I first suggest getting familiar with the game's mechanics. Scroll down on the game page and look at those keyboard shortcuts, they are very useful. Read carefully all the tutorial pages so you know everything.
Then, I highly suggest completing the game, or at least most of it, so you have a decent level of at least 80 to start with.
I myself managed it at only level 141, but that was because it took me from level 110 to 140 to even find poolbound tome lol.
Your First Endurance
The essential skills are:
Mana Leech Poolbound Fusion Traps
Lesser Essentials:
Crit True Colors Chain
In the order they are listed.
Reasons for not including other skills that may SEEM good(and are in regular play).
Mana Stream: The mana you get from killing monsters will be next to zero compared to the farm. Lower mana pool caps is unnecessary.
Amplifiers: Until your next couple of runs, you won't have enough points to spare to max Bloodbound, which after you start using it often, is where amps shine.
Resonance: Not enough skillpoints atm. Priority falls just below chain hit tbh...
you also shouldn't max chain ever unless you enjoy mega lag/are going for a really high grade gem for bragging rights: You want least lag/most mana for your endurances, lest you quit because of lag.
Fury: Very nice skill, need more points to max it though, because mana farming specs are most important.
All others: Don't bother.
Okay, so this is the skillset I would suggest at level 80, with 553(+ achievements) skillpoints, and a skill cap of 13.
This is what I suggest for level 80 wizards, if you are higher I suggest adding to pool, traps, leech first, in multiples of 3. Leave 1K mana at all times. If you are 90 and cap is 14, raise all others as much as you want instead, it's best to have multiples of 3 as the secondary bonus especially for component skills, is very nice.
Almost forgot- If you are missing any of the colors-
B5 has orange L6 has poolbound R1 has critical hit
Now, onto gameplay- I suggest an early map that has one entrance only(F1, F4, F5, F6, etc).. set glaring, maximum haste, 1 mana lock, 7 beacon storm, 7 swarmling, 7 giant.
Open up with a grade 4 red yellow white gem in tower(split approximately evenly, made of 2 grade 1 chain, 3 g1 crit, 3 g1 pool, if you can).
Make the tower gem grade 6, that's it, save up mana until wave 10.
Now, make a grade 5 with 5 chain, 6 mana, 5 poolbound grade 1s.
place it as close to the entrance as you can.
Build towers on any non-path 2x2 space near the trap to prevent discharging beacons from appearing there.
Upgrade tower gem to level 8 or so, then put it into trap a little ahead of the mana farm
start angering the waves to about 20x the max damage of farm. Upgrade killgem to go along with it, killgem should be 2-3 grades behind.
Just keep upgrading farm, make amplifiers if possible nearby them filled with pure orange 4-5 grades lower, keep enraging waves with the highest grade you can afford that drains maximum half your current mana. Try to use up more mana on giant waves- they're slower, which is a plus they'll give more mana from the farm, and they have higher initial xp, so bombing it gives more xp.
By wave 30 you should have no problem with mana, keep doing what you did and continue until you get bored, pretty much.
Then, end the endurance and/or try and get extra achievements if you want(more mana/skillpts), then collect all your xp.
You should be at about level 160-240 at least if you did it right. If you did, great job! If you didn't, try to follow the guide closer, and of course tweak it to suit your immediate needs.
Part Two- Your second jump, from the hundreds to thousands- will be typed up later. I want to get to level 3K at least from level 2818.
No edit eh? Anyway, I would have to assume HP, because amount would be crazy after a little while. So, Giants'B HP is generally already way more than 20x the max damage of the farm, so should we not anger Giants at all?
I found giants often got through easily with this method, leading to either a very quick death or pulling the kill gem out of the trap, leading to a slower death and nothing like the level 160 to 240 promised (and I was level 100 when I tried). Also, unlucky beacon placement can be a huge factor, and I had to try several times just to avoid getting heal, speed, or no-build beacons in places that made the suggestions here fail miserably.
The idea obviously is good, as I can see that most things die easily with the kill gem, even when it's only a level 8, but the directions definitely need some tweaking.
Also, what do you suggest for enhancing the trap gems? Presumably the farm should be with Barrage. Bolt or Barrage for the kill gem? Or first one, then later, the other?
i never expected myself to say this but... got a video example or mind spreading things out? i did F1 word for word (although the entrance is a little clunky) and the "kill gem" isn't that good in trap at against giants by wave 30 via battle trait maxed. i gave it bolt for obvious reasons. "no mana issues" sounded funny because i did have mana issues the moment endurance mode started (wave 35). i attempted to add a slowgem before/infront of the manafarm gem, wasn't "in time" so to say. freeze spells weren't helping thanks to swarmlings' reduction.
something of note, you stated killgem twice in same paragraph when referring to gem level differences. "start angering the waves to about 20x the max damage of farm. Upgrade killgem to go along with it, killgem should be 2-3 grades behind." which also states to anger to a certain point of hp... of which the giants had WELL above 20x hp of the raw damage (and multiplied too).
edit: wis lv 109, 15 of fusion, mana leech, trap, and poolbound, 12 in true colors, 9 in crit, 6 in chain. then had some other stuff but still a lot more starting mana than indicated/suggested: 2.2k starting mana.
the basic principal of the guide actually works, the exactness of when to do things, doesn't work however. at first bolt in a trap will be used untill you reach that "mana isn't an issue anymore", which you swap to barrage for both killgem and the "main" manafarm gem. any secondary gems use beam which leaves bolt for a tower gem in case shadows come, of which should die instantly. ALWAYS upgrade manafarm gem FIRST.
however i only reached wave 90 for my first attempt which was smooth sailing for the most part. i lost because i wanted to mess around and have a tower gem kill of beacons for bonus exp (which isn't worth it but i was being silly). my focus was split between 3 gems instead of 2, which is what made the entire thing fall apart.
the "20x hp of kill gem's damage" should instead be "armor equal to your slow trap gem's damage" which is directly infront of your manafarm trap gem.
edit: reached lv 258 from the above post's level in the sitting. also met a bunch of achievements i was too lazy to get lol... skill caps of 30 now possible but maxing isn't suggested yet.
the first was done at around lvl 100
making some F1-F6 levels you can do it at lower exp and then try at lvl 100-120
the second one was done at lvl 800-1000
the basic is to build 2 kind of gems:
mana farm :
(1 red lvl 1 combined with 1 white lvl 1 ) combined with
( lvl 1 orange combined with 1 white lvl 1)
as result you have a lvl 3 gem
combine it with a lvl 3 orange and get a lvl 4 basic gem
damage:
same as mana farm but put yellow gem at the place of orange.
both gems in trap ( at start you can use the dps one on tower )
and keep it for killing the flying shadows.
the amplificators next to mana farm are filled with a red+orange or pure orange
the dps ones with a yellow +red or pure yellow
after some levels i add a blue gem to slow monsters in both the gems
those in traps. with a combination. the lvl depends on the lvl of the gem in the trap.
example if i have a lvl 10 mana farm
i make a lvl 4 blue gem combine it with one lvl 4 orange
combine the lvl 5 obtained with a lvl 5 orange
combine the lvl 6 obtained with a lvl 6 orange..
until i am at lvl 10 then i combine this gem with the one in the mana trap.
the same for dps with yellow in place of orange.
p.s. keep the amp gems around 3-4 lvls under the trap gems.
unpdate gems in trap frosting monsters nearby ( pause the game ) and activate the gem back
with barrage skill.
for the dps i prefer the bolt ability that ignores armour.
as you get plenty of mana ,
build towers/amp on all map to avoid the spawinig of beacons.
if you have some spowned kill them with te gem on tower.
( usually i have a copy of the dps trap gem on place on a amplifier , to put on tower on need of killing flying monsters )
p.p.s sorry for my bad english.
Tried this on lvl 120 after finishing the game. I incorporated the 32-spec and x16 gem upgrading into it and i must say. Its ridiculus how fast those gems scale .... The further i went into the game it was getting easier instead of harder . I also used the tips from fractalman about enraging monsters to 1/2 of killgem base dmg. The only problem i have now is that killgem has 2 long range and it kills mobs before they go into manafarm. I have my doubts to combining the gems though. I did some testing and it didnt seem to have such extreme differences as the ones shown in your youtube video. http://youtu.be/1rPKxEvRCFk? -> this is how i do it. If you find time can you check if im not screwing smth up? Thx in advance and thx for great guide.
If the stage has Chain Hit and Bloodbound, yes, it is possible to manafarm.
Poolbound is useful for certain things but when you get to a higher gem grade, it becomes far weaker than Bloodbound. The exact point is not known to me, but in some testing I did using the 16 gem upgrade psorek came up with, at grade 28 the Poolbound managem was 12% more mana than the Bloodbound. At grade 34 the Bloodbound was 42% more mana per hit than the Poolbound. That was with both skills being equal, by the way.
Poolbound is good (if the stage has it) for when the gem is not going to reach grade 30 or higher. If it is going to reach 30 or higher, then taking Bloodbound instead of Poolbound will yield a better result in the long term.
Ok, so I used the basic setup here and not quite understanding what we're enraging to 20x of, I used "enrage to armor being half the min damage of your killgem" as suggested in fractalman's low-level guide.
I'd tried using the supergems as described in psorek's "extreme end-game" guide since the diagrams are so easy to read, but it failed outright. Repeatedly. I think they're not kidding, that you need maxed skills and whatnot.
Plus, I can't freeze-lock since for whatever reason I never get freeze on any of my talisman fragments. I currently have 8% freeze duration from a level 21 inner fragment, and 70% freeze charge total between two fragments, one of which is a 19 that I haven't been willing to ditch since its one of my three fragments with anything freeze on it!
Be that as it may, as I said I gave this particular setup a try (with the enrage armor to half min-kill-damage) and I ended up pulling off 1.7 Billion exp points on stage F2 with a 30x multiplier from Glaring, maxed traits except for no Mana lock, Adaptive carapace, or Orblets.
I doubled my level, from upper 300's to level 762.
F2 is double entrance, but it does meet at a fork, which is where I put the farm. I put the kill farm in the middle where the road is horizontal, and I had a kill tower set up next to the orb, where the amps could also help with banish cost.
I got up to mana pool level 40, which is by far a personal best, and a new baseline to improve upon. I think my highest level gem was level 45.
It was really pretty quick, the sudden switch flipping where one moment the kill farm would just *pop* anything that even came near, to suddenly not being able to kill *anything*.
Eventually, I started sending waves early as a ghetto freeze recharge booster, got things freeze locked, used my three spells as much as I could for the increasing number of targets hit exp bonuses, lagged the hell out of the computer.. finally had to say good night. Nothing in the map was even killable anymore, so I let the specters steal my gems and it didn't take much longer to end the round.
At this point I think I need to farm some of the higher level tiles for better fragments and try to get my freeze duration up.
At level 762, you can put freeze skill at 45 - already makes the cooldown almost(just needs ~3-4 more levels from talisman) lower than the maximum duration. So just get a few +strike spell skill talismans and some inner frags w/ the freeze duration, and you're set to go.
