in Gemcraft Lab I could go on in Endurance mode forever with Chain+Mana-Gems collecting Mana, enraging giant waves and some killing gems. In CS it kills me pretty soon. Main problems I identify would be slow mana-collection and high armor. I appreciate that endurance became limited but Id like some more chance for staying at least some longer. Anybody found a good strategy for endurance?
Poolbound gems are your friend when it comes to mana farms. And Kill gems. And anything, really. Poolbound is just awesome. Beyond that, you should probably realize that you're not really meant to be able to max out endurance in CS.
Ya I have to agree with the above. I think they tried to design it this time where you can't complete every single wave. The monster defense just outgrows the gems faster.
Mana traps still work, the issue your having is you don't have stun and your setting up single trap mana farms. just like them up and amp if possible then freeze. Be careful because this will still lag you just like in lab... and it's harder to find the cutoff point since your going to be adjusting your mana traps stage to stage in amount and such.
Yes it doesn't work the same and your not going to get mobs stuck on one single trap but it's still worthwhile in most cases.
I'm just level 54, so things might change a lot, but so far, I noticed that mana gems need more and more hits to pay for themselves, with rising grades. It takes a long time before they actually generate a surplus of mana?
Well, its pretty simple. In Gemcraft labyrinth there was a health cap. In chasing shadows there is non. In lab the max health was 3.4 billion. I just came out of a endurance run, and at lvl 150 I was facing monsters with 800 Billion hp. I don't think you will "beat" endurance anytime soon. I got to round 260 with a grade 27 gem. I ctrl clicked around wave 160 right after spending al my mana. If I hadn't done that and would just continue, I believe I could have gone farther, but not really that much I think. The main thing is that the hp rises extremely fast, for me it went from 20 million at wave 100 to 800 billion at 150.
I was lvl 107 and gained 200 million xp, which boosted me to lvl 197. I spend 205 shadow cores and gained 450.
I am wizard level 2495 and i didn't even start doing endurance mode yet.. why are you already at it pre level 100? Clearly its not needed for good experience!
I will do an endurance soon and i'll tell you if it caps out even for high wizard levels.
@Rymdlasse, I suppose you replayed some levels in order to get to 2495? And I figured I already spend the shadow cores, so why not continue to get the most out of them? Besides, I like endurance
I agree with you, blackpaladin. If you've already beaten a level, then it doesn't hurt to at least let it run out on endurance to get your extra XP/cores/fragments.
I've been doing endurance since about level 150 or so.
Your cleanup (tower) gem should be red/yellow/white/black. That will take care of everything that gets past your trap gem.
Your trap gem should be red/orange/white/black. I tend to get those up to about grade 33 or so before getting overwhelmed.
--Low skills YOu don't need much in red component skill, as it eventually gets to massive ranges without incident. fury is good, but the -HP/Armor penalty is kind of a joke. It's good to get the boost from the early waves until it no longer matters (read: 1,000,000 mana per hit). amplifiers shouldn't need much at all. Just put enough to get you through the early waves, as the endgame's +1.2% efficacy is hardly worth it.
--High skills Orange component is crucial. The doublestack of the bonus and the grade 7 bonus help you get that mana pool up to 30 before entering endurance mode. Black/White/Yellow component all may as well say "Increase damage by a ton". True Colors also increases your mana gain by a ton at the end.
--- Start with a red/white/black/yellow in a tower, shoot out your first few waves, then transition to a red/white/black/orange in a trap right at the entrance. Upgrade the trap gem as soon as possible as often as possible. This will allow you to enrage the waves more and jack your mana up to hilarious levels.
Keep in mind that "endurance" is a misnomer, because the best way to gain XP is to max all traits on the highest difficulty you have, giving you 200+ waves with a 50x+ XP modifier.
As for monster HP, the highest I've seen is roughly 200 trillion, in the 200s.
Great guide, Cirno! I find that having high skills in Traps, Mana Stream, Fusion, and Resonance are important as well. Once you have the skills to make the mana farm gems (Orange/White), your initial mana pool is much less important. Maximizing of those skills increases your mana farming ability by quite a lot.
Traps is great, but not essential. I currently have orange at 21, and traps at 12, as the bonuses work more favorably with the orange skill.
Resonance is a waste of points. There's no point in the endgame where you would say "If only I did another 20% damage, I'd have cleared all those mobs!", considering the point where you start losing tends to be in the vicinity of "Oh, the difference between this grade and the next one is about 3.5x damage"
Fusion and Mana stream are not bad, if you have the points to spare. I think I've got like 9 in both of those.
The way I play, I want to get a veritable ton of mana, before caring about whether or not I reached the next mana pool level.
