A few questions

[Kraifwraith tha Ill Krayfish, yo]

So I bought this game a while ago after playing CS to death, I havent even finished CS, but at wizard level 400 with all but the final maps cleared, it felt like the time to move on to the next game. So here I am in this wonderful maze. Wizard level 170ish with only 8 edge and 4 corner talismans left to unlock, and all but rage and core skills unlocked. I'm at that peak Gemcraft moment where I crave this game when I am away.. it might be unhealthy.. anyway

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The most pressing question I have has to deal with poison gems, bolt enhancements, and how the increase works.

The bolt skill reads that it increases damage by 100% in traps, but is this the hit damage or all of the damage? (including the special which is poison which is a source of damage)

I am about to do some experiments to try to suss this out, but figure I might as well get the community's feedback here. I figure its only going to increase the hit damage, but that'd be something if the poison affect is increased too like in CS

[It would appear it only affects hit damage. level 1 trap poison is 30, monsters receiving one hit both have same poison at same point, one has slightly less health..]

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In later rounds armor values get really high, and it seems my array of armor tearing gems is not effective, and the leak-train begins because many of the monsters getting through have full or mostly full armor.

Firstly, what is the calculation of damage reduction and armor? (It may be stated in tooltips and I am blind)

Secondly, is it necessary to remove armor on later waves, or am I supposed to crit them down under the effect of bleed?

Thirdly, how is one to get the maximum armor shred? I have tried free standing or amplified towers, lanterns, and traps, as well as having one or two yellow+purple combines. I usually set firing mode to shielded/highest armor but occasionally leave some at nearest, or least affected, and in special cases giants or swarmlings. No matter what I do, when Im tryna push deep, there comes a point where the monsters are coming through with too much armor, and my kill gems are no longer effective. I understand I gotta learn more about the best time to fall out of favor with the mana gem versus the kill gem, and I understand that in most cases a pure gem is the best, but I gotta ask your take.

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Aside from breaking open stashes, how can I talisman fragment farm? Im beginning to grow tired of having 200% Wlevel as mana and 1300 initial mana, and feel as though some of those talismans need to be replaced with strong damaging bonuses or in the best case skill increases. I can save cores to unlock slots, but I need better fragments. I understand it will take some time still to be able to farm the highest level fragments, and I know I can spend cores to increase the quality of dropped fragments by 10. It seems that there is very little variability in base quality chance across the board (unlike CS), and the only way to get a higher level fragment is to jack up the difficulty with traits. Im currently on the phase of doing journy and endurance clears for exp at 3x-4x bonus, usually with increasing total monsters and wave-stone speed, then I put 1-2 in the others that are least impactful, but im still not getting much in the way of fragments. Wat do?

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This one is silly and I prolly know the answer: What does killing an already opened stash do? Is there any bonus, or is it just to clear up the land tiles it is sitting on?

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Thats it for now.. Thanks if you read all the way through to here.

KR

[Kraifwraith tha Ill Krayfish, yo]

Oh yeah, Also:

Does a critical strike in a dual gem affect the gem's special?

For example yellow/green: crit would give bigger poison value
yellow/purple: crit would shred more armor
yellow/orange: crit would gain more mana

[It appears as if it does not. A critical hit will deal more damage, but the poison value is not increased by a critical hit.. bummer]

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Does spending 100 cores to increase talisman level by 10 also increase the level of talisman's gained through wizard stashes?

This one will be much more difficult to test

It works

[Bill Wilson]

Armor tearing is useless later on since crits apply before armor, enraging gives more health than armor and traps and whiteout ignore armor (pylons do too but their limited fire rate makes them bad later on).

Combining yellow gems with anything else once you have true colors (that is, once crit actually gets good) is not good and results in inferior damage, especially before the crit chance cap is sufficiently exceeded since the crit chance gets reduced as well as the crit multiplier.

[Kraifwraith tha Ill Krayfish, yo]

I have been making fewer yellow+purples, and now only do it to break structures when necessary.

So critical hits will deal the increased damage without being reduced by armor? or do you mean that the value of the crit is calculated first, and so is then only reduced by the armor.

(where as a high armor value would reduce the critical damage to also doing next to nothing by virtue of the value of a regular attack value after armor, hit dmg of 1 b/c armor increased 10 times by a crit will only do 10 dmg, where a 50 dmg hit int his same armor scenario would do many more times damage than a measely 10)

I think its the second one, which makes sense. So one way for defeating much higher level mobs is to get a pure yellow as high as possible and not worry anymore about the armor tearers?

[12345ieee]

Yeah, it's the 2nd.
And yes, pure crit is the best gem for killing monsters once you have all the skills.