Forums → Games → GC:CS End game tactics after v1.1
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Hi everyone,
I'd like to collect here some opinions of more experienced players than me on how to tackle some of the changes of v1.1, as the master source of endgame knowledge (psorek's guide) is now slightly obsolete.
Then we can link the two topics together and have an updated end game guide.
EDIT 29/12/14: scattered all over the topic there are a lot of useful info, I may recollect them all in the future.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an high level MP player, what I write here is from my perspective, may not apply so well to low level/not MP.
1) Hatred, is it worth it?
My observations would say not, but I'm still not sure, I seem to get ~20% less exp from lv 7 hatred than without it, but maybe there is a better balance in between, on the other hand it makes the round shorter, so I could actually do more if I was continually grinding exp.
Of course without MP I guess it's a blessing, because it shortens the number of waves you have to play to reach unkillable monsters and lets non-MP players achieve similar exp levels as MP players.
2) Enraging, theory and practice
Now that exp bonus from enraging is a one time factor (one g1 and thousands of g100 give the same result) it makes no sense enraging to killgem's kill power (displayed_crit*displayed_damage).
What I'm doing now is enraging with tons of g2 to make the armor grow during my mana gathering phase (I use over 500 g2 at the later waves) and killing them all with a throwaway killgem with bolt.
Then I start the exp gathering phase and just bomb them up to 999 monsters using as little bombs as possible to keep their HP low: I seem to recall throwing 9 g62 and 8 g68 per wave are two sweet spots, going for 7 bombs was too costly.
Do someone has a better tactic?
3) Goodbye sharding (and permafreezing)
Peter fixed the two bigger exploits we had to get to astronomical mana values
I found (some confirmation would be great) that if you bomb a shard and don't make it spawn you still get the 5% bonus mana, but it's waaay too low to make sharding a viable mana gathering method.
I don't think there is anything we can do about this, other than discover another exploit.
4) Farming high level talisman fragments
Luckily I had already did this time ago, but hatred has made a full traits speed run of Y6 much more difficult, to the point that U upgrading barely gets me to the end, but I cannot get the 3 endurance fragments.
I've always used a method similar to this, are there better ones?
5) Gem recipes
The only gem changed from 1.0.x to 1.1 were slowing and suppressing, both were improved, so the previous recipes for killgems and managems are still valid.
We (psorek and I) actually built better ones than the ones on the guide, but the lack of easy and understandable diagrams for them precludes their use to anyone who isn't willing/don't have time to parse unfriendly parenthetical/tree formulas.
Is there someone that could help with this?
Recipes can be found there: gemforce results
6) Uncapped skill balancing
Component skills, true colors and resonance were uncapped, great news, but finding a balance between them can be quite tricky.
I may do the math one of these days but at moment, does someone have a thumb rule that gives good results?
EDIT: as usual, thanks to AG forum for messing with all my formatting.
Yay for walls of text
12345ieee
EDIT: I forgot to mention the #gemcraft IRC channel, where a lot of top players reside stably (access from https://kiwiirc.com/client if you don't have a favourite irc program).
- 108 Replies
Don't worry about the patronizing, I deserve it a bit. I'm actually surprised it is that easy. Hope your willing to forgive me for that, because I never actually attended school. Basically all the math I have is self taught, and I'd never come across a problem like that. Was trying to figure out how to word it for google but nothing I was putting in turned up what I wanted to know.
I have do have another question not really covered in any of the wiki threads (triple checked) or gemforce readme. However I've bugged you guys enough and it won't really matter until I'm at least 4-5k wizard levels higher. So I'll leave you all be for now.
Once again thanks and sorry for being a lazy idiot. I'll make sure to pay it forward and help a good few people before bugging others with my own questions again.
@Lanore :
This is a good Google query: "multiplication of exponential notation"
the 1st result has some basic rules to get the hang with exponential notation.
I don't know if I am more impressed with the fact you self-taught math or that you read gemforce's README.
Rest assured that I've seen maaany lazier and stupider (is that even a word?) people than what you seem.
So for once I have something to actually suggest and talk about, rather than questions to ask. (or at least not stupid ones!)
Recently I reset my achievements to grind out for the extra 120sp. It is a pain, and I'm not sure how I'm gonna even get some of them again, but whatever I can only do endurance runs so often.
Anyways, a few of the achievements like laying low, or getting a tome chamber open by a certain wave, can be tedious either because I dislike making gems so often for each field achievement or because even my most basic gems wipe the floor in tome chamber levels. So I just started gem bombing. I already had 20 points in demolition because having extra demolitions can be handy, and 10 in ignition because why not. Interestingly this worked really well.
Then I decided to play an endurance run on P6. I was having a common problem I have during endurance runs: Managing the number of monsters on the field. If my killtrap is too close, I can't keep enough, too far and I get too many. Using freeze and WoE even sparingly gets me upwards of 15k monsters, where 6-7k is fairly optimal for me. In my boredom during the run I dropped some gem bombs of an orange g45 I had been using on sparks. Interestingly enough the gem wasps stunning the monsters occasionally managed to slow them down even more than slow gems alone were, without lagging me down too much. I usually kept around 7-11k monsters on the screen with relatively easygoing lag. While using gem bombs like this, I noticed a definite increase in my mana gain too. It turned out to be a decent way to hold them over my mana trap a bit longer without stopping them entirely from getting to my killgem.
This had me wondering, since gem wasps deal a percentage of their gem's specials, if they work with chain hit gems. The reason I ask is that every managem I've dropped as a bomb has paid for itself (not that any gem dropped for these purposes would matter manawise) and so if it worked with chain hit as well, it might be viable to build a red-orange chain hit gem because every second sting stuns, optimizing stuns per gem bomb and still paying for itself.
Maybe it's a terrible idea, but it worked for me this once and I plan on trying it again soon. I just don't know how the mechanics of gem wasps work and whether or not mixing red in would be worth it. I also don't know the validity of this tactic overall since the most xp I've gotten from a run was ~25bil. So I figured I'd toss it by a few of you who do massive xp runs to see what you all think.
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