jimmie-i've sent you some generic tips, most of which are mentioned here.
one of them has not been mentioned around here (though it is implied): anger very early waves with grade one gems to increase the monster count for a low mana cost; thus, more mana is gained from kills and mana-farming. oh, and take the right fork after the 1st arcane gaurdian-I found it to be easier.
last update for today: http://tinypic.com/r/1491m9v/3
um... around 10 grade 16's in traps, and some in the towers (at least 2, possible 10)...the lag is making it pretty difficult to get an accurate count, so i'll say 30 15's, +/-20, and 30 14's, +/-20...i really don't know.
oh, the gems at the far right are mostly r/o from my original mana farm, and some r/y/c gems to enhance the freezing abilities of some of my prismatics.
Karsten, that was a set of monsters you failed to eliminate in time, they probably ran around your maze some ~40 times boosting their banishment costs up to ~40k each, and if clustered, they can eat you whole. I have seen a giant monster once with 7k mana cost, that was when I angered a giant wave to ~1M and 300 monsters, and even 50 grade 10 L/Y gems failed to eliminate them all fast enough, however, this one was the last to perish.
fractalman, you need to anger waves "1-25" way more, they should be able to make a full lap each (not two, though, if possible, for me it's usually ~25 armor for waves 1-10, ~40 armor for waves 10-15 and 80+ armor for waves 16 onward, because of me going mass-supergem at around wave 10), and any early giants are better be angered though the roof to make full 4-5 laps (but you should have a sustaining mana farm for that, you will have to hastily build defences, or else you might lose), I'd say 10 times will do, with the best gems you can produce at that time.
Why you make prismatic mana farm? Why do you need a prismatic in the trap? They are very slow to get accelerated, they are not to do damage while in traps, they produce less mana than duals, the only thing they can do is stun and slow (poison is out of question... what, 2 damage over 5 seconds??? bwahahaha!), which is nice tho, and for armor reducing I'd better have specialized traps.
You will definitely want to push your multiplier upwards from wave 5 massively, especially if you have angered waves 3-4 to do a whole lap, so they can be leeched off twice. But make sure you will spend most of your mana into grade 3 R/Os and nothing else but more of them, several traps and supergemming duals strictly. This will help to place a good mana farm early, and the earlier is the better
ConnerC, have you ever seen GC0 lad to 1 frame per 3 seconds or more? Don't get scared of lag, however it IS frustrating to some extent, but it's better to have a slight lag to do more actions per wave.
I disagree with you and the prismatic gems. Put a level 12 prismatic gem on a level 8 O/R/C/Y and you have a trap that does about the same mana of 5/6 of a R/O. It has one target minus but get more fire speed even if the mana can't be really maxed. Plus, with the shock and alternate some traps with R/O you get some target that feed your mana farm everywhere. This way you reduce a lot the banishment cost and drop the armor of every monster to 0 in less than 1 turn.
i strongly disagree with you on that one lankhr, i make prismatics and any prismatic that has 4-5+ mana per hit and 16+ splash radius i put in trap, anything with less and i use for firepower or angering giants
a grade 11 prismatic can do 7 mana per hit at a rate of 900 firing speed, where at absolute best a red orange can do 10.1 at rate of 670
and also prismatics in traps at grade 15 with 1100 firing speed do tons of dmg, 2500 dmg at a rate of 1100 imo is better than 10k dmg at 279 just because with about the same or less damage you get 4x mroe special abilities like slow shock armor reduce and mana per hit
so basicly make prismatics and if one looks good such as 5.7 mana per hit at 23 splash radius and 1k firing speed put it in a trap, if not put it in tower
also unless thers like 200 monsteres on only like 20 traps prismatics can nearly freeze monsters still meaning they dont complete laps they get stuck on traps that bombard them with mana stealing and tower firing, thsi prevents those annoying waves that cost 40k per monster and get bunched up
hey AsSto, how do prismatic specials are created, and how are their thresholds calculated? If you max prismatic mastery, it's said "Specials are at 10-80%", so having 80% orange, 70% yellow and 60% red special is better than plain R/O... hum, hum. I have tried to determine but failed... weird I think. Maybe you know?
I wonder how to increase specials' cap to those 80% they spoke about. Their current values are increased by supergemming like normal gems behave, but the cap is hard to be determined, and I don't think there's a way to find out what the selected gems' merging result will be... well, without performing the merge, obviously.
I guess Lankhr is right for the gem specials. I've done only one game with prismatic but relly like them.
That's why I've talked about combining a level 12 prismatic on a level 8 O/Y/C/R (I think Cyan is better than purple because even if the % of purple is minimal Cyan and Yellow compensate it). This way you get a level 12 prismatic with 5 targets, mana almost maxed, Fire speed 200 above a dual and a good shock percent (slow does the rest to keep monsters almost in place). I've tried to do the other way -> max colors after creating the prismatic but every time you up something you decrease another. So I end in creating level 7-8 gems with the colors i've got interest in. And then i combinate a level 12 (aleatory) with it and i get some prismatics with always 5 targets, a good fire speed and about 6 mana per hit. This way, the creation of prismatics isn't aleatory and works very well on the last level ... I've begun with classic R/O then replace all with prismatics but with a support of 40 mana towers because the farming was not enough especially if you under-anger a wave.
Lankhr...I don't have the cheat engine (and probably never will); at high mana gains/frame, I have to make do with forcing gemcraft to focus on processing my clicks-which is impossible (or nearly so) while supergemming, and unwieldy (even for prismatic-style combining) at extremely low fps.
oh, and vesper, there is a way to gaurantee the spetials when merging two prismatics of an equal grade (and usually unequal grades, but there seem to be exceptions...). in the inventory (not a trap or tower), drop the gem with the desired spetials onto the other gem, and voila! The first gem's spetials will be the spetials of the new gem. or if using ctrl+g, set the first gem towards the top of the inventrory. a similar rule applies with gems of different types.
ive found the % of what composed it to be the ability
for example out of the 32 grade 6s that go into an 11 if 10 are orange 8 are red 7 are yellow 3 are lime and 1 of cyan green blue and purple then usualy ull get tons of splash mana steel and triple dmg (or range/firing speed in traps)
thats why i make 36, use the excess greens and stuff on angering or whatever and get it to just barely more than average amount of red/orange then craft and its fine.
but like i said since its hard to controll the specials i place the gems where they best suit, and good splash/mana steel go in traps and anything else like a good triple dmg/chain hit goes in tower, some horrable ones that are like all poison go to angering giant waves and stuff
