Forums → Games → Gemcraft CS - Fastest Shadow Core Farming?

On my quickruns, the Gems grow up to 36-44, but I still use white for them, I typically don't set up a killing gem in the beginning, only 15w, 1r, 16o, enrage the first 6 waves with a few G3 gems, the gem remains in trap till the first flying one appears, in the end I just add a equal grade yellow to the gem... That brings enough shadowcores for two or three fully-traited haunting runs.

Any recommended maps? Earlier in this thread I read there are scripted apperations on T7 so that's the one I've been doing.

So are there any better maps for farming cores aside for T7? I get about 250-300 now with chasing shadows trait, under a minute to complete. Anyone having better results on any other map?

I've gotten seemingly random amounts, ranging from 200 to 500, on any given map, without Chasing Shadows set. Sometimes I'll set Chasing Shadows and get less than the previous map's run, where I did not have it set (and that's before the battle trait charges my SC account).

I just do whatever map I feel like doing, I don't aim at any particular map.

Astro- That contradicts what I've been experiencing. If I do maps that don't have "scripted" apparitions or anything (for example F1) I wont even break 100 a lot of the times (untraited, sometimes I get almost 200 with the extra waves when traited but not worth the cost) however I get 250-360 on T7 (with only chasing shadows) which has a handful of scripted, or guarantee apparitions that appear . I guess I was just wondering if anyone knew of any other maps that have more scripted apparitions or scripted spires/shadows, ones that will always have them appear without chasing shadows. I'll just try to pay attention to it myself if a google search/this thread don't help sooner xD

The fact is, F1 only has 3 waves. I'd rather click on that 4 or 5 times a minute. I get 20 Shadowcore a pop, so that's 100 a minute. That's enough for me, since I can do that mindlessly for 10 or 20 minutes while watching TV. If I played some T level then I'd actually have to pay attention and keep an eye out for Walkers, Shadows, or whatever. This is fastest and easiest.

Altwing, don't knock it until you try it. I get 250-360 cores in under a minute on a T map and all I do is make 4 basic gems, send all waves, upgrade those gems as I can. No traps, no power towers, no nothing but those four gems (usually only get to grade 11) and since they are always over powered as long as u upgrade they have time to kill the spires, shadows, ect ect, without you even having to redirect them. Keep in mind I am lvl 2000. Maybe you're just a lower level? But give it a try sometime because the T maps aint got !@#$ on me

as I said, F1 is faster at first. it's when you get to the point you can set up and 9x the higher levels that switching is worth while.

You can also do what I do and run around collecting level-specific acheivements.

My thoughts on SC farming.

First, you can get to level 2500+ without need to acquire rare Talisman fragments or cores for their upgrades. So, you should get to high levels first, and start farming later.

I've tried T7 as was advised here. It indeed has a lot of scripted apparitions, but they drop much less cores than normal. Tried some other T fields, but those with low number of waves drop less cores, that U fields.
Once I got to level 1500, I've started to farm U2-Haunting, because it has low number of waves and can be done on the mana you get from monsters. It gave me about 500-700 cores per run (with Chasing Shadows 7). Then I noticed, that Glaring gives about the same number of cores, so I switched to Glaring to clear the field faster. I'm checking out other U fields now and U3/U5 give pretty decent amount too (500+ cores for less than a minute).

For fast farming I use only damage-related skills, most of them around level 30, and unassigned SPs give me ~100k starting mana. I'm starting with 2 adjacent towers with identical W9Y9R6 gems, one of them is set to target nearest to orb, and another is set to target flying ones. Once gems are placed I press QQQ to max speed and surround towers with Y6-amplifiers. I finish with amps around wave 8, after that I Ctrl-click to send all waves on max speed and upgrade gems in turns when I have enough mana. This pair clears everything that moves in a flash, and you don't have to care about specters that appear on U fields quite often.

Astro,
Thank you for this: "Tower, 8 amps around it. Make my killing gem of G1's : 1 red, 8 yellow, 7 orange, and 16 white."
I had powered through 140+ fields on Looming to get all of the Skills, done some Endurance runs to get up to the mid-1500s and now it's time to go back and clean up. By focusing my Skills to support your regime I freed up 49k mana so I am able to Send All Waves on Glaring and Haunting on every field. Takes a couple of minutes and I've harvested a ton of SC.
Nice work!

I did run into the occasional stage that, for whatever reason, would not end favorably using that particular gem combination (as I said in the post you got that from, Orange/Yellow is a really bad gem combination).

Still, I'm glad that you found that useful.

I did run into the occasional stage that, for whatever reason, would not end favorably using that particular gem combination...

A minor update. Reinventing the wheel for my killgem didn't work. Fell back on psorek's 32-spec in a tower surrounded by eight 16-combine yellows to start. From there it was Send All Waves and U upgrade until finished. Not interested in racking up a super score, just cleaning up unplayed fields. I have harvested more than 60K SCs though.

Do anyone know mouse macro farming on F1 work or not? simply set it up and let is run for days or night.

Idea: basically it let the computer play the game again and again non-stop alone.

I know people who do macro farm on f1. I don't know how do they do it.