Early game mana farm

[hbarudi]

I am wizard level 180 and would like to know how I can get xp enough to get lots of levels for a chance to get the rest of the achievements in this game that need the higher level. So how to do that first mana farm for millions xp which field should I use for that endurance run? How to set up the mana gems, kill gems, skills, traits, and so on?

[tuxino]

Here are the skills I used for a very early-game mana farm at level 110.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2106757169

With only Overcrowd maxed, this gave me 266K XP = 7 levels.

If possible, I'll set up the mana farm at a corner. 5 traps, and one amp inside that can boost all 5 traps, and so that I can hit all the traps with freeze and whiteout. Diagonally behind the amp, is a lantern with slow that covers the trap area. Aggressively upgrade the trap gems. When the upgrade cost becomes higher than the cost of an amp, I'll add one to each side, so all traps have two and the corner has three.

Somewhere behind I start with a single tower with a pylon to catch any stragglers, that are not killed by the farm. Later this may be amped or replaced with traps. Don't sweat it if some leak through.

You can add other traits too, but I don't have too many available now. Don't use haste - instead enrage more. A couple levels of Insulation is removed by the mana farm. Don't use Corrupted Banishment until you're sure that you wont leak. Swarmling Domination is good in moderation = more monsters on farm.

For maps where Critical Hit is available (or if you, unlike me, have the skill) the trait that gives massive amounts of armor to monsters is also good. If you use a kill trap, you don't care about armor.

Oh, and as you can see, I didn't yet have the Fury skill at the time. If the purpose is getting XP, I'd put about as much in it as I put in traps.

Final key point: spend as many of your skill points as possible, leaving only enough that you can comfortably build the starting farm. For me (with my talisman) this is around 2000 mana from remaining points.

[freeriderprivat]

I made the first and the second level on the map nearly 100 times, to farm the talisman parts and build it up. This made a lot in my opinion.

[Aglet Green]

Originally posted by freeriderprivat:

I made the first and the second level on the map nearly 100 times, to farm the talisman parts and build it up. This made a lot in my opinion.

That's a completely good and viable strategy. In a world where many of us are just sitting around passing time until the epidemic pandemic is over, there's no need for efficiency. Allow me, however, to tweak it just slightly:

Don't waste time in the "W" fields. You'll find plenty of jigsaw puzzle pieces just doing all the levels, even if you do just once each on Trial, Journey and Endurance. Plenty are in wizard stashes, and many more come floating around from monster kills.

However, should you have bad luck and end up with only 63 out of the 64 shapes, or you need more Shadow Core, or have some actual particular reason to farm, then yes, grind a level, but only if you have the following conditions:

First, make sure you have Ritual. This will allow you to get enough Shadow Cores to buy your talisman puzzle spaces and to upgrade shapes and change shape pieces.
Second, make sure you have Seeker Sense.
Third, make sure you are only grinding for pieces that are level-5 or above. This will allow you to have a good Talisman, get the achievement "Have every piece at level 5 or above," and will mean that you don't ever have to worry again until you are grinding A-1 and other such fields for end-game Talisman pieces.

Pay attention: the same level will have different level Talisman pieces available depending on where you pick Trial, Journey or Endurance.

==============================================================

To answer Hbarudi:

I don't know. When I was under WL200, no matter how perfectly I followed the various guides and advice, I found myself constantly hamstrung by the fact that my Endurance waves ended at 30, 35, 40, etc. Until you have at least 50 to 100 waves more in Endurance than you do in Journey, you just aren't going to see yourself skyrocket. Though you will indeed keep gaining levels, even if it's just 10 or 20 at a time. For me, things really opened up once I hit WL250.

[tuxino]

A followup a few days later. I did a new run on I4 to get my last remaining skill. Here's a screenshot from near the end. I started as described in my previous comment, except I didn't make a pylon this time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2112661261

Once again, it wasn't particularly intended as an XP run, but I ended up getting 1,509,579 XP.

My skills this time were

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2112674488

I forgot to put points into critical, but I managed to complete the run anyway.

[lfindlay]

You may want to read the new Extreme End Game guide on the guides tab. Not that most of it applies, but the simple mana gem combine using 13 g1 gems might be worth using to see what difference it makes.

[hbarudi]

Good replies so far, but as I was aggressive on stashes for the first playthrough which is on chilling difficulty, I have all skills and some unlucky talisman things happened to me:
Yes I have all shapes except one that just does not want to drop as a low rarity that I can sacrifice to shapes.
I got 2 over level 90 puzzle piece for one single corner from the stashes... This means I have to choose which one I will use and have to unfortunately sell the other one.

[12345ieee]

Originally posted by lfindlay:

You may want to read the new Extreme End Game guide on the guides tab. Not that most of it applies, but the simple mana gem combine using 13 g1 gems might be worth using to see what difference it makes.

It'll make things worse, as the guide states:

Originally posted by EEGG:

Non-standard combines sacrifice fire rate for specials/damage, because fire rate is capped anyway.
Therefore they aren’t worth it before you can easily reach the fire rate cap with amped gems in traps (around WL 5k) and even then aren’t really needed until levelling progress starts to get too slow for your liking.

[hbarudi]

Replaying on frostborn and reached this point, but slowly grinding wizard levels by doing every field with over crowd and haste traits maxed and angering with a grade 1 gem. As for iron reached the point where it is too difficult to do normally for n1 and o1 spot. Really wish for a mid-end game guide instead of just extreme end game guide.