Forums → Games → Gemcraft CS: Perfect Mana Farm

my supergem increases 3.12x mana per 5x cost, so roughly 63% per grade

Increases effectiveness of specials only: in Labyrinth it affected damage, too. I'm not deep into the game yet, so I can't tell you how effective it is for the Pouch players. But for me, 20% is certainly worth a little trouble.

That's what I just said, Conner.

This "weaving" is exactly the same as specced upgrading technique. It may be a little faster if you learn this pattern well, it just does not 2 but 4 grades at once.

oh.

I'm sorry, this had to be ask a billion time, but is there a post that explains every technic because I have a hard time understanding clearly how to and what are the increases/drawbacks/costs.
- Classic upgrading
- Specced??
- Supergem??
- Weaving??
Thanks for your help.
Love this game!

Classic upgrading = Just hit U on the gem.
As I said, the term Weaving was from Labyrinth: it sounds like the CS guys rediscovered the technique and gave it the name Spec. A rose is a rose.

In Labyrinth, Weaving was a huge time saver for Endurance mode, despite it being fiddly. The Mana bar operated very differently. The Grade 4 Weaving technique I describe may be useless in CS: I just am not there yet to check, but the few videos I watched suggest that it isn't necessary.

In Labyrinth, if you could make a G21 gem from a full mana pool, it might take 10 minutes to double the mana pool size so you could make a G22. Since the Mana Pool refilled instantaneously (with a good mana farm, and it became easier on later waves as your pool increased), you could just hold the D button and fill up with 36 L21's in seconds. Shift-G them into one L26 gem. That took 10 seconds instead of an hour waiting for the pool to grow to make a G26 in one go. Using the Weaving technique on top of this raised Specials the same way, so this lowered the Grade of gem you needed to complete Endurance (from Grade 28 to Grade 27, for instance) which further cut the time necessary. All this meant that getting your kill tower up to where you could finish off all 1337 waves could be dropped from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, if you wove your gems properly. Endurance XP in Labyrinth was by wave, and capped by monster (easily achieved), so once your kill tower could kill wave 1337 Enraging more was pointless.

And looking at the following may also save some time for you. All gems below are Grade 6 Crit+Chain (yellow-red) with Level 20 true Color and Crit (no MP yet, so can't do Chain).

Upgraded (no weaving, just hit U on a G1 combine until it was G6)
Damage 184-423
Range 6.8
1.46 sps
33% x3.25
1.52 Chain

1x Weaved (Combine two G3's for the dual, then dupe and weave once with G4's)
Damage 187-423
Range 6.8
1.47 sps
37% x3.48
1.56 Chain

2x Weaved (Combine G1's for the initial dual, weave and weave again)
Damage 193-418
Range 6.8
1.47 sps
38% x3.58
1.57 Chain

From this, if you are starting a new high level Dual gem, and don't have a woven gem to start with, the benefit of multiple Weavings is very weak. It's the last weaving that matters most. Someone with a pool larger than mine might be able to post G8 or G12 weaves for comparison.

On crusade for G100 genm, I posted grade 50 dual orange blacks, one I'd, one specced, and one supergemmed. A page or two back, check it out I calculated how much % each was better than U.

I was mana farming using 4 traps (2 slow/chain, 2 mana/chain) and after seeing the above image I changed to one trap with the quad displayed. It's definitely netting me a lot more exp on maps however...

One thing that seems to elude my understanding is how exactly you get so many monsters stuck. Even with slow at it's capped 90% with a lot of chain I doubt (idk how to tell the number) I have anywhere near 900+ monsters on one tile. What happens for me when doing the quad black/red/orange/blue (I don't add blue once its at 90%) is it instantly kills things, then all of a sudden it'll just hold on to a wave or two then they break free. Freeze seems to help me hold another wave but that's about it. What the heck am I missing??

Please understand that I do not understand most of the terminology. I've only been doing mana farm for a week and even with my failed mana farm, compared to what I was doing, I feel like I am hacking xD I finally broke 2,000,000,000 mana. So please dumb down the terminology =)

Edit: Oh and I also surround my trap gem with amps using red/orange/black. I am assuming once slow is at 90% its useless to pump up further. Perhaps someone could also share what skills they have to what levels? Again I am level 320. Best I've been able to mana farm for exp was, on the very first map, 5mil exp. I've only tried the new quad method (again, based off of the above image) for a few maps. I just can't comprehend how the heck to get thousands of monsters stuck on one tile =(

At 320 you are not going to be doing the Permafreeze thing, which is necessary to have that many monsters on a single square. Put simply, permafreeze requires having a high Freeze skill level (up near 60) with several talisman fragments also containing + Freeze duration, to bring Freeze's duration longer than its charge time.

I'd recommend instead forcing monsters through one manafarm (6 amp area with a trap in the middle) into another, similar area, that is your killing field. It too will be 6 amps and a trap in the middle.

Given your level, I'd suggest starting with 2 amps each area, with walls in the spots for the remaining amps (so monsters don't block you from placing them). Your manafarm gem should be primarily Black and Orange, with a single G1 Red added to it. Its amps should be solid Orange. Your killing gem should be primarily Black and Yellow, with a single G1 Red added to it. The killing area amps should be solid Yellow.

You may want to stick a trap right before the manafarm trap, and right before the killing trap. These would be your slow traps, and should contain little more than G2 White + G1 Red + G1 Blue. They should hit 90% slow in short order, giving your manafarm trap more time to leech mana from each monster, and your killing trap more time on target to kill it before it gets past.

I'd suggest keeping things simple, for now. For a manafarm gem, 1 G1 Red, 8 G1 Orange, 7 G1 Black, just Shift-G combine them until they are one gem. Stick it into the manafarm trap. For the killing field gem, 1 G1 Red, 7 G1 Yellow, 8 G1 Black, again just Shift-G combining them until they are all one gem. Stick it into the killing field trap. Make your amp gems, stick them in, and bomb the waves a little bit. I would suggest using White in your manafarm and killing traps, instead of Black, if your gems generally stay under Grade 30. Later on, you will definitely be seeing higher grade gems, and using Black is better for those high grade gems.

At your level, a manafarm is primarily to gain a bunch of levels in order to do a better manafarm, to gain more levels, to do a better manafarm. At higher levels, you will want to look at psorek's high-end guide for recipes for your killgem, manafarm gem, and a simple upgrade that raises your gems' power by more than the U's they cost would.

I've not been paying much attention to it lately, and when I've been there I've basically been the only one in there, but if you've any other questions, try poking your nose into the kiwi irc someone set up. https/kiwiirc.com/client ... set your name, and for channel, #gemcraft

Astroshak- I am actually doing something very similar now. After my post I decided to retry a few things. One thing I wasn't thinking was a killing TRAP, I've been struggling to keep a killing tower at a distance from my manafarm and that's been a challenge once they are upgraded to 20+ due to the insane range. Aside for that I was on par though =)

So how should my skills be set for all this?

You provided excellent information. I don't see any thumbs up or anything on this forum? Just know I am very appreciative of the time you took to write all that and I will be referring to it until I am higher, thanks so much!!

One other question aside for the skills...lets say I did your "formula" for the gems, but all grade 2's. It yields same results but just one less U hit on it right? I'm a little proud because half of what you posted I was already doing xD But yeah if you could share your recommendation on skills that would be great =D Doesn't have to be skill point per skill point but just a general idea =)

Ran out of time to edit. Also, why put white into the slow gems? I've just been doing a 50/50 blue red into them until slow hits 90% then I was pumping pure red into it until grade 12-15.

That little formula for manafarm and killing gems is really only something simple to get started with. Later on you are going to want to use what psorek came up with and put in his High End guide (check the useful links sticky).

While you could use all G2's in those simple starting gem recipes, there is little reason to. If you want to start off with a more expensive gem, you would be better off doing something to supergem the base gems instead of simply starting off with higher grade base gems. You should come off with pretty much the exact same gem if you were to combine 16 G2 gems in the ration I suggested above, or if you combine 16 G1's and then U the result anyway.

When making starting gems, you will eventually want to supergem them - make them stronger stat-wise, though a lower grade, than the equivalent cost gem. For example, if you were to make a G3 Orange gem, it will cost X mana. You could also take 4 G1 Orange gems, combine two into a G2 gem, then combine the other two, one at a time, into that G2 gem, resulting in a G2 gem that costs what the G3 costs, but is stronger. The lower the grade you start to supergem, the stronger the gems eventually become.

If you have the initial mana to spare, after almost maxing out those skills I suggest below, then you will want to start toying with psorek's supergem methods. He details a powerful initial gem for both killing and manafarming, as well as a pair of upgrade plans (16 and 64) that will make your gems more powerful than their cost would imply. For what its worth, U is the simplest upgrade you can do, and is the least effective. You won't actually need to use those initial 32 count gems, or the 16 or 64 gem upgrade plans, but when you can and do start using them, you will find your efforts at manafarming much more effective.

As for your skills, I cannot give you hard numbers. True Colors, Masonry, Fusion, Mana Stream, Resonance, Amplifiers, Fury, and Traps are all useful skills, as are the gem skills for White, Black, Red, Yellow, and Orange. If you need to skimp, I'd skimp on the Mana Stream - ideally most of your mana income comes from the manatrap, not killing the monsters, and you don't really need any given mana pool level, just the mana in the pool.

Try to keep all of those skills at a multiple of 3, but you do not necessarily have to have them at the highest multiple of 3 you can reach. I do not know what level your skills cap at, but if they cap at, say, 28, you do not necessarily need to have those skills all at 27. If you can get away without the initial mana, go for it. If not, then knocking them all down to 21 or even 18 may help you out even more. The reason for "multiple of 3" should be fairly obvious - its the secondary benefit to the skill. The one skill that you can really afford to have lower is, as already stated, Mana Stream.

I use White in the slow gems for a simple reason : I'm not raising those gems to high levels at all. The White boosts both the slow% (to its cap) and the chain hit by a decent amount. The less mana I need to spend on the slow gem, the better. And it hits everything that crosses it due to the high firing rate of traps and the moderate chain hit. If your gem does not max out the slow percentage in the trap at Grade 2, then just hit U a few times until it does, then forget about it. It will hit all the monsters you need it to. There is no need to supergem the slow gems more than the initial formation, they do their job well enough without it.

Ty sosososo much =) I'm getting x3 or better more exp on maps I previously mana farmed. Cant wait until I got the full hang of it xD take care!