Black vs White

[Lulero]

I hear many believe Black > White, and I somewhat agree, but I couldn't get a decent start with maxed hatred without going white first and switching when it felt appropriate.

Anyway here's an illustrative picture with bits and pieces of different screenshots from the same gemcraft session :
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=442188087

Thoughts?

[12345ieee]

You can do some math/in-game experience and discover that at the same skill level (at least up to 60-60) black outperforms white at around g30.

Having both *bound colors on the same gems is nearly always worse than just the best one for that grade range, maybe just around g30 when they are equivalent it might be worth it.

When you'll get to a decent level, like 10k+, you'll see no reason to keep skill points on white just to have a slightly stronger start, as you get to g30 in less than a wave even with pure orange.

Note: the term "grade" here is used loosely, what I really mean is "equivalent grade".

[IceTrey™]

Let me tell you what I've discovered (Or observed,really):

White gems start off strong. (Your mana pool level would be 7-8 usually anyway,thats an instant 7 levels it has over the black gem,which would start at 0 hit levels)

Black gems end up strong, they have this weird curve to their multiplier, I don't know it by heart but its something like:

2.0x at hit level 1
3.0x at hit level 2
40.0x at hit level 10ish
500.0x at hit level 30.

White gems seem to go the opposite way,as it gets harder to gain pool levels,and at pool level 30, an equal quality white gem will give 19xish multiplier.

These numbers are off,as I can't remember them off the top of my head, but give you a general idea, the gains are the same.

That said,here is some interesting bits:

If you mix black (of equal strength) into your white gem when it gets to around 1 million hits, it will get STRONGER than just white alone,no matter if its single color,dual,tri,etc. If you switch to a black only gem of equal hits,it will be stronger than the other two. BUT due to that weird multiplier curve on black gems,they are weaker until about hit level 20 (246,509 hits).

I agree,starting with white is easier, but if you're doing the hardest stuff possible,its better to just put skillpoints into resonance/true colors until you can kill things with a black + yellow gem combined and go PURE black. Never use the white gem,no matter what it will hinder you at wave 200-300+

Now,this is ALL stuff I figured out through trial and error,so I could be wrong. It's just what I've noticed through my endurance runs.

[Lulero]

That was quite informative 12345ieee, how did you come up with that nickname of yours is what is left for me to wonder ;-) So depending on how fast you get to G30 you might want to use white to get started or not.

Edit : To ice, that's also what I was getting at from my own experiments so far. But couldn't quite decide if I still needed white at start or not.

Edit 2 : About the black curve, I did some maths as well, it's not as weird as it looks like. The lvls are further apart from each others in terms of number of hits, if you look at the resulting multiplier from this point of vue it makes more sense. Also don't forget to factor the gem grade as well.

Thank you (edit : both !).

[IceTrey™]

Originally posted by Lulero:

That was quite informative 12345ieee, how did you come up with that nickname of yours is what is left for me to wonder ;-) So depending on how fast you get to G30 you might want to use white to get started or not.

Edit : To ice, that's also what I was getting at from my own experiments so far. But couldn't quite decide if I still needed white at start or not.

Edit 2 : About the black curve, I did some maths as well, it's not as weird as it looks like. The lvls are further apart from each others in terms of number of hits, if you look at the resulting multiplier from this point of vue it makes more sense. Also don't forget to factor the gem grade as well.

Thank you (edit : both !).

No problem! Yeah,all these numbers and tests were factoring in fair gem grade. Also,what wizard level are you? I could tell you if you should start with white or black.

[12345ieee]

15 year old me chose this nickname.
Now nearly a decade later I have this nickname wherever I go.

Gem curves are not weird, they are simple mathematical formulae.
I could write for hours about the in-game math, but I'll just outline the general approximate progression of the two bound colors (grade > 7):

Bloodbound: Mult = baseMult * hitMult * (a number between 1.09 and 1.2 depending on how complex is your upgrade method)^gem_grade

Poolbound: Mult = baseMult * manaLevel * (a number between 1.25 and 1.4 depending on how complex is your upgrade method)*gem_grade

Notice that one has an exponentiation, the other a multiplication.
As such white grows much slowly, but the baseMult is made to have it stronger at low levels.

[IceTrey™]

So it seems both gems are this way on purpose (White early,Black late). Makes you wonder why the surpressing gem exists...hmm. SURELY someone that put this much depth and thought into this game has a secret purpose for this supression gem I just don't know about yet..

[12345ieee]

Nope, poolbound is this way because it formerly had the same growth as the bloodbound and it was obviously overpowered.

Suppressing gem has been buffed.
Two times.
It's still useless.

Don't overestimate the game author on the math department, really.

[Lulero]

Heh. I see. I thought you were running mad at all your usual being already taken and went for this one out of frustration :p I like the truth better.

Anyway, I just tried to ditch white and start with black. Had to restart once to figure a proper early setup and then broke my exp record by 10M. I'm around lvl 3500 now. But it feels there's not much else to see from this point on.

Thank again.

[12345ieee]

Well, after this there is just beginner/intermediate/advanced supergemming, optimal skill allocation and haunting endurance victory.

[BilboCGL]

Originally posted by 12345ieee:

... and haunting endurance victory.

Don't forget hatred :)

[Lulero]

Supergemming? I have some tricks I use to build my starting gems, but I guess it doesn't even pass for beginner level whatever supergemming is :p Do you have a link or something?

Optimal skill allocation is a bit of fun. I built a bunch of sheets with a bunch of numbers to help me with that.

Haunting endurance ... victory? Can you win endurance?

Edit : About hatred, I'm already on max and not moving back ;-) I have yet to unlock haunting though.

[BilboCGL]

You might want to have a look at the extreme end game guide for some recipes, you find also some links there.
And yes, endurance is beatable: 999 waves!

[darthmohawk1]

The highest-level players on ArmorGames can consistently beat Haunting with all settings maxed except Hatred (that stays at 0, please and thank you). On most fields, wave 999 will end with monsters around e67-e70 HP, which is just about beatable. Each point of Hatred after that raises the final value by another e3-e4.

Even at WL 50,000, I doubt it would ever be possible to clear 10-Hatred Haunting endurance. Fortunately, the game only keeps track of what difficulty you cleared endurance on, not what modifiers were applied. I would safely consider the game well and truly beaten if all fields had a "Haunting clear" glow applied to them, regardless of Hatred level.

...You know, I wonder how high of an HP the monsters in Labyrinth would have reached if they weren't capped at 9.999e12 HP in that game. Would it have been possible to beat 1337 waves then?

[Lulero]

So I tried to understand some bits and stuff about gem weaving (supergemming). The funny part was to find out that 12345ieee is one of the main contributors of the Gemforce project where those recipes are from. Great work on that. But I really could have used a short introduction to what this all stuff is about and why would you do it. I'm starting to understand some bits :

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=442447991

[BilboCGL]

Originally posted by darthmohawk1:

The highest-level players on ArmorGames can consistently beat Haunting with all settings maxed except Hatred (that stays at 0, please and thank you). On most fields, wave 999 will end with monsters around e67-e70 HP, which is just about beatable.

I am one of these players and I can tell you, that even I have a look at the end hp of monsters on each map as i.e. f3 is unbeatable even w/o hatred - it goes up to E97 hp...
OTOH I have beaten one or two maps with haunting, hatred=2.
To look for the estimated end hp, check out another 12345ieee-tool: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mfWXh80KGKTaTx-p033c6xeEuH2UoyoWna6SoKKXB2U/edit#gid=1391672033

Originally posted by Lulero:

So I tried to understand some bits and stuff about gem weaving (supergemming). The funny part was to find out that 12345ieee is one of the main contributors of the Gemforce project where those recipes are from. Great work on that. But I really could have used a short introduction to what this all stuff is about and why would you do it. I'm starting to understand some bits :

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=442447991

We have decribed a lot of that stuff in the extreme end game guide with (hopefully understandable) pictures on different combines and speccs:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=434889753