Forums → Game Walkthroughs → Gemcraft Chapter 0 - an In-Depth Walkthrough

There are basically 3 "levels" of Gemcraft playing - I divide these up into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Beginner ranges from level 1-30. Intermediate from 31-200. Advanced ranges from 201-1000.

Here are guides complete with strategies - the objectives for each guide are to score the greatest amount of points possible assuming your range of levels.

Beginnerâs guide (level 1 to 30)

Towers, Traps, and Gem Creation and Combination

Mana is the currency of Gemcraft Chapter 0. With Mana, you can buy Gems, Towers, Traps, and you can Mana Pool.
The goal of Gemcraft is to defend your Wizard Point from successive waves of monsters, each wave more difficult than the last. When monsters reach your wizard point, it costs mana to banish them, which brings the monsters back to the start of the map (wherever they originated).

There are 6 controls on the top of the screen. From top to bottom in columns:
Gem Bomb, Create Tower, Create a Gem, Mana Pool, Create a Trap, Combine Gems.
We will be ignoring Mana Pool for now â" it is a skill that only becomes useful later.

About a strategy for killing monsters:

At this stage of the game, it is far more useful to use towers, as they deal more damage than traps. Mix two colors of gems to create Dual Gems, as these provide the best bonuses, especially with Dual Gem Mastery. It is useful to space out your towers a bit so they are not competing for creatures.

Amulets and Amulet strategy

Early on, we need to gain experience, but we are not capable of scoring in the millions and getting experience that way. Luckily, Gameinabottle has provided us with amulets, which help us gain experience without requiring high scores.

List of Amulets that you should get

Do not build a trap â" 100 xp. (experience)
Do not build a tower â" 150 xp.
Do not throw a gem bomb â" 50 xp.
If possible, destroy every building in a battle (What does this mean? It means to use the gem bomb skill to destroy the structures in your way, like beacons, monster buildings, and small rocks. This requires you to throw gem bombs, but gives an extra 150 xp, and allows you to get Lost Amulets on certain levels, which give from 200 to 2000 xp.) â" 200 xp.
Call waves early â" you do this by clicking the upcoming waves â" 40, 80, or 120 xp, depending on the percentage of waves sent early.
Kill 50 monsters in a row â" This is more difficult than it sounds at this low a level â" 60 xp.

Angering

There are also amulets for angering. You anger by gem bombing the sidebar (at low levels, anger with grade 1s). Angering causes an increase in the number of monsters, the score per monster, the monster health, and the monster armor. Beware! Angering can easily kill you and angering too many times can make creatures many times more difficult to kill. Even though the monster health increases slowly, the armor level increases rapidly when angering with grade 1s. The armor level shields creatures from damage equal to their armor level of hit points every hit (so if a tower fires a shot with a damage of 10 that hits a creature with an armor level of 2, the creature will only take 8 damage). A high armor level can make creatures almost invulnerable to damage. Angering with grade 1s causes 5 more monsters to be summoned in the next wave.
That said, there are amulets for summoning 50, 100, and 200 monsters in battle, giving 100, 150, and 200 xp, respectively.

Skills

There are 28 skills total in Gemcraft Chapter 0 (3 are reserved for Armor Games). Here are the four most important skills:

Focus â" the initial starting mana is important, and it will help you immensely. Upgrade this to level 6-7. The only one of the beginning skills that is actually worth the skill points you spend.

Replenish â" An underrated skill; it affects mana gain AND score, increasing them by 40% each when it is maxed. Once you reach level 16, invest as much as you can in this skill.

Dual Gem Mastery â" When maxed, it provides 60% more damage, range, and firing speed for dual gems. This is superior to Pure Gem Mastery, which has less increase to damage, range, and firing speed and fewer specials (certain gem types complement one another).

Forge â" Not as important as Readiness or Dual Gem Mastery, but it complements both of those skills.

Spend points in Focus until level 16 (and maybe Towerbuilder or Trap builder skills if there are poison gems availabe), then reset skills. Maximize the skills Readiness and Dual Gem Mastery as soon as possible; then bring up Focus and Forge.

If you are having problems â" beginner problems often need to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Feel free to post.

Intermediate Guide (level 31-200)

The supergem â" After a point, it does not become beneficial to combine two gems of an equal grade. Why? Because the resulting gem only has 1.5x the amount of damage as the two original gems. However, there is a much easier and less expensive method to building damage and increasing firing speed. This process is known as âsupergemming.â

To supergem, you must take a Dual gem of grade 3 or higher and combine it with gems at least two grades lower. You can combine a grade 3 with grade 1s, for example. The resulting gem has more damage and slightly more firing speed, but with each combination, the amount of firing speed will increase exponentially. The result? After 30-50 or so gem combinations, you will acquire a gem with a firing speed of greater than 200, capable of killing armies of creatures.

The supergem is the basis of more advanced Gemcraft play.

Angering

If you have enough mana and the damage to handle it, you should anger with higher grades of gems. The higher the grade, the more score gain you will get. However, the HP will increase faster with each anger. The good thing about angering with higher grades is that you will need fewer angers to achieve higher score. After a while, the armor of the creatures will become too high to deal with if you anger with grade 1s.

If you anger with grade 1-6, the score increase will diminish over time â" with each successive anger, you will get less and less score increase. However, if you anger with grade 7 and higher, the score will increase more and more. If you anger a wave with a high enough grade, each creature in the wave can have millions of Base score.

The O component supergem

There is a particular gem, the Orange gem, that âsteals mana.â The mana gain from these gems seems pitifully low â" only about 1-2 per hit. However, with supergemming, we can create gems that steal up to 10 mana per hit and fire 670 times per minute! Create a dual supergem that has an Orange component (try level ID# 10 Endurance, which is Orange and Green). You can place this in a tower to deal damage or You will find that once you have a few of these supergems, you will earn mana faster than you can possibly spend it. This is good.

To speed up the process, I recommend clicking on the gem, pressing 6 on your keyboard, and dragging to combine with the desired gem.

Mana Pooling

We have not talked much about mana pooling so far. Mana pooling is the process of spending mana to increase your mana âpool.â The pool itself is not important. What IS important is the multiplier. With each mana pool, you will get 5% more mana and score gain. After 20 mana pools, you will double the amount of mana and score you will get every wave. With a full map of RO supergems (we will talk about these in the next section), it is possible to get a mana pool of over 1 million.

Instead of clicking the Mana Pool key, try pressing 4 or M.

The RO supergem

There is a particular type of Orange component supergem that yields 6x the mana of the normal O-component supergem. This is the RO supergem. The Red component looks like it does nothing in a trap unless you have at least 15 splash (this is not true â" it still can hit multiple targets even if it doesnât say so). The Red component is for hitting multiple targets. With maxed Red Mastery, Trap Specials, Recharge, and a maxed grade 6 RO supergem in a trap, you can have a gem with a firing speed of 670 hitting up to 6 targets at once, each hit stealing 10.1 mana.

Skill points

Once you reach level 190-200, you will have enough skill points to spend in every area. Here are some recommended skills:

1. Red Mastery
2. Recharge
3. Trap Specials
4. Radiance
5. Turbulence
6. Orange Mastery

Do not get Enhanced Pool â" it is a negative value. The important thing about your Mana Pool is NOT the maximum mana â" it is the multiplier that goes along with it. The way the game is set up, you will mana pool 2x less frequently with Enhanced Pool maxed, scoring less than 2x fewer score (if you scored 5 Billion with Enhanced Pool, you would have scored at least 10 Billion without).

How to make 5 billion points

It is possible to make 5 billion points in any mode (although it is significantly tougher in Time Siege and Swarm Mode), but it is better to try to make the 5 billion points in Endurance mode. Endurance mode has less pressure, because Try Level ID#1 (Red, Orange, Yellow) or Level ID#12 (Red, Orange, Yellow, Lime). To make 5 billion points, you need nothing but mana gems. Here is what you do by round.

Round 1-20: Make a few RO supergems.
Round 20-30: Fill the track with as many RO supergems as possible. When you have the mana, anger with grade 7s or higher. You create these quickly by creating several grade 6 gems (SHIFT + 3), then pressing SHIFT + 6 and clicking on one of the grade 6 gems. Gem bomb them by pressing SHIFT + 1, and clicking multiple times on the desired wave. Be careful not to send the wave!
Round 30-40: Mana pool as much as possible. Donât worry about angering too much. Once you have a mana pool of 200K or higher, create full sheets of grade 6 gems (SHIFT + 3) and combine two of these sheets to create grade 12s. These will deal more damage, and be ROY or ROL (if they arenât drag a grade 6 Orange and Red ONTO the gem, combining them), which are gem types that steal more mana and have specials more favorable to damage.
Round 40-80: Anger a ton. Donât worry about too many monsters. If you have a full track of RO and arenât having any leaks (no monsters are reaching your Wizard Point), then you are not angering enough. Anger the next wave more, if this is happening.



Done at level 114 on Level ID#5 Bleeding Edge - it is possible to maximize skill points with any level.

Advanced Guide (level 201-1000)

The RO field â" why more?

If you have so much mana that you cannot possibly spend it all, why do you need more? For the mana pooling. 2x the number of RO gems will double your score through mana pooling.

Gem Transmutation

What do we do on maps that donât have Red or Orange components? Can we still build a good mana farm? The answer is âYes, absolutely.â We can create 3 Orange gems out of 1 Orange gem and 3 pure gems by transmuting the gem. You drop a gem bomb on a row of gems. Be careful not to lose the particular gem component!

The Benefit of Lag

Once you have some RO supergems working in traps, you probably start to encounter lag. This is a double-edged sword, because it can work for you or against you. With enough lag, you have more time to think and perform all the necessary actions. You can also trigger what is known as the Interrupt Cat, where you quickly perform a lot of actions, and Flash does not move frames, instead performing these actions before moving on. However, the Interrupt Cat can be very unpredictable, and you can find your game lagging >20 actions behind.

The Benefit of Leaks

Leaking monsters is not a bad thing. It helps you gain more mana because the RO gems, which would have fired at 3 monsters perhaps, can now shoot at 5-6 monsters that leaked. Leaks are great for maximizing the amount of mana that you can earn. Also, it allows you to anger more â" if youâre not leaking monsters, then youâre not angering enough.

Overangering and Giant Monsters

You will encounter âGiant Monsters.â These are special waves of only a few monsters that are just what the name suggests â" Larger than normal. When one of these monsters dies, the screen shakes furiously. When one of these waves comes, anger it more than the normal wave. If angered optimally, you will receive tens, even hundreds of millions of points PER giant monster.

Estimations of Angering

The formula for angering is Health (HP): increases by 5*grade % Armor: Increases by 25%, regardless of grade Score: is multiplied by (1 + 0.15*grade) / # of angers # of creatures: Increases by 3 + 2*grade creatures (until 20 angers have been performed).

Speedhack and Mouse Recorders

Gemcrafters have effectively used Speedhack and Mouse Recorders to score billions of points. Speedhack is a function of the program Cheat Engine, and it slows down the frames, allowing you to build mana gems at a much more relaxed pace. Mouse recorders allow a set of keyboard and mouse actions to be performed very quickly (some mouse recorders only record and play back in real-time).

Some macroing programs that have been effectively been used:
Axife Mouse Recorder (only plays back up to 3x speed).
Autohotkey
Mouse Recorder Pro 2

Out of these, I personally recommend Mouse Recorder Pro 2. It is free, and it doesnât require any previous programming knowledge. Most importantly, it is fast.

RO__ gems and R__ gems

It is possible to create non-RO supergems that perform other purposes.

The ROL supergem â" Steals 45% more mana than your standard RO supergem.
The ROY supergem â" Steals 25% more mana than your standard RO supergem, but has a larger range than ROL or RO supergems.
The RB and ROB supergem â" a few of these can slow an entire track of monsters by 75% (not 96% like the specials indicate). These are extremely helpful in survival and helpful in making your RO gems more effective.
The RC and ROC supergem â" Capable of holding several monsters indefinitely.
The RP supergem â" lowers the armor of gems, making each hit deal more damage. Very useful early on.

Map #78

What is the best map for a player your level? Where can you rack up the greatest score? The answer lies in Map #78 â" the Last level. Why? You can stop at any time, and the HP curve is slower (you should definitely be able to get up to Wave 150, if not higher). The track is about twice as long as a normal level youâre used to â" it has 103 spaces.

Damage Gems

Once you have a full track, it is necessary to build a damage gem. This is a gem that deals a ton of damage. Make sure your damage gem has a Red component, and a Yellow Component is very helpful as well. The best damage gem is a Prismatic Supergem.
Prismatic gems max out at grade 11 (I have maxed the firing speed on prismatics on as little as grade 8. You combine two grade 7s with a bunch of grade 1s until it hits the cap, then combine those.). Do not build more than a grade 11, as the damage per gem combination actually goes DOWN.

Prismatic gems have completely different mechanics from what youâre used to. The specials are variable â" it is up to you to âalignâ their specials. You align your gems by dragging grade 6 pure gems onto your prismatic (so for an alignment Yellow-Lime-Orange-Red, you would drag a Grade 6 Red to combine, a Grade 6 Orange, a Grade 6 Lime, and a Grade 6 Yellow onto your prismatic). The optimal alignment for dealing damage for a prismatic is Yellow-Lime-(you can put an Orange or Cyan here)-Red. You will place this gem in a trap â" because of the Red component, it deals more damage. This is a gem with 1012 firing speed, hitting up to 5 targets at once, and having a 66% chance of extra hit.

Angering Strategies

I recommend making your total monster health (the sum of all monster health in a wave), 10,000 times the max damage of your properly hued and aligned prismatic gems. Donât worry about armor â" the difference is negligible. Anger significantly less for Swarm waves, which give no experience. Anger significantly more for waves with fewer monsters (8-monster waves). Anger Boss waves a ton â" anger them 5x this amount. Anger Twin boss waves 10x this amount.

100 billion points

Scores this high require a lot of mana gems â" I recommend a full track of 100 on map #78. You can use RO gems until you have 600K mana, at which point you will replace them with ROL gems (if you so desire). Once you have a full track, mana pool to 1 million max mana; then start building your supergem. There are various strategies that you can employ. You can focus on building damage in only a few gems or you can use up to 10 (there is no real advantage to building more or fewer damage gems unless it interferes with mana pooling).
The plan:
Waves 1-20: Maximize your mana farm with RO gems. Then pool as much as possible. Donât worry about monsters unless banishment costs start to skyrocket.
Waves 21-30: Score your first billion points at least by wave 30. Once you have a 600K mana pool, start replacing your RO gems with ROL. Also, feel free to start building your prismatic
Waves 31-40: Continue to increase your prismatic damage. Make sure to mana pool a lot.
Waves 41-60: If your prismatic damage is less than 200K in tower, you will be âmaxing outâ here (not a guarantee). Anger these waves a little more than normal and use higher grades for waves 42 and 54.
Waves 61-80: If your prismatic damage is between 200K and 1 M in tower, you will probably be âmaxing outâ here (not a guarantee). Read the above.
Waves 81-120: If your prismatic damage is more than 1 M in tower, you will be âmaxing outâ here. One expert gemcrafter jumped from 3 Trillion points to 8 Trillion points on his 228 run here.
Waves 121-140: There are likely your last anger-able waves.
Waves 141 and onward: If youâre going for the 228 challenge, continue onward and kill these creeps.



Beating all 228 waves. Beaten without Speedhack, and only with a slow macro. Nowadays, if I were to try this challenge again, I would score more than 10 Trillion points.

Here are some great challenges -
The 228 Wave Challenge: Beating all monsters on Map#78. You MUST NOT gem-bomb the Gem of Eternity.
The 1-Map challenge: Maximizing your skill points with just one map - you must only play level ID#1.
The 512 Wave Challenge in Beyond Corruption - has not been beaten yet. If you are interested, write to the forums on Kongregate. (unfortunately, the way the Armorgames forums are set up, it is impossible to post saves here, because the formatting is messed up.)

Here is a link there: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/23-gemcraft-chapter-0/topics/96894-all-512-waves

Also - please read more - there are plenty of strategies that I have not put here that are available on various forums.

Here is a video I made of the start; the continuation of this is available on the above link to the thread I posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y9mRy7JhOw