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In response to meetad220, points come from 2 sources. You get points for killing enemies and calling waves early. You add a multiplier to these points by expanding your mana pool. The trick is creating strong enough gems to kill waves quickly while expanding your mana pool as much as possible. This becomes much easier with the level 40 skill, it allows you to breeze through most of the levels with a glowing frame easily.
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For those curious about how to play Gemcraft post-Flash with the SuperNova SWF Enabler plug-in, use this address provided below by copying the entirety of it and pasting it onto the address bar at the top of your browser to ensure that it bypasses the ‘GameShell’ issue that have plagued many earlier games of Kongregate: supernova://play/?swfurl=https://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0001/4871/live/gemcraft-kongregate.swf?kongregate_game_version=1214663642 Make sure that your latest installation of SuperNova works correctly, as it will not function if it cannot load games that can work fine without this bypassing of the SWF files here. As a tip for this game, try utilizing different gems and combining them for different effects as, although the early missions are quite forgiving in how well-optimized you are, later missions demand that you know the gameplay mechanics fairly well and will punish players for mistakes much sooner as a result!
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I've been coming back here to play this game for 2 weeks straight so I could finally beat it. I have to say, it really drew me in... there's something really satisfying about continually upgrading my gems and I like how combining them can make potentially useful dual-colored gems. Once I completely beat this, I'll be sure to check out Chapter 0 next.
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I would find a breakdown of the scoring to be very useful. It's difficult to improve my level score when I don't know what gives me points.
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fun game.. but gem combination should be able to be done in the towers.. instead of putting the gem back in the slots and combining then putting back it to the tower
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Fun game, 5/5 but you should be able to combine gems in towers, add something to distinguish level 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 gems from each other (like a number on the gem or something). Lastly, it definitely needs a level with either infinite, or a very high number of waves, so far I was only able to create a pure level 10 gem on 2 levels.
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Ahh...the early days of AG and Kong... a game that refuses to die in people's memory and always feels fresh...or at the least very well fermented.
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If you are having trouble defeating the first 'EPIC WAVE'. Go back and do some of the other levels again, until you have made it up to level 19, to help you level up you should call waves in early when doing levels as this gives you good points. When @ lvl 19, then max out the following: More initial mana, more mana replenish & lower mana costs, put the rest of your skills on more mana per kill. Like if this helps, thanks.
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To get all badges you'll need to cast manapool (M key) during waves to increase your score (and level) faster. As you level up, top out all mana upgrades and keep them that way. Then prioritize gem cost and building cost. Put what's left in gems and mastery (spend more in higher-grade gems and pure mastery) but invest all gem/mastery points in high-grade gems once you get them (put the remainder in pure mastery and lower-grade gems, but place those points in high-grade as well when you get enough points to do so). Use high-grade gems to max out every level you see. Finally, master pure mastery, then dual, then the rest. By then you'll be maxing out most stages first run through, dying only in later stages. NOTE - Manapool will be essential for completing later stages, but if used at the wrong time, it can and will kill you, so be wary when buying (to stay safe, have 2-3K extra mana in waves 25+ when expecting enemies to make it to the hut and 15K near epic bosses).
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quick tip: you can "super charge" your gems. Simply take a high grade gem of your choice and combine it with grade 1 gems of the same color. It will gain +1 to +3 points in min damage (even more on max damage) plus an increase to it's special. At a little most than the cost of making a grade 7 you could have a grade 6 with almost double the damage! was able to beat the final boss in one pass with just 1 of each color super gems!
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This is a great start to an awesome game series, but what's the deal with some amulets being only available at a competitor's site? I left that particular site over their terrible ads, so I won't be going back there.
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Still a classic. But man, I would love an updated version with the keyboard shortcuts from the later editions of the game.
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Here's a few tips.
When going for score, be confident in your gems and rush waves, they can do more than you think they can.
Don't fear letting enemies through, each enemy has a banishment cost, and panicking to kill an enemy could drain the mana that would otherwise banish them.
If an enemy is past your defenses, and you don't have enough mana to banish them, rush the next wave, killing the enemies from it will get you enough mana to banish the enemy.
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1. Hidden levels appear after you get glowing scores on all surrounding levels. It is not one concrete glowing score that will unlock the hidden level.
2. Once you are far enough to have "Pure gem mastery" (level 37) it's a good idea to reset your points and max it up, along with Initial mana, Mana replenish, Lower mana costs and Mana per kill. The game stops being a challenge at that point, basically (well, at least if you don't send all waves at you at the same time).
3. I got the final boss at level 78, you can probably do better than that. Get your mana to 9000-10000 to be able to banish him at least once and pray for enough high level purple gems (I did with one lvl6 and one lvl 7) to get rid of most of his 120 armor level in the first round, so all your fire-power will wipe him out in the second. If all is lost, throw high level gem bombs at him.
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I beat the game! I didn't get all of the amulets but I got all levels at glowing frame including the hidden levels. Once I got high grade starter gem skill I reset the skills in order to transfer the skill points from middle grade to high grade (and put the rest where they were). At the beginning of every level I would build some towers and 3 trenches right in front of the spawn point and put my free high grade gems there. When the monsters were killed I would call the next wave and use the mana pool spell (it increases score gotten) as soon as I could until level 25 about. Then I would build some more towers and trenches and raise the grade of the gems when I could for the rest of the level.
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@genius11 : For amulets:
The level 7 gem amulet is the best one. 80,000 XP per stage. If you get 1 level 7 gem, just merge 6 level 1 gems into it and it counts as 7 level 7 gems for the gold amulet.
Also, if you can leave one monster with a small banish cost at the end alive. So long as it's banish cost is less than the mana you build up as it goes along the route, you will gain mana over time. Turn on triple speed and leave it go around in circles for a while.
Mana builds slowly so you can make towers, gems etc after a while. You might need to leave it a while to get enough to earn whatever amulets you want.
The two biggest things for XP gain are:
(1) Casting mana pool as soon and as often as you can.
(2) Call waves early whenever you can. The earlier you call them, the better.
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Once you get level 40 the rest of the game is a piece of cake.. just respec into starting high level gems and mana on kill and yawn your way through 30 more levels and a couple easy "hard" badges. 5/5 for pre level 40 gameplay though.
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This game is amazing. Also an impressive transformation from this to Chasing Shadows. The last skill, however, was too game breaking for the game to be fun enough. Also the scoring system is bad. It collides with most people's play style and thus makes it needlessly hard to get a high score. Especially early game. 4/5 overall.
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if you have trouble leveling up for the epic levels, try going back to other levels, then fighting every two waves at the same time (1 & 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6, etc.) to do this, just click on the bars that show when the wave is going to arrive. rate + to keep this alive.
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One of my favourite things about Gemcraft: To increase you exp on a replay, you have to do the level BETTER than last time. So your skills are based on just that: your skills, not countless hours of grinding.
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Okay, this is the second game in a row that isn't registering total kills or levels. Just to make sure it wasn't a matter of the bar not showing ongoing progress, I got 540 total kills and it's not registering. The bar for the second badge has not indicated any leveling yet as well.
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Note: Backup your saves. Always. I was at level 16 and removed my cookies, thinking that this didn't include my game files saved on the computer... stupid me, that's what a cookie IS. Anyways, check out the Backup Saves? forum discussion to learn how to protect your game.
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Glad to see I'm not the only one with badge issues. Two different PCs and browsers, and I still have a red plug and no badges... also no "report a missing badge" link on the Achievements page.
I don't think I'm gonna get this week's kongpanion :(
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Great game, even if it is a scary 11 years since I got the badges. The other Gemcraft are even better but that's no reason not to give this one 5 stars.
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This game is starting to show it's age after the dizzying heights of Chapter 0 and the great Labyrinth. The biggest slap in the face is the difficulty curve of the first boss battle. It's infuriatingly hard, especially when you compare it to the relative easiness of the rest of the game.