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psorek
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psorek
447 posts
Jester

This guide is outdated for game version 1.1 - new guide can be found here

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Introduction
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First of all, this guide is beneficial only for 1000+ level players with all skill unlocked who also know how mana farms work and fully followable for 2000+ with at least +10 to all skills talisman. If you are lower level, better check out fractalman's and thunderrider's guides. They explain respectively low-level (0-100) and mid-game (levels 100-2000, basics of mana farming and endurance).
Another important thing is Magician's Pouch - if you don't have it you also won't be able to follow this guide as it heavily uses premium-only content.
If you are able to set up some macro for clicking mouse, it will help a lot. You will have to anger waves for example 500 times, so click-ten-times button is highly recommended.

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Skills
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Must be is 45 points (+ your talisman) in following skills:
True Colors, Fusion, Mana Leech, Bloodbound, Freeze, Amplifiers, Fury, and Traps

Very important and heavily needed but not essential are:
Masonry, Critical Hit, Chain Hit and Barrage

Least important (but also recommended) skills:
Mana Stream, Resonance and Poolbound

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Map to choose and difficulty settings
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Easiest places to set up a mana farm are maps with a single entrance. I prefer fields M7, Q4, U1 and X4 (not single entrance but nice too). Q4 is nice for beginners because no beacons will spawn there, and the gem resocketing ones are really annoying. I will use this map for my example in the rest of this guide.
I prefer all traits except manalock maxed and haunting. It really doesn't matter for a play and gives huge 70x XP multiplier.

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Gem combining methods
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As you probably know (or not), pressing "U" isn't the best option for gem upgrading, and not every colors proportion in gem is equally good. To squeeze every drop of power out of gems I recommend using following gem combining methods - they are carefully designed to maximize power of this particular gem combination and probably won't be so efficient for others, so for best results use them in way I recommend.

I'll introduce two kinds of methods: 32-spec and 16-combine. First one (32-spec) is one-use only, it combines 32 g1 gems of three colors to get g5-equivalent with the most specials. Second (16-combine) is repeatable, it combines 16 equal grade gems to +4g-equivalent. It's used to upgrade gems and allows faster special growth.

32-spec for mana gems
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64607958/Gemcraft%20guide%20images/32-spec_mana.jpg

32-spec for killing gems
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64607958/Gemcraft%20guide%20images/32-spec_killing.jpg

16-combine
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64607958/Gemcraft%20guide%20images/16-combine.jpg

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Basic setup
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Get around 1,000,000 mana however you wish (white mana farm or something). You will now need 6 amplifiers surrounding 3 traps and one trap directly after and one directly before - just like on this picture:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64607958/Gemcraft%20guide%20images/buildings_layout.png
You can also perform a corner setup.

First make 32-spec for mana gems to get basic g5 gem. Then set it to random targetting. Copy it and save a copy somewhere in order not to need to craft it again in case of mistake. Upgrade it twice with 16-combine.

Create 2 white, 1 red, 1 blue slowing gem, upgrade it by pressing "U" to 1/8 of mana gem value. Duplicate. Place in traps before mana gem. Set targeting to Random.

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Early gameplay
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Anger 2-4 waves of reavers by g1 gems (no swarms and no giants) to e24 armor and send them all. Using permafreeze (freeze spell with recharge time shorter than minimum freeze time), freeze them all as precisely over the managem as you can. When your mana is high enough and you have got barrage spell reloaded then pause, use 16-combine on managem (sometimes your mana grows so fast that you can do it two or three times), put in back into a trap and reload it by barrage. Upgrade your slowing gems to keep them 1/8 of managem price, (but not higher than g40) and reload if have got some spells (other than bolt!) to spare. If not, upgrade first of slowing gems, wait it to reload and upgrade second then.

When your mana gem is about grade 29, craft amplifier gems. You do it by simply getting g1 orange and applying 16-combine for amplifier gems to it. Go until it's grade 28. Always keep your amplifier gem 1g lower than mana gem!

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Late gameplay
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When all monsters are frozen, remove slowing gems. Keep monsters in this state by constantly freezing them. Then upgrade your mana and amplifiers using methods explained to g59 and g58 amps. It's enough for very good xp gain, ideally you do it by wave 65.

If you wait very long for 16x mana to upgrade mana gem, I advice to duplicate it and hide somewhere a copy and then perform the formula step by step - wait for enough mana to perform next step of 16-combine, duplicate your hidden copy enough times and combine into mana gem according to current step of formula. After that don't forget upgrading amplifiers.

In order to farm hits slightly faster, create some duplicates of managem, put them into towers and combine in during next iteration of 16-combine.

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Killing gem building
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You are now ready to build killing gem. Similar to the managem, build g56 one (using 32-spec for killing gem and 16-combine). Also build 8 g58 yellow amps, using 16-combine for amps. Don't farm hits yet. Combine 1 red and 7 black. Upgrade by pressing "U" to grade 50. Place in tower and farm some hits on this gem.

Build "fortress" - 8 amplifiers around the tower. Put yellow amp gems in. Perform 16-combine, but combine your g50 gem with hits into one of 16 copies of basic gem before combining it with anything. Now your killing gem is ready to kill the mass-enraged monsters, but still don't place it on tower.

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XP gaining
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You should be now around wave 90 if you did everything right. Fill at least 1/10 of your mana pool. Finally, you can put your killing gem into its tower

Create a gem with value about million times lower than your mana pool. Take your killing gem's damage (round it down to two digits) and multiply by critical hit multiplier, rounded down the same way. It's HP of monsters you want to reach. Anger by gem you've created untill you reach it. Try not exceed it more than 10 times or you probably won't be able to kill the monsters.

Anger in this way every wave and send angered early. Remaining 40-50 waves should boost your XP by roughly 300,000,000,000 points before endurance. You can then proceed in endurance with exactly the same bombing technique, further boosting XP. Go into endurance as deep as you can and then finish it - I recommend around wave 500

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Final conclusions and other stuff like that
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- You don't have to follow this guide exactly, it's just an example.
- I can play it through in about 3 hours, but it surely can be done faster.
- Feel free to leave comments, as I can use them to improve this guide.
- If you want to know some even more complex gem combining techniques (in order to perform g100 run for example) also ask, I can post them for you.
- All gem combining techniques I use are computed by my PC, I will probably share software I used for it somewhere.
- The guide is published over CC-BY-ND license. If you want to copy it, please also post link to original one (there will be the newest version).

Good luck in hardcore GC:CS gaming!

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Informations for true addicts
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http://i58.tinypic.com/vo23ao.jpg
64-combine, use it instead of 16-combine if you wish to beat g100 or something. Doable, but lots of patience. About 2x better at g78-e than 16-combine.

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Credits
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Main author and math dude - psorek

Man who wrote everything I've forgotten and inspirator of every manafarm-crazed person, including me [psorek] - thunderrider (Armor Games) aka Takiza (On IRC and Kongregate)

Our fantastic graphics author - cronos51

The people who helped us in creating this guide and developing showed methods - Astroshak, borthelcash, dsizov and many others.

  • 88 Replies
Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

When you create a manafarm or killing trap gem, you use the 32 spec recipe. That is the only time you use those two recipes. That creates a Grade 5 gem that has the cost of a Grade 6 gem.

When you create the pure orange gems you stick into the manafarm amplifiers, you start with 16 Grade 1 orange gems, and do the 16 gem upgrade on them. That gives you a Grade 4 gem (that has a cost of a Grade 5 gem). Same thing with the amps for the killing area - start with 16 Grade 1 yellows and combine them all into a Grade 4 yellow.

Thereafter, you use the 16 gem upgrade on them all. That raises the trap gems from 5 to 8 to 11 to 14 to 17 to 20, and the amp gems from 4 to 7 to 10 to 13 to 16 to 19, and so on.

The statement about keeping the amplifier gems one level below the trap gems is saying to keep them at the same number of upgrades. Don't go raising the manafarm trap to 20 while the amps are still at 11 (for example). After you do the upgrade on the trap gem, do it on the amp gems before going back to do it again on the trap.

godderidge
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godderidge
3 posts
Peasant

Hi Gemcrafters
Still interesting to have a proper explanation regarding bombing wave (enraging if you want).
My understand is the following :
I bomb wave 1-4 with grade 1 up to 250/300 monsters
I bomb wave 5-10 with grade 2 up to 999 monsters
Then I bomb wavves 10+ with grade12 up to 999 monsters plus a criterium regarding my killing gem : min dommage x dommage multiplicator /2 for monster HP. Could be a very long bombing... more than 100 times to reach the result value.
Is my method optimize ? do you have any suggestion or link where I will find the relevant knowledge ?
Many thanks for your kind answer.

UgAhgItHurts
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UgAhgItHurts
258 posts
Peasant

How much to anger has a lot of variables, so can't give a solid anger x wave y times with grade z gem. At least it's end game so you don't care about throwing 10^18 mana at each wave

With maximum mana-lock, I throw 12-15 grade 3 gems at waves 1-6 for about 350 monsters per wave. When mana comes in, I upgrade then go to grade 7 to 9 for bombing the next six waves. After that, maybe grade 14 and finally getting 999 monsters every wave. Then after that...

Since this is level 2000+, you can probably anger more than that early, but there's diminishing returns and lower grade gems increase armor more quickly than hp (although it takes a while until armor is actually a factor). I don't usually macro, so don't take angering to the extreme as it's so tedious.

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

By this point, you should have your killing gem already at 80% chance to critical hit. You should also be putting slow gems (I like 1 Red + 1 Blue + 2 White, as with White maxed out it starts off at the cap of 90% slow) in traps right before and after your manafarm and killing traps.

With that in mind, godderidge, simplify your target HP calculation somewhat : max damage * critical multiplier. I call that amount the Kill Power of the killgem.

Next, you have to look at the map itself. Here is a very serious question : are monsters going to reach your killgem before your Bolt spell charges completely?

If yes, then your bombing for the first wave, possibly through three waves, is a bunch of Grade 1 gems, until the monster Armor + Hit Points is at or just under your HP target. Once you get to Bolt your killing trap gem, proceed on as though your answer was "no" instead of "yes".

If no, or if you've already got Bolt on the killgem, then a second calculation is called for : Kill Power / (1 - Slow%). If the Slow is only at 69%, then it would be Kill Power / (1 - 0.69). If the Slow is 90%, the max, then it is Kill Power / (1 - 0.9), or Kill Power / 0.1, or Kill Power * 10. Bomb until monster Hit Points are roughly around that new figure.

As for the bombs to use, I start off with grade 1 bombs through the first few waves (I use Manalock, if you are not, then you will have the mana to use higher Grade bombs sooner). Later waves, after upgrading gems and/or amps, I look at my remaining mana, and bomb with as high grade gems as I can comfortably afford - if I've got 6,234,651 mana left, I can comfortably afford gem bombs that cost about 1000 mana or so. If I'm up to 435,435,321,771,235 mana, then I can afford gem bombs that cost around 1,000,000,000 mana or so - never more than 1,000 of my mana pool, never less than 1,000,000 of my mana pool, basically. Because of the cost of the gems, I generally prefer to bomb with gems Grade 5, 15, 25, 35, 45, 55, or 65.

For bombing waves, I never look at the number of monsters in the wave. Except possibly for the first few waves, I am going to be dealing with the max 999 monsters per wave.

MUCH later on in a stage, I stop looking at my total mana pool, and instead look at the amount of mana I'm gaining per mana lock. When it takes several mana locks to gain enough to upgrade just one gem, it is counterproductive to throw more mana at a wave than you gain per cycle. If you are not using manalock, the principle would be the same, but I don't know what you would be looking at to see what grade bombs you should be tossing about.

godderidge
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godderidge
3 posts
Peasant

Dear Astroshak,
many thanks for your complete answer. Much clear for me now, I will try your recommandation soon

nixk94
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nixk94
2 posts
Nomad

Hello,
I noticed on a lot of screenshots that you guys get +bloodbound modifier from amplifiers. I heard that is possible with really high grade gems in the 6 amps but i never get that. Even 6 g51 pure black gems were not enough.
I´m playing without the premium content, so I don´t get the bloodbound skill. May that be the reason? If not, wich grade would the black gems in my amplifiers need to be?

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

Bloodbound does NOT get boosted by amplifiers. Nor does Poolbound.

What happens though, is that the -bound multipliers take effect after the amplifiers have added their stuff to the gem in the tower/trap. So, if a gem has a -bound multiplier of 50, and gets put into a tower with an amplifier that increases one of the gem's specials by 23 points, the actual gain to that gem is going to be 50 times 23, or 115 points.

Because -bound gems do not work in amplifiers (the -bound effect does not get boosted) it is best to put single color gems into the amplifiers. If it is a killing gem, then use pure yellow gems in the amplifiers. If it is a mana leeching gem, then use pure orange gems in the amplifiers.

nixk94
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nixk94
2 posts
Nomad

I mainly asked because of the pic of the gem on page 3. (wich clearly has a +bloodbound amplifier bonus). I guess it was fixed/removed in recent patches.

Still thanks for the answer. I already knew your advices though.

ArcaneOptic
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ArcaneOptic
1 posts
Shepherd

It would be nice if the 32-spec and 16-combine charts were more informative, I had a hard time understanding them.

stickpag
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stickpag
47 posts
Peasant

Is this gonna be updated?

bilboCGL
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bilboCGL
323 posts
Peasant

Already posted in comments:
V 1.1 tipp for some extra mana:
As our beloved permafreezing at the end of pre-endurance is gone forever (R.I.P.), there's a need for an alternative. I found a way to get at least a lot of extra mana, even if it is far away from the almost everlasting old way, it helps a lot.
- Setup a manafarm and a killtrap as usual, make sure, your path between the two traps is not too short but fits in your freeze spell circle
- Don't set the manatrap too close to the entrance(s) of the map. (Not essential but helpful), I found a 7-10 traps long path useful.
- Make sure you have a few thousands (how many depends on your lag/ lag tolerance) monsters with normal speed or slower on screen that will not be killed by your manafarm (ie. e35 hp) but be killed by your killtrap!
- Setup a few slow gems with a high chain hit (i.e. 5k), a long enough slowing time and 90% slow.
- In the beginning, try to freeze the monsters on the manafarm as usual
- when the monsters start to reach your killgem, use WoE in front of the the killtrap - A fifth of the WoEed monsters will start again and meet your manafarm again!
- Freeze & WoE whenever a monster is killed by your killtrap, don't waste your spells in between
Playing with the old 32s64c, I had a G80 (2.1e30 mana) managem on map and was able to build 6 G81 (4.2e30) amps only with this method instead.
So you get a lot of mana that can later be spend on your killgem
I start playing with a 'u' upgraded killgem that later will be thrown on a mana-shard. This intermediate killgem will be good enough for the first 300 waves or so! (here&now e45, g90)
I have a red amplified g1rb in a trap to collect hits for the final killgem.
I build the final killgem, when it is necessary - It will be good enough for some dozen extra waves in endurance. This is important, as the higher the waves are, the more xp you get!
hth

bilboCGL
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bilboCGL
323 posts
Peasant

Some pics to illustrate:

Time to freeze, in the trap next to the g1y, there is the killgem
http://s21.postimg.org/cqlc9764n/freeze.jpg

To the left of the WoE circle is the managem
http://s21.postimg.org/471ybfxs7/Wo_E.jpg

tyler83010
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tyler83010
3 posts
Peasant

bilbo i dont understand your method clearly. you said have manafarm, and a few slowing gems behind it?

UgAhgItHurts
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UgAhgItHurts
258 posts
Peasant

In front of depending on how you look at things Have creeps encounter a slow gem first (although you can farm hits behind it too) and have a some backup slowing for spawnlings or stuff that sneaks by.

bilboCGL
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bilboCGL
323 posts
Peasant

Yepp, but there is no need for more than one slowtrap between mana- and killgem. But a slowtrap behind the killtrap is essential due to spawnlings coming from giants.
Just have a look that all monsters on the map are slowed the whole time.

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