GC:L level: 1,971 (XP: 315 million)
I completed my first wave 1337 at around summoner lvl 40, I recommend doing your first one WITHOUT "waves get stronger faster" just to lay foundation exp (you will easily level over 100 times) and make your next run much easier to get started.
Yellow/lime/orange is the best combination. You definitely want the triple-mod gems from the very beginning, they are substantially better than single or dual.
For the early waves, make your gems 50% lime, 25% orange 25% yellow. start off with 1 tower (sell your wild gem, try to get up to a grade 7 y/l/o gem before starting). Build amplifiers around your tower as mana becomes available, then later add one or two more towers IF NEEDED. Be sure to enhance mana pool regularly.
Absolutely, summoning is your best friend, try the first few waves a couple of times and find the magic number that you just barely manage to kill everything off.
At around grade 8, 9 or 10 (varies depending on your skill setup; maxing trap mastery will be very beneficial) you will find that because of the amplified critical chance, your trap gems will be doing roughly the same damage as your tower gems. Transition your gems into traps. Leave a slightly lower grade gem in a tower to mop up any leaks, but later this should become vestigial.
By grade 11-12, you may or may not want to upgrade your 50/25/25 l/y/o gem with a pure orange to enhance mana gain, but you will later have to alter or discard this design. This step is not necessary.
Once you get to the point that you can duplicate grade 12-14 gems whole (regularly) slow down on the mana pool and start working on getting a killer gem. Depending on your skill setup, somewhere around grade 20+ you should get to the point where your mana pool can go from 0 to max with every frame (the higher your base mana pool, the higher grade gem you will need, at present I need a grade 24 for this). Once you get to this point, upgrade your killer one more time with a pure yellow gem.
Next, you should be casting summon 10-30 times each wave with grade 12+ gems by now. Put summons down on every wave in the wave bar, tape your [M] key down and leave the game runnung at normal speed. Go for a jog around the block two or three times. Do some push ups, pull ups if you have a bar, and take a shower. By the time you come back you should be just about done with the waves that you summoned. Now, with your unreasonably large mana pool, you should be able to quickly and easily make a grade 30 gem. To date, I have not seen a grade 30 y/l/o gem in a trap fail to 1-shot anything. For the lower tier levels a 28 or 29 should be sufficient, but 30 is a safe bet. Get your grade 30 and now tape the [N] key down. Go to the local grocery store and buy a healthy meal to supplement your workout. Enjoy lunch, and return to see just how many levels you gained.
