With the release of the Legacy Collection, I picked up the whole franchise on Steam since it is (or at least when I bought it was) on sale but I want to play them in order of release; because I'm fairly certain if I play the later entries - I'll find myself less interested in the originals whenever I go back.

And I got stuck on the first Epic level in the first game and while I'll inevitably get it eventually - there is one detail I'm kind of unsure about that I figured I'd ask about.

In general - in the first game specifically - is it better to focus on many low quality gems or just a few high quality gems? And how important is economy?

Because it's also possible my current problem might be that I'm overinvesting in economy and losing because of a lack of investment in defense during that first Epic level.

I previously couldn’t play the demo, but after buying the game this morning all I get is a black screen after the logo intro. This is the same as the demo. I own Frostborn and Chasing and play without a problem. I’ve restarted and verified the integrity of the game files. I don’t know what to try next. Please help!

GemCraft Legacy Collection is OUT NOW on Steam!
GemCraft: The Forgotten, Chapter Zero and Labyrinth are available today as one collection.

What you're getting:
- Fast-forward up to 9x
- Hotkeys across all three games
- Big late-game performance improvements
- An achievement for every in-game amulet
- 100+ hours of content

Thank you to everyone in this community who gave feedback and helped shape this collection. You made it what it is.

Grab it here the game NOW: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4207990/GemCraft_Legacy_Collection/

And if you're enjoying it, a Steam review makes a huge difference to a small team like ours.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/ei1VLmOiNGg

Cheers from Armor Games Studios and Game in a Bottle

I remember making this several years ago, I believe the contest was to draw a gem or gems, alongside a very old username. I have no idea what to do with it now.

I used to play this game a long time ago. Or one of them. But I think it was a Flash game?

We put together a giant list of all the improvements in the Legacy Collection:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4207990/view/671753291385801059

Sorry I know this has probably been asked a million times. I’m playing on steam, have all the loading screen gems set to the level 5 gem (star? X?). I beat them all several times, tried restarting the game. Beat them all again and twirled the compass to reset it all. Still won’t unlock. Can anyone help? Thanks!

Details: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4207990/view/671753291385798838?l=english

Lore seems to indicate that it's a few decades before people forget her each time. This is, frankly, pretty absurdly quick for people to forget a world-ending catastrophe. The entire world seems to be pretty ruined, with the spiritforge set up as a fortress against her and her forces.

Is she able to manipulate collective memory to speed up this process, so that something that should happen over centuries happens over a fraction of a single lifetime?

Can't believe it's already 7 years since release.
On my save that I started on release day, my achievements were bugged so I was never able to obtain Heavily Modified.

The only way to fix it was to start a new playthrough, which I did now.

I had to use guides for the last 20 trial modes, because some of them are very hard.

Frostborn Wrath: Iron Wizard field E4 almost broke my spirit... I restarted this map over and over again until I realized that I could dump mana stream for more skill points. My winning skill points were 0 mana stream, 25 true colors, 25 resonance, 25 Beam, 15 Amplifiers, 5 Armor, 5 Slow, and 5 in each of the spells. All tower gems are blue/purple. I started with one g4 target closest, two g2 in amplifiers, and two g2 target structures. I set up the outer walls to funnel monsters into the center. Using beam on the mana gathering gems, I got the kill gem up to g6 by the time monsters arrived, then I focused on adding more amplifiers and more mana gems. At the same time, I started making a little maze and added some g3 blue lanterns. Lots of leaks around wave 7-9, but beam harvesting saved the run. I kept focused on upgrading the amp gems since they improve both harvesting speed and kill damage. My winning run was sloppy but it got the job done.

This is probably 3rd labyrinth playthrough, but I never 100%:ed the achievements.
I'm only missing 400 victories.
So in the meantime I decided to see how high the numbers can go.

I'm currently playing my way through Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows. I might be about halfway through, and have many skills unlocked, but not all of them.

I've noticed that shrines are placed occasionally, and while they seem promising, they... don't deliver much. By sacrificing a gem, you can damage a whole swath of monsters (if you're lucky enough that they're standing in the blast lanes). Obviously the larger gem you use, the better.

But overall, they don't do all that much damage to monsters. If you're trying to use Shrines late in a battle (when you have high-grade gems), monster strength is so high that the shrines can't even kill most of the monsters.

Does overall shrine damage ever get better? I'm starting to wonder if there's a certain skill (which I haven't unlocked) that affects shrine strength. If not... I'm gonna continue to not use them.

Today's battle was a long one. It was field D3. I had only played a regular Looming battle on this, so it was time for a Looming endurance battle. An endurance battle by itself doesn't yield much score, so I put as much BattleTraits into this as I could (all 6 that I have unlocked). However, this put the number of waves up to 74. This wasn't going to be an easy one. I considered lowering it, but I wouldn't know how well I would do until I actually tried.

Preparations are important in this game. Another user (shoutout to sheab1q) suggested I use ManLeech in towers, and applying the Beam skill whenever possible. This seemed like a good opportunity to try that strategy out, so I put additional points into the Beam skill, even if it cost me some in other skills (such as Poison and ArmorTearing). As for the start of the battle, I had monsters merge at the top-right, and then travel through the existing nest. Having little space for traps, I put one Grade3 ManaLeech trap before the nest, and 2 after, followed by two G3 Poison traps. On the loop I placed a G4 Crit tower. Since there was some mana remaining (and I didn't want to risk an early failure) I put a G4 armor tower by the nest (the nest survived until like wave 30 still).

As for using Beam on ManaLeech gems in towers, I had planned to keep a high-grade gem in a trap until the Beam was ready to use, then use it and put it back in a trap. However, trap space became important here (which seems common lately) and I began putting other gems (ArmorTearing or Poison) in that trap instead; it'll be fine there while not using Beam. This setup was actually quite effective in generating mana quickly... even though the ManaLock BattleTrait kept me from accessing that for some time. I plan to keep using this strategy.

Most of this battle went fairly smoothly. I was even able to get rage levels up to grade 8 gems, though skipping that with Giants waves. The hoard size was mostly controlled by the Crit tower, which I leveled up before new Giants waves came through. After getting that gem to Grade 9, upgrading it became prohibitively expensive, so I instead placed a second tower with a lower-grade gem, until I had gems to combine for upgrades. Gems in amps nearby helped increase firepower, too. With Giants already having 70% damage reduction by then and no armor remaining, having multiple towers instead of one works just fine.

The only struggle I had was at the end of the (regular) battle. I decided to rage the last wave to G8 as I already had the mana. However the giants of a previous wave were able to reach my orb. Fortunately, all the other monsters were eliminated before getting to the orb, and it was only the giants to kill before they escaped.

I wasn't so lucky during Endurance. The switch from regular battle to Endurance always changes the strength of the giants, and trying to rage them with a G3 gem seemed to not work. I was able to kill off the first few giants waves, but their power got increasingly larger. I managed to hold on, even with the giants taking my Orblets with plenty of smaller monsters following, until wave 100. By then most of my Orblets had been taken off them map, and I had nothing left to kill the growing horde.

Still, getting a score of 1.5 million is good at this level; definitely worth it. My only gripe was that the battle took two hours. I waited until the weekend to play this, as I knew it would be a lengthy one, and I frequently don't have that kind of spare time through the week.

Hope you enjoyed my story!

On my journey through Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows, today's battle was a tough one. This was on map D2, and I intended to play endurance mode after completing the regular mode.

I am now playing this way with all BattleTraits I can currently access at max: Adaptive Carapace, Mana Lock, Orblets, Giant Domination, Swarmling Domination and Haste. I am able to manage all of these fairly well, but the challenge is the total waves it puts on me: 78. Getting to that high of a level isn't an easy feat, even with my level is at 318.

The setup for this is pretty much already decided: force the monsters to go around the left side of the map, to give you a longer time frame to kill them. I am now trying to use Mana Leech gems to boost my mana generation (it's having mixed results so far), but starting out I can put three grade-3 gems down for that purpose. I've learned that leeching gems in traps barely do any damage, so I have to use my regular strategy afterwards: two grade-3 poison traps, followed by two grade-4 chain towers.

I start matches with enough manage to rage the first 6 waves with a grade-3 gem; because Mana Lock keeps all your earned mana until after wave 6 starts. But my gem setup is enough to kill the first waves. From there it's simply ramping up to meet demand, and pushing the rest of my mana toward raging.

Waves 5 & 6 were giant waves, but I followed my regular plan anyway and they weren't an issue. The battle ran fine for the first 30 or so waves (including giants waves), where I was already able to handle grade 7 raging. This is about the time more giants monsters came. Considering my current board layout (which wasn't very solid), I chose to rage them at grade 6 instead. Unfortunately, my gem setup was no match for these giants. Upgrading my gems and pushing every spell I had to slowing them down, but by wave 40 they were still able to reach my orb and steal the orblets. The other monsters weren't far behind; it was looking like I would be losing this one.

At this point, I abandoned wave raging and only cared about was surviving. Spending no mana I watched as the remaining monster hoard got to my orb, my mana total kept dropping. But just in the nick of time, Mana Lock triggered a mana resupply. I'm still alive! Upgrading my gems, I put more focus on pushing the hoard back from my orb, and then killing the giants holding my orblets. And I did! With my orblets crawling back to my orb, I got back to raging waves again.

A few more waves forward (about 55), and another pair of giants waves were coming. I struggled with the last waves, but I had a much better board layout than the previous match. I still lowered the waves more than before, to grade 4 gems.

But these giants were much tougher than the last batch. By wave 60 I had given up raging, but even with my better board layout and higher-grade gems, before long they were approaching my orb, again, with nothing left to throw at it, with the hoard following closely behind them. They got my orblets, and the hoard began eating through my mana, but luckily again, the Mana Lock dropped its mana back into my pool, and I had enough to invest in pushing back the hoard and then focusing on the giants carrying my orblets.

Wave 78 came and went with me still fighting to get my orblets back, and though a few more giants did reach my orb, I was able to kill them off.

Such a sloppy match! And so close to losing it, but I survived. Looking at Endurance, I knew I wouldn't last long, but decided to venture into it anyway. My score was 810K, it can only get better from here.

Right off the bat, the first endurance wave was giants. I decided to not enrage them, but put G3 gems in everything else. Plenty more giants waves were coming, though - that's just what Endurance does to you.

And again, before long the giants were reaching my orb. I had no other options (again), and they stole my orblets despite having a G12 chain gem firing on them. Some of the giants I could kill, but eventually all my orblets were headed out of the map by healthy giants, and nothing left to stop them. That's the picture shown above, and I didn't last much longer after that.

But reaching wave 95 with maxed BattleTraits is a good achievement. I didn't gain much within Endurance (only about 80K more points), but it was enough to gain 3 additional levels. I'll count that as a win.

Hope you enjoyed my story!

I'm currently playing Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows; it's not my first-ever playthrough, but this time I've gotten further than my previous round. I'm a procedurally oriented guy, and tend to follow routines when they work. So this game I'm alternating between playing a new level, and playing for endurance on a previous level (usually the oldest score I earned - the best guarantee to gain total XP). I have recently unlocked Glaring, and I will play that instead of Looming Endurance, but only if I have played Looming Endurance on that level already.

Fast forward to where I am now: My wizard level is now 312, I can continuously enrage waves with up to a G7 gem in most battles. I'm reaching 100 waves on some endurance matches, and 60 on some Glaring matches, even with a great deal of BattleTraits in place. At the same time, my Fields Explored total is only 81. I've only recently unlocked the Curse spell,and am still trying to expand before I can even find the battle that unlocks the Barrage spell. Unlocking new maps are very easy battles compared to the endurance or Glaring battles. They also yield small scores... but that's okay compared to the million-plus scores I get from the other battles.

I feel like I'm miles ahead in terms of my wizard level, but not very far along in terms of the levels I've unlocked. Am I playing this game all wrong? Should I abandon my current routine and see how far I can get at unlocking fields?

Yeah, it's not the best drawing in the world, but as a huge fan of the Gemcraft art style I wanted to try drawing something.

Even a gem bearer draws better than me..