Third pylon stage
I'm stuck on the third pylon in Gemcraft Labryinth. I'm level 45 as a non-premium player.
I've tried a couple of different strategies; both end up with me reaching around wave 40, and then being stuck -- spending 99% of my firepower on monsters (or huge monsters) and eventually dying.
- Wild gem (red/yellow) with swarm only, and a concentration of yellow/blue for the pylon
- Yellow/blue or orange/blue or yellow/orange towers clustered around 1-2 amplifiers
I have a feeling that using the wild gem on swarm-only will be easier, since it takes less towers to hold back the monsters; but I still can't get over ~10k (50%) of the crafting done. Should I focus on fewer, high-level towers or more, low-level towers that focus on structures?
Solution 1:
For future reference, here's the complete strategy I used to beat this.
Wizard level 49: I beat all of the other levels on basic settings; I did some grinding, like beating the first 3-4 levels with all the difficulty multipliers (more than 6x experience) and beating some easier levels with a few additional settings.
I also benefited from a lot of journey amulets; you can beat any level to keep adding to the counts for these.
My skill distribution was:
- Focus: 30
- Replenish: 30
- Forge, construction, multiple damage, slowing, dual gem: max
- Resonance: 11
- Recharge: 3
- Radiance: 3
My gem strategy: I built several gems the same way: combine level 1 of slow + multiple damage, then keep fusing with the next level slowing gem. I used level three gems (the squares), with some ascending to level four by the end.
My tower strategy: I placed level three gems in all the starting towers; I focused a cluster of towers around an amplifier in the bottom-left corner of the map -- three towers touching the lake, to charge the crafting pylon, and a smattering to cover enemies. I also placed a tower directly to the left of the magic orb.
I placed towers as needed, mostly in U-shaped paths to maximize surface area covered, usually lone towers.
I also had a charged bolt shrine next to the magic orb; I used it once or twice, mostly on giant monsters.
Near the end, around the second major wave of giant monsters (11k+ HP), I realized I wouldn't make it; since I had 16k+ of the orb done, I:
- Paused
- Switched all gems to target structures
- Built a couple of towers in the top-left quadrant, dupe some gems, same settings
- Kept summoning the maximum wave of monsters I can see
Although my game started lagging like crazy, I did manage to finish off the last ~3k of charging before the monsters breached my tower. I had to use mana pool a few times to sustain the huge amount of mana.
Edit: Here's a screenshot of my second victory, with similar skill distribution. The shrine was unnecessary, as was forcing early waves -- I easily made it.
