ForumsGame WalkthroughsGemCraft Labyrinth walkthrough

87 131990
Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

Partially based on Einfach's Gemcraft chapter 0 walkthrough.
Also thanks to Kongregate players: LordBucket (main quest strategy), pongi01 (orange\lime+orange tables, frostlion(grade scaling)
Updated 12 July 2014 - fixing broken formatting.

Basic tips can be found in strategic guide and in game on tutorial pages, even about target priority!.

1.First steps
2.Tricks.
3.Some targets
4.FAQ.

Part I. First steps
Storyline.
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/8605/mapmain.jpg

Our target of this part - blazing through storyline to get decent level and obtaining trait (for premium).

When you reach first pylon, make a stop.

Use these videos as a guide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmksNzFA7E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5FuGnOgibc
Main idea behind this trick - formula for summoning multiplier, which is equal to (summoned/(killed-summoned)+1)^0.53. Pylon levels let you do (killed-summoned)=1, thus provide insane multipliers. Since version 1.12 it is capped on 50, nonetheless it is still best gain of exp for time invested.
Cap will be reached with 1606 monsters summoned (you need 1607 killed), bear in mind that there are amulets which require 2k kills and 120 shrine kills.

Summoning. You summon by gem bombing the sidebar. It causes an increase in the number of monsters, monster health(7+3*grade), and the monster armor(125%). Beware! Summoning can easily kill you. Even though the monster health increases slowly, the armor level increases rapidly when summoning with grade 1s. The armor level shields creatures from damage equal to their armor level of hit points every hit (so if a tower fires a shot with a damage of 10 that hits a creature with an armor level of 2, the creature will only take 8 damage). A high armor level can make creatures almost invulnerable to damage. Summoning with grade 1s causes 4 (5 with violent explosion skills) more monsters to be summoned in the next wave.

Pulling this trick would level up you to level 90+.
Example:
Settings
http://img861.imageshack.us/img861/4879/d104.jpg
Skills used (took screenshot after win)
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/957/d105.jpg
Gems obtained during play. Green for poison traps and cyan/blue duals for pylon charging.
http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/697/d102.jpg
Leveled from 18 till 34 level. Failed at summoning exact amount.
http://img858.imageshack.us/img858/2499/d103.jpg

After getting decent result on D10 max wild gem, support skills, lime/yellow/orange masteries.

Part 2: Tricks.
Gem building strategy.
1.Grade1 lime+grade 1 yellow[orange for manatrap]
2.Duplicate it
3.(dual +pure yellow [orange])+(dual+pure lime)
4.repeat from step 2
http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/6527/32996638.jpg
When your gems would be around grade 10, make gem ((purple G1 + lime G1) + lime G2)...+lime G9.
Use this gem in step 3 instead of pure lime.
Resulting gem would have triple gem bonus without diluting Yellow and Lime by weaker colour*.
*Don't spend skillpoints in Purple

If you would follow this path, you will get notably stronger gems.(for example, x2 crit multiplication at 7 grade)

Premium only leveling
Simple strategy

Part 3. Tips.

If You don't have premium:
Better to start with highest base exp fields - they have decent number of waves, so you can get more amulets. Then it will be easier to get more exp with lowest exp fields(with higher level you can manage more summons).
Using random wave composition + restarts would give you early giant waves. Summon the hell out of them, then use high grade yellow gem in shrines. Result is individual, with high resonance grade 7 gem in shrine could kill 120k hp monsters.

If you have premium:
Endurance is easier to start with highest settings on lowest exp fields (less hp for starting monsters=more angers=easier to build defence).
Example of endurance

Part 4. FAQ:
1. Unlocking hidden levels.
A1 : L9 Challenge Amulet (Kill 7000 monsters)
A13: Kill 12 Apparitions Amulet
M1 : Kill 200,000 monsters Amulet
M13: K9 Challenge Amulet (Beat 100 waves) Yes, impossible without premium.
2. Changing target priority. Shift-click on gem
3. Breaking tomb. Set target priority to "structures"
4. I replayed field and didn't get exp!?!
You get as exp difference between you current attempt and you previous best attempt, obviously if you scored better.
5. How to kill *spoiler* at *spoiler*?
Grade 7 yellow gem in shrine.
6. Crystal ball near A13. Horizontal bars over the stages.
It shows your performance on fields.
For every 5x multiplier you get on field it shows 1 bar, with maximum being 4.
7. Multipliers.
Summoning (summoned/(killed-summoned)+1)^0.53
Endurance based on waves beaten and isn't related with amount of summoned monsters

  • 87 Replies
Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

And we get new version.
1.14. Now we submit level instead exp, so

8. Does anyone know what happens if you get more than 2,147,483,647 xp?
You can't submit score to leaderboard.
is gone.
At this moment scoring is backward, the less level=the better. Will be fixed soon.
logos16
offline
logos16
2 posts
Peasant

do you recommend combining yellow, orange, and lime into a single gem, or into lime/orange gems and lime/yellow gems?

Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

For manafarm better have lime-orange dual, without yellow it kills monsters slower, deal more hits and steal more mana.
About killer gem...
While it is in trap, L-Y-O will give good amount of mana, but for final gem it useless(because it is final, i don't need more mana).
I usually do my runs this way:
1. Y-L dual in tower
2. Summoning+upping grade+manapool till i get 220k mana(for 12 grade gem)
3. Then i do traps with L-O duals near each entrance
4. Upping grade of this gems till it start to kill monsters.
5. Then upping grade of manafarm+summoning+manapooling till i get 224 mln mana
6. Create fullsheet of gems(hide panels - hotkey I, then with D over gem wait some time, combine - will be 27 or 28grade gem(ctrl+click).
7. Repeat until keypressed;
8. now i have tower surrounded by 8 amplifiers with 29 grade yellow in each
9. create a little more gems till i get 32 grade yellow-lime dual. (5-10 target enough), set it to random priority
So, now it's finish of endurance - it will destroy all monsters. I don't need more mana and destroy manafarm gems.

logos16
offline
logos16
2 posts
Peasant

are you level 500 already? what skills do you focus on now?

Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

Level cap was removed month ago(500 level i got without premium ).
I have level 1842 now. (was 5600, but deleted it because mana avalanche bug)
I don't use Banisher, Cyan-Blue-Green-Purple-Red masteries, Demolition - occasional.
Resonance - 400% damage boost (263 level)
Focus - 700% (92 level)
Replenish - leftovers(389%, 411 level).

Su4eK
offline
Su4eK
1 posts
Nomad

thanks! very usefull FAQ

Kreistor
offline
Kreistor
34 posts
Farmer

Gremlion said

For manafarm better have lime-orange dual, without yellow it kills monsters slower, deal more hits and steal more mana.
About killer gem...
While it is in trap, L-Y-O will give good amount of mana, but for final gem it useless(because it is final, i don't need more mana).
I usually do my runs this way:
1. Y-L dual in tower
2. Summoning+upping grade+manapool till i get 220k mana(for 12 grade gem)
3. Then i do traps with L-O duals near each entrance
4. Upping grade of this gems till it start to kill monsters.
5. Then upping grade of manafarm+summoning+manapooling till i get 224 mln mana
6. Create fullsheet of gems(hide panels - hotkey I, then with D over gem wait some time, combine - will be 27 or 28grade gem(ctrl+click).
7. Repeat until keypressed;
8. now i have tower surrounded by 8 amplifiers with 29 grade yellow in each
9. create a little more gems till i get 32 grade yellow-lime dual. (5-10 target enough), set it to random priority
So, now it's finish of endurance - it will destroy all monsters. I don't need more mana and destroy manafarm gems.


First, for reference, I am currently over Level 2100.

I find it easier to start with a triple (Multiple Damage)+(Chain Hit)+(Shock) to start, instead of the double MD+CH. The Shock component allows you to increase the number of summons/increase hit points by making CH more effective. S compresses the front of a wave so that the gem hits more monsters per shot, and actually slows the wave's advance towards the base, which the double gem doesn't do. (Slow has the same effect, but I feel the Shock gem does it better by stopping the monsters completely.) I use a 3/4 MD, 3/16 CH, 1/16 S. Later (after your CH gets to at least 8) you can bump up the MD component if you want, but it's fiddly and I just don't bother.

The start is vital.

a. Bomb the Wild Gem to generate major mana.
b. Find someplace you can place your tower gem (ideally with 8 free spots for amplifiers) where it can hit all monsters near one entrance. You should have enough mana to create some significant walls. Create the largest single +triple gem you can.
c. Use level 2 gems to summon on Wave 1. (As many as you can handle, which may take a couple restarts until you have an idea of what that is.) How many you can summon will also depend on which map you start. Deep mazes have much higher starting HP, and so you'll summon fewer. I can handle 20K HP monsters at L2000, with a gem that only does 300-900 x2, so don't limit yourself to max damage when deciding what you can kill. Practice. You will find that it will take 5-8 waves to get your gem up high enough to push back the early summoned waves on deep mazes.

d. Favour bumping up your tower gems over your mana pool, once you get a 2.00x multiplier. Summoning more monsters will amplify your mana gained per wave better than the multiplier. You'll be targeting summoning 1000 monsters in a wave, eventually.Once you get a L10 Gem out, you'll increase your tower gems sizes quickly, and the monsters summons just as fast.

Failure to build your tower up fast enough will mean a loss. Summoning too high HP monsters will hit your base. The 'U' button is your friend!

I suggest keeping the tower up until you have upgraded the manafarm gems to at least Level 15 before shutting the tower down, and then you want to increase those manafarm gems ASAP, instead of bumping up the mana pool. Early on, you may accidentally summon monsters with too many HP, so you may have to put the tower gem back to drive them back behind the traps, so do not destroy the tower gems... just put the shooter in an amplifier to the side so you can put it back in an emergency. I actually do this on purpose, too. One trick I used was to continue to summon the massive waves for the tower to kill, but I just pulled out the shooting gem, letting them march over the traps to generate mana, then pop the tower back in place to drive them back behind the traps. Repeat until the traps can handle significantly large waves. (It doesn't take long.)

The manatraps will not kill monsters of anywhere near the hit points your tower will, so you have to kill off an entire wave before switching to the lower HP waves the manafarm will eliminate. A single L15 CH+MG with 6 L12 MG amplifiers should kill monsters with 1.1 million HP, depending on your level and build.

(In point 5, Gremlion is trying to say that you should build up a manapool of over 224 million before building the higher level tower gems to finish the game with. You don't *need* to go that high, but combining together L21 mana gems to create a Level 32 gem is extremely fiddly and time consuming compared to L23. I have frame rate issues, so I push even further to L25 gems to create my final tower. You could push on to L27 gems if you wanted, but I doubt going beyond that to L28 saves time.)

You only need a Level 31 + 8 Level 28's to get through to the end, not L32+L29's. (Which might be due to my Shock component.) You will have about 30 stacked at each entrance, off-screen, but that won't hit your frame rate, and since my gem has an excessive 1800+ targets, that number is nothing. If you only have 5+ targets, focusing on MD entirely, you can't handle this many stacked up with a L31 that can't single-shot kill them. I will try a L30+L27's next, since it's possible that might be good enough. (Yes, I'll generate a second batch into amplifiers which I can immediately combine to get back to L31/L38, in case they prove inadequate.)

There is no need to destroy the manafarm gems. You can leave them there, just in case. They aren't hurting anything.
Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

Grade 32 was due


Fixes & changes in v.1.14:
-when played with 3x speed, very high grade gems were firing 3x slower than with 1x game speed
. I prefer click through game on x3.
Suggested by ifju :
Recommended endurance-runnings in order.
1-a. Pylon levels. Nice boost without big problems. (up to 400-500 level)
1-b. Giants only+Quadr+Banishment traits. Before first pylon. On G13,for example, they will have only 60 hp. LOL. Wild gem will rip apart them.
2. All settings but monster getting tougher faster - before second pylon. Also easy.
3-a. All settings but monster getting tougher faster and tenfold HP boost(double-triple manageable)
3-b. Full 75,76x settings on an easier stage (before 1st-2nd pylon). (will give same exp as 3-a. You need more time)
4. Full 75,76x settings on any stage. (E8 hardest due to base field exp, doable with 1800 level. Seems possible with 1600-1700).
Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

Focus <> Resonance <> Replenish
Focus:
Increase mana and max mana by XXX%.
This skill "have breakpoints":
1. start with grade 4 gem
2. start with grade 4 Red gem on any field
3. store mana from wild gem after 2-3 extends
4. same as previous + creating grade 6 lime-yellow dual on any field
5. Gather all mana from wild without extends (600 mana saved for summoning. 10 times by grade 1)
6. 7 grade lime-yellow dual on any field
7. 8 grade lime-yellow dual on any field (I am near this, need 2k more mana)
...
If you exceed breakpoint, you can slowly decrease Focus (Due to growing Ritual) until you can jump to next.
Resonance:
Increase damage by XXX%.
Seems perfect skill to stuck with, but...
100% add - double our damage output (2X)
200% add - triple our damage output (3X). Stop. Triple? Overall damage increased only by 150% (Need compare with previous breakpoint, not with "naked" gem)
300% add - (4X) 133% increase
400% add - (5X) 125% increase.
I stopped at 400%, but for hardest fields (after 4 pylon) i suggest 500%, will be easier.
More - worse. Why? Insane skillpoint cost.
Increase grade by 1 increase average damage by ~55%, and attack speed by 18% - better than increase Resonance from 100 to 200. For these skillpoints you can increase Focus and make 1 grade higher gem or add amplifier at start.
Will 10% of added damage let you make 1 more anger by grade 1(10% hp boost)? No.
Example: we already did 10 angers by grade 1, in case we did 11: (110%)^11-(110%)^10 hp =285%-259%=26% more hp.
It's 26% more HP, which can be a lot higher, than gem damage. (For example, at E8 with Tenfold Giants, monsters start from 20k hp. Grade 7 gem for me have around 1k damage - with 400% Resonance. With 410% still around 1k damage... I don't feel difference)
Replenish:
Increase Mana gain per kill and Mana regeneration by XXX%
For opening field on easiest settings it's useless, i even finish game without any points in it.
But for endurance it's crucial.
Also have same scaling as Resonance but way less skillpoint cost.
Example of work:
Basically monster will give 60 mana per kill, 4 monsters in wave(240 mana in wave total).
We summon 1 times by grade 1, get +5 monsters, each will give 60 mana. (540 mana in wave total -225% mana increase). But we spend 57 mana on summoning, overall we get 483 or ~200%.
With 100% Replenish
480 mana -base
1080 mana - after 1 anger. Spend 57, overall - 1023 or 213%.
But Replenish increase not only % effectiveness of summoning but also absolute numbers of mana.
With 500% Replenish this wave will give us grade 6 gem for 1 anger by grade 1.
More absolute effect - faster we can build final defense and less summons need(and thus less lags). (You even can get it to point, when you can cast summon on swarm waves with "1 mana per kill" and get profit)
Conclusion
1. Have Focus near comfortable breakpoint
2. Have Resonance around 200-500%
3. Replenish - leftovers

ifju
offline
ifju
91 posts
Shepherd

A nice tutorial about building a Mana farm.

(video shows Lime/Orange/Cyan)

Kreistor
offline
Kreistor
34 posts
Farmer

Wizard Level 2300

Tower 30/27 does work (at 3x speed) on a 2796 base maze, so I'll try 29/26 next. I did not have a larger stack up at the two entrances than with 31/38, so I have high hopes. Might even be able to drop back to 28/25, but one step at a time, eh?

Focus/Replenish/Resonance

All three of these skills increase your mana gain.

Focus
Having more focus than necessary for a particular gem permits summoning more monsters. When you have a 4xGiant wave, summoning with one grade 3 gem adds 15 monsters, tripling the mana you gain from the wave. Further, excess mana can be assigned to the Mana Multiplier, allowing you to start the first wave with double mana/monster.

The cost of increasing your mana gain with Replenish can cost enormous amounts of skill points, but increasing it by 5% with 194 mana from excess focus has a trivial skill point cost. If you're sitting at Replenish at 400% (replenish multiplier of 5.00), you need to increase Replenish to 425% (0.25 = 5% of 5.0) in order to add 5% mana. But 5x1.05 = 5.25, so you only need 1 level of Mana Pool increase to provide the same effect.

Replenish

No comments. Straight forward and obvious.

Resonance

Resonance has the least obvious effect on mana gain, especially on early waves. It is, however, on a similar scale to Replenish. It is, essentially, no different to increase damage by 5% (allowing you to kill slightly tougher monsters) vs. 5% extra mana from the kill. When you're summoning 1000 monsters using 20 gems, each gem represents 5%. In the Replenish case, you will get 5% more mana without summoning more monsters, while in the Resonance case, you'll summon 1050 monsters instead, and gain 5% more monsters. (This assumes you're capped on firing rate, not damage. If you're capped on damage, then the next summon will increase the monster power by more than 5%. Still, the point is that more damage = more summons, but in this case, the effect is most noticable in later waves, not the initial waves where you are doubling HP wiht a few summons.)

Conclusion

Don't ignore any of the skills. They all work together and amplify each other, making the final result exponential. If you have the choice of increasing Resonance and Replenish by 20% total, if you assign all of the additional skill points to one or the other, you increase the end result by 20%. If, instead, you increase each by 10%, the end result is 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.21 = +21%. 21% > 20%. Whenever you're in a multiplicative situation, never concentrate on a single skill.

Kreistor
offline
Kreistor
34 posts
Farmer

29/26 is good enough. Map was H6 repeated on G8 to confirm. Wiz L2600. 30/27 was done on G5.

When fast forwarding through the 9,999,999,999,999 waves, sometimes I'd see 12's and 16's chain together to push my numbers up to 120 popped but off-screen. At those points, I saw frame rate issues, which more powerful computers wouldn't notice. So I'm certain someone could do 28/25, but I'm sticking with 29/26 since the frame rate problem can only get worse.

FYI, Focus 215 (1638%), Replenish 527 (498%), Resonance 258 (393%).

Gremlion
offline
Gremlion
518 posts
Blacksmith

You wrong about Resonance grow.
5% of added resonance increase your overall damage not by 5%.
For your 393%, increasing it to 398% mean that your damage will be increased by 1.27%. (398-393)/393
Also it can't be scaled with "you can add 5% more monsters", because their HP scaled not by gem damage.(5% more monsters with 1000 already summoned means hp boost by 28%(grade 7 gem - 7+3*7) for EACH monster plus 50 more monsters = overall wave hp will be increased by 34%. (compare with increasing damage by 1.27%.)
Resonance increment must exceed grow of grade(155% damage*118% attack speed~183%)
1. 83% (183% damage for gem)
2. 152% (0.83*1.83)
3. 278% (0.83*1.83^2) â" stop here.
4. 508%
It means that if you want to get same result, you can heavily invest into resonance (from 278 till 508=230 levels with insane cost) or simple increase gem grade by 1.
Example: after changing my resonance i can create grade 8 gem instead 7 grade, my new grade 8 gem have same raw damage as old grade 7, but 7 grade hardly gives x2 crit, grade 8 have nice 50% x3 â" multiplier higher, and overall i finish my final gem 10 waves early â" at 50 instead 60-65).

Kreistor
offline
Kreistor
34 posts
Farmer

Early today: L2800, Focus 215 (1638%), Replenish 527 (498%), Resonance 258 (393%).

Later Today: L 3315, Focus 250 (1903%), Replenish 527 (559%), Resonance 295 (450%).

After three games, I've increased Focus by 21%, Replenish by 10%, and Resonance by 12%. So, yeah, not only did I increase it by 5%, I increased Resonance by MORE than 5%, as well as increasing the others by as much. 114000000 per game goes a long way towards driving up those stats.

But, frankly, why are you assuming that I was not talking about 5% overall? I think it's clear that I am talking about increasing overall damage by 5%, not increasing the numerical Resonance value by 5%.

While a single overall 5% increase may not seem like much, it is cumulative. It's 5% yesterday, 4% today, and 3% tomorrow (due to increasing skill point costs and increasing level cost), but 1.05 x 1.04 x 1.03 = 12.5% extra damage after three days. Well, actually, in the above real example it's 12% today, 11% tomorrow, and 10% the next day, for 36% extra damage. It all adds up, game after game. Many small increases become one big increase.

Your point on bumping a gem grade is correct. If you can dump some damage to up your initial gem grade, sure, that's a good trade-off to make. But note that each gem grade costs 2x as much as the previous, and the vast majority of you starting mana will come from bombing your Wild Gem (which has a hard cap on mana). Since you start with a Grade 5 or 6 gem, Focus 250 provides 6926 starting mana for me, while teh Wild Gem provides 8230 for 15156. Grade 9 costs over 27000, so I would need to triple my Focus %age in order to bump to Grade 9. And Grade 10? 7x as much Focus %age as I currently have. Cutting your damage by 1/2 to get the next Gem grade is fine, but cutting it to nothing to get two gem grades will leave your gem woefully ineffective, because the Law of Diminishing returns is in effect. The more you sacrifice from Resonance, the less you gain on Focus as Resonance gives you fewer skill points and Focus costs more.

I heavily favour Resonance, because in early waves, you gain far more mana from summoned monsters than from mana multiplier increases. There are breakpoints on that, just as there are breakpoints on starting Gems. If adding 5% more damage allows you to summon a third Grade 2 gem (on a 4 giant wave), you're increasing the mana gained from that wave by 39% (9/23, assuming mana per monster is significantly larger than the 300 mana cost, and it always is now), where spending that 300 mana on a mana multiplier will only get you ~5% more mana. At some point, adding another gem does not increase mana gain by 5%, so it is at that point that you should buy the mana multiplier instead.

In truth, you often have more mana than you can spend on summons (because the monster would get too tough to beat), so you throw excess mana at the mana multiplier. You've also got the cost of upgrading the tower gems to consider. Spending 6700 to upgrade a 7 to an 8 will more than double damage output and each shooting gem upgrade generally allows for 3 more gems to bomb the wave, which will often double mana gain in very early waves, while that much may get you 13 mana multipliers. That is only a 65% increase in mana gain per monster and so 65% increase in mana gain per wave, where 3 bombs on a wave that already has 3 bombs is usually a 90% increase in mana gain from that wave. Upgrading the gem also increases firing speed, which allows for more monster numbers to be summoned, when the damage is already more than enough.

Kreistor
offline
Kreistor
34 posts
Farmer

So, I mucked around a little bit. Once I got to the stage where one frame would fill the mana bar, I added Multiple Damage into the mana farm gems. (I always have a Chain Hit in my trap amplifiers to increase damage, since amplifiers have a smaller effect on specials than damage and firing rate.)

It worked fine. My mana extend didn't slow at all, even though at that point, damage per hit was now 100x what it had been before the combine. More importantly, I could summon much more massive and numerous monsters. The interesting thing to note was that lack of decay in mana extend rate. There may be a cap of some kind here.

The importance of this comes in the next stage. Having completed all maps with all settings, you now want to repeat the process while summoning monsters on all 1337 waves. I have been finding that Chain Hit (at least, I think it's Chain Hit in the trap at fault) at very high levels slows the frame rate incredibly. Once you hit the point that you don't need more Chain Hit, you can add in Multiple Damage and ideally keep the frame rate up. I'll experiment with optimizing that later.

I built up my gems as normal, then built my tower, and started fast forwarding through the waves. When i got to the 9,999,999,999,999 waves, I realized that I could just try the trap gems, and see how much damage they were doing. Lo and behold, my traps killed the 10 trillion damage monsters.

Here's the stats:
Trap: Grade 29 -- 5x MG, 2x MD, 1z CH
2x Amplifiers: Grade 27 -- 6xMG, 1x MD, 1x CH
Damage = 3000000-13000000
MD = 1688x damage
CH = 1048 targets

No firing rate, because that's a constant and I forgot to record it. 8P

Showing 1-15 of 87