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Ultimately, I had to rate the game 4/5. I love it, and bought Premium to obsess over the numbers after I'd beaten the game... but the later game is a lot of repetitive work because you can't set the waves to be auto-bombed out of your mana, so you spend a lot of time making lesser gems to make stronger gems and have to stop the game every 12-13 waves to make a mass of the same throwaway gems and bomb the next few rounds X number of times, make more, bomb more, etc. It's a LOT of work for something that could be automated.
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Once you unlock them and feel you can handle it, run every field, even ones you haven't done yet, with at LEAST Armored Only (prevents swarms, and armor is negligible unless you also use Higher Monster Armor) AND Banishment penalties. Also, play with extra waves (if you can handle it, always use the +15 or +20 waves) to get the most out of each new field right off the bat. Don't go back to an old field afterwards until you have enough skill to make a SIGNIFICANT increase over the xp you got from it last time; just keep doing new fields instead. Good luck!
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@Shinigami: You can boost your level by replaying the fields you have unlocked and beating your old score. To improve your score you can change the battle settings at the start ('Armored only' is a good one to get), you can try to earn more amulets during the battle, and you can try to summon more monsters.
This game can be beaten without premium without too much difficulty. Certainly, if you want a challenge, don't buy premium :) The premium content is much more aimed at players who have won the game, but still want to get more from it.
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The only thing I am cringing about is the "endurance" and "giants only" lock.
Endurence, Sandbox, however you call it mode is a big part in almost every Tower Defense Game and "Giants only" is kickass and has been craved by TD players for years but is still found rarely.
I never complain about Premium stuff and understand that this game needed it (I even suggested it about 2 years ago because of the sheer lenght and replayability of the originaln Gemcraft) but it's sad to see that they cut through flesh.
But yea, I'll pay, it's gemcraft after all. I had over 100 hours fun for free what do I have to give you? Five bucks?
Well, at least the price is hillariously low :)
Thank You
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empnu, why don't you say the same to say Legend of the Void 2's devs, that actually have locked a part of the content (location, side quests) with premium lock, while this game only has skills and settings locked, which you can easily cope without? The only option I crave about being locked is Shadow Clash, and even that is post-win.
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"Gemcraft Labyrinth having a Premium edition has nothing to do with enjoying the game and beating it. Premium is only for those addicts who want to rack up hundreds of millions in each field and wizard levels in the thousands… just to say they did. You can beat it easily with less than wizard level 100 playing normally and still have a great time clearing the labyrinth and whatnot." From Johny-o-too immature to address valid criticism publicly so sent it to the critic in a private message.
Hmm, if it was just a raised level cap that would be one thing and more point to spend on skills that would be one thing, but your locking down abilities and battle setting, ergo actual CONTENT from the game.
Premium skills- Banisher, demolisher, violent explosions, magnify, triple gem mastery, powerful shrines, deadly traps, readiness, and ritual. Not exactly a small list, and that's not touching upon the the almost as numerous locked settings.
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Seeing that there's a "Premium option" that require a cash purchase net's this game a 1/5 and me skipping it, ya greedy piker.
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My idea of dropping gems on them was to illustrate a bad idea. Hitting Space takes time; if the shrines' visual timers were somehow clearer... a minor request, ultimately... then I could play by the seat of my pants until my fingers fell off. Realizing you need to hit Space and then hitting it takes precious tenths of a second I'd rather not have to spend. Some manner of clear visual indicator showing that a particular shrine is available the moment I want to use a shrine would allow better moment-to-moment gameplay. Also, I DO play in 3x speed and usually do fine... but that's when the issue of split-second "is the shrine ready?" timing becomes even more important. It's not your call to tell me how to play, and my request is actually a very simple one that I'm shocked the developer didn't think of himself. He fixes it, I give him +1, to 4/5.
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@jonny0panic: I do see your point that the charge time could have been made clearer. However, my suggestions were a lot better than your method of dropping gems on the shrine until it goes off. Furthermore, pressing space takes like no time at all, and if you play on normal speed you should have plenty of time to mouse over a shrine without even needing to pause. If you do find yourself swamped with thousands of monsters all over the screen and you're unable to find the time to press space (or you forget to), you should rethink your strategy because you've gone wrong somewhere.
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@Keylole Checking the mouseover doesn't help when you're trying to play in action (i.e. so swamped that you forget to hit Space to pause the game), because it costs time. Heck, having to think to hit Space to check it takes time in itself. If the developer wants his kudos, then he wouldn't put a broad black stripe at the top of shrines, covering some 5% of the clock animation's time range. I'd like to be able to tell literally at-a-glance rather than stumble through even more processes than I already have going.
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7.329.086.415.743.968.368 i wonder how many times i will have to bomb the wavestones to get monsters that doesn't die from 1 hit....
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drop CCleaner and other stuff that can mess with your PC's files. Turn off Private Browsing. Do a Google search to find other causes of this. Do not whine.
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my game will not save. i've had to restart 5 times now. I've used both inernet explorer and mozilla firefox. neither will save and i've made sure cookies will always be saved from kong.
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@jonny0panic: in addition to what NightReaver said, the shrine itself has a clock-like animation which causes it to light up as it charges (hard to explain in words, but you'll see it in the game with ease), use that as a rough guide to how charged it is. Also, if you do not see the information of the shrine when you mouse-over it, check you have not set your 'Info panels plate opacity' to 0 in the options and also check you haven't toggled panels off in the game (press I to turn them back on if you have). Finally, I would like to mention how the developer has spent so much time and effort on this game that you should add +2 to your game rating, just to show you appreciate his work, thanks.
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One BIG problem I have: it's very hard to tell when a shrine is charged and ready to use. The only way I can find it to drop a gem on it repeatedly until it goes off. This has cost me more than one win. -1 (3/5 now)
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Now THIS version I LIKE! You get to set the difficulty of the room to X degree, depending on your progress... you can defeat a level normally for so much XP, then come back again and again to add various modifiers and make it harder for more! I'll give it a 4/5 to start.
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It took me forever to figure out the skills page comes up when you're going into battle. This is poor design; it should be on the map page.
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Basically what vesperbot is saying: ONLY combine gems of the same grade :) Also remember that when combining same-grade gems your new gem will be one grade higher than the original ones.
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To make a triple gem, you have to make a gem that will have 3 colors in it. You make a fourth gem of your desired "primary" color, combine it with the third of yours, then combine the two bigger gems together.
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i tryed to make a triple gem, but when i try to combine them (3 different gems) i get only a dual gem and a simple lower grade gem.. What should i do, if i'm so noob ? :)
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If you combine gems of lower grades with one of a higher grade, then you get a gem of the original highest gem's grade, that does a little less damage than if you had used the same amount of gems to upgrade the highest gem, (for example, say you have four grade 1 poison gems, if you combine two at a time, you get a grade 3 poison gem with 23-47 damage, 3.4 speed, 4.1 range and +20 poison. If you, instead, combine the last two gems straight into your first grade 2(without pairing them up), you get a grade 2 poison gem with 22-44 damage, 3.3 speed, 3.5 range and 19 poison.)
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Hm, no, I combined all the colored gems, and all I got was an eight component gem that did the exact same damage as a pure, and had 60% of the abilities as a random three of the gems I used to make it.
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@simla: If you combine all the colored gems, you get a prismatic gem. Not very good special abilities, but it has very high damage, reload speed, and range.
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here are powerful gem comboes - (1) poison , chain hit and critical hit (2) bloodhound ,mana gathering and critical hit
thump up if you agree
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Thumbs this comment down as if you do You'll be listening to me which makes me feel special and if you thumbs up you'll make me feel special too so...