yes its riddiculous how it takes 512 grade 6s to make a grade 15 with 10k max dmg, 2 grade 15s with 10k max dmg combine into a grade 16 with 16k max dmg? thats horrable only a 1.6x increase per grade rise, id like 1.8 or higher after a certain grade like 15, because face it grade 20s are worthless due to the fact that its bauot 90k max dmg and the same ammount of mana could super gem a grade 15 into 410k max dmg where if starting past grade 15 it was 1.8x per combination then a grade 20 would at least be abuot 180k
Just for a bit of variety, I decided to try the exact opposite of most attempts: keep my score as low as possible. The trick is to try and get to the first arcane guardian with as few points as possible. (you need to be level 16 beyond that, so it's not really possible to keep going).
I actually found it surprisingly easy to get there without the skills you can buy for higher levels, but it gives you a whole different way of looking at things: - Use your mana pool as little as possible - Don't anger monsters - Make sure you don't get any rewards for building no traps, destroying all buildings etc.
On my first attempt I got it to 2.920XP at the first bridge ([url=http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/3391/gemcraft0minimalism.png]), but I'm thinking it should be possible to get down to about 2.700XP without too much trouble. Anything under that should be quite interesting.
Karsten, if your gem remained a dual, and earned 10 or more firing speed, then you are doing right, and actually the expected "best value" about what grade a gem should be to achieve 220+ speed with least mana spent, I think is 4, meaning a grade 4 gem will take the least amount of mana (grade 1 gems and combinations) to reach top speed. But, it's possible that it's grade 3 instead... Well, I constantly stuff a whole lot of 100 (maybe less, but that was certainly more than 50) red and orange grade 1 gems into a single grade 3 to make it fire at 222 speed, it had a damage of 200-500, which is about as powerful as a freshly made grade 8, at least if it's an R/O and not say a L/C, mainly because grade 8 L/C receives 279 firing speed without any supergemming and has a good enough damage, and certainly it's way better than a fresh grade 7 dual.
The angering of the arcane monster should be less boosting than normal, at least it shouldn't be an exponential function... perhaps a plain adding of whatever bonuses added to the angered wave will do. Say you have super-angered 3 giant wave to ~200 armor and ~300k HP each, the arcane gets +600 armor and +900k damage, and also there might be more than one arcane guardian... the limit could be about 100 total grade of gems used per arcane guardian summoned. So if this angering will be done with grade 10 gems only, and 15 times each wave, assuming there was a 50-grade worth of angers into the other waves, there will be 6 arcane guardians. But then something should be done about the guardians' satellites, and their enforce of guardians' armor loss... perhaps leave as is, unless will strictly require alteration.
About the white gem - hmm perhaps, the only thing I didn't like in the prismatic is that it has a hue, although having several prismatics of different hues created a pleasant-looking view for the eyes, it's possible that when you're all into prismatics and they are hueless, it'll be boring and sanitarium-like to see only white shots flying around. It's also a way to count prismatics of certain grades, you just turn all grade 13 into reds, grade 14 into blues, etc
AsSto, hmm-hmm, will have to try, wasn't yet trying to combine inside a trap just to get a special to the top, was combining strictly in the inventory. I'm not sure about lime traps, I have only noticed that they produce about triple lags than normal R/O or low-lime prismatic. But it's possible that my "sysadmin aura" helps my PC to survive (there's a game "Arachnophilia" where a normal result is ~10000, and a "win" region lays somewhere at that point, and I had a game of 572000 and still running, despite several noticed misalign in its engine. I have claimed this result as achieved with a help from this, as no one could get even close due to crashes.) I had a set of 8-10 R/L/O grade 11-12 gems stuffed in spare traps, and had a horrible level of lag, once I removed them off traps I've got a double speed boost while not stuffing anything inside. This hurts in fact. I'd better use lime with yellow... they look funny early on, a target gets roasted pretty quick.
But... if prismatics are to be more powerful than both pure and dual gems, they should be really hard to get, currently you can achieve a prismatic at wizlevel 36 and 40 skillpoints spent into all 8 masteries, which is pretty low IMO.
WOOT. I just finished a loong battle. I think it took me 2 or so hours. it was level id 2 and i have gotten 10 billion x 3 score on it. 30 billion. This now leveled me up to lvl 987. yay. it was pretty easy. standard mana farm start, then i angered waves 18-22 about 20 times each. then less angering each wave, with an occasional super-angered wave followed by not angered waves. In the end i just bombed all of my gems and started sensing waves continuously. wave 160 had about 230 trillion life.
I did some calculations. Not according to the guidelines vesperbot laid out for supergemming: Holy cow, stuffing 100 grade 1s into a grade 3?
Anyway, I was on a level with all colors so I did a little experiment.
A grade 11 gem is 32 grade 6 gems. According to supergemming philospphy, a grade 8 ssupergemmed hould be substantially more powerful than a grade 11?
SO what is the benefit of using 32 gems to create 1 grade 8 and then supergemming it with 28 grade 6 gems? And how does that compare with simply creating eight grade 8 gems?
I'll try again along the lines vesperbot suggested, but I think at th elower levels my strategy should be as follows:
First get all mana traps to hit at 10.1 mana/hit with grade 8/9.
Then boost mana traps to firing speed of 670 at grade 10/11
After that build grade 14/15 prismatics and intersperse them with the R/O mana traps.
And someone mentioned the spectacular effect of Lime/Yellow - LOL it is great to have a grade 14 like that. If your track isn't filled, you can literally see how it sweeps up the monsters until it is concentrated on their entrance gate.
30b in 2 huors is impressive, instead of going for 1t games i might some time try a bunch of 10b games and go for like 1500 wizard level, too bad highscores are dead
it takes me till about wave 40 and 8ish hours before i get to 30b, of course this was a triple so really 10b but 10b still takes me till like wave 35 and 6 huors to get 10b
a grade 8 supergemmed will be a lot more powerful than grade 11 if you supergem it with grade *1* gems, not with grade 6 gems. A grade 15 gem is surely better be supergemmed than combined with another grade 15 to make a grade 16 gem.
About stuffing 100 grade 1 gems - well yes, in fact something like that. I usually start with grade 2-3 pure orange traps against 1st wave, then I add plain dual grade 3 R/O, then I start adding 1-10 grade 1 gems to each of the next grade 3 R/O, then more, until the next gem hits the top speed (222, 533 if in the trap). Usually this gem is enough to provide a real ton of mana so I can turn to anger monsters by grade 4 gems at first, then by grade 7 or more. I usually get a grade 6 red or orange and stuff it with another hundred of grade 1s, to make it hit the top speed of 279/670. These provide the majority of the mana, usually they last until the normal waveset is over my last big game held ~40 grade 7-11 R/Os which were all maxed for speed and specials.
About L/Y - that was me :P but take heed that if you add red to lime, the result is horrendous against the game engine - such gems lag too high.
Hmmm.. I'm going to check out a L/Y/R combo gem... sounds interesting!
The problem with stuffing 100 gems into another gem is that it takes a LOT of time and the gem isn't firing for all that time.
So perhaps I will redo the experiment by seeing how many grade 1 gems go into 32 grade 6 gems and then trying to stuff them all into the grade 8. Oh my poor wrist!
Karsten, be careful with these, they can harm your game and might crash PC... people report they can. But it will be interesting as a trap, indeed.
The problem is in your gems management, you are to not to fire away with your very first gem, you are to set several of normal and above-normal (1-10 stuffed grade 1 gems) traps first, then go farther and farther, again with several consequential R/O gems, and only when you'll have a steady amount of mana from your last set of gems, you may devote enough time for a single gem to get stuffed. Yes, that's a big amount of time, but it really pays off.
I've been able to create a free VM using this tutorial for a XP VM under XP ^^
All the problems I've encountered were solved by reading the page and comments (memory size, file extension, dvd boot).
I've been able to close and restart the VM were it was successfully (auto-save). I've been able to back up the entire VM Folder and restore it (like a saved game, but about 5Go the save O_o ... will dig to check the 'only needed' files).
About the performance, I've just started a game and found it as quick as original. But I've still not tested the game at "full" lag. And I don't know when I'll begin a huge game. But that's great to know that's possible .
About technical issues. I'm not an expert so i don't know how to do with vista, 7, mac, linux etc... If you encounter a problem, it's at your own risk. I've just back up my system before installing my VM. And I'm happy that's working just fine (except for the lag that i don't know how the VM will act).
