
YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED GEMCRAFT 0? Or did you just didn't get to that part? Anyway, Shrines take gem sacrifices, uses their power, and unleashes their special power.
What type of shrines are their?
There is a lightning shrine, which shoots lightning in all 4 directions, and charged bolt shrines shoot bolts in a circle.
How does the gem affect the shrine?
A shrines power is just as powerful as the gem. So use powerful gems a sacrifices if you need something dead, and those pesky level ones to take some damage to that monster that bugs you.
Well, hopefully I answered all your misconceptions about Gemcraft.
Part 2 will come soon.
There's a weird bug which sometimes increases or decreases your available skill points by 1. I picked a field and my options, started the battle, then immediately exited the field and re-selected it. I noticed I had one more skill point than before. Once, I actually had -1 available skill points because of these weird skill point bonuses/minuses.
It doesn't work repeatedly on the same map, and I'm not sure of the exact trigger. It has something to do with going back and forth from field to map.
@Vebyast:
Thank you so much. I can sleep easy now.
JIGuest, thanks for your comment about the weird bug with the skill points - I was wondering about that myself. Have frequently gone to replay a level, having just lost it, and discovered that I now have -1, -2, even sometimes -3 skill points. Prettttty annoying. Wonder if there's any chance it might get fixed?
@JIGuest re: lvl 37
Follow Ytaker's advice. Max out Construction, Bloodbound, and Flexibility, all 20/20. Put about 40 into Focus, 20 into Replenish, and the rest into Forge.
Next, build a 5x5 diagonal wall from the upper left to the lower right, near the top left monster entrance, plus one wall just above the top left diagonal block. The idea is to force the three paths on the right to divert downward to the bottom. Specifically, counting from the top left square, place a block on the 4th column, 3rd row, followed by (4,4), (5,5), ..., (8,8). Then place a block at (12,4) so that monsters can't take the shortcut.
For the towers and gems, put them in the upper 3x3 square. Unlock the red gems and use those only. Start off with two or three towers, no amplifiers, and buy two L2 gems. The exact placement is up to you but I find (9,5) and (10,6) to be good starting choices.
As soon as you build enough mana, start placing amplifiers and upgrading your gems. Since they build up damage the more kills they make, take care to recombine them so that you have at least two gems with big damage. Whatever you do, don't let the tomb enter the attack radius.
Finally, at some point, build a second wall from the bottom so that monsters coming from the left are forced to travel just below the diagonal wall you built earlier. By then, your gems should be so powerful the attack radius will reach monsters opposite the wall. Hit rate is key. You shouldn't need to build more than 4 towers, and 4-5 amplifiers.
Bloodhound is not the best gem mathematically. It is easily the best gem for early game and some mid-game waves, but both in endurance and later waves with the difficulty cranked up, it is not that good.
Its damage increases only linearly, and even at 200% +dmg per kill, it simply doesn't give enough extra damage to keep up with the late wave hp increases, especially for endurance.
The best late game gem that I've found is yellow-lime of grade 12+ in an 8x Amp tower (and, using the glitch, a single grade 23 takes care of maxed difficulty endurance with waves angered up to 3 or 4 times (~12 Billion hp x ~400 monsters/wave). It really wrecks things. Haven't tried the YOL trap yet... gonna try to beat endurance legit next so maybe I'll use that.
Am I the only one who suddenly was at -12? Seriously ticked me off. Now I have to go back and replay early waves again!
@josh: you are somewhat correct. I think the best is either, lime/yellow, lime/yellow/red (bloodbound), or lime/yellow/orange. Any of those will work well for the 3.3+ billion health creeps.
Regarding traps versus towers:
Note: Statistically the tower surrounded by 8 amps appears to be better; it has much higher DPS if you do the math. However, when you place it in a trap (with 6 amps) it will do much more damage. There is a bug in the calculations for traps that allows the extra hits from lime to bounce back/forth between 2 or more mobs, hitting each many times. When a tower fires the bounce is limited to 1 hit per mob.
You also can stick a high level lime/purple trap in front of your main trap to instantly strip all armor from creeps. I believe a high level light blue (stun) trap after your damage trap will stun as escapees within range of the carnage as well.
How did you manage to make a grade 23? That's 2048 times you combined grade 12. The money is certainly there, but that would take forever. There needs to be a way to buy grades beyond 12.
re:travcm to get a lvl23 first make a level 12, then place your mouse over the level 12 and press "d". Combine your two level 12 gems. Now put your mouse over the resultant level 13 gem and press "d". Combine and repeat ad nauseum.
@dumbledore Ahh, thanks. I never considered the duplicate option. Now I just wish there were a way to increase the mana pool by more than 1,800 per upgrade. I had it around 2 million before, but that took forever.
Every level health of enemies increases by a multiple of 1.11. They double in health every 7.5 levels.
You start to fall behind with bloodbound around 30-40 By then you should have a multiplier of around 90-100% with amplifiers, 1.11^30 is 23, 1.11^31 is 25.5, so every round the enemy will be gaining their starting health*2.5. You can extend this a lot, but I've found the limit to be 90-110.
In the long run it will always lose out simply because health increases by a factor of 1.11 every level but the number of enemies stays flat. That's why you need special strategies as above.
I've also experience the glitch of leaving the game and coming back to -13 skill points suddenly.
Ana: I dropped to -16 skill points. I think it is because they fixed the bug posted earlier. The one that gave random pluses and minuses to skill points.
Bug in level D12?
1) put a gem in a tower next to one of the accelerator beacons
2) the gem fires at the beacon until its hit-points reach zero
3) The accelerator beacon hitpoints go negative, which confuses the game. All gems stop firing and the level can't be completed.
(I'm on a mac) On the first level involving speed beacons, whenever a speed beacon is destroyed, the game glitches out and continuously damages the tower but does not destroy it. The game freezes and creeps cannot be destroyed, banished, towers do not fire, etc etc... the only thing that functions is the options menu, but it offers no help, other than starting the level over again.
This happens every time a speed beacon is destroyed.
If anyone has any solutions, I would love to know!
So I'm just busting through these and the first epic battle has stopped me cold. D10---any great hints? I'm not really in the mood to level up--at level 20 now.
Three playthroughs and I just get bogged down at about wave 82-87. I've tried adding a fifth color (red), using tons of amplifiers, ignoring amplifiers and really heavily upgrading gems. As always, I'm constantly upgrading my mana so I'll pull more. What am I missing? Should I just bite the bullet and grind back through the rest of the labyrinth to level up to 24?
Ah!!! Power of the post. New strategy, success at about wave 63!
SteveJobs, I'm getting the same bug. No real need for a spoiler: what happens is that if a gem fires on an accelerator beacon, the beacon's health will go negative and the gem will stop firing. At anything.
@Mike: thanks for tips! Initially I tried mana-farming the old-fashioned way by covering the map with mana-traps, but a high-level YOL is so much more effective. :)
Bytheway, how many monsters did you summon to get that 7000+ multiplier?
Does a mana gem have to do damage to give the mana gain?
@dsrtrosy For the epic fields, you should be winning sometime between level 20 and 40. You have to charge up the pylons by putting gem towers near them.
I too played through to the final level of endurance, 1337. Killed 70000 monsters along the way. A few things struck me. In this game you really have to understand exponential and linear growth.
Bloodbound is an example of excellent linear growth- it starts off powerful, and slowly grows more powerful. The foes you fight have exponential growth so they eventually outpace it.
The orange lime yellow combination is an example of poor exponential growth. Each of the component's specials sucks up to about level 8. You might be doing triple or quadruple the damage with all those specials, which is kinda weak.
Beyond that point the exponential component comes in. The chain hit and the multiple hit start to do 10 or 11 times the amount of damage, both of them (which works out to 100 times the damage in total) . Your damage and speed increase exponentially too, making you a lot stronger.
The gem's strength rapidly enhances to insane levels. I was doing 880 billion damage per round (level 22 oly gem with 6 level 17 oly amplifiers and 1.9 million mana pool) at the end, to enemies with 3,333,333,333 hp.
OLY only works well if you can get to level 9 or so gems, however. That's when the bonuses start getting decent, and start getting decent faster.
I'm currently sweeping through the board at level 110 or so, after my huge exp haul.
I beat the endurance mode with my damaging gem being a red/yellow/time. It helps to have a strong gem early to start building your mana pool early. At lvl 14 time/orange gems in traps surrounded by lvl 12 amplifier orange gems you start getting instant max mana pretty much no matter the max mana you have. I made my damaging gem a lvl 24 or 25 I forget which and had the time doing attacking up to 100+ monsters per and doing 300% multiplier from my yellow with my red being at 200%. My base damage was over 230k minimum x300x100. and just for the fun of it, I used lvl 18 gems to summon more monsters. You can summon about 160-180, I forget exactly how much per wave and not even be in trouble. When I was done having fun I set it up on my keyboard so that the n key was constantly pressed down and left to fold laundry. won 1.6 million xp for the level
Is the actual max HP of monsters 3.33~ billion? If so, I have no reason not to be running 10x HP modifier on all the levels I'm playing, but I'm too lazy to check myself. Anyone know off-hand?
@ catatonicmonkey: The soft max hp for monsters is 3.33 billion. You can increase it above that amount by summoning more monsters. I Summoned 2000 in one wave with lvl 12 gems and ended up with 2000 monsters all with 12 trillion health. I killed them using a shrine and a lvl 21 gem. Knocked all of their healths down to 1.
Can anyone give me some advice on how to get the amulet to win a battle on row 8 with no skill points used? I lose on the first wave
Update: As per standard (at 1x HP), monsters max out at 3.33~ billion HP. Gem bombs will increase this. Haven't yet verified if the HP multiplier affects this or not.
I checked, the hp multiplier does not affect the max health of the monsters.
Hi guys, I'm looking for a few advice, i'm stuck in field H2 i'm at level 57 and I really can't beat this level, anyone can help me? I haven't the premium edition. THanx
Here is some information on max wizard lvl and max lvl gems needed to kill monsters with shrines.
The max wizard lvl is 500 in case anyone wanted to know. Also, lvl 17 gems in shrines will kill monsters with 3 billion health. lvl 18 gems in shrines will kill monsters with any amount of health. I tried it on monsters with 17 trillion health.
I'm with CHCSD. I can't beat field H2, even with the original settings. I'm already level 69. No premium edition either.
How do you unlock the four corner fields? I accidentally unlocked one, but I don't know how I did it.
@atomic: you unlock them by beating a specific journey or challenge amulet.
I believe the lower-left corner is tied to one of the nearby challenge amulets. The upper-right unlocks after you've killed 200.000 monsters.
Is anyone else having trouble getting the 7x700 kills journey amulet? It looks like that one is bugged - I should've gotten it at least twice by now, but never got it.
FAQ part 2:
Red gem:
What's the fancy name for this gem?
Bloodbound.
What does it do?
Converts kills to power.
Tell me its strengths.
Well, if it killed a lot, it gets powerful.
Weaknesses?
Only useful early and mid-game, then you need to combine it.
Orange gem:
The fancy name?
Mana Gathering. Wait, that's not fancy.
What does it do?
Get you more mana than usual.
Tell me its strengths.
Ummm, gives you mana? I suggest putting them in traps, so you can maximize their ablities, and DON'T place a tower nearby before you squeezed all that mana. Combine with the gems that kill a lot for easy mana.
Weaknesses?
Weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, weak gem.
Yellow gem:
Yeah, name?
Multiple Damage.
Yeah, use?
Chance to inflict multiple damage.
OK, strengths?
Um, multiple damage? Combine with other strong gems for DEVASTATING effects, this gem is also useful for multiplying a gem's power.
Uh huh, weaknesses?
Rather weak gem.
Lime gem: (this is the yellow-green gem)
N...A...M...E...
Chain Hit.
U...S...E...
Chance to inflict damage to multiple monsters.
S...T...R...E...N...G...T...H...S...
Damages many enemies at a time, useful for swarm. Combine with other strong gems so they can shoot more monsters at a time!
WE...AK...NE...SS...ES...
Not so useful alone.
Green gem: (the darker shade of green)
Nam-
Poisonous.
Us-
Poisons enemies, if you don't know what that is, check Part one of the FAQ.
Strength-
Deals gradual damage, so even if nothing is hitting them, poison makes use of that precious time.
Weaknesse-
Slow firing rate.
Cyan gem: (the lighter shade of blue)
N-n-n-name?
Shocking.
U-u-u-use?
Shocks enemies, that is, leaves them immobile for a period of time.
St-st-st-strengths?
Leaves enemies immobile, place near towers for maximum effect.
W-w-w-weaknesses?
Not so useful alone.
Blue gem: (the darker shade of blue)
NaMe?
Slowing.
UsE?
Makes enemies slower.
St*&^rengh./,.ths?
Dude, is your keyboard broken? Anyway, makes enemies slower, place near strong towers and traps for maximum effect.
W@eak^$&ness*(es?
Not so useful alone.
Purple gems:
Let's test your memory of the format.
Armor tearing.
Degrades armor.
Busts their shields so they are wide open and absorb more damage. Place before strong towers.
Not so useful alone.
Hope that cleared your misconceptions about gems.
This FAQ focuses on gems, weaknesses and strengths. Part 3 will come soon and is about the diffrent gem combinations.
i think that with an amp putting 5/6 towers around it gets the best results as you get 300% amplification over all and also thebloodbound gem is mathematically the best damage gem and is very useful in really long battles so its one of the best gems and far better while uncombined
Solution to how to obtain the "win a battle on row 8 with no skill points used", Amulet
Field C8 has pre-built structures and some mana pools. Put a tower in the position which both, blocks off one sides access to the Orb, and is near enough to hit the mana pool. As the mana builds up, buy gems (e.g. level 1) and put them in the four pre-built towers. Later in the battle, you can afford to combine the gems for more power.
I disagree very strongly with this review. It actually makes me wonder (seriously) whether the reviewer played GemCraft Labyrinth for more than a few minutes before reviewing it. The artwork certainly resembles GemCraft chapter 0, but it's a massively different game with numerous new and altered features, and fundamentally different gameplay. You have to acquire a whole new set of knowledge and skills to make progress in it. And as for grinding - it's totally unnecessary in GCL. I finished the game without playing most fields more than once, and I'm not alone in having done that. Although GCL contains interesting new challenges in the late game, in many respects, it's easier to play than GC0. People who found GC0 too tough to beat should give it a go.
@JIGuest: thank you very much for your help with that amulet.
@Pieter W: I've gotten that amulet when I was trying for it. The only thing i can think of is that you maybe combined one of the gems before the end of the battle or something. All 7 gems must exist at the end of the battle and all 7 must have 700 not combined kills. So if you have 7 gems all with 700 but you accidently combined one before the end of the battle you won't get it. I got it with swarm monsters with quadruple number of monsters and endless waves and used time/red gems.
The first epic battle is WAY too easy. I beat it first try at wizard level 17. I killed a couple apparitions too. I won at wave 46.
What I'm really stuck on is B9.
@atomic-
Lower left = Unlocks when you kill 12 appartions.
Lower right = Unlocks when you beat wave 100 on M10 or K9 (Either one, forgot).
Upper left = Unlocks when you defeat 7k monsters on field L9.
Upper right = Unlocks when you kill 200,000 monsters through out your journey.
Would someone please explain how to set a tower's priority to structures, or is this only an option in premium edition? Thank you!
I generally hate TD games, but I Love this one. You really have to use use your head for more than a hat rack.
Would someone please explain how to set a tower's priority to structures, or is this only an option in the premium edition? Thank you!
Hi, if you hold down shift while clicking on the gem (in a tower) you will change it's priority. You will need information enabled to see what it is set to, or just keep clicking until it starts to fire at a structure.
Thank you so much. I've been trying to figure out the tower thing for the longest.
Someone above posted where to find the save files for the Armor Games version, but does anyone know where I should move them to to migrate my save over to Kongregate? I want to buy the premium and can only do so at Kongregate, but don't want to lose the progress I've made at Armor Games. I've tried searching like it says, but I haven't found anything that helps me.
so I'm trying to juggle, but it gets that walls can't be bombed, why is that? is there some trick to bombing walls? or does it prevent you from destroying walls at a certain point?
What's with the change in login for the premium edition? I paid real money for that feature and now I have to pay again. That doesn't seem fair.... Good game up until that point....
>>>(ED) What's with the change in login for the premium edition? I paid real money for that feature and now I have to pay again.
@ED .. I've just played my premium edition (bought fairly near when the game 1st came out), and it is working just great, with NO NEED to pay again or anything. The ONLY issue I did find, was that it took a good 10 seconds or so, after logging back in to kongate, for it to "process" my paid subscription for the Premium edition.
where can I get the amulets needed to the four corners of the labyrinth?
The new login requires a "GamerSafe" account. It does not recognize my previous saves or the fact that I paid real money for the premium account. It requires that I pay again for the premium version. This is totally unacceptable that they took my money and blanked my account....
[Try playing it over at Armor Games, your old save should still be there. -Jay]
I made a mistake in my earlier post.
It WAS Armor Games, sorry for any confusion.
I start the game (above link), and then click on the top left hand corner, where it says "Armor Games Enabled Login now".
It then works just great. I managed to be one of the first 200 people to play this game when it first game out. There were 192 people before me, going by the website counts.
Now we are at Version = v. 1.15 AG
(Just tried it again, it still works just great!).
Just "finished" the game. (G7; no trillion-point monsters.)
I was stuck for a long time on the first Epic level -- I wasn't level 30, and couldn't open any other levels. Shortly thereafter, I discovered a reasonably simple formula that stood me well through G7.
Start by choosing Armored Monsters (which actually makes things easier), +15 waves (just for the bonus). Unlock Bloodbound (if necessary, as it usually is). Set up walls so everybody has to traipse past a single tower, in which there is a high-level bloodbound gem, who is never upgraded thereafter. Gradually put 5 amplifiers around it (battle amulet! +5%). Anytime it's not firing is a waste, so hit "n" quite often. If you have +5 waves, that's usually enough to get 500 kills on the bloodbound (another battle amulet!).
At T-20 waves or so, make two shrines (battle amulet!), in a place you can funnel everybody together. They'll be ready by around T-10 waves. Summon the last 4-5 waves all together, and turn the bloodbound to Random Monster. Sit on a shrine and wait until the monsters are about to leave its blast radius. Dump in a grade 7 gem (battle amulet!), killing at least 20 monsters (battle amulet!), and with the second shrine, hopefully 60 (battle amulet!).
Before your bloodbound picks up the last few stragglers, gratuitously make 10 towers (battle amulet!), and if you can manage it, two more shrines (battle amulet!).
It's actually a bit disappointing that this same, rather naive routine sufficed for so long. The posts up above make clear that it wouldn't be enough if I kept playing, but I think the point at which this stops working should happen before the "end" of the game.
Does anyone else think it's weird that the monsters are nameless? The game is so beautiful, its monsters deserve some personality.
How on earth do you get past field D4? I must be missing something really important because I cannot even get close to killing the shadow minion thing.
I have beaten all the fields and have wizard level 3401.
I am mostly using triple gems with Chain, Muliple and Mana. For the first 30 levels I use them in tower. But after that only one in a trap is needed and using 6 amplifiers around, with two of each type. With all at level 24-26 is kill all monsters, even summoned.
Only giant monsters is also a good thing to use.
I also have all the highest settings except banished monsters cost extra.
Only problem is that the game is lagging much when killing monsters after about wave 300 in thsi way.
I'm just curious about a complete loss of a saved game. Was I playing this somewhere else? I realize it's been a few weeks since the last time I played, but I always come in to the game through JIG. Is there a time-limit on saved games? I don't mind starting over, but I hate losing my progress up to this point.
I have the same problem as the comment above, also I'm pretty sure I played the game through the link on JIG.
Taking the advice of another post on this page, I have saved the flash cookies giabGclPrefs.sol and giabGclSaveData.sol after the last time I played, but after replacing these, the save files were still empty...
I earned the Novice Amulet "Create a Triple Gem" in a somewhat unusual way... by upgrading the "Wild Gem" skill!
Level grinding FAQ:
Level grinding is the practice of replaying an earlier field with higher difficulty settings, summoning more monsters, or collecting more battle amulets, as these all affect your XP multiplier. Your wizard level depends on the best XP score on each field. Experts will often be able to achieve 10 times the base field XP.
At low levels, the easiest gems to work with are bloodbound, chain hit and multiple damage. Once you have improved your XP on the fields using those gems, you can try unlocking the bloodbound gem and using that on the remaining fields instead. Note that this costs 500 mana.
On the non-premium game, you normally try to select all the difficulty bonuses that you dare, except that you don't normally choose swarm only waves.
Some battle amulets are more worth while collecting than others. Each amulet has a modifier which is added together and the result is then applied as a bonus to your XP. For instance, if you win two amulets worth 10%, you get 20% bonus. This is not the same as 10% bonus applied to the result of 10% bonus, which would give 21%.
Do not let any monster reach your orb (30%)
This is a very useful battle amulet to achieve, effectively negating the banishment battle traits, effectively giving you an extra 25% XP free.
Destroy all monster nests (5%)
This is an easy amulet to obtain.
Reach 500/1000/2000 (not combined) kills with a gem (5%+5%+5%)
Assuming that the level has sufficient monsters, the amulets are fairly easy to get by investing most of your starting mana into a high-level gem and then improving it by amplification rather than upgrading it. So you tend to qualify for the amplifiers amulet too.
Build at least 5 amplifiers (5%)
If you are also going for the kills by a gem amulet, you will want to amplify your gem. As well as a massive firing speed bonus, 5 amplifiers will also net you a convenient 5% towards your bonus. It does use up a fair amount of mana though.
Do 1000/2500/5000 overkill damage (5%+5%+5%)
If you are level grinding, then these are almost impossible not to get. In particular, if you start with a single high-level gem, then you will do lots of overkill damage on the first few waves.
Reach 100/200/400 kills in a row (5%+5%+5%)
If you play a high-powered gem on a low level, you can try summoning the early waves quite quickly so that there is a queue of monsters to be killed. Extravagent summoning of later waves is not always as successful.
Gain 100/200/400/700/1200/1800 mana from starting waves early (5%+5%+5%+5%+5%+5%)
You should normally be able to pick up a few of these. If you are also going for lots of kills in a row, starting waves early will avoid gaps in the flow of monsters. Take care not to overload your tower by mistake though! Keep an eye on your stats near the end of the battle to see whether it's still worth summoning the last few waves early.
Create a grade 6/9/12 gem (5%+5%+10%)
Even at low levels, you can usually achieve a grade 6 gem with careful timing; combine your amplifier gems when there are only a few monsters left.
Summon 60/300/900 monsters (10%+30%+60%)
If you are careful, you can balance the mana spent on summoning gems against the extra mana gain from killing the extra monsters.
Summon 50 monsters in one wave (20%)
I haven't achieved this yet as it requires quite a high-level gem.
Build 2/4/6 shrines (10%+10%+25%)
Shrines are quite expensive to build, but if you have any mana left near the end of a battle it might be worth investing in some.
Activate a shrine with a grade 7 or higher gem (5%)
This could be one to slip in near the end of the battle.
Build at least 10 towers (5%)
If you can spare the mana, you could slip this one in too.
Kill 20/60/120 monsters with shrines (5%+5%+10%)
It seems to me that these are quite difficult to achieve, but then again maybe I'm not a high enough level yet.
Level grinding example:
With a level 25 wizard you can unlock all the non-premium battle settings for an overall multiplier of x6.52, and on field H13 I was able to score an amulet multiplier of x2 (1000/2500/5000 overkill damage, 100/200 kills in a row, 100/200/400/700 mana from starting waves early, destroy all monster nests, build 5 amplifiers, build 2 shrines [10%], reach 500 kills, do not let any monster reach your orb [30%]) for a total of 4981 XP, which is basically gaining a level, and that's without even summoning monsters.
@A--after posting that, I noticed a new thing at the bottom of the game window called Gamer Safe or something like that. It wasn't there before--I wonder if that's where we were supposed to save it but since it didn't show up in my browser before, I couldn't use it. Seems to work now--you might try it. It requires you to register, but only takes a few seconds.
how to get the "have no more and no less than one of each building type when winning a battle" amulet?
Amplifiers FAQ
Amplifiers allow you to boost gems in adjacent towers and traps. Although they are quite expensive at low levels, at high levels they are a cheap alternative to upgrades. The following figures are based on basic lime gems (no skill points) in one tower with 7 amplifiers, but of course other combinations of towers, traps and amplifiers are possible.
Each time you upgrade a gem, its damage increases by 60%, its range by only 7%, its speed by 18% and its chain hit by 38%. These effects are cumulative, so three upgrades work out as being equivalent to 310% extra damage, 24% extra range, 64% extra speed and 163% extra chain hit.
The problem with this is that upgrades get very expensive. For the price of three upgrades you could get 7 more gems at the original grade. (In fact you save slightly by not having to pay the combination cost, although this is of course offset by the cost of building amplifiers).
Turning to amplifiers, each time you amplify a gem with another gem of the same grade, its damage increases by 60%, its range by 9%, its speed by 16% and its chain hit by only 12%. These increases are additive rather than cumulative, but we're talking 7 gems here, so the amplification works out as 420% extra damage, 66% extra range, 112% extra speed although only 84% extra chain hit.
So the overall benefit of amplifiers over upgrades is 27% extra damage, 34% extra range, 29% extra speed but at a cost of 30% less chain hit.
In the specific example of a grade 7 gem compared to a grade 4 gem amplified by 7 other grade 4 gems, the grade 7 gem does about 107-193 damage, has a range of 3.8, a speed of 5.9 and a chain hit of 104% (4% chance of hitting 3 targets), while the amplified grade 4 gem does about 140-240 damage, has a range of 5, a speed of 7.6 and a chain hit of 72%.
Against two giant monsters with 10,000 hit points and 10 armour, the grade 7 gem would take 12.1 seconds while the amplified grade 4 gem would take 8.5 seconds. This makes it almost possible for the monsters to walk past the grade 7 gem!
Of course, you're not limited to putting gems of equal value in amplifiers. It should be obvious that it's best to have the highest grade gem in the tower, but even sprinkling a few low-level gems in amplifiers will do wonders for a gem's range and speed; amplifying a level 4 gem with just one level 1 gem will boost its range as much as an upgrade, while amplifying a level 5 gem with a level 1 gem and a level 2 gem will boost its speed as much as an upgrade.
When aiming for the 500/1000 kill amulets, or just if you don't want to wait for the tower gem to recharge, you may want to start the level with as high a value gem in the tower as you can afford, and then only use amplifiers and never upgrade the tower gem.
Mana pool spell costs
The first mana pool spell costs 240 mana. The second and third spells each cost 60 mana more than the previous spell. The fourth to sixth spell each cost 70 mana more than the previous spell. The seventh to ninth spell each cost 80 mana more than the previous spell. The tenth spell costs 90 mana more than the ninth spell (which happens to be 900 in total), and so on.
Gem costs (assuming you maximise your Forge skill)
The cost of creating a gem is the same as creating individual Grade 1 gems and combining them all together. The number of Combine spells is one less than the number of gems, so the costs of the gems don't quite follow a doubling formula. However the costs of upgrades do; the upgrade from Grade 1 to Grade 2 costs 107 mana and each upgrade costs double the previous upgrade. The costs of the first 12 levels of gems are readily displayed in-game so I won't repeat them here.
Building costs (assuming you maximise your Construction skill)
The first wall costs 12 mana, and each subsequent wall costs one more mana than the previous wall.
The first trap costs 90 mana, and each subsequent trap costs 14 more mana than the previous trap.
The first tower costs 90 mana, and each subsequent tower costs 18 more mana than the previous tower. Therefore to build 10 towers (battle amulet) you must spend 1710 mana.
The first amplifier costs 240 mana, and each subsequent amplifier costs 144 more mana than the previous amplifier. Therefore to build 5 amplifiers (battle amulet) you must spend 2640 mana. (Personally I think this is mana well spent.)
The first shrine (of either sort) costs 540 mana, and each subsequent shrine (of either sort) costs a whopping 135% more than the previous shrine. So if you want to build 6 shrines (3 battle amulets) you'll need to shell out a massive 66970 mana.
My tips are the following: (the free version, not premium)
-
Lime/Yellow is the best tower combo once you get Dual Gem Mastery. One adds a chance to deal multiple damage and the other chains to multiple foes. A higher level gem with several amplifiers can easily hit a 100% chance of triple or quad damage and hit 3 or 4 foes per attack. That multiplies your damage MANY times over.
-
Summoning is important. The theory is that the mana you spend on gem bombs to increase monster count, you get back by actually killing them. This is particularly important if you are using ORANGE mana leech towers or traps.
-
Even if you aren't, ideally summon more of the monsters that naturally have LESS of them in a wave...especially GIANT monsters! In the early game, you can easily kill the 4 giant monsters on say wave 7. So you use a rank 2 gem, add +8 of them, with each one giving 100 mana per kill. Throughout the game, try to summon more Giant monsters since they give so much mana per kill.
-
What this does is give you more mana faster. This snowballs into a lot more mana later on when the waves get much harder. You want to use the time when the waves are easy to boost your power as much as you can. It also works wonders with Bloodgems.
-
When summoning, the lower level gems are cheaper but will give less monsters added per use yet still boost the enemy power. Higher level gems are less efficient, but add a lot more monsters for a minimal power level. (i.e. 3 rank 1 gems = +12 monsters and THREE power jumps! 1 rank 3 gem = +13 monsters and only 1 power jump...but costs about 3 times as much as using 3 rank 1s).
-
-
Max Wild Gem ASAP. At each wave, use M to increase mana multipler and use X to sell the wild gem for around 6000+ mana!! Even though it is only a rank 5 or 6 gem. Go figure.
-
Mana farms are a good idea. You simply drop say 3 traps where the monsters are forced to go (use walls as needed) and put lower grade Orange gems in, with an amplifier possibly. This gives you a constant influx of mana. Make sure the traps are close to where they enter and that your tower won't kill em later.
-
A Gem with multiple amplifiers around it is more efficient than a higher ranked gem by itself. It is also easier to upgrade it in parts and without upsetting the currently working gem.
-
Max DUAL GEM ASAP. Adds a whopping 15% bonus to range and attack power.
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Use the PYLON levels to MASSIVELY boost your overall power. What you do is create your main towers AWAY FROM the Pylon, and then have 2 small gem towers that are charging the pylon up with Structure targeting on. Make plenty of Mana Traps as discussed previously to boost mana hugely. Make sure you fight armored monsters only, preferably with Double the # of monsters active, banish cost more, etc.
-
You fight like normal, trying to summon a lot more than normal.
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Once your Pylon is ALMOST charged, pause and remove those gems. You now have control over when you win.
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Build up mana, last as long as you can. Upgrade towers n stuff. When you can no longer keep up, PAUSE THE GAME. Sell your gems as needed for this next part.
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Make tons and tons of rank 1 gems, bombing some random wave of baddies to summon. Looking at your STATS, bomb until your summoned is ONE LESS THAN your acutal kills. So if you killed 1684, make sure to summon 1683. THis takes forever and is tedious...but worth it. Use the rank 3 gems to add +13 and ensure you can get exactly 1 under with lots of +4s from rank 1 gems.
-
Then, put a gem to charge Pylon and unpause. You will get a 50(!!!!) summoning multipler. I.e. Whatever your final score was... TIMES FIFTY. I got 700,000 on my first Pylon and 1 million on the 2nd. I got SERIOUS level up!
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As far as the first post with the walkthrough goes:
Bloodbound is good at first, especially when you have a large number of waves with a large number of monsters.
If, however, you are fighting mostly armored or giant waves, yellow gems are better in the early game.
Either way, yellow > red in the long run, since yellow gems scale exponentially, while red gems scale arithmetically. 300% of 5000 kills +500 - 600 is still less than 500 - 600 x12.
Also, while they recommend never investing points in the explosions skill, I find one purpose for it: It increases the mana my wild gem gives me when I smash it against the anvil by 15% - very useful starting off the fight with 10,000 or so mana tucked away in a gem. It's also somewhat useful for the end-of-battle wrapup, when you're getting rid of all your gems to make shrines, towers, amplifiers, etc for the various amulets.
FYI:
If you are a member of Gamer Safe, or have gamer gold which is currently the only way to get the premium edition of this game and is used in other games, you should read this article: https://www.gamersafe.com/payment_entrypoint.php?game_id=400&payment_method=g2s . I promise I'm not link dropping! I may be the only person who goes back and replays these games, but I have long considered purchasing the premium version--looks like that won't be possible in the future. GameInABottle? Any other options on the horizon? Or will the premium game be opened up? Just some thoughts!
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Game of the week
Walkthrough Guide
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A helpful Gemcraft FAQ formed by this site, forums, and experience. (mostly forums, and this site)
FAQ part 1:
General Info:
What is Gemcraft?
New to the game? Play Gemcraft 0 or Gemcraft 1 first. Then you will understand.
What is this Gemcraft about?
Behold, the mystical area of the labyrinth has appeared in your mystic map. As a loyal wizard, you HAVE to go check this place out, right?
The map:
What's the map?
Its the "level select screen" of this game. It is divide into areas, denoted by a letter and a number.
What are the hidden labyrinth fileds?
These are the places that can only be accessed by possessing the correct amulet. These are located at the 4 corners.
The different kinds of monsters:
What are the different kinds of monsters?
Regular, Swarm and Giant.
I know what Regular monsters are, but what are Swarm monsters?
Swarm monsters are easy to kill (usually one shot), and cheap to banish, but they come in very large numbers, and run very fast.
OK, what about Giants?
Giant monsters have high armor and lots of hit points, but they move slowly.
Bloodbound Gem:
What is a bloodbound gem?
A bloodbound gem is a gem that takes a portion of its total kills, then adds it to the damage. This is why the gem is powerful, especially in the areas with a long number of waves.
OK, I understand what it is, but why not mix it with other gems?
If you mix it with other gems, it will just pollute the bloodbound skill, rendering it almost useless.
So is it the best gem?
Well, mathematically, yes it is. The bloodbound is the best gem you can have. But the real answer is, "It depends." It all depends on the situation, of course. If there is a swarm wave use a chain hit gem. If it is a giant wave use a multiple damage gem. For general purposes, bloodbound is the way to go.
Poisonous Gems:
What are poisonous gems?
Gems that poison the monster, surely you know what poison does.
What does poison do?
Ugh. Oh well. Poison slowly damages the monster for a period of time.
Why not mix it with other gems?
Mixing pollutes abilities.
Assigning skill points:
What are skill points?
These skill points can be used to upgrade a wide variety of your skills, they range from Focus to Bloodbound mastery to Replenish.
So how do I assign them?
As quoted from Ytaker's post:
"Focus. This allows you to buy better gems earlier on, unlock bloodbound, and reshape the battlefield to your liking. Early on, you'll want to level this up to 20, and a bit later to 30-40. It's pretty core. It's very expensive to level up so don't be afraid to drop a few points from it at times to level up more useful skills. Each point adds 24 mana.
Replenish. This means you generate mana faster, which is far too slow and useless, and that you get more mana per kill, which is very useful. You should pump quite a few points in here, more and more as the game goes on.
Construction, forge. Both incredibly useful skills as they lower the cost of buildings and gem crafting. You should max these out. Sometimes in earlier levels you'll have pre-existing towers in certain levels so you can put less points in construction but forge is always useful.
Various masteries. Mostly seless, except bloodbound mastery which should be maxed. Bloodbound gems are mathematically superior to all others.
Consider a hypothetical scenario where you compare a level 1 bloodbound gem to a level 1 yellow gem fully upgraded. Both do 4-11 damage with 18% kill ratio for the red and 14% triple hit for the yellow, or 7.5 damage on average, and 8.5 on average for the yellow. Each wave has an average of 13 monsters, and 13 mana per wave.
By level 5 the red gem will have killed 65 monsters and will have 6 more damage, or 11-17 damage. If you upgrade the yellow one up a size now it will do 8-19 damage with 19% double hit. 13.5 damage versus 16 damage (and some extra speed). So, the red gem at level 1 is close to being as good as a level 2 tower.
In early levels you can put a few points in them if you have nothing better to buy.
Flexibility. Lowers upgrade cost for mana pool, lets you buy bloodbound more cheaply. Very useful. You should max it out.
Resonance, recharge. They increase your damage and should be maxed out. Very useful. Recharge is more useful than resonance.
Radiance. No need, good tower placement removes the need for this.
Dual gem. No need, bloodbound works better on its own.
Wild gem. Max it out, rarely gives you useful gems but you can sell it on the forge for good mana early on.
Premium skills. Banisher can be useful for cheaper banishment, and resonance is good for enhancing towers. Spend in them as you wish. Demolision could be useful if it suits your playstyle with mazing.
Violent explosions is bad as it means you are wasting mana on gem bombs, triple gem is useless as bloodbound is the only useful gem so if you can make three gems you have no need for triple gems. Powerful shrines is useless as it means you are wasting mana on a single round of foes, deadly traps is useless as you can get more benefit from upgrading a gem mastery, readiness may be useful in some levels as you can move stuff faster, ritual is underpowered- I have gone halfway through the game and have 400 battle trophies. When I have 4000 I will get 100 mana, or the equivelent of 4 points in focus."
Amplifiers:
What are these Amplifier thingies?
Place a gem in them, and they cannot shoot but the Amplifier gets a portion of his damage, range and firing speed, and carries it to all adjacent gems.
So it's useful to put powerful gems in Amplifiers?
If you can't find a good place to use it in a tower, then yes, it's useful.
Should I use it?
You probably can't in the early levels because of mana shortage, but you will use them A LOT later on.
Shrines:
What are shrines?
YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED GEMCRAFT 0? Or did you just didn't get to that part? Anyway, Shrines take gem sacrifices, uses their power, and unleashes their special power.
What type of shrines are their?
There is a lightning shrine, which shoots lightning in all 4 directions, and charged bolt shrines shoot bolts in a circle.
How does the gem affect the shrine?
A shrines power is just as powerful as the gem. So use powerful gems a sacrifices if you need something dead, and those pesky level ones to take some damage to that monster that bugs you.
Well, hopefully I answered all your misconceptions about Gemcraft.
Part 2 will come soon.
Posted by: CJ
|
February 22, 2011 7:59 AM
FAQ part 2:
Red gem:
What's the fancy name for this gem?
Bloodbound.
What does it do?
Converts kills to power.
Tell me its strengths.
Well, if it killed a lot, it gets powerful.
Weaknesses?
Only useful early and mid-game, then you need to combine it.
Orange gem:
The fancy name?
Mana Gathering. Wait, that's not fancy.
What does it do?
Get you more mana than usual.
Tell me its strengths.
Ummm, gives you mana? I suggest putting them in traps, so you can maximize their ablities, and DON'T place a tower nearby before you squeezed all that mana. Combine with the gems that kill a lot for easy mana.
Weaknesses?
Weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, weak gem.
Yellow gem:
Yeah, name?
Multiple Damage.
Yeah, use?
Chance to inflict multiple damage.
OK, strengths?
Um, multiple damage? Combine with other strong gems for DEVASTATING effects, this gem is also useful for multiplying a gem's power.
Uh huh, weaknesses?
Rather weak gem.
Lime gem: (this is the yellow-green gem)
N...A...M...E...
Chain Hit.
U...S...E...
Chance to inflict damage to multiple monsters.
S...T...R...E...N...G...T...H...S...
Damages many enemies at a time, useful for swarm. Combine with other strong gems so they can shoot more monsters at a time!
WE...AK...NE...SS...ES...
Not so useful alone.
Green gem: (the darker shade of green)
Nam-
Poisonous.
Us-
Poisons enemies, if you don't know what that is, check Part one of the FAQ.
Strength-
Deals gradual damage, so even if nothing is hitting them, poison makes use of that precious time.
Weaknesse-
Slow firing rate.
Cyan gem: (the lighter shade of blue)
N-n-n-name?
Shocking.
U-u-u-use?
Shocks enemies, that is, leaves them immobile for a period of time.
St-st-st-strengths?
Leaves enemies immobile, place near towers for maximum effect.
W-w-w-weaknesses?
Not so useful alone.
Blue gem: (the darker shade of blue)
NaMe?
Slowing.
UsE?
Makes enemies slower.
St*&^rengh./,.ths?
Dude, is your keyboard broken? Anyway, makes enemies slower, place near strong towers and traps for maximum effect.
W@eak^$&ness*(es?
Not so useful alone.
Purple gems:
Let's test your memory of the format.
Armor tearing.
Degrades armor.
Busts their shields so they are wide open and absorb more damage. Place before strong towers.
Not so useful alone.
Hope that cleared your misconceptions about gems.
This FAQ focuses on gems, weaknesses and strengths. Part 3 will come soon and is about the diffrent gem combinations.
Posted by: CJ
|
March 5, 2011 12:08 AM
My tips are the following: (the free version, not premium)
Lime/Yellow is the best tower combo once you get Dual Gem Mastery. One adds a chance to deal multiple damage and the other chains to multiple foes. A higher level gem with several amplifiers can easily hit a 100% chance of triple or quad damage and hit 3 or 4 foes per attack. That multiplies your damage MANY times over.
Summoning is important. The theory is that the mana you spend on gem bombs to increase monster count, you get back by actually killing them. This is particularly important if you are using ORANGE mana leech towers or traps.
Even if you aren't, ideally summon more of the monsters that naturally have LESS of them in a wave...especially GIANT monsters! In the early game, you can easily kill the 4 giant monsters on say wave 7. So you use a rank 2 gem, add +8 of them, with each one giving 100 mana per kill. Throughout the game, try to summon more Giant monsters since they give so much mana per kill.
What this does is give you more mana faster. This snowballs into a lot more mana later on when the waves get much harder. You want to use the time when the waves are easy to boost your power as much as you can. It also works wonders with Bloodgems.
When summoning, the lower level gems are cheaper but will give less monsters added per use yet still boost the enemy power. Higher level gems are less efficient, but add a lot more monsters for a minimal power level. (i.e. 3 rank 1 gems = +12 monsters and THREE power jumps! 1 rank 3 gem = +13 monsters and only 1 power jump...but costs about 3 times as much as using 3 rank 1s).
Max Wild Gem ASAP. At each wave, use M to increase mana multipler and use X to sell the wild gem for around 6000+ mana!! Even though it is only a rank 5 or 6 gem. Go figure.
Mana farms are a good idea. You simply drop say 3 traps where the monsters are forced to go (use walls as needed) and put lower grade Orange gems in, with an amplifier possibly. This gives you a constant influx of mana. Make sure the traps are close to where they enter and that your tower won't kill em later.
A Gem with multiple amplifiers around it is more efficient than a higher ranked gem by itself. It is also easier to upgrade it in parts and without upsetting the currently working gem.
Max DUAL GEM ASAP. Adds a whopping 15% bonus to range and attack power.
Use the PYLON levels to MASSIVELY boost your overall power. What you do is create your main towers AWAY FROM the Pylon, and then have 2 small gem towers that are charging the pylon up with Structure targeting on. Make plenty of Mana Traps as discussed previously to boost mana hugely. Make sure you fight armored monsters only, preferably with Double the # of monsters active, banish cost more, etc.
You fight like normal, trying to summon a lot more than normal.
Once your Pylon is ALMOST charged, pause and remove those gems. You now have control over when you win.
Build up mana, last as long as you can. Upgrade towers n stuff. When you can no longer keep up, PAUSE THE GAME. Sell your gems as needed for this next part.
Make tons and tons of rank 1 gems, bombing some random wave of baddies to summon. Looking at your STATS, bomb until your summoned is ONE LESS THAN your acutal kills. So if you killed 1684, make sure to summon 1683. THis takes forever and is tedious...but worth it. Use the rank 3 gems to add +13 and ensure you can get exactly 1 under with lots of +4s from rank 1 gems.
Then, put a gem to charge Pylon and unpause. You will get a 50(!!!!) summoning multipler. I.e. Whatever your final score was... TIMES FIFTY. I got 700,000 on my first Pylon and 1 million on the 2nd. I got SERIOUS level up!
Posted by: MikeP | July 18, 2011 2:52 PM