GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath

GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath

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On the cost and effect of Gem level and color.
By kohinoor
Match behind gem level and mana cost.
And the mathmatically proof why blue gem suck so hard.
   
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The basic

Thanks for Trial, we all know how much gem cost with out any skill :

60 for G1 240 for combine.
So a G2 gem cost is 60+60+240=360

We can see clearly, the cost of gem is mainly it's combining cost.Even if you trade you soul with forgotten for a 0 cost gem.After a few grade up, it's cost will rising and end up preety much same as any other gem.

Classic demon shenanigans.

With every grade up,the cost of gem is nearly double.
  1. 60
  2. 360
  3. 960
  4. 2160
  5. 4560
  6. 9360
  7. 18960
  8. 38160

Or in formula : Mana cost= 2^(G-1)*30+(2^(G-1)-1)*240
The cost of power
Every gem has 2 power:
it's raw DPS
and it;s special color related power.

In this guild i will focus on special color only. Becouse the raw DPS are very close among 6 color.


Because with each grade,the cost is double,we hope the special power is also double to keep up.
But there is no such thing as hope.
Take look at purple gem

the armor it reduce is 2/3.8/7.22.Only a 1.9 time of increase.
With every grade make it 2 times more cost,it only reduce 1.9 times armor.

The growth rate is only1.9,as for green it's 1.8,and for orange is 1.38.

growth rate is define as:

Gem-power/ Gem-power of previous grade
If this number is the same in all grade.
then this number is it's growth rate.


Blue is a ltlle bit speical, as agentronin316 kindly point out, a 10% slower means monster take 111% more time to reach orb. (1/0.1=1.11)

We should consider the power of blue gem in term of time increase rather then the slow percentage.
After this correction we can see blue still sit in the bottom.
Time mob takes to reach orb only increase 103% with each grade.Compare to Purple's 190%.
The color difference
Some wizard attempt to compare the power between different color,may want to draw a plot indicate the power and grade of each gem.


well this plot can tell us very little thing.

It's mainly because the magnitude is so different.

To unlock the arcanic secret of gemcrafting,we must seek guidence from math,more specifically Logmatiic function.
Since we are discussing doubling, i am using base 2 for log.

log(gempower) in base 2
I add in the imaginary hope gem(black),as reference.It double it's power every time it's cost double.



this is much better now,then i move all plot vertically a little so they all line up in (0,0)



Now the arcanic secret is well exposed.

In term of power growth rate, the colors order are :
P>G>O>Y>R>>>>>>>>B

In early game,under wizard lv 100 Green and purple are in deed powerful and useful.
They have the best power growth rate,Nearly 2.
But after beating final boss and enter the post-game,they become less useful.

Also in lower WL (before you can create L12 gem), dual color has better raw DPS .In lower level the raw DPS bonus out weight special color bonus.But after you can create L12 gem and start to work the way up to infinity, special power,especially mana leech is much more important.

The orange need a lot of skill point and set up to work,it grow slower but the return is great it gives you more mana to play with !
If you set up correctly you should harvet 10~1000 more mana then killing monster.This is op. This why special power is the most inportant aspect in post-game.
Once you can create LV 12 gem and set up trap-amp for mana farm, Orange is the best color to invest you mana.
New wizard should try if they can set up mana farm. The color choice go thru a Paradigm shift after you can harvet mana from monster.


Yellow gem has very low growth rate, you need a good mana income to feed it up.
A 100 times critical damage is identical to ignore armor.So player in post-game normally just use Y instead of P becouse they can afford the more expensive Y gem with op mana farm.
FYI,the crit rate is cap at 80%,but the crit multiplier has no cap.

Red gem has second lowest growth rate only 1.16, i never use it other then trail.

Blue is slow.They grow up and up grade up slow.In most of time a 40% slower rate is all you ever need.It's really not worth to upgrade more then that. Just freeze them already.
Blue also has the best raw DPS, but i doubt any one will use blue instead of Y as their killer gem.
17 Comments
CrazyJ 22 Sep @ 11:06am 
As is typical with guides like these, the information is interesting and useful to a lategame player, but needlessly complex for a newbie.

My advice to any new player is to juat have fun and spam yellow/purple gems until your skills get high enough that pure yellow does more damage and you can stop caring about armor.
{ST}Immortal Nub 20 Mar, 2022 @ 2:18pm 
"New wizard should try if they can set up mana farm. The color choice go thru a Paradigm shift after you can harvet mana from monster."
I'm a new wizard right now. At this level, the mana gained from mana leech is wasted on gem upgrades trying to play catch up. I know from other gemcraft games that it's crucial in the late game, but it is currently a waste for me. I'm level 64.
{ST}Immortal Nub 20 Mar, 2022 @ 1:40pm 
When I am crafting gems, I always make them a dual color for the extra damage, but then I only feed pure gems into it for either the special effect or stat growth of the gem, depending on what I need.
{ST}Immortal Nub 20 Mar, 2022 @ 1:27pm 
"10% slower means monster take 111% more time to reach orb. (1/0.1=1.11)"

This is not correct as the answer to this would be 10, or 1000% of the time to reach the orb (or 900% more time). Also consider that if you had 100% slow, then your answer would simply be 1.0.

This is the formula: 1 / (1-x), where x is the slow factor. An undefined case would have to be treated as infinity. If you throw in some sample values; 0%, 50%, 75%; then you would expect to get regular time, twice as much time, and 4 times as much time. So this formula I have presented is actually more accurate for determining how much more time you have to kill something.
maximumcool 29 Dec, 2020 @ 8:44pm 
I have to join other comments in saying that you've overlooked a lot of factors and generally this guide will just confuse new players but it's nice of you to try and share some ideas with others.
Pollo 14 Feb, 2020 @ 11:01pm 
You've forgotten to factor in the increase in firing rate. A level may raise a special's power by 1.9x, but when the firing rate increases by ~18% this makes it a net 2.24x increase.
12345ieee 28 Jan, 2020 @ 7:28am 
Illuminating guide, thank you for it.
54x 27 Jan, 2020 @ 3:14am 
This guide doesn't get that, other than green and purple, all the gem types make each other more powerful, and all have situational uses throughout the whole game. Green and purple are only good when you're getting started and facing high armour mobs, because they scale abysmally against rapidly inflating HP and armour.

I'd highly recommend re-writing the whole thing from scratch without trying to compare apples to oranges, or just deleting, which might be the most straightforward way to avoid confusing people, frankly.
Azzy 26 Jan, 2020 @ 11:58pm 
This tracks the visible value and ignores the actual usefulness of a gem. Blue tracks more linearly, but when you slow something 80%, that's 5x more damage you'll be able to do. It'll be on a mana trap for longer, meaning more mana.

Red gems, 100% extra damage means doubling all other damage sources, and you can get 100% with no skill point usage and just a grade 15 in a lantern.

Green scales so well because simply put, it trails off late game. As in it is completely useless compared to the exponential enemy hp growth. And purple, again late game the exponential growth of a yellow gems damage output (its rising base damage multiplied with its rising damage multiplier) laughs at armour. It doesn't even acknowledge armour exists.
kohinoor  [author] 26 Jan, 2020 @ 12:19am 
Thanks for the sugesstion. I fix some place.Add some different in power and special power DPS etc..... As for the blue gem,sorry for the trash talk. Blue are not trash,they just a little special gem.