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[LordBucket]

Gemcraft 2 has finally been released!

http://armorgames.com/play/15760/gemcraft-chasing-shadows

First impressions:
Definite improvement over Labyrinth. Certainly more complicated than Chapter Zero. Seems to be overall a good blend of the features from each of them. Seems more difficult to progress though, because skills cap so easily leaving you with nothing to spend level up points on extra extra starting mana. Not sure I like needing to spend shadow cores to get score modifiers, but presumably they'll be easier to get later on. I usually seem to get 2-4 per level, and the most I've seen is ~25. But I can spend as many as 56 on a single level and I only have two out of nine traits unlocked. I really hope that it's not balanced to require grinding easy levels for shadow cores in order to do those same levels again at higher difficulties. I like the talisman mechanic, but again, shadow cores, and I'm skeptical of the apparent need to spend shadow cores to level talismans that I'll eventually end up throwing away when I get better ones. Also not sure the xp talismans were a good idea, since it means leveling talismans specifically for the purpose of leveling better, which means not using slots for talismans that help you win battles. The game absolutely needs higher shadow core drop rates at higher levels (which it probably has) or some way to reliably grind them (which it might.) It kind of looks like there's a "grind for the ability to grind better so you can enhance your ability to grind your grinding" design here, which is not a fun mechanic. Lots of achievements. So many they're tedious to filter through, though the in-map achievement list helps. Also, I miss the 'highest multiplier' indicator from Labyrinth. Haven't yet found a "do this to win" strategy yet like existed in previous games.

[MoLAoS]

You sir, are a monster. I pissed away like 7 hours of my days off on this today. Got 83 achievements, shoulda had 200 shadow cores but I didn't get the apparition spawn in the try that I won, only the one I lost. Would  have got 70 cores in that one fight. I'm level 26 with a skill cap of 7 and I have 7 free skills and sadly one premium skill that based on being the skill for chain hits is probably amazing.

My amulet is full and I've recycled about 7 pieces. I try to max out all non-bonus-damage pieces. Although maybe having 20-30% bonus damage would be good.

I spent several rounds abusing Orb boosting but sadly anything with a boss monster is not beatable with that strategy. I got 300-700 as the max damage on my orb. I have about 70 unused skill points giving me a massive early mana pool. Sometimes I consider ditching some skills to get even more starting mana. I start with 1200 now thanks to skill points, wizard levels and amulet boosts.

I have 3 traits and one premium trait(I can't use premium stuff since I didn't pay).

I think adding walls and orb boosting really made the gameplay more varied and fun. Even if they have limited chances for application.

[LordBucket]

You sir, are a monster.

Muahahah!

It's ok. I played ten hours straight last night.

orb boosting

If you still have that, don't refresh your browser. It was nerfed to do no damage because people were using the orb damage to pass levels. Was talking to someone earlier who managed 3.5 million on an early field just by maxing all his battle traits then gem bombing his orb with everything he had and putting the game on fast. By comparison, I've unlocked roughly half the map and the highest score I've managed is 100k.

I'm level 26 with a skill cap of 7 and I have 7 free skills and sadly one premium skill

I'm presently level 50 with 13 fields unlocked, 12 skills (plus 1 premium) and a skillcap of 10, 293 unspent skillpoints and 2051 starting mana.

Unfortunately, the game gets terribly difficult later on. I hit a massive wall at H4, so spent 2-3 hours grinding levels and achievements and still couldn't beat it. The game is obviously balanced for people with premium. So eventually I gave up and afk macroed shadow cores to make up the difference. F1 is worth about 200 shadow cores in ~11 minutes with the right macro. I'm now up to +9%, +58%, +43% damage to swarmings/reavers/giants, and without that I probably would have stopped playing by now.


Random info and tips:

 * Micromanaging pause and using bolt/freeze spells becomes just about mandatory at some points
 * Using battle traits also increases talisman drop rarity. So if you know you're going to spend a lot of them on a map, it's probably best to save up the extra and use the rarity enhancer at the same time so you get a higher tier talisman.
 * Haste trait is pretty much an easy 3x xp for 28 shadow cores. With the ability to pause, speeding up the waves is largely irrelevant. Personally I start them early most of the time anyway. But I've been finding it more efficient to mostly not use traits and then periodically go back and use a bunch of them on easy fields. It might be viable to always use ~10 or so for an easy double xp everywhere all the time, but that would mean rarely having leftovers for talismans and things, and given the way the rarity boost works, I don't recommend it. With enough shadow cores on glaring, the very first field can drop talismans of level 21-49 even with only 4 bonus traits. Though doing so would cost 324 shadow cores, which is a lot. But compare for example...highest level field I've manged to unlock so far...N1, has a base rarity of only 2-23. Getting higher tier talismans pretty much means burning through shadow cores, so you may as well save them and burn them on easy levels.
 * Glaring difficulty is unlocked by field 4, but requires the beam skill from D4 to get. It turns the 30% xp bonus from traits to a 70% bonus, allowing you to get a bigger xp bonus for fewer shadow cores.
 * I've been finding reaver and giant damage bonus talismans to be absolutely essential. I started out trying to focus on xp, but it didn't work very well.
 * Do achievements. 1 skillpoint doesn't sound like a lot but there are a lot of them, and they add up. 959 out of 2051 of my starter mana comes from acheivements.
 * Armor tearing is way more important than in previous games.

[MoLAoS]

Sadly I didn't leave the game up after making an Armor Games account to let me use server saves. That's bullshit. Orb boosting was my favorite new thing.

H4 was indeed a MASSIVE pain.

Okay, just got a 38k exp run. One level 7 trait plus some 4s. Went up 3 levels at once. Did not know that it would be that high. Sadly not getting much in the way of high tier talisman pieces.

I have not unlocked glaring yet. That field has really hard missions.

[Nighthawk]

Is there a downloadable version anywhere? I really liked the first couple of Gemcraft games, but I seriously dislike having to get on flash game sites to play them....

[Blaze]

AFAIK, the game's only available on armor-games; Gameinabottle hasn't authorized releases elsewhere. Plus the game itself is site-locked.

You can go directly to the game and skip the site altogether here.

[miauw62]

Oh man, gemcraft. I remember this game. Probably one of the best TD games in existance, right after Creeper World.

[LordBucket]

H4 was indeed a MASSIVE pain.

Okay, just got a 38k exp run. One level 7 trait plus some 4s. Went up 3 levels at once. Did not know that it would be that high. Sadly not getting much in the way of high tier talisman pieces.

I have not unlocked glaring yet. That field has really hard missions.

My highest level talisman is rarity 22. Talisman drops appear to be heavily weighted towards the lower end of the reported range. For example, I tried farming talismans by investing 212 shadow cores into the very first field, which gives a reported rarity of 14-38, and then restarted the map anytime I didn't see a talisman drop. Did that three times, got two rarity 15 and one rarity 18. Over 600 shadow cores spent and none of them were very good.

It's possible I might have made some bad choices on talismans though. Most everything I have is focused on damage boosting. But I have one mana boost that's rarity 15 that gives +74 starting mana. If I had a full set of those that would be +1110 starting mana, which is almost an extra grade four right out the gate. +50% damage sounds better, but fairly often

Game seems really hard to me. Kongregate has some people claiming strategies that I just don't see how they work, and generally insisting the game is easy. I've tried reproducing them, but monsters just don't die. So far I've had the most success simply spamming armor tearing towers. Poison traps seem possibly viable, and bolt/beam spells make gems in traps ignore armor/fire faster, but again...it just seems like it's not enough. And they fail spectacularly on giants. One gem in a trap for swarmlings and reavers and one in a trap for giants has potential, but I think that generally requires more mana than I have to get it set up fast enough to not die.

EDIT:
Ok, just used mixed traps/towers to successfully beat two levels I was stuck on. I'd been avoiding it because poison/trap skills means ~600 less mana to start, but they're very effective against small stuff, and the towers take out the giants. A couple mana boosting talismans might make this much easier.

Don't feel the need to rush to unlock glaring. It's super hard and it doubles the shadow core costs of traits. I've only been able to beat a couple fields with it. It's possible you might be able to use it to get a better shadow core/xp ratio. For example, glaring with 8 shadow cores with 3.6x xp, whereas looming with 16 only gives 3.1x, but you have to actually be able to beat it.

[Robsoie]

Been playing it but not yet gone very far (reached level 20).

After completing Labyrinth (mixed gems were noticably superior to pure ones in it) i thought i would hate this game forever and never play any sequel , but here i am, damn thing going to waste some of my free time again

By the way, if you want to play the 2 first gemcraft offline, they're available from there (along a few more of their past games) , free of charge :
http://gameinabottle.com/games/games.zip

gemcraft 1 had 1 skill locked to armorgames, so you can't upgrade it while in offline play.
gemcraft 0 (the 2nd game of the serie) had 3 skills that were locked to armorgames (but had more skills available than in gemcraft 1)

[Nighthawk]

You can go directly to the game and skip the site altogether here.

Thank you so much for that. I always hated that extra stuff crowding my screen.

[LordBucket]

Gemcraft Chasing Shadows hex map

Shows locations of hexes, spell tomes, wizard towers, normal fields, vision fields, compass locations and the spirit forge. Sadly it does not include which skills are learned at each tome.

[MoLAoS]

I have finished a lot more stuff and I'm level 39 now. Poison traps possess the powers of a small god. How did you get so far without them?

My best talisman is 28 I think? Whenever I add trait it never says that my rarity level is rising. Perhaps I don't do enough?

I usually do one poison trap and one or two towers at the start of each level and slowly raise the poison level plus dropping the first bolt spell on it.

[MoLAoS]

Got a rarity 27 amulet, maxed out traits and +10 bonus on first field. At full ups its 10% damage to reavers, 65mana and 25% slower kill chain cool down. Not that killchains are worth anything. My best by far but seems so miniscule. Maybe stacking %damage on reavers is better than it seems but it doesn't feel like it.

[MoLAoS]

Fuck free to play! These tools want to charge me 5$ so I can access all skills, traits, and hexes. And they'll give me 40000 fudging shadow cores for 10$. I could literally never get another shadow core as long as I play the game and I'll still have thousands left over after maxing a 50+rarity on all Talismans Amulet and basically maxed exp for all time.

Geedy pigs! This game is NOT worth 10$.

[IronyOwl]

Poison traps possess the powers of a small god.

I haven't gotten very far, but this has been my experience also.