Gremlion said
For manafarm better have lime-orange dual, without yellow it kills monsters slower, deal more hits and steal more mana.
About killer gem...
While it is in trap, L-Y-O will give good amount of mana, but for final gem it useless(because it is final, i don't need more mana).
I usually do my runs this way:
1. Y-L dual in tower
2. Summoning+upping grade+manapool till i get 220k mana(for 12 grade gem)
3. Then i do traps with L-O duals near each entrance
4. Upping grade of this gems till it start to kill monsters.
5. Then upping grade of manafarm+summoning+manapooling till i get 224 mln mana
6. Create fullsheet of gems(hide panels - hotkey I, then with D over gem wait some time, combine - will be 27 or 28grade gem(ctrl+click).
7. Repeat until keypressed;
8. now i have tower surrounded by 8 amplifiers with 29 grade yellow in each
9. create a little more gems till i get 32 grade yellow-lime dual. (5-10 target enough), set it to random priority
So, now it's finish of endurance - it will destroy all monsters. I don't need more mana and destroy manafarm gems.
First, for reference, I am currently over Level 2100.
I find it easier to start with a triple (Multiple Damage)+(Chain Hit)+(Shock) to start, instead of the double MD+CH. The Shock component allows you to increase the number of summons/increase hit points by making CH more effective. S compresses the front of a wave so that the gem hits more monsters per shot, and actually slows the wave's advance towards the base, which the double gem doesn't do. (Slow has the same effect, but I feel the Shock gem does it better by stopping the monsters completely.) I use a 3/4 MD, 3/16 CH, 1/16 S. Later (after your CH gets to at least 8) you can bump up the MD component if you want, but it's fiddly and I just don't bother.
The start is vital.
a. Bomb the Wild Gem to generate major mana.
b. Find someplace you can place your tower gem (ideally with 8 free spots for amplifiers) where it can hit all monsters near one entrance. You should have enough mana to create some significant walls. Create the largest single +triple gem you can.
c. Use level 2 gems to summon on Wave 1. (As many as you can handle, which may take a couple restarts until you have an idea of what that is.) How many you can summon will also depend on which map you start. Deep mazes have much higher starting HP, and so you'll summon fewer. I can handle 20K HP monsters at L2000, with a gem that only does 300-900 x2, so don't limit yourself to max damage when deciding what you can kill. Practice. You will find that it will take 5-8 waves to get your gem up high enough to push back the early summoned waves on deep mazes.
d. Favour bumping up your tower gems over your mana pool, once you get a 2.00x multiplier. Summoning more monsters will amplify your mana gained per wave better than the multiplier. You'll be targeting summoning 1000 monsters in a wave, eventually.Once you get a L10 Gem out, you'll increase your tower gems sizes quickly, and the monsters summons just as fast.
Failure to build your tower up fast enough will mean a loss. Summoning too high HP monsters will hit your base. The 'U' button is your friend!
I suggest keeping the tower up until you have upgraded the manafarm gems to at least Level 15 before shutting the tower down, and then you want to increase those manafarm gems ASAP, instead of bumping up the mana pool. Early on, you may accidentally summon monsters with too many HP, so you may have to put the tower gem back to drive them back behind the traps, so do not destroy the tower gems... just put the shooter in an amplifier to the side so you can put it back in an emergency. I actually do this on purpose, too. One trick I used was to continue to summon the massive waves for the tower to kill, but I just pulled out the shooting gem, letting them march over the traps to generate mana, then pop the tower back in place to drive them back behind the traps. Repeat until the traps can handle significantly large waves. (It doesn't take long.)
The manatraps will not kill monsters of anywhere near the hit points your tower will, so you have to kill off an entire wave before switching to the lower HP waves the manafarm will eliminate. A single L15 CH+MG with 6 L12 MG amplifiers should kill monsters with 1.1 million HP, depending on your level and build.
(In point 5, Gremlion is trying to say that you should build up a manapool of over 224 million before building the higher level tower gems to finish the game with. You don't *need* to go that high, but combining together L21 mana gems to create a Level 32 gem is extremely fiddly and time consuming compared to L23. I have frame rate issues, so I push even further to L25 gems to create my final tower. You could push on to L27 gems if you wanted, but I doubt going beyond that to L28 saves time.)
You only need a Level 31 + 8 Level 28's to get through to the end, not L32+L29's. (Which might be due to my Shock component.) You will have about 30 stacked at each entrance, off-screen, but that won't hit your frame rate, and since my gem has an excessive 1800+ targets, that number is nothing. If you only have 5+ targets, focusing on MD entirely, you can't handle this many stacked up with a L31 that can't single-shot kill them. I will try a L30+L27's next, since it's possible that might be good enough. (Yes, I'll generate a second batch into amplifiers which I can immediately combine to get back to L31/L38, in case they prove inadequate.)
There is no need to destroy the manafarm gems. You can leave them there, just in case. They aren't hurting anything.