All that glitters is not gold. In this case, it's a fantastic hoard of gems that everyone and their sneaky ninja wants to get their hands on. What's a poor, defenseless Gem Keeper to do? Why, build crypts full of terrifying ghouls, temples to unholy forces that can scorch the earth, and dens packed with malevolent beasties, of course! Cursed Treasure Level Pack from Gem Masters Iriysoft offers up another dose of the same action-packed gameplay found in the original. It's more of the same addictive, strategic tower-defense gameplay we know and love, and will help scratch that itch for calling meteoric hellfire down on your foes we know you've been having.
The premise for newcomers is thus; you've got a rad volcano secret base packed full of gems that everyone wants because... well, because they're gems the size of your head most likely. Everyone from lowly peasants to sneaky ninja to overpowered champions wants your gems, and they'll stop at nothing to get them unless you use the various towers at your command (dens, crypts, and temples) to blast them into vapor before they cart your gems away. Success depends on figuring out the best locations for your towers to not only take advantage of the terrain and any bonuses, but rack up enough kills that you can upgrade them to become stronger or even unlock a new ability. Allow all your gems to be pilfered and it's game over, but save just one gem to the end of the stage and you'll win, gaining experience and skill points to spend on passive abilities that increase your offensive and defensive capabilities in a variety of ways. As before, surviving to the end of the stage by the skin of your teeth can be easy, but achieving the highest rating (obtained by not even having a single foe touch a gem) is the true challenge.
There are only fifteen levels, and if you played the original you'll probably have a sense of deja vu, since apart from the various level designs not much has changed. As the stages progress, you'll have to contend with more waves packed with more enemies and figure out how to make use of the increasingly miserly terrain to place your towers. If, like me, you loved the original, then you'll probably welcome this pack of official stages to grind and attempt to score a perfect rating on. But at the same time, the lack of anything new to speak of makes that grind all the more apparent, and if you've already perfected all of the original levels than being asked to do it all over again might not put a spring in your step. It sort of makes one wish there was a level editor available for us to create and share our own stages, because boy howdy, the hurtin' I know you guys could put on a Gem Keeper with the proper tools at your disposal. But if you've been dying for another excuse to destroy destroy DESTROY all invaders, you could do much, much worse than this assortment of challenging stages. Cursed Treasure Level Pack offers up another dose of addictive, evil overlord-sy power with the same brilliantly simple and strategic gameplay that made the original take home the gold in Best of 2010 Strategy Games.
It seems a little glitchy...
Brilliant on "The Caves" and on the final level seem nearly impossible. On "The Caves" I have plenty of green units lining the entryway to make sure the ninja champion gets hit right away, but he still has enough invisibility to make it to the gem before uncloaking again. I have the same problem with the final level. Any advice? I've gotten brilliant on all the other levels. I haven't tried spamming meteor yet, so maybe that's the only solution....
Great to see this back, but I've found a bug. On level 4 it got to about wave 16 when the "Attack" button stopped lighting up, and pressing the space bar wouldn't send the next wave, either, so I had to wait for the timer to run out on its own. I completed the level and was just left with an empty map. No more waves, but no victory notification, either. The only way to get out of it was to quit, losing the experience and the win.
Only way to beat ninja champion for "Brilliant" is to use damage and mana cost upgraded meteor spam
OR allow crypt spam at entryway with fear/disarm
(this is much less reliable)
It's possible to get Brilliant on The Caves with just a few towers and no spells.
Set up two dens at the entrance (above and below works well). Place a crypt mid-way down the path and a few more back near the gem.
You want to build as much experience for your crypts as possible, especially for that mid-point crypt. This will mean sitting on upgrades for the dens and crypts, keeping everything weak enough that the towers in the back get a shot in on enemies. Ideally, you want that mid-point crypt 4 star for the final champion and the rest of your crypts well-starred. I don't push the dens past 2 stars.
Immediately after the last regular wave, sell your dens.
The final champion will be dazed by your mid-point crypt, fall back, then easily picked off by the rest of the crypts.
It took me a few tries to get the upgrading balance right.
Thanks Cheeseinspector. I've been stuck on The Caves for a while and I'd just about given up. I wasn't able to do the level without meteors, I needed them to pick off some of the groups of ninjas but your tactics really did help.
I've just got the last level to finish now.
I'm stuck on level 15 brilliant, mainly waves 39 & 40. I know to conserve mana and meteor spam the champion. Wave 39 has 5 ninjas and I usually need to use a meteor or a gem gets touched, typically on the lower side, and then I'm stuck without enough mana to spam meteor kill the champion. Can anyone offer a strategy where I won't need meteors for the regular ninjas?
Advice for level 15 brilliant please? I can't find a way to kill all of the normal ninjas without meteors and therefore I don't have the mana saved up to spam meteor the champion ninja when he comes around.
If you have plenty of gold, you can try having some random places to drop Temples ready. Then after 39, drop 5 temples and gain 100 mana back from that Talent. You only need 1 point in the crappy "take damage from carrying gems" talent to be able to buy the +20 mana one.
You also need the max amount of mana talent to get to 500 max mana, as well as the Meteor booster talents.
great game. i got brilliant in every level, and 20 achievements. (to maximize all the skills you have to play way to many hours and the same levels over and over again)
I have not managed to get brilliant on level 15 yet -- I can easily handle all wavesexcept for the one super-ninja that comes around level thirty-something. I'm going to meteor-spam him now.
The solution I found for all the other waves on level 15 is:
Interior defenses. Built dens on the two high ground points, and on the strip of grass along the bottom. Build a cluster of 4 or 5 temples on the rock strip just to the right of the topmost high ground. Build a den and a temple on the mana fountains.
Upgrade the temples on the "evil eye" path and the dens on the "critical damage" path, not the "mega damage" path; this gives them maximum range, they never miss, and they will do enough do enough damage to half-kill a ninja when it enters the board, then finish it after its cloak expires.
Here are the stats of the various temples when you are at level 41 (i.e. all skills at maximum) and the temples are at level 7.
Range:
6.15 Banshee Crypt/Fearful Crypt/Catapult Den
4.24 Hunters' Den/Beholder's Temple
3.30 Hellfire Temple
Firing Speed:
0.71 Hunters' Den
1.00 Beholder's Temple (rated; game actually plays double speed and half damage which is therefore less effective against Knights)
1.07 Banshee Crypt
2.14 Fearful Crypt
2.85 Catapult Den/Hellfire Temple
Damage:
297 Hellfire Temple/Catapult Den (per victim within range)
208 Beholder's Temple (except against Paladins)
198 Banshee Crypt/Fearful Crypt
132 Hunters' Den (but multiplies up for critical and extra hit)
132 Beholder's Temple (against Paladins)
To compare the various towers, I tried playing levels 14 and 15 using different types of towers at maximum skills.
For level 14, I simply placed 4 towers of the same type on each of the high ground squares.
For level 15, I placed 2 towers of the same type on the two high ground squares, and I also placed an (Orcish) Den and (Evil Eye) Temple on the two mana squares, because these were the other two squares that most people would build on.
On both levels, I upgraded as much as I could in between waves, and I used no magic at all.
Banshee Crypt
Level 14: Brilliant (occasionally Excellent due to random variation)
Level 15: Saved 1 Gem
The Banshee Crypt's big strength is that it can Disarm and subsequently Freeze Paladins.
Fearful Crypt
Level 14: Excellent (occasionally Brilliant due to random variation)
Level 15: Defeated on Wave 46
Chain Hit still works against Paladins, but it's not as effective as Disarm.
Hunters' Den
Level 14: Excellent (would have needed two or three fireballs to achieve Brilliant)
Level 15: Saved 1 Gem
The fire rate and critical hit capability really stands out here; any normal Ninjas not killed on entry were quickly dispatched when their smoke bombs wore off. Interestingly on level 14 only the two outer towers made it to level 7, while the inner towers only managed level 5; presumably their range meant that the outer towers killed too many enemies before the inner towers could attack.
Catapult Den
Level 14: Saved 5 Gems (would have needed around five fireballs)
Level 15: Defeated on Wave 34
The level 14 result surprised me, because I thought they weren't very powerful, although it turns out they have the same range as Crypts and the same speed and damage as Hellfire Temples.
Hellfire Temple
Level 14: Saved 4 Gems (would have needed around nine fireballs)
Level 15: Defeated on Wave 44
Despite having the worst range of all the towers, the multiple hit really seems to make a difference.
Beholder's Temple
Level 14: Saved 3 Gems (would have needed around nine fireballs)
Level 15: Defeated on Wave 39
I say Beholder's Temple; on Level 14 none of them actually made it to level 7, the outer towers managing level 6 and the inner towers level 5. The poor result is probably due to their Radiance being ineffective against Paladins.
I find that the best way to deal with ninja champions is to have a fully-upgraded hellfire temple at the entrance. This will daze the champion, slowing him down, and allow you to kill him with meteors. (Helps if you have meteor damage maxed out and mana cost for the spell minimized.)
There are mana pools in every level i didn't realize that until last level , hope it will help somebody
Actually I only managed to succeed on level 15, Brilliant, when I had improved the skills high enough : precisely at level 36 (giving an additional 35% to fire rate, range and damage). Then basically the strategy noted above (temple below, crypt above, etc.) allows one, with just a bit of luck, to use only one meteor on the 5 ninjas of level 39, to have had the mana well replenished even before that, and to use 4 meteors on the ninja champion, which at last gets him without hois touching a gem. I guess at level 40 it becomes a piece of cake...
The "get 20 mana for 5 temples built" trick, on the other hand, is useless.
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