In this GemCraft – Legacy Collection guide, I cover the basic concepts, tips, and best early game skills to help you progress through the game. I explain why dual gems are better than pure gems, why poison gems become less useful, and which skills I recommend prioritizing to gain EXP and prepare for the mid game.
Basic Concepts and Tips
GemCraft is one of the best games in the Tower Defense genre and, in my personal opinion, my favorite.
At first, the game may seem simple, but as you progress, you will eventually hit a wall where you cannot complete the next maps or leveling up takes too much time, making the game boring or frustrating.
Generally, GemCraft games are divided into three stages depending on your progress: Early Game, Mid Game, and Late Game. The early game is always quite easy and serves as a tutorial to teach you the basic concepts.
Mid game begins around level 25–30. This is where many players start struggling because they do not know certain basic concepts or strategies. This guide focuses on explaining some of these concepts.
Dual Gems Are Better Than Pure Gems
Pure gems are rarely used throughout the game because dual gems are generally stronger and have two effects at the same time. Although each effect is less effective individually, the synergy between them is much more worthwhile than using a pure gem.
The only example of a pure gem that comes to mind, even in the late game, is the blue gem (slow).
Focus on Completing Levels, Not on a Perfect Run
At such a low level (below 30), there are not many strategies you can use apart from placing a couple of dual gems and completing all the waves.
At this stage of the game, it is more efficient to complete maps as quickly as possible in different modes. Every five different victories reward you with an amulet that gives you a fixed amount of EXP, not points added to the total of that run.
This should give you easy EXP to get out of the early game.
Poison Gems Are Useless in Almost the Entire Game
These green gems are ONLY useful at the beginning of the game, where you can place them in traps to easily kill the first waves.
The problem is that their damage does not scale linearly. Instead, it increases with diminishing returns, while monster HP continues to scale. I cannot say whether monster HP scales linearly or exponentially because I do not remember the formula.
Spending points on Pure Gem Mastery, Poison Mastery, and Trap Specials just for this purpose would be a waste, and even then, poison gems would eventually become useless.
Skills: Which Ones to Use in the Early Game
Assuming you are in the early game, you should be below level 30. This means you will not have many points to distribute across all the skills.
Skills initially cost 5 points (you gain 5 points per level), then their cost decreases slightly before increasing again, with the final two levels costing 5 and 6 points, respectively.
So, where should you spend your points? Below, I show an image of the skills marked in green for the highest priority and yellow for optional skills based on your preference.
Focus: YES, ALWAYS
Focus is practically the most important skill in the entire game and the one that gives you a boost right from the beginning by providing more mana at the start of the run.
You need to understand that monster difficulty increases EXPONENTIALLY, so it is better to have a solid foundation from the beginning. Additionally, during the early game, you do not have many ways to generate mana apart from killing monsters.
Replenish: YES, ALWAYS
This skill provides more mana generated per second, but also more mana for each monster killed and more POINTS for each one, which translates into more EXP.
This skill is another important factor that will help you progress throughout the game.
Dual Gem Mastery: YES, ALWAYS
As I mentioned earlier, dual gems are more effective than pure gems. Making them even more powerful means that all the gems you use will be stronger.
What if you use Pure Gem Mastery instead? It costs exactly the same, and you would be wasting a 5% bonus to the stats. It is not worth it.
Flexible Pool: ONLY IF YOU ALREADY HAVE FOCUS MAXED OUT AND HAVE POINTS LEFT OVER
Mana Pool is a power you use during a run to increase your maximum mana, mana gain, and the score you earn from killing monsters. It is one of the most important things for the mid and late game.
Why not give it much importance now? Because the spell is quite expensive, and most early maps do not have more than 20 waves.
That is a lot of points for very little benefit during the early game. Replenish will give you more mana and points at this stage.
Forge: ONLY IF YOU HAVE POINTS LEFT OVER
Forge reduces the cost of all gems and the cost of combining them.
It is not bad, although it is not as important as the skills mentioned above. Later, when you play maps where you need to create many more gems, this skill becomes increasingly important.
Enhanced Pool: NO, NEVER
This skill increases your mana limit. Not only is it a useless skill, but it also has a negative effect that I will discuss later in this guide.