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

Im gonna try to beat looming endurance on F1 and was wondering what grade I should stop at

@Lanore : 20k monsters? You are a madman.
I can't go over 6k or I need several seconds for each frame.

If you summon too many beacons those that have no space simply don't get summoned, no strange effects.
Note that there are fields that can hold over 200 beacons, 100 is not that large of a number.

@mafilux : do you think you gave enough information for someone to answer?
The only thing I can say for certain is somewhere between 40 and 400.

I find myself wondering where everybody will be, level-wise, a couple years from now (those that still occasionally play, anyway). Assuming you've farmed all endurance maps to the best of your ability, further experience gain really only depends on your luck with wisdom sparks, yeah? Or is there some other non-luck factor that will continue to push progression?

I didn't want 20k monsters, they just weren't dying fast enough. Then again, I had the field covered in slowing gems and was spamming freeze and WoE.

Think I learned my lesson though. Because of the lag I ended up over enraging a bunch of waves and lost. Was probably bound to happen anyway since I hit a wall with my managem at g47 and around e20 mana. After that manaflow just crawled.

Lag's the real opponent anyway.

For level ~2k, I'd stick with u gems. Probably wouldn't bother optimizing (except making mana/kill gems with as little red as possible, i.e. r + y + 2b + 3y ...up to 10 or 11), just last as long as you can (higher xp in later waves). You can still grab 500-1k levels per map that way for a while, you don't even have to worry about angering early waves to 1k if it's too much, they're not worth that much xp.

Just lost on field I2 around wave ~180. Lag caused me to accidentally overenrage by like e2 or so hp, so that I could wound/eventually kill the monsters but not before they overran me.

Fairly interesting micromanagement for slow gems. Too many or too early, and the monsters overflow, leading to massive lag. Too few/too far ahead, and you lose mana.

I also need to learn to tone down on WoE/Freeze. It might help with mana but it doesn't help if the lag makes it unplayable.

Now questions:

Is it better to have your killgem in a tower or in a trap now? With adjustable range it seems like it should be better in a tower. But traps can benefit from barrage/bolt.

Another thing I've found is that I've run up against a wall of sorts. Around e19-20 mana things start getting slow, and around e23 mana they get impossible. In order to upgrade my managem, I end up duplicating it and putting them into traps to help raise the mana. I was getting to where I had around 9 managems at certain points. Similar situation for amps. It didn't hurt since they were the duplicates I needed anyways. But once I hit e23-e24 mana it became fairly clear I'd likely not be getting another upgrade again. I think my managem was g59 at the end. I was wondering if everyone had this problem, like it is just a skills/WL type thing, or possibly the gem formula I was using.

It depends on what you want to do:

An amped killtrap is nearly equal with a tower, but has less amps for roughly the same DPS (if the trap has barrage), thus making it more cost effective. A good strategy involves 8 or so towers tasked with farming their own sector of beacons, while your main killtrap (also the same grade) kills the beacon summoning giants. I'd recommend you check out the extreme end-game guide 1.1 for a more in-depth look.

As for mana gain, we've all run into 'that wall'. Yours was as you said, and mine happened to be at e40 the last time I did a run (which I beat its endurance ). It increases as you level, but even then, that too hits a wall as you experience the pain of logarithmic prestige - every 'reset' nets you less and less 'currency' to upgrade your main 'buildings'; black, orange, yellow, true colors, and resonance. It's why I've stopped playing GC for now. I know I could reach 30k if I really wanted to, but it seems to be too much work to pull off e12 after e12 for maybe 1,000 or so levels per run to slightly improve my mana leeching skills.

Come on, the progression is not a logarithm.
It's a sixth root.

While traps have barrage I'd recommend a killgem in tower for the final phase.
That's because the tower can fire at the monsters in hundreds of tiles while a trap can fire only in a single tile.

For beacon summoners you need some additional precautions.

@borthelcash : do you see any problem with the guide? Me and @BilboCGL finished it in a hurry those last days to have it done before the stream release.

@Lanore:
Having 9 managems will definitely create lots of lag, I'd stick with 3 as a maximum number. Similarly, you shouldn't need more than 3 slow gems, ever (assuming you put black in them to boost the slowing component), 1 before the manafarm, and 1 each before and after the killtrap; again, too many traps firing increases lag by a lot.

Eventually, you will hit a wall with your mana gains. Where that wall is depends on your skill distribution, and combine method, but the wall will be there. Once you hit it, you can sit around micromanaging things to squeeze out a tiny bit more mana (which might net you a whole dozen or so extra waves at the end of endurance), or you can just accept that you've hit the wall for this run, switch your killgem to an amped tower, switch enraging to one of the low-gem formulas (listed in the extreme end-game guide; 14 G43's or 16 G39's are probably reasonable if you're hitting 1e20 mana), and just see how far you get before you lose endurance. And remember, you'll gain infinitely more experience from a suboptimal run than you will from a loss.

@12345ieee:
I really like the guide; it's a masterwork. If I had one criticism, it would be one that comes out of the above conversation. i.e., that it should mention somewhere, that while its instructions are for maxing XP, it's possible to do quite well with suboptimal play that is much, much quicker. I know you know this, since you're one of the people I got it from. I get about 1/4 (or more) of the XP I got trying to maximize by doing speedruns, but I complete them in 1/12 of the time or less, so my XP/wall clock hour is several times higher. This only becomes an issue if I run out of fields I've played to max, which won't happen for a long while (or ever, since I'm waiting for the Steam release now), and by then, it will be time to revisit those first fields I played with my vastly higher WL regardless of which method I used.

Since lots of people new to the endgame are learning from that guide (and rightfully so! It's awesome; I can't say enough nice things about it), this will help stop some of those people from making themselves miserable trying to absolutely max everything their first time out.

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had or knew of a calculator that can handle eN values. I tend to have a hard time estimating the strength of my gems and knowing how far to enrage.

Another question I had that I can't seem to find addressed is how armor works exactly. Like, say a creature has 20 armor, does it reduce dmg by a % or by a flat 20? Just kind of curious for judging how much I need to enrage for my managem.

Thirdly, what grade gem do you guys use to enrage? I use a whole ton of g1 until endurance because I like getting max beacons. In endurance g1 gems can't always get 999 monsters on field without bumping up armor and hp beyond my kill range. Higher grade gems don't spawn many beacons. (Kind of related, what gem grade is needed to max sparks/is it still worth it to use manashards? )

Lastly, I was wondering if anyone has compiled a list of the fields best suited for endurance runs? There are so many maps I often overlook them/forget they even existed. I would be willing to compile a list myself if others are interested or willing to offer feedback.

1) I use this calculator: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc on my android.

2) The armor is substracted from the gems damage.
Example: Monster has 80 armor and 100 hp
Any gem dealing less than 80 damage would not harm the monster
A gem dealing 90 damage would reduce the monsters hp by 10
For a one-hit-kill it needs a gem with 180 damage.

3) I use g1 as long as possible, later high grade gems for 999 monsters and additional g1 gems for beacons.
In http://armorgames.com/community/thread/12479126/gemcraft-cs-extreme-end-game-guide-v11 you find numbers for how many gems of which grade are needed to max giants waves

4) What is good for endurance... I suppose every map but b3 (the traps) and that lousy spiral thing on W hextile...You can use the hp-simulator to look for end hp and the beacon chart.

@xande1 : thanks for the kind words.
Several people asked for a section with a "semi-extreme" play style (e.g. fast U-8c upgrade runs).
IMHO it's outside of the scope of the extreme end-game guide, which is a compilation of the best.
If you or someone else want to write an addendum to the guide I'll be happy to review it, add it and list someone on the credits.

@Lanore :
1) Do you need a calculator to sum 2-digits numbers? The default one in your OS should easily take care of it.
If you don't understand why it's enough to do 2-digits additions feel free to ask.

2) Armor is a flat reduction and gets meaningless fast.

3) Look at the extreme end-game guide.

4) Look at the HP spreadsheet.

Not to be rude, but before you keep asking questions take a look at the sticky topic, there is a sticky for a reason...

EDIT: @BilboCGL ninja'd me. Hi Bilbo

1) It isn't a matter of summing up, unless I'm mistaken about how crit works. It's an issue of mulitplying something like e18 dmg by e14. It's too big to do in my head or on paper, my basic computer calc doesn't do scientific notation, and I didn't really want to download a new one if I could help it. I figured I'd ask what others use because perhaps there is one that is best for it.

4) Interestingly enough I had looked at that spreadsheet, but hadn't considered it as a guide for picking out the best maps. Bit stupid on my part.

Also I wasn't trying to be a burden, I apologize for that. I learn better by talking with people than reading outright. Still, I've read every single thread in the sticky. I just have a bad tendency to skim/skip parts I feel I already know, then forget they exist. That or I read for only the bits I want to know at that second and don't notice or remember the other parts in there.

@Lanore
Let's go on with 6th grade math (I'm patronizing you, but just a bit, please forgive me).

Let a=A.AeBB and c=C.CeDD be two numbers written in exponential notation.

Then a*c = (A.A*C.C)e(BB+DD)

this rule descends from the properties of powers, it's fairly easy to proof (see wikipedia).
For all practical purposes then you just need 1-digit multiplication and 2-digit addition and use:
a*c~=(A*C)e(BB+DD)

If you want to multlply 2e18 and 3e14, you have to multiply 2x3 in front of the e and add 18 and 14 behind the e - so 6e32
Edit : Ninja each other...