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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This guide is outdated for game version 1.1 - new guide can be found here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
roycehellion
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roycehellion
4 posts
Shepherd

Wasnt this made obsolete in the update?

psorek
offline
psorek
447 posts
Jester

Some part of it was, but we are working on new guide. Be patient @roycehellion

roycehellion
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roycehellion
4 posts
Shepherd

Oh ok; i was just checking If had misunderstood and it was still valid i would have been upset lol
@psorek

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

Permafreezing, the concept of "Gem Killing Power" and bombing a wave to meet but not exceed it, even what you are enraging waves TO, have all either gone away or changed. The necessary skills have not really changed, though being able to allot points to raise a skill higher than 45+15 has added a new dimension to high level skill point allocation.

Gem creation has not changed. The basic premise behind the manafarm trap, killtrap, and kill tower have not changed, nor has the logic behind emplacing these structures.

Beacons are a more important source of experience now. So leaving room for those, while not allowing them to land too close to your structures, is a viable tactic, though not everyone is interested in farming them for experience.

Mustrum14
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Mustrum14
2 posts
Farmer

Did anyone make tests on uncapped skills importance? As far as my makeshift test goes it's True Colors>Blood>Mana>=Crit>Resonance, but I have hard time figuring the right proportions.

Revenga849
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Revenga849
3 posts
Peasant

@Mustrum14
I've created an application, that computes optimal (in some way) levels for Resonance, True Color and 3 main Gem (Crit, BB, Mana) skills
It needs 7k and more points to properly work, and it assumes you can live with remaining 15% of total points, not less than 7000
https://www.dropbox.com/s/52zkksq0ushmeud/GC_CS_points.rar?dl=0
i hope i dont get banned for this :|

Narim
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Narim
5 posts
Scribe

@Revenga849

Could we please see some math behind this?

Revenga849
offline
Revenga849
3 posts
Peasant

@Narim

Sure, let me explain some.

I have calculated multipliers behind each skill and how they affect outcoming damage and mana gain. I am iterating through all possible combinations of skills (0 to 250 each, that needs to be extended after level 10k or smth like that) and calculating effective multiplier from them.

I count multipliers from each skill in two different variables:
spec and dmg.
I tried to get best performance on combining those variables, multiplying and adding them to get effective skill set characteristic value.

I was testing on lvl50 RedBlackYellow gem and value dmg*spec^3 was best.
So, it calculates all possible variations possible with your skill points pool and returns one with maximum effective value.

It is capable of taking in account your talisman +skills and returning exact effective value and estimated lvl50 RBY gem damage, but i was too lazy to write those additional lines

I know that it can be improved by defining more variables for each skill, for each gem spec skill, or by researching for more efficient effective value formula. But for now, im happy with what i already achieved and it is undoubtedly better than allocating skills by eye.

If you want, i can share source code, its not more than 60 lines and is written in C#.

And sorry for my english, not my main :|

Narim
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Narim
5 posts
Scribe

Thanks!

4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
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4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
5 posts
Nomad

Even if the name is a bit strange, it's 12345ieee here:
An optimal skill distribution for an endgame player (OBR manafarms and YBR killgems), that is mathematically optimal, is found maximizing the subsequent function:

t = 15;
gm = 0.625;
gk = 1.41;

TCs[tc_] := 1/2 (1 + (1/10)*(tc + t)/3)
TCd[tc_] := (1.2 + (1/10)*(tc + t)/3)
Leech[l_] := (1 + 4/100*(l + t))*(1 + 5/100*(l + t)/3)
Bbound[b_] := (1 + 4/100*(b + t))*(1 + 5/100*(b + t)/3)
Crit[c_] := (1 + 4/100*(c + t))*(1 + 5/100*(c + t)/3)
Reson[r_] := (1 + 3/100 (r + t))

M[tc_, b_, l_] := TCs[tc]^2*Bbound[b]*Leech[l]
K[tc_, b_, c_, r_] := TCd[tc]*TCs[tc]^3*Bbound[b]^2*Crit[c]*Reson[r]
GP[tc_, b_, l_, c_, r_] := M[tc, b, l]^(gk/(1 - gm))*K[tc, b, c, r]

with the constraint that:
P[x_] := x*(x + 1)/2;
P[tc] + P[b] + P[l] + P[c] + P[r] < S

Some results with t=15, both 16c:

S=5k: tc->62, b -> 60, l -> 44, c -> 18, r -> 10
S=10k: tc -> 88, b -> 84, l -> 63, c -> 24, r -> 19
S=30k: tc -> 155, b -> 142, l -> 112, c -> 45, r -> 27
S=80k: tc -> 240, b -> 235, l -> 188, c -> 86, r -> 60

@Suuper has a c# program that does this exact thing, but it slightly more inaccurate than Mathematica, he may want to share his, since everyone that has Windows can execute it.

If you have questions feel free to post them below or look for me at #gemcraft on freenote.net

@Revenga849 : you won't get banned for this, they were ok with gemforce, only things that directly interfere with a game are frowned upon (like the automatic gem combiner).
I also can't look at your program (because you posted no source code) but on your premises your results might be not very accurate, specially on resonance and leech

Happy gemcrafting
12345ieee (undercover)

4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
offline
4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
5 posts
Nomad

EDIT: as usual AG broke my formatting and not allowed me to edit:
Even if the name is a bit strange, it's 12345ieee here:
An optimal skill distribution for an endgame player (OBR manafarms and YBR killgems), that is mathematically optimal, is found maximizing the subsequent function:

t = 15;
gm = 0.625;
gk = 1.41;

TCs[tc_] := 1/2 (1 + (1/10)*(tc + t)/3)
TCd[tc_] := (1.2 + (1/10)*(tc + t)/3)
Leech[l_] := (1 + 4/100*(l + t))*(1 + 5/100*(l + t)/3)
Bbound[b_] := (1 + 4/100*(b + t))*(1 + 5/100*(b + t)/3)
Crit[c_] := (1 + 4/100*(c + t))*(1 + 5/100*(c + t)/3)
Reson[r_] := (1 + 3/100 (r + t))

M[tc_, b_, l_] := TCs[tc]^2*Bbound[b]*Leech[l]
K[tc_, b_, c_, r_] := TCd[tc]*TCs[tc]^3*Bbound[b]^2*Crit[c]*Reson[r]
GP[tc_, b_, l_, c_, r_] := M[tc, b, l]^(gk/(1 - gm))*K[tc, b, c, r]

with the constraint that:
P[x_] := x*(x + 1)/2;
P[tc] + P[b] + P[l] + P[c] + P[r] < S

Where
GP: is the function of the skill levels you need to maximize
S: skill points that you can spend on uncapped skills
t: skill levels granted by talismans
gm,gk: growth of the combine method used for managems and killgems (here I use 16c)
tc,b,l,c,r: levels of the relevant uncapped skills

The math behind this is quite complicated, but was doublechecked both by me (@12345ieee) and @Suuper.
When my main account gets unbanned (3 weeks) I can post a detailed proof of this, if somebody wants to see it.

I have a Mathematica notebook that perform the calculations, I can share it, but I don't think it would be very useful as there are not many people that own Mathematica.

Some results with t=15, both 16c, you may want to get them to the nearest multiple of 3:

S=5k: tc->62, b -> 60, l -> 44, c -> 18, r -> 10
S=10k: tc -> 88, b -> 84, l -> 63, c -> 24, r -> 19
S=30k: tc -> 155, b -> 142, l -> 112, c -> 45, r -> 27
S=80k: tc -> 240, b -> 235, l -> 188, c -> 86, r -> 60

@Suuper has a c# program that does this exact thing, but it slightly more inaccurate than Mathematica, he may want to share his, since everyone that has Windows can execute it.

If you have questions feel free to post them below or look for me at #gemcraft on freenote.net

@Revenga849 : you won't get banned for this, they were ok with gemforce, only things that directly interfere with a game are frowned upon (like the automatic gem combiner).
I also can't look at your program (because you posted no source code) but on your premises your results might be not very accurate, specially on resonance and leech

Happy gemcrafting
12345ieee (undercover)

Suuper
offline
Suuper
34 posts
Nomad

I can edit my program for slightly better optimizing, but it's already within a few % of what ieee gets from Mathemeticia.
The equations are also not quite exact, but the difference is minuscule.
Also note that if you are playing a field with a gem enchantment shrine, Resonance is even less useful. (As it's boost will be dwarfed by the shrine's boost.)

I'm certainly willing to upload, if people are interested. (I could probably even write it in C so that Linux users can compile it, if necessary.)

Revenga849
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Revenga849
3 posts
Peasant

Hi, @Suuper and @12345ieee!

Thank you for the post, I've tested your algorithm and it works really great, but a bit slow .
I have created new version of my C# Skill Allocator based on your formulas, it returns almost same results as you mentioned in your post.

It allows you to enter these values:
S: skill points that you can spend on uncapped skills
t: skill levels granted by talismans
And returns levels for 5 main skills, rounded to the nearest multiple of 3

Depending on your system, my app can work faster or slower, especially noticable with high amount of points to distribute, so i added minimum progress information for some comfort.

Download Gemcraft SkillPoints Allocator
VirusTotal

4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
offline
4ty39grfguwergfuriwe
5 posts
Nomad

@Revenga849 : extremely quick note, I'm in a hurry.
Rounding Resonance is useless, don't do it, for the rest it's pretty solid work, great!

I'd list other improvements but I'd rather not load workload over you but wait for @Suuper or you or someone else or when I have free time (hint: I'll not have much this month) to do something portable for all OSes.

My ideal initial idea was to make this a web page (hosted on github pages of gemforce or on my personal page at my uni) but seems the calculations are a bit too much.

If someone wants to help, feel free to write here.

12345ieee

Drufearrx
offline
Drufearrx
9 posts
Farmer

Greetings fellow wizards!
I'm reading all this and it's all great, though it's really bothering me it's MP-only (especially @Revenga849 's app, since I'm too stupid to understand all that math thing above).
Anyways, hopefully, I'll be able to get some use out of all this :P

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