Forums → Games → Gemcraft CS : can one finish the game without the magician pouch ?

@thunderrider

So did I. The early hextiles were easy.
I have no problems any more, it was because of M1 still being bugged and not giving me True Colors. Now that its fixed, I have the 40% to damage bonus across the board and have leveled up 10 times since my last post.

@Erile, you can easily beat the earlier levels, 21 waves from traits and 5 or 8 from glaring, resulting in 40 waves for the f hextile, for other hextiles you can reduce the traits a bit if you get overwhelmed in the last waves, but at that level every level done with glaring and 21 traits gives you 2-3 wizard levels,

the traits barely influence the gameplay at all,
if you leak in one level you can reduce the leak trait,
faster waves are not a factor at all until the 40+ waves if you don't anger, and beacon storm just gives free xp, because beacons are easily killable even with full trait until wave 35+ or so, in which case 1 unlucky shield/resocket beacon with an unlucky amount of hp can kill you, but you can simply reset and x9 speed again, remember we are not talking about endurance or anything because it's not included for free, and the first 3 hextiles are easily doable with those 3 traits after lvl 40 with enough achievements (there are plenty of easily doable achievements that can be done on x9 speed on f4 or other earlier tiles)

the most important part is the 6 tower 3 amp formation, where your 3 amplifier gems create 2 gems with triple amplification and the slow gems in traps doubling your damage, that gives you about 4 times as much damage than with simple towers, and better than any other formation, while still beeing affordable and placeable on most maps(you have to build 2-3 towers and 1 amp only at start, put gems in there (you need 1 gem as far upgraded as possible to 1 hit monsters) and kill the first waves till getting the other towers and amps)

obviously you put the skills to their respective skill cap or to the respective number divisble by 3

I recommened looking up where the tome chambers are and farming old levels with looming and all traits to max (unless you see that one of the traits gives you problems, then just ignore it, because you are looking for wizard levels and not topscores) until you can get to those tomes

every new spell tome gives you power that you can't compare with wizard levels (so get them if you see them and look up the tomes so you know in which direction to go next),

also wizard levels really only tell you the cap of your spells, achievements and starting mana are really an important factor as well

I'm not mistaking, I startet with glaring at lvl 40 or 45, after I saw that it was easier than looming with full traits (or rather the 4 different traits I had) (because the giants really become a problem, and every leak of them is basically gg with the leak and mana lock trait)

also bolt, beam and freeze spell are a must have, so get to them if you don't have them yet

also having talisman fragments with +reaver damage is useful, apparently I have 60% reaver damage with 1-19 rarity fragments, I could tell you how to farm them but I'm affraid it could be nerfed

ps: +initial 50 mana talisman fragments from upgrading the 15-19 grade 0 ones is a good for starters as well

i prefer finding talismans which improve giants damage, because swarmlings and reavers never were a real problem.

actual:
swarmlings +10% damage
reavers + 76% damage
giants + 71% damage

Update to my post of 27th May. Y6 completed without pouch.

Don't let the complainers put you off, if I can do this - you can do this :-)

As I already stated, the problems I was having have nothing to do with strategy, skill choices, missing skills, or any of that. There is no need to make more suggestions. I thought my issues were related to not being able to get the pouch, but it turns out they were due to a completely unrelated bug.

I was missing the True Colors skill because of a bug. I had zero levels in this skill and was trying to do R and P and Q fields. Once I finally tricked M1 into giving me the skill, I got my 40-50% damage bonus, and everything in the game got really easy after that (300-400,000xp on many levels without using any angering).

For those who care, I managed to "trick" M1 into finally giving me the skill by completing it on glaring. I opened the chamber over 50 times on looming and it never worked. I have a suspicion that this is related to an earlier bug in the game that prevented proper access to M1 - and when the developer fixed this bug, I was at the right point in the game for that to set up another bug of some kind.

Update to this thread.

I have also "finished" the game (the main storyline) without the pouch. In the end, when you have the skills (in particular True Colors and Resonance on the top row), its actually quite easy.

There are 3 skills other than red that I don't think you can get without the pouch. These include the skills for the white and black gems, which you apparently will not generally have access to without the pouch. There are also numerous hextiles and fields you will not have access to: C/L/W are locked for pouch only, and many fields require haunting difficulty completions which are not available without the pouch.

I went through and got all 3 difficulty levels completed on the left hand half (or so, maybe 55%) of the map, and I don't recall any stage opening on the highest difficulty. The middle level, yes, but someone was telling me that that middle difficulty level is available without the pouch.

That person also told me that you do not have access to the three bottom Battle Traits without the pouch.

In this thread there are numerous fields that are reported opened by completing other fields on Haunting difficulty:

http://armorgames.com/community/thread/12291687/gemcraft-cs-secrets-guide-spoilers

And it is true that you do not have the lower 3 battle traits without the pouch. The compass rewards are also not available because of locked fields.

Update to my post 30th May. Returned to game after a break. I have now pushed the game as far as my feeble computer can manage. I am L301 and have 15million XP on M1, 10million XP on P1. 334 skill points earned.

I am still addicted and will be returning if I buy a new computer.

Don't let anyone tell you you can't win as a free player.

To finish the game, if your goal is (1)To win Field.X5 and get Congratulation message, then answer is Yes.

I finished it twice without MP,
First time is about Level 1xx and second time i try to finish it with lowest level.I finish it when Level 61 with 175 archievements(it mean 175 skill points).

If you gold is (2) .To get all skills ,or (3) All archievements or(4). Complete All fields or,(5) Get more high level talisments or (6).Level up much faster and easier,

Then the answer will be: You have to join MP.

=> " @Ell1e : in R2 (attempted 3 times so far, last time right before writing this post).... I feel overpowered at wave 15 already... ... in a tower with 8x amps with lv4 pure yellows, I somehow survived (barely) until wave 58 to be annoyed by both a shadow and a specte"

Maybe 1.You can go to other field first,(or may get other skills first)I just play and pass R2 with my Level 64 wizard without seeing a shadow or a spector,
But i had meet 5~6 spectors in a same battle(and two come at same time and same way)
or 1~2 shadows in a battle before.
They sometimes come at high chance.

2.Do you have skills such as Resonance,Barrage,Curse,Wake of Eternity ?
I seem got these skills during 5X levels already, if you dont,maybe you can go to get them first.

You can check
http://gemcraft.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Skills_in_GemCraft_Chapter_2_%28Chasing_Shadows%29
and find which map to get that skill.

=> "during which the specter eventually stole my gem"

If you can not kill the specter , you can move your important gems to inventory, and leave some weak gems in ground,it will just pick up the best gem in ground and run away.

If the Magician's Pouch is not necessary to win the game, I assume that you don't need to get all of the Replicas? (Hextile W has one of them)

You can get to y6 (obviously includes up to x6). You can get the finish on glaring reward fields. You can get the first compass reward field. You can get to level 2000 at the least (1.0.19), I've done close to that. Farming level 80+ all skills talisman parts is possible, but will take much, much, much longer than premium (you get 3 60+ on y6 as opposed to 6 80+ for premium), haven't come close to doing that personally

i don't know if the game is just as hard as it ws back then but i got to R5 with only a few hurdles and i'm already at wizard level 120. or did the game become easier in the 4 years between our experiecens