Guide For Newbies

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Im not sure if theres a guide thread or something but if there is can you move it to the correct place??
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£'s GemCraft Zero Gem of Eternity Guide
Basic tips

Gems
Dual gems are superior to pure gems, they get larger bonuses to their damage, range, and firing speed. This can further be improved with the Dual gem mastery skill.

Pure gems have the strongest special abilities. If you combine two gems of different types, you get both specials but with a decreased power. So if you want to use the special ability of a gem, combine it only with gems of the same type.

Try to avoid making gems containing more than two base colors.

If you have all 8 gem types available, you can create a prismatic gem. It will have all 8 abilities (in a very small portion each though) and some bonuses to its basic values.

Towers
Place your towers in positions where they can cover the longest path possible.

It might be worth placing a tower at one square distance from the path instead of right next to it.

Look at the range indicator (yellow circle) of the inserted gem to see how far it can shoot, and place it in a tower that can give it the longest path cover.

It's better to have more towers with somewhat weaker gems in them, than a few towers with stronger gems.

Destroy misc buildings to place towers at key positions

Traps
Place a trap near a group of towers and place a slowing gem in it, this way the monsters will have to crawl by the towers for a longer time, taking more shots.

Place a trap right next to an other one, place a slowing gem in the first trap and a mana gain/armor reduce/shocking gem in the second one. You can leech more mana from the slowed monster or have a greater chance of shocking/piercing it.

Monsters
Click on a monster to view info about it.

Monsters take more and more mana each time they reach your wizard towwer, be careful with hordes of fast monsters.

Wave types
There are five different monster waves:

-Normal

-Armored (slower, but tougher, can have a very heavy armor on harder levels)

-Runner (weaker but much faster)

-Swarm (lots of weak and fast monsters that take only a small mana when reaching your wiztower - they can be dangerous though by attracting your firepower and letting the tougher monsters pass through)

-Giant (a few strong and armored monsters, a great source of mana but can be very dangerous)

Waves can come from the main monster base, and in addition from minor monster bases, via paths from outside the area, or both.

The wave stones on the left side of the screen show you what kind of monsters will appear and where they will arrive from.

Minor monster bases
Sometimes it's worth destroying the smaller bases, but not always. You might want to get ride of a minor base if it's too near to your wizard tower, or if it'c connected to your wiztower with a path otherwise not used, and so you would have to make additional towers and gems to protect your flank. It's not worth spending gems on destroying a minor base if it's far away from you. Keeping a minor monster base can be especially good if it is far from both your wiztower and the main monster base, because it can make the coming waves more loosely spread, giving you more time to kill the monsters one by one.

If you destroy a minor monster base, the monsters that would come out of it will be "redirected" to the main monster base.

Beacons
Don't destroy a beacon unless necessary, especially at the beginning of the battle. Use your mana to build up your defenses first.

Watch out for shield beacons. If invulnerable monsters drag your towers' attention, all the other monsters can slip through your defenses unharmed as well.

If there are healer or shield beacons near your wizard tower, you might want to build your defense line closer to the monster base so that the monsters will have to get through your defenses before being healed or shielded. You can kill all monsters coming in the first waves so the beacons won't be any help for them, and you can wait with destroying the beacons until the later waves when more monster will get through.

Mana management
If you plan to use the mana pool spell, use it early, this way you get more total mana in the long run, thanks to the increased mana gain multiplier.

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.

How to get the gem type you want
First, look for what types of gems you can except on the level. You can see it when you roll over a level icon on the map.

If you want a gem type that is not one of the available ones for that level, learn the mastery skill for that gem type, this will give you low grade starter gems (up to a grade 2 and a grade 3 gem), which you can use to tran****e other gems thus making more of that type.

To tran****e gems, you need a pure gem of the type you want to make more gems of. Place 2 or 3 pure gems of no higher grade in one row in your inventory, Then select the gem bomb spell and drag the gem you want to "make more of", on the other gems. The gem will blast and tran****e the other gems, giving you up to 3 gems of the same color instead of 1 you initially had.

Make lots of grade 1 gems to have a great chance of getting the gem type you want. You can go on from there by tran****ing.

if you can't beat a level and tried multiple times:
-Reassign your skill points. It can make a great difference. Different levels and battle modes may require very different skill configurations.

-Level up by going back and beating previous levels in new battle modes - the XP you gain in each mode adds up. Look out especially for highlighted modes which give 3x XP.

-Level up by going back to an early level and summoning more monsters - this way you can reach a much higher XP for that level/mode.

Advanced tips

Poisonous path
You need some green gems for this, so it works only if the level gives you some or if you have learned the poison mastery.

Create up to five green gems, grade 1 or 2, no need to go higher. You can tran****e other pure gems by throwing your existing green gems on them as gem bombs.

Place traps at a distance from each other so that the poison effect from the first trap lasts until the monster gets to the next trap.

Put the green gems in the traps and you are safe for the first dozen of waves or even more, depending on the level you play.

Use this tactics on easier levels where monsters have so few hit points that most of them won't get past the traps alive. It can also be very useful in swarm mode (with lots of weak monsters) and carapace mode (because poison ignores armor).
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Rest wont fit!!! (next post)
-£