Forums → Games → GC:CS End game tactics after v1.1
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Hi everyone,
I'd like to collect here some opinions of more experienced players than me on how to tackle some of the changes of v1.1, as the master source of endgame knowledge (psorek's guide) is now slightly obsolete.
Then we can link the two topics together and have an updated end game guide.
EDIT 29/12/14: scattered all over the topic there are a lot of useful info, I may recollect them all in the future.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an high level MP player, what I write here is from my perspective, may not apply so well to low level/not MP.
1) Hatred, is it worth it?
My observations would say not, but I'm still not sure, I seem to get ~20% less exp from lv 7 hatred than without it, but maybe there is a better balance in between, on the other hand it makes the round shorter, so I could actually do more if I was continually grinding exp.
Of course without MP I guess it's a blessing, because it shortens the number of waves you have to play to reach unkillable monsters and lets non-MP players achieve similar exp levels as MP players.
2) Enraging, theory and practice
Now that exp bonus from enraging is a one time factor (one g1 and thousands of g100 give the same result) it makes no sense enraging to killgem's kill power (displayed_crit*displayed_damage).
What I'm doing now is enraging with tons of g2 to make the armor grow during my mana gathering phase (I use over 500 g2 at the later waves) and killing them all with a throwaway killgem with bolt.
Then I start the exp gathering phase and just bomb them up to 999 monsters using as little bombs as possible to keep their HP low: I seem to recall throwing 9 g62 and 8 g68 per wave are two sweet spots, going for 7 bombs was too costly.
Do someone has a better tactic?
3) Goodbye sharding (and permafreezing)
Peter fixed the two bigger exploits we had to get to astronomical mana values
I found (some confirmation would be great) that if you bomb a shard and don't make it spawn you still get the 5% bonus mana, but it's waaay too low to make sharding a viable mana gathering method.
I don't think there is anything we can do about this, other than discover another exploit.
4) Farming high level talisman fragments
Luckily I had already did this time ago, but hatred has made a full traits speed run of Y6 much more difficult, to the point that U upgrading barely gets me to the end, but I cannot get the 3 endurance fragments.
I've always used a method similar to this, are there better ones?
5) Gem recipes
The only gem changed from 1.0.x to 1.1 were slowing and suppressing, both were improved, so the previous recipes for killgems and managems are still valid.
We (psorek and I) actually built better ones than the ones on the guide, but the lack of easy and understandable diagrams for them precludes their use to anyone who isn't willing/don't have time to parse unfriendly parenthetical/tree formulas.
Is there someone that could help with this?
Recipes can be found there: gemforce results
6) Uncapped skill balancing
Component skills, true colors and resonance were uncapped, great news, but finding a balance between them can be quite tricky.
I may do the math one of these days but at moment, does someone have a thumb rule that gives good results?
EDIT: as usual, thanks to AG forum for messing with all my formatting.
Yay for walls of text
12345ieee
EDIT: I forgot to mention the #gemcraft IRC channel, where a lot of top players reside stably (access from https://kiwiirc.com/client if you don't have a favourite irc program).
- 108 Replies
Hi
1) Hatred
I don't know by now if it is really worth, I have to do a test but somehow, when I plan to do a long run, I automatically check all traits, I just can't resist...
2) Enraging
I don't enrage with tons of g1 in the beginning! Instead, with 90.000 starting mana, I use, for the first six waves, something like 30 G3 and I spend around 2x13776 in kill- and managem, another 27600 in amps...
Later on I watch for the cheapest way to get to 999, I end up bombing the way you do.
4) Talisman farming,
I did it not so fast, I used to get something like a g45, mana/killgem both in traps, call all waves later at around w30 or so. But I'm happy with my full talisman and inventory with r100, too.
5) Recipies
Without permafreezing, I find everything higher than 32s16c much too time-consumpting. In the good old times, once I had my gem set, I could play with this gem for weeks, now max. 2 days, so I don't find it useful anymore. Sad! And this is the point I still bother with 1.1...
6) Skills
Without big maths, I found:
Truecolors most important as it influences specials of all gems and damage!
My actual settings are
TC 150+15
Resonance : 111+15
Mana 129+15,
Crit 99+15
BB 90+15
Slow 12+15
Barrage, Freeze, Fury, Traps, Amps , Stream, Fusion, Masonry maxed.
Next to increase is BB & Crit
Greetings from The Shire
1) Mid to late hexes, hatred is probably not worth it. Makes it real easy to get a good mana flow going though. Can you dig out the base xp per wave progression? Then it'd be easy to calculate which is best case.
2) Enraging: I tend to do 9 g30 (which you get to quickly), twice for giants. Later can up that a bit, g45 fills stones, so keep one of those around too. I also tend to start angering with g4 or g5, but then 200k starting mana.
3) One slow gem up front (laughable progression with W/B, takes g40 to max in a trap without those). One hit collection gem, one to two mana gems, kill trap...more mana gems are worth it if you can do it without lag, I hit that point fast.
4) I still need to look at Y6, but then is perfect talisman that important anymore? I've seen 70+ with all skills, I can live with 10% less of everything, not like there's enough useful to need that extra feature of a g100 (yay faster gem wasps, more lag), and the 80s tend to throw better trait collections at you anyway.
I tended to do g43ish kill gem and get the 3 endurance parts, took about 20-30 minutes, not sure what's fastest now.
5) I don't really recipe, even the 100x payoff isn't enough for the tedium and I hit lag too fast anyway. Most important is 13c or 16c mana gems, that's probably the biggest boost.
6) I have TC 119, black/o/y 85, res 52 (TC adds damage anyway). 50% more damage at res 82 for 10k starting mana doesn't sound that bad... Skills are a Sum(n) cost, and since they're percentages higher gives less boost per rapidly increasing skill cost. They do reinforce each other, I guess it's same as always, be sure you have enough starting mana first (100k is good to do anything).
Enraging:
Albeit i am not at the levels it appear you players are at (im just under lvl 2k)
i keep finding that getting to 999 per wave is easily done with about 39 g5 gems. Thats all i need to use and i stay at around 970-999 depending on monster type. This obviously doesnt work for giants but will still change them from 3-5 to several hundred.
Hatred Hex:
Total junk. lose unless as stated above the MP is available to you.
i would really love it if someone has a better view on engraging to break it down mathematically.
Shards: I have found that the drop levels are pathetically low. even at lvl 1200 or so before the patch i was seeing 85-95 and havent seen much at that level still. The importance though seems to be equal just from the damage multipliers to all 4 monster type
Not that this helped, but would love to see some more math from the update. Personal opinion: hate the update.
Y6 + full Hatred (talisman 78+, 72+ without): e25hp at wave 260 (end of normal map all hardener). Wave 350 is at e36ish, my grade 60 u button gem wasn't getting that especially with e37 healing Probably looking at a g64 or so to get all shards most of the time.
Since it's probably still a g45 to get them all without hatred and probably takes a lot less time (I think I had a kill gem by wave 20), I'd try that route
I haven't checked non-mp with patch (change to slow hurts tons). Even in 1.0.19 glory, farming high end talisman was awful.
I'm level 5.1k but most of this flies over my head, I can't make heads or tails of the gemforce data so I think my opinions here will be of little value.
1- No not really in my experience.
2- I tend to have just a g12 and bomb it on x36 as many times as needed to have my mana gems not kill them outright, this has functioned up to like wave 400...but i've only ever reached 500's once on m2 so that's not much experience dealing with this at the high end.
3- I never really took advantage of either so nothing changed for me here.
4- I ran Y6 at max traits (w/o hatred) for a few rounds and got a mostly 90s talisman so I'm happy with that.
5- Like I said I can't understand the recipes for gemming so I just U them till I can't anymore. Any help with this part would be great. :B
6- Skill Image because I'm lazy. :P
i am curious what kind of xp you gents are averaging on each run now?? That kind of info helps advise if some of us actually have anything to add lol
Aprox. 150-160bn, with 32s64c, a lot of freezing and a lot of lag.
in that case i have nothing to add lol
my best so far ( havent tried too hard so far) is about 11
I get like 60 bn, I'm still a newb and I don't do any of that fancy gem combining
As always depends on how many touch of wisdom stones you get. Average multiplier of say 8x, I get about 6-7e10 (I farm until lag then build a g70ish kill gem that poops out at about e40 hp). That's with full hatred, without I got a 150, but that felt like higher than normal xp multiplier and took longer.
i experimented with the skills a bit. mana, black and TC at the same lvl gave me the most mana per hit. very high TC and less bb and mana was half efficient.
but i would like someone to do the math
Thanks to everyone for sharing their ideas.
@jdguy99 : don't be shy, everyone's contribution is more than welcome, don't be scared by @bilboCGL's score, I just average 50-60 bil/run.
@UgAhgItHurts : it is surprisingly difficult to get the exp progression out of the game, I got the right piece of code after hours searching, now I've over a thousand lines of code to understand, I'll probably do it in the weekend.
@people_who_asked_for_math : that will come in the weekend, too, if I have time.
@evryone : don't be shy and contribute to the discussion, you don't need to be WL 96789435707 to add meaningful content.
Happy gemcrafting
12345ieee
WL 4332 here. Never spend much time into maths, U'd most often. Of course I miss permafreeze, but surprisingly I gain WLs quite fast. So while gameplay might not be as efficient as it used to be, it feels more efficient, especially with hatred. And for a player I think, feeling good, seeing progression and have possibilities again to improve (some caps removed), is more important than if the actual math is probably a step back.
on hatred:
I personally like it, because I don't have the patience for hours on end runs... so even if i could squeeze a tiny more exp off of a non-hatred run, i'll stick with hatred so i can get it in a more reasonable time frame...
enraging:
i think it's down to "enrage to 999 monsters" now... i mean, once you hit 999 monsters there no reason to enrage any more unless you want them to be tougher for whatever reason. i tend to enrage with lots of low-grade gems to pump up the armor, and then put trapped-bolt on the killgem.
exploits:
sad but true... i shall miss permafreezing... there really doesn't seem to be a "new permafreeze" yet, but only time will tell...
talisman fragments:
i already have my talisman filled with mostly fragments in the mid to late 90's, so i don't really care... but yes, it has gotten a little bit harder now...
recipes:
i don't have the time or patience for that... sorry...
skills:
i find blood is slightly more useful than colors being a bonus that usually stacks up to 25x compared to only 1x, though they both have the same end result and i haven't exactly tested anything, it's just my initial reaction...
Skills aren't that hard to figure out. You need like 15k starting mana to go from gem skill bonus of 300% to 400%, but a lot more to go from 400% to 500%. The first is a 33% improvement, the second 25%, the next will be 20%.
Colors is important because it also adds to damage and specials, just at a lower rate than the gem type ones.
Granted you don't need that much mana to get started, the first 6 waves are going to be 1/10000 or less of final score, so skill selection that gets you more waves is important.
We can always eyeball the xp values. Within 300 waves you're talking going from 5 to 100 starting xp, so say getting up to wave 400 instead of 300 probably be more than the ~33% bonus of hatred multiplier. And it's probably not worth as much as getting 50% more Touch of Wisdom than normal either, sadly.
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