Gemcraft

Gemcraft

Strategy Guide

Basic tips:
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How to get the gem you want?
Make multiple gems with one click (press the create gem spell, then hold the 
Ctrl key and press an inventory slot). This gives you many random gems, 
hopefully including a few of the type you need. Combine them if you want and 
place them into your towers. The rest of the gems can be useful to make gem 
bombs. Combine them until you reach a grade high enough to damage the monsters, 
and use them when the situation looks grim.

How to reach the glowing frame score?:
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If you are at wizard level 40, you have a very good chance to get the glowing 
frame score on every levels. For most of the levels, you can do it even on a 
lower wizard level. Try to get many amulets, e.g. build 10 towers, throw many 
gem bombs, create and combine many gems. Click the topmost wave stone every 
time you feel you can handle the mass of monsters coming. Ideally press it 
10 or more times at the beggining of the 
level.
Reaching the glowing frame score on many levels can unlock hidden stages.

What to do when you face a level which seems to be unbeatable
Redistributing your skill points can help a lot. If you have just reached a new 
powerful skill, don't hesitate to put many points in it, even if it means you 
will have less points to spare on your previous skills. 
Play former levels again to get a higher score. This increases your grand total 
and possibly levels you up. To see how many points you have to level up, roll 
over the info panel at the bottom left on the world map, or go into the 
statistics screen.
If you have unlocked a hidden level, don't try it until you have the pure gem 
mastery skill.
See the special tactics below, they can help as well.

Make strong points:
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Place your towers so that each of them covers the longest path possible. place 
your trenches near your towers, so they will give your towers a better chance to 
halt the advancing monsters. Placing 4 towers and 10 water trenches in a small 
area can give the monsters a very hard time getting through.
 
Special tactics:
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Swapping your strongest gems
Make one or two gems as high grade as possible (on longer levels you can make it 
a grade 8 or two grade 7 gems, or maybe higher).
Cover the path with towers, making 3-4 smaller strong points.
Swap your power gems to those towers that have the best sight on the monsters. 
This way you can give these gems something to fire at every time.
 
Make the epic boss run multiple laps:
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Increase your max mana with the mana pool spell, until you have 20-30-40k max 
mana (depends on which level you are playing, the later the level the higher max 
mana you need) and fill it up (don't buy anything during the last 5-6 waves, 
only additional mana pool spells if you reach the max mana).
Of course build your defenses up, with many towers and trenches, shocking and 
armor reducing gems.
Your massive mana reserve makes the epic boss run 4 or even more laps before 
killing you. After the first laps its armor should be reduced enough for your 
power gems to damage it.

Build your defenses against an epic boss:
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You have to build at least 8-10 towers, and many trenches. create armor reducing 
(purple) and shocking (cyan) gems, combine them up to grade 2 or 3 and place 
them in most of the towers. Create a few high grade gems. A strong poison gem 
can also help.
 
Other tips:
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Click on a monster to view info about it.
If you need some micromanagement, e.g. swapping or combining multiple gems, it's 
better to decrease the game speed to normal.
If the game seems to lag, you can decrease the rendering quality in the options 
screen.
Poison damage stacks up and ignores the monster's armor. Having a high level 
poison (green) gem can do a massive damage, and is especially good against epic 
bosses or when only a few monsters are on the scene.
If you plan to use mana pool, use it early, this way you get more total mana in 
the long run.
If you have a good splash (red) gem (or a gem with a strong splash component in 
it), build many trenches around the tower you place the gem into, then call 
multiple waves. The splash damage will give your gem a much higher effective 
total damage, as the horde of monsters, tightly crowded by the trenches, tries 
to get past the tower.
 
There is no gem grade cap, you can build gems of any grade, if you have enough 
mana. However, it's usually better to have multiple lower grade gems. It's worth 
moving beyond grade 7 only if you are facing very heavily armored foes.
On the other hand, making a very high grade gem of components giving a good 
firing speed modifier, can make a turbo-firing gem.
Try to make pure or dual, or maybe 3-colored gems. Gems can't have more than 3 
specials, so if you have a gem with 5 different ancestors, only the first 3 
specials are kept, the remaining 2 are discarded. Pure and dual gems also get 
bonuses to their minimum and maximum damages, as well as their firing speed and 
range. These bonues can be boosted further with the pure and dual gem mastery skills.
If you combine a high grade gem with one of a much lower grade, you will get a 
gem slightly stronger than the stronger original gem. It's a good way to upgrade 
your strong gems a little further, but only if you use gems of colors your strong 
gems already have as a color component. Otherwise you will get multicolor gems, 
losing the pure or dual bonuses.
If you are at the last wave, and you have a gem which cannot reach the monsters 
any more (no free towers), don't hesitate to throw it at the face of the 
remaining monsters. Don't do this though if the monsters are likely to reach 
your tower alive (even sfter the gem bomb damaging them) and coming back for one 
more lap.
The faster you kill a monster the more score you get for it, so it's better to 
build your defenses near the monsters' base.
Keep an eye on the mana bar. if it's filled, all additional mana you would gain 
from slain monsters is lost. Use the mana pool spell to increase your mana 
capacity.
You can buy high grade gems or create many low grade and combine them. The 
second option costs more mana, but gives you a better control on the final gem. 
If you have enough mana and you are going for raw damage, buy a high grade gem. 
Its purity will give it some damage bonus.

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