Forums → Games → GemCraft CS: Can't get a mana farm running. Need help!

It sounds like you have the basic idea, but you are simply approaching it wrong. Do it backward.

Make the kill tower first. I prefer to start out with 1 red, 9 yellow, 6 black. Combine them all into a G5 gem.

Once you have your kill tower up and actually, y'know, able to kill the waves, maze the monsters so they have to pass through an area that you can set up with the trap and 6 amplifiers touching it. I call this a Trap/Amplifier Array.

[A][A][A] [A][A][A]
[_][T][_] or [_][T][A]
[A][A][A] [A][_][A]

I hope that comes out as well as it did as I type this! Anyway, rotate them as you need to. [A] means Amplifier, [T] means Trap, and [_] is just the path that the monsters take.

Set up your Mana Farm by making a gem that is 1 Red, 1 Blue, 8 Orange, 6 Black. Every time you U the Mana Farm Gem, put it back into operation quickly with the Barrage spell (for anyone else reading this, if you lack Barrage then Beam is a good substitute). Use pure Black gems in the amplifiers.

Once that is up and generating Mana for you, then make the Kill trap. Maze the monsters so they have to pass through a second Trap/Amplifier Array. In this one, the Trap gem is a duplicate of the gem you have in a tower killing monsters. The Amplifiers still get Black gems. It may help to put a few Amplifiers around the tower - but once you have that done, make an Amplifier that is NOT being used for anything else and put the Tower Gem in it. This holds it in reserve for Apparitions, Spires, and the like.

Once you have the Kill Trap set up, and the Tower Gem set aside, look at the Kill Trap Gem. There are two things in particular you want to look at : its maximum damage, and the Critical Multiplier. The base gem (without the amplifiers around it) *may* say something along the lines of Damage: 83-250 and have some chance to deal x17.9 damage. Your numbers WILL be different, but in this example, the 250 and the 17.9 are what to look for. Use your numbers! Anyway, round them both down. Round the 250 to 200. Round the 17.9 to 15, or something. Then multiply the result (200 times 15 is 3000). That result is your target HP. Start tossing gem bombs at the wave stones so that you approach, without going over (going a LITTLE over is ok, but going way over is not, rounding both numbers down a bit provides you some wiggle room for going over a little) that monster HP.

Surrounded by the amplifiers, you should have a bit higher a multiplier than the number I just used, by the way.

When you get enough Mana, you want to continually upgrade both the Mana Farm and the Kill Trap. Barrage works well for both traps; Beam is a good substitute for the Mana Farm Trap and Bolt is a good substitute for the Kill Trap. Continually upgrade both the Traps and the Amplifiers. When you get an Apparition or a Spire (or anything along those lines that a trap cannot kill) somply pop the old Tower Gem off of its resting Amplifier back into its Tower, upgrade it a few times, upgrade its Amplifiers a few times, and once the approaching menace is defeated, put it back into its resting amplifier.

After each Kill Trap upgrade, re-do that math! You want to gem bomb the waves as much as you can without making them impossible for you to defeat.

The tricky part, once you see how to get it up and going, is figuring out how much you can boost the necessary skills, and how much mana you need to start with. You can completely ignore the Freeze, Curse, Wake of Eternity, Bolt, Beam, and Barrage skills. You can also completely ignore the gem bombing skills, and any color skills that you are not using.

Oh-mygod. Thank you SO much!
Got the hang of it straight away and went to wave 200 or something in endurance mode before I ended it. Soooooo grateful, thank you again!

What messed me up initially was figuring out just how much to bomb the waves. That is why I spoke of the math. As you can see, you want to round the two numbers down a bit - but not too much. Too much means you don't get the experience per wave that you should be getting. Too little and you kill your wiggle room.

After you gain a few levels doing that, you can experiment with various gem combinations for the mana farm trap and the kill trap.

Yeah got it all sorted, just went from level 250 to 580 in one game. Cheers again :-)

I've asked this in other threads before, but noone seems to answer.

Can you mana farm if you are not paying for the game?

Yes, you can. There is even somewhere guide how to.

As Psorek says, you can mana farm without the pouch.

BUT - it is not going to be quite as effective from an experience standpoint.

Depending upon how many gem skills you have unlocked (I think you should have most of them by the time you get Amplifiers anyway) you will need to find a stage that has a specific combination : a path that you can direct monsters through the two trap areas, any missing gem colors(either available as gems from the start, or as skills for that stage), and a lot of monster waves. Gem colors needed : Orange, Yellow, Black/White (one or the other), and Red. Some would add Blue to that, and while it is rather helpful, but not required.

Not paying for the game puts a crimp in your ability to mana farm, just based upon those criteria. It does not eliminate it entirely however. Good luck!

@Astroshak

You have about 1/3 of the skills when you get amplifiers.

I've been looking through every mana farm post that's come up, but all of them are heavily dependent on red gems and the pay features.

Ok, I had gone well ahead and skipped over opening many of those things until later, so did not know when you would normally get Amplifiers.

As for the "red gem and pay features" coming up a lot, there are two reasons for this. First, at least *some* red is necessary in your Mana Farm Trap gem. Otherwise, it won't necessarily hit every monster, especially when you have a whole bunch (as in, tens if not hundreds) crossing the trap. With some red, it will be hitting every monster many times, giving you that much more mana gain. Second, Endurance is locked behind paying. A beginning mana farm will take a few waves to get going, and if the stage runs out three or four waves after the farm starts hitting its stride, it becomes something of a waste of time. A corollary to that is the way that experience increases with each wave - the more waves you have going with the farm, the more mana you generate, the higher you can take the gems, and the more experience you can obtain when you do finally get done. That experience, ultimately, is the main point of the mana farm, after all.

As I said, not paying puts a crimp in your ability to mana farm, but does not eliminate it. You simply need to find stages that have the gems you do not have skills for, which necessarily means finding a stage that provides you with or permits the red gems. If you do not think the stage has enough waves, start using battle traits to add to the waves. The more waves you have your farm running for, the more mana it can get you. And, the more experience it can get for you as well, and that experience is ultimately the real goal in doing a mana farm.

(If someone wants to say that generating the mana for beating Endurance is another reason to mana farm, that is true - but not the reason someone trying to figure out how to do it, or someone lacking the MP, is going to have.)