Forums → Games → Beacons (Gemcraft Chasing Shadows)

Last thing first :

Where you place your towers depends on a couple of things. First off, do you have access to Amplifiers yet? Second, are you talking a manafarm, a post-game clear for the sake of either just beating the stage on that difficulty level or just farming shadow cores, OR are you talking earlier in the game than either of those two scenarios?

At first, before getting access to Amplifiers, if the stage has amps lying around, place towers next to them so that you can take advantage of them. Otherwise, place your towers such that they can hit monsters at different points of the path. Ideally, the path would take the monsters by the tower once, and then later on, right back by it. This gives your tower a second chance at killing the monster. I usually like to place two towers right next to each other at such points.

If you DO have access to Amplifiers, and are still progressing through the game, I'd suggest that you look a little bit more carefully for good tower spots. Although you do not need to set it up initially (and may not have the mana to do so) I like to set up my tower/amp areas this way :
[A][T][A]
[A][T][A]
A vertical arrangement works as well, it just depends upon the map. The advantage of this arrangement is that all four amps affect both towers, and this is the most cost-effective means I'd found for providing the biggest boost to the most towers before you can afford to just surround one tower with eight amps (which has its own Rate of Fire issues at lower wizard levels).

It really does not matter where you place your towers, as long as they are able to either kill the monsters themselves (ideal) or weaken them enough for the next pair of towers to kill (less ideal, but more realistic at lower levels). Just try not to let monsters reach your orb.

As for the whole Beacon issue .. I never found those beacons to be too bad (the ones that reduce adjacent beacon damage intake by 75%). The beacons I despise the most are the Resetting Beacons, that cause all gems within range to have to resocket themselves. The solution is the same for both, however : Walls, Towers, and Amps.

In any stage, initially Walls are the more cost-effective means of denying Beacons a place to land. A Beacon is like a Tower and an Amp - it requires four small spots to be free to be placed there. Unlike a Tower or an Amplifier, however, they will NEVER appear on walls, nor on the monster path (even if the path segment is blocked from being used, they will not appear there). So, place 1 section walls in a grid pattern, so that there are no 2x2 sections off the path for beacons to land on.

Walls, unfortunately, have a tendency to crumble when a Shadow or a Spire crashes down upon them. So, if you are being attacked by those, sooner or later you will need to start setting Towers/Amps down on top of those wall sections in order to continue denying beacons a place to land.

Its mainly any level that make use of giants (and frequently) Like 3 ways of giants back to back really beat me down. I don't have the Pouch to make use of though sadly (at least not at the moment). But my problematic levels outside of farming are

A1
K1
M3 - Haven't really done this one but M Hextile doesn't seem to be THAT hard.

Its basically like this - Ill do fine each time but once those giants clump up together I might at well just blow the orb up myself (I know I can't... a joke). This lets the little monsters get by without a scratch because the giants are taking everything...

Like I said earlier its probably from bad tower placement with the above there.

I assume K unlocks J hexile when the corresponding K field has been completed. I am pretty much trying to focus on getting to J4 and completing it to get Amps to at least make other levels a bit easier.

As for the rest of you're post. I will def make use of walls more outside of pathing. Also Thank you for the useful advice on anything I may have not covered. If anything of the above sounds repeatable from the OP (Opening Post) then feel free to mention it should you wish to post again.

Er...damage reduction beacons only reduce damage to other beacons, not damage to monsters.

So, I take it giants+beacons keeps killing you?

It really, REALLY helps to have both yellow and purple on a map. purple is unlocked rather early, if I recall correctly. If you can set up a couple low-mid grade purple traps/towers set to "highest armor", they'll help kill off beacon-created shields, allowing your yellow (or red/yellow if red is available) gems to focus on actually killing the monsters.

note: I do not recommend yellow/purple dual gems.

p.s. anger the non-giant waves a bit, see my low level guide for details.

Yeah its the Giants mainly and whenever I use the beacon trait its worse. So I believe if I can get The giants under control despite any level I should be fine.

Will give you're guide a read.

Angering waves, as long as you can handle the monster you've created, is a great way to boost the experience you get for a stage.

Purple gems that reduce monster armor are great for two things in particular : countering the armor increase brought on by bombing waves, and countering the Shadow's natural armor generation.

I don't anger waves on the first run (field completion).

Which gems are unlockable on said field that aren't premium? I can try to rush to those fields.

Also whats the best level for core farming?

I did spend my five bucks to express my appreciation for them having made the game, so I do have the pouch, access to the bloodbound skill, poolbound skill, chain hit skill, as well as the highest difficulty level and whatever else buying the pouch got me.

So, I haven't the faintest idea, beyond what others have said, is locked behind the pouch.

You should not need to do much (if any) core farming though, not until you've beaten the game. My preferred method of core farming though, involves some things I've been told are locked behind the pouch : pick a stage, any stage, turn Chasing Shadows trait on at level 7, choose the hardest difficulty, and make a tower surrounded by 8 amps, pure yellow in the amps, a mix of 1 red, 15 yellow, 16 white in the tower, using U to upgrade everything as much as I can while the stage plays. Set it to 9x speed, and call all waves at once. A couple minutes later, I've cleared the stage with 300-700 more SC than I had before.

What you'd do without the pouch, I've no idea.

I might buy the pouch for a new game. But since its harder without the pouch I'd figure of actually trying to complete the game without the use of it and getting to the highest level possible.

Also I just acquired Armor Tearing on A3 so there's that one.

"Also whats the best level for core farming?"

Very, very early on, f1 is the best. (It's kinda usefull if you just need to get shadow cores to upgrade some rarity 1 fragments).

Later on, there's a level with lots of apparitions hard-coded into the battle...there's a story frame or two, so it's hard to miss...

By level 500, the best is whichever level you can set to x9, call all waves, and beat with nothing but the starting mana...and which has flying, which kinda rules out y6.