GemCraft 2 Strategy Guide

A strategy guide for GemCraft Chasing Shadows written by Game in a Bottle that will give you some tips on how to play through this epic tower defense title.

Use dual and triple gems in towers as they are stronger than pure ones, but if you wish to focus only on  a gem’s special ability (poison, mana leeching, armor tearing) make sure to use pure gems, especially in traps.

You can use walls to build a zigzag path for the monsters so they will have to walk a much longer path while being fired at by your towers.

Set your gems’ target priority (right-click or shift-click and drag), this way you can pick giants with your stronger gems, or have your gems fire at mana shards, beacons or monster nests, ignoring monsters.

If you want your gems to fire at a certain creature or building, select it, this will override all your gems’ priorities. You can catch monsters feeing with your orblet or get rid of a beacon effectively.

If you suspect a specter coming (you can tell from the demonic fingerprint of the premonition), store a freeze spell (or keep it charging and buy some time), then, when the specter is closing in on your gem, freeze it, enhance your gem with bolt and select the specter to take it down quickly.

To have a chance against shadows, build several towers around your orb to take down incoming shadow projectiles.

Enhancements work very well on gems in traps, and they don’t deplete, so don’t forget to enhance your mana farm or poison path.

Gems in amplifiers can amplify multiple gems without any power penalty.

If you see a bunch of monsters inevitably coming for your orb, curse them, this will decrease their banishment mana cost and thus save you lots of mana.

Don’t forget to strengthen your orb by either dropping gems on it or surrounding it with gems in amplifiers.

Achievements give skill points, so it’s well worth trying to get as many as you can.

Don’t over-level your skills. Leveling cost goes up fast, but the bonus you get from leveling your skill up doesn’t. It might be better worth keeping your skill points unspent and get initial mana instead.

You can enrage monster waves by dropping gem bombs on them, to get much more XP from the tougher and larger wave of monsters in return.

Use the fragment rarity booster to grant +10 rarity level (up to level 100) for your dropped fragments. High rarity fragments can be hard to find, give your luck a boost and build a powerful talisman, so you can get faster to tougher fields which naturally give higher rarity fragments.

The beam enhancement spins your gem’s hit count, so it makes bloodbound gems gain power much faster.