Forums → Games → GC:CS End game tactics after v1.1

For unclear reasons % increase in health for 1 wave a little different at almost all levels, it is checked for health haunting complexity of the second wave, from about 371 to 383, but in the end on the 999 wave differences reach somewhere E68 E74, that a significant affects the experience, as it reduces the number of punched at the end of the battle the waves.

So, I did a bit of math on skill distribution (just fiddled around a bit in a spreadsheet; I might write a program to search for the optimum combination via simulated annealing or something later if I get ambitious, but don't hold your breath), and the results were a little surprising. Everyone has worked out that True Colors and Bloodbound are the most important skills, but it's shocking by how much. I tried out the skill assignments below in game, and went from a personal best mana pool L66 to L69, and from max killgem damage (including crit. multiplier) of 1e43 to 1e47.

My skills (WL ~9200, +15 skill talisman, skills not listed should be obvious)
* Poolbound 45 (only used for initial start-up; you can skip it if you're not as lazy as I am)
* Resonance 45 (turns out, Resonance doesn't need to be very high at all, even 45 is bordering on too much; I just picked 45 because it's the old skill cap, like I did with Poolbound)
* Crit 90 (shocking how low this should be)
* Mana Leech 108 (ditto, but not quite as low)
* Bloodbound 174 (It's insane how high this should be; it's almost as important as True Colors)
* True Colors 180 (even more insane!)

So, the rule of thumb I'd give for high level (>4000) wizards is: Poolbound & Resonance at ~45 (30 if you're closer to the low end of high level); pick a number for Crit mastery; make Mana Leech around 1.2xCrit (i.e., just a bit higher); make Bloodbound and True Colors around 2xCrit. True Colors is slightly more important than Bloodbound, so if you have a few skillpoints left over at the end, add to True Colors; if you need to cut a few points, cut Bloodbound.

@xande1
Not bad, not bad at all, you are quite close to the optimum result.

I already did the math for the optimal skill setup and another guy built a program.

You can find them here: http://armorgames.com/community/thread/12313145/gemcraft-cs-extreme-end-game-guide/page/8
A rule of thumb is: TC>~BB>Leech>Crit>Resonance
If you look at the formulae it's easy to understand why Leech has to be much bigger than Crit (the reason is the mana runaway, I could explain it better if needed).

I should probably do a new thread here with this information.

Sorry for doubleposting, dam.n AG forum.

I'd advice you to ditch Poolbound entirely, but that's up to you.

It turns out (assuming you use OBR managems and YBR killgems) that your skill points are better spent more or less like this:

tc = 177;
b = 171;
l = 135;
c = 63;
r = 39;

which gives you an increase of +40% in final killgem power.

Ditching Poolbound makes it +90%, with a slightly different arrangement.

@12345ieee: Thanks! I hadn't seen the update in the other thread. I knew my arrangement wasn't quite optimal (since it was just a bit of fiddling around in a spreadsheet), but it was much better than anything I'd seen before. Going to check the other thread, so I can really optimize. Thanks for your hard work.

And I know having points in Poolbound harms my final killgem power, since it's not used in either the killgem or managem. I just do it because I'm lazy, and it's slightly easier/quicker to start out with, and for doing speedruns of maps with. I could probably switch back and forth between having it and not depending on what I'm doing, but like I said: lazy.

Since this thread is apparently still alive, I'll ask/discuss in here, rather than bumping my old thread, which I only created because I didn't want to necro this thread.

I reread through a couple of the old threads/sticky links to find that there was discussion later pertaining to 1.1, so a good few of my questions have been answered, but I still have a few things to ask.

How much starting mana do you guys think should be left after spending points on skills? I currently start with 24k mana and have ~1800 unspent skillpoints. I know for now I should probably hang onto the mana, but in the future when I level up, how much is optimal/when should I spend?

I've also seen a few screencaps where people only have a single point in chain hit, and I was curious why this was. I used to think you always invested in Blood/Leech/Crit/Chain.

Lastly: From what I've seen, with permafreeze gone, people have turned to slowing gems and relying on killgems earlier on in the game. This makes me wonder if it is worth it to invest points in the slow gem component skill or not.

Also wondering people's general experiences in keeping a balance between killgems and managems, and how much to enrage. It's easy to get monsters stronger than your managem, but making sure they are also weaker than your killgem seems to be difficult. I think I saw bilbo say he enrages them to e35 once, but how on earth someone can afford a killgem that can manage that early on is beyond me.

Anyways, whatever help/advice given is worth while and appreciated. And sorry for the questions, I'm a bit slow in the head. >.>

Also: Was somewhat curious when going over the gemforce combining schemes, they all have o/b or y/b, but never specify when to insert chain hit into the gems, yet I haven't really seen anyone use a gem without chain hit. It made me kind of curious when to add the g1r gem for that component, and when people do it. Do some people just substitute a red for an orange or yellow? Or do they add it after the final gem has been built?

The general rule of thumb is to insert red in the deepest nested yellow or orange subgem. ieee tested a red adder and had those recipes added to WGem, so copy one of those from the program and memorize .

I'm sorry, WGem?

WGem is the auto-gem combiner that does everything for you, but here I am listing its utility as a container for red-optimized starter gems.
Here is a 64 spec from the program:

((((((((((((o+o)+o)+o)+o)+o)+o)+o)+((o+o)+o))+((o+o)+o))+((((o+o)+o)+o)+(o+b)))+((((o+o)+o)+(o+b))+b))+((((((o+o)+o)+o)+(o+b))+b)+(((o+b)+b)+((b+b)+b))))+((((((((b+b)+b)+b)+b)+b)+(b+b))+(((o+b)+b)+(b+b)))+((((((o+o)+o)+o)+(o+r))+b)+(((o+b)+b)+(b+b))))

I suggest memorizing this or others lest you get nailed by the mods ).

No need to worry, I wouldn't use a program to combine gems anyways. 64 spec eh, seems rough. Highest I've ever done was 32 spec with 16 combine for upgrading.

That makes me wonder though, when upgrading gems with these super high numbers, like 64, 128, 4000+ and so on, are you supposed to combine again the exact same way to upgrade, or do you simply u upgrade? or?

Just occured to me, because once you get to higher levels, getting 64 duplicates of your g60+ gem might be difficult :v

It's best if the supergemming never stops .

If you only do one combine, it won't be worth the effort. U button is about a 40% improvement on most gem stats, various combine schemes improve that by another 10-20% (larger combine usually being better). Doesn't sound like much but that multiplies every upgrade cycle until your g100 gem brings in about 150x more mana or your kill gem does 1000x more damage (any improvement in mana is worthwhile, while a factor of 10 damage in your killgem only gets you another 16 waves or so).

Other questions, starting mana isn't important unless you play with mana-lock, then you need to budget carefully. Enough to get to a g7 slowing gem and something decent to start bringing in mana. Easiest is just to 1000x g1 angering, that gets e44 armor (mana gem won't touch that for a while) and e20 hp which is easy to kill with a bolt trap in a few waves. Chain skill is pointless, it gets stupid huge fast. Also 2/3 of the possible xp comes from beacons, hope you like lag (you can get to at least level 20k in a few maps without beacon farming).

Last thing: the biggest contribution to xp is entirely random sadly (alright second biggest, lag is the biggest).

[rant] Why nobody reads the god**** README?
https://github.com/gemforce-team/gemforce/tree/master/results#readme

I mean, the "Where do I put red?" section covers exactly this. [/rant]

Sorry, let's go back to business.

The red adder @borthelcash mentioned is still a bit wonky (and I had had no time to fix it) so the redded recipes aren't still in the repo.

Investing in Chain Hit is not really helpful, a good OBR or YBR gem has so much bb multiplier that the chain hit is already in the millions without wasting skill points.

As for combine length, the longer the combine, the better the result (in 99% of the cases), when you have difficulties keeping up with the required mana simply switch to a lower combine.

My routine for managems is something like, IIRC:
4096 x 6 -> 256 -> 32 -> 16 -> 8 -> 4 -> ...

I'll also answer about talisman farming: with a good tactic you can still do Y6 sending all waves with minimal pausing, I'll probably upload a video of it on Youtube.

Did a test run on F1 for my first endurance since starting again. Was interesting without permafreeze to be honest. Makes WoE far more useful though. Only went a few waves after endurance ended since I didn't really have the time, and lag was insane.

I mean wow, lag was insane.

Concerning killgems: Do they do more damage in traps or in towers? I was curious about this since obviously raw damage from towers is higher, but traps multiply the crit special so much. Also, for the killgem, when in a trap, is bolt or barrage better?

90% of my questions exist because I'm too lazy to do math. I admit.

Also ieee, sorry for not reading the readme. I hate to say I've never read them, anywhere, for anything. It's something I should likely do. Stickies, faqs, instructions for a piece of furniture from Ikea? I read all of them. Readmes? Pft. (I'm a terrible person)