Lily Plays Gems

[lilyplaysgems]

I have been working super hard on getting things traited, and have failed to update here! Time flies when you’re having fun?

I did a couple of quick videos to show some teams I’m using frequently right now. I can’t take credit for the builds, as suggestions come from my guild as well as others in the GoW community. The community of this game is awesome, and it’s great so many are willing to share their experience and knowledge!

Ok so, first video: 

Elspeth / Bombot / Black Manacles (Mechanist) / Troglodyte

It took time to get this properly traited since for it to work to its full potential Elspeth, the Mechanist class and Troglodyte need to be fully traited. It is very much worth the effort! Many matches are over without the opponent even getting a turn. Others are done after one or two turns. Including getting in and out of battle, matches can take 30 seconds or so! This is one of the fastest and simplest ways to farm Arcanes that I know of. There isn’t really much thinking involved, so it’s good for multitasking as well. :P

Any Soul Generator + 3x Necromancy-traited Troops

This is how one gets ALLLLL the souls. Right now, I’m using The Dragon Soul / Kerberos / Acolyte / Flesh Golem, but there are many possible variations. This team isn’t as fast as the Elspeth/Bombot team for overall match time, but I am getting 250 souls per match vs. 10, so the additional time is worth it if you need the souls. I would like to get Pharos-Ra traited so I can try out his Necro Master trait, but I don’t know if using him would be faster or not due to his higher mana cost. Something for future testing!

Second video:

Crimson Bat / Princess Elspeth / Penguin x2

This is another super quick explore / arcane farming team that doesn’t require a specific class, so if you’re using something other than Mechanist for something else and don’t want to switch, this team works about as well as the Elspeth / Bombot team. It’s also true damage based rather than based on Bombot’s shield, so if you’re farming in a kingdom where troops have bigger shields, it might be better.

Next steps for me:

As you might guess from the videos, I’m trying to finally get Mercy traited so I can try out some of the teams people are always raving about! I would also like to get a Psion team up and running, since it is such a pain to fight against. It’s funny how some of the best troop / team ideas come from teams you hate to fight! :P

Until next time!

[lilyplaysgems]

This Week’s Agenda

All Divinion troops gain +25% to all stats, all Centaurs gain +25% to all stats, get an extra 500 gold in PVP for using a Centaur team, and the “Ship Shape” event (win in PVP to help Atlanta buy a new ship, lol) for bonus rewards!

Time to come up with an awesome centaur team for PVP!

There are also Arcane Swamp traitstones available in the glory packs, and there are several troops I’m interested in that use them. I have no idea how many I could realistically get by racking up glory this week, but I’m going to get as many as I can because Krystenax, Queen Ysabelle, and Mercy are troops I would like to get all traited out. 

Thanks to previous events offering Arcane Swamp, I have Apothecary, Druid, Giant Spider, and Rowanne fully traited already. If I didn’t, I would be working on those too! There are quite a few really strong and useful troops that use this week’s stone!

The new troop this week is Anthea, who creates 15 yellow and green gems and dispels all enemies. This will be particularly useful against troops that provide barrier and enchanted. A fully traited Celestasia barriers on 4 or 5 gem matches. I can imagine dispelling all enemies AND generating mana is going to be really useful.

Other troops (besides lovely Celestasia) that gain or grant barrier:

Alastair Dark Priestess Dragonian Monk Dryad Forest Guardian Grand Inquisitor Jotnar Stormshield Priestess Queen Aurora The Silvermaiden Winter Knight   

Those that enchant or gain enchanted:

Elven Bard Enchantress Krystenax Unicorn

Team ideas coming soon, please share yours with me as well!

[lilyplaysgems]

Is there a good team built around using Devour?

Hope this helps!

[lilyplaysgems]

Asked & Answered: Devour Team

A really fun team with a somewhat unconventional mechanic is this one I learned somewhere awhile ago. I didn't come up with it; I believe Tacet may have shown it in a video some time ago. I have used it quite a bit and have been pretty impressed with it.

The video above was made today, at my current level of 338, but here is another I made at level 86 using the team:

Black Beast: It devours an ally and generates skulls. Devours an ally!? Why would you do such a thing? Won't you eat up your whole team in a matter of minutes? Who cares when you can create new troops aplenty? ;)

Green Seer: Entangle is awesome, though once you get this team going your Beast will have health for DAYS. Her main purpose here is to create green to feed Giant Spider.

Giant Spider: Creates purple and spawns a Spider Swarm. Do you see where we're going yet?

Jackelope: Jackelope has two purposes in this team, and his role is short. You know the guy who dies at the beginning of the story to kick the whole thing off? That's this guy. The one other reason to choose Jackelope is that it's a beast (no, the troop type, seriously) and that gives the Beast Captain team bonus. You could also use another beast troop type, or you could use anything you want, really. He won’t last long anyway.

The Strategy: Charge up Green Seer, use her ability to charge up Giant Spider and hopefully Black Beast. Use Giant Spider to re-charge Green Seer (repeat if necessary). Once Black Beast is ready to go, devour Jackelope (nom nom nom). Create skulls, hit enemy automatically with newly increased attack. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Keep looping and making baby spiders to consume until you've smashed the opposing team completely.

What about other troops using Devour on the opposing team?

Other than Black Beast, unless I am mistaken, ALL other troops with Devour do so on a conditional basis.

Wulfgarok: Devours a random enemy IF it kills an enemy troop. This is pretty much the best enemy-devouring spell.

Kerberos, Kraken, and Sand Shark: 50%, 40%, and 25% chance to devour an enemy, respectively. It might be worth building something around Kerberos, especially with a skull generator. I'll have to look into this! (And I'll report when I do.)

Chupacabra, Dragon Cruncher, Elf-Eater, Gob-Chomper: 10-50% (depending on which of these) chance to devour a specific troop type, so best used against very specific teams (such as in particular kingdoms when traitstone farming?). Because the chance to devour is so low, I personally wouldn't build a team relying on it.

Mimic: Chance to do one of many things, including devour. In my opinion too unreliable to consider devouring a strategy on a team with Mimic.

Hope this helps! Let me know what your experience is. :)

[lilyplaysgems]

Rough Days, Rough Knights.

Why such Knights this week?! I lost one battle again today, even though I used the same team I did last week for Brown Day: Behemoth/Corrupt Sorceress/Alchemist/Cockatrice. Everything else went well! I still like this team and will probably continue to use it until/unless something better comes along!

I tried to come up with some variations for some guildmates this week who did not have Behemoth, and ended up looking at brown weapons.

Bronzelock Pistol looked interesting since it destroys gems based on gold collected (and Alchemist would increase gold collected), this provided random mana to everyone and worked better the longer the match went on. Though interesting, I wasn’t sure it would be strong enough to handle the harder Guild Wars teams.

Black Manacles is a weapon I’ve used before and is definitely nice for it’s AOE damage and potential to devour. It does conflict with Corrupt Sorceress, being brown/purple also, but waiting to use it until Corrupt Sorceress has also been filled could lessen this problem. 

War and Peace is also a good AOE weapon that strengthens itself and the entire team as the match progresses.

Guild Wars matches can be pretty rough on newer / lower level players or those who have not had much time in productive guilds and don’t yet have a large collection. Finding solid color-specific teams that flow well with one’s playstyle and then investing in leveling and traiting them so they can be used and reused each week for these fights can make all the difference!

Link me your collection and I’ll be happy to help find teams, for Guild Wars or otherwise!

[lilyplaysgems]

I finally got Kraken this past week, while trying for Queen Aurora. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but it isn’t a terrible consolation prize!

I didn’t get around to GW battles until late in the day because I spent a decent amount of time farming souls and traitstones to get Kraken leveled and traited! 

Other than the Knight team that stomped all over me the first time I fought it, Kraken/Seer/Anariel/Dokkalfar did really well. 

Kraken damages the two last troops and creates blue gems. There is a 40% chance to devour the last troop, but that hasn’t happened for me so far. The blue he created often fed Anariel (which helped her keep Kraken going as well, more on her in a minute). I didn’t get enough Arcane Venoms to get Tentacles (I WILL get Tentacles!), but maybe if I’d had it even that Knight team wouldn’t have been trouble! Deal 3 damage to ALL enemies on 4 or 5 gem matches??? Yes, please!

Green Seer was mainly brought on board for her green gem generation, but as I’ve said before, Entangled isn’t a terrible thing to have. I actually ended up using her a bit less than I thought I would, simply because...

Lady Anariel was the unexpected hero of this team! Her tag-team mana generation synergy with Kraken was amazing! Like Green Seer, I had brought her mainly as a support to feed Kraken. However, she had a habit of not only giving mana to Kraken but to herself, and the more I used her, the more she monopolized the board with green and blue everywhere. And then I looked up, everyone had an insane amount of life(Kraken was at around 150!), and I thought “Bwahahaha! WE ARE IMMORTAL!” And we were. That time.

Dokkalfar is a troop I hadn’t really used in the past, but with the value of having a summoner on a Guild Wars team, I’ve been looking at summoners in general a lot more, lately. Dokkalfar is a troop worth considering building a team around, and I plan to look into doing that. I have long relied on Giant Spider in other teams for purple mana gen and oh shit summon mechanics. Dokkalfar summons a Giant Spider if needed, which is why I brought him along. He also does AOE damage, which is quite handy if you have gotten to the point of needing him in this team. His traits aren’t hugely amazing, but Daemonic Pact could be nice (25% chance to summon on death) and any kind of immunity is never bad. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I didn’t need to use him much in this team, but I’m certain he will be useful just when he’s needed the most.

So what happened with the Knight team? The first time I fought them I lost, brutally. I couldn’t get my team up and running before the Knights smashed not only Kraken but also Dokkalfar (thank you Knight Coronet! *angryface*) to bits and I was left with two pretty but non-damaging ladies. Meanwhile the entire team was gaining armor at an insane rate thanks to a fully traited Queen Ysabelle. It was not a pleasant time. (I should have brought along some true damage. Looking at you, Shadow Dragon. And Psion. Hmm. Things to consider for next week’s purple day!)

Coming up later, some other GW purple teams that were suggested to guildmates based on their collections, GW brown teams for myself and for guildmates based on collection, discussion of farming resources (gold, souls, traitstones), and testing the Infamous Knight Team for myself!

[lilyplaysgems]

At first glance, I wasn't super excited about the new troop this week, Dark Priestess. The wording on her spell didn't make it clear to me who got the attack she created after draining life from a troop. While trying to work out how she could best be teamed up, I realized there are LOTS of possibilites, including several that take advantage of this week's Ghulvania bonuses. I have been fiddling with teams all morning and feel like I haven't perfected anything yet, but the idea is to find troops that gain life, heal, respawn, summon or otherwise regenerate in order to provide fodder for Dark Priestess. Since I initially wondered if she drained an ally's life and then converted it to attack for herself, I thought using a stream of Spider Spawn, for example, might be ideal. She could drain their life, buff herself up, smash things with her increased attack and hopefully generate skull matches all at the same time. Giant Spider would continually generate Spawn for her to drain and would provide purple mana (and hopefully 4 matches for extra turns to keep things moving). Unfortunately (for this strategy), she adds the attack she creates from life drained to the ally from which she drains. That makes continually creating new (or respawned, or transformed) allies for her to drain not the best use of the created attack since each time the drained ally dies and is replaced or is transformed you have a troop with the amount of attack with which it normally starts. Having a summoner/color generator that works with Dark Priestess or the team in general isn't a terrible idea, especially if it's there as a backup or support plan. Since her ability DOES add the drained life converted to attack to the troop on which it is cast, it is more suited to troops that gain life. A few that first came to mind were Wraith, Zombie, Crimson Bat, and Flesh Golem (all of whom are Ghulvania troops, bonus!). Wraith and Zombie are particularly compelling because they have low mana costs, should be available to most players, and they each have a couple other handy utilities in their kit. Wraith's spell only requires 8 (blue) mana and will either drain an enemy's life OR steal its mana. Either of those options are helpful! He can inflict death mark and frozen on skull damage. Did I mention he only requires 8 mana??? Give yourself a +blue banner and you'll only need one to two turns to get him going. Toss in a blue mana generator and things could be even better. Zombie consumes skulls to boost the life he gains for himself. Since Dark Priestess generates skulls this works out well. He also only requires 8 (purple) mana, and if you have his Necromancy trait you'll be getting even more skulls. Remember how I mentioned Giant Spider before? Purple mana for Zombie and Dark Priestess and a summon "just in case" might be quite nice! If you have a Crimson Bat you know how nice a troop it is in lots of circumstances, but pair it with Dark Priestess to boost its attack, protect it with barrier, and generate skulls to (again) take advantage of boosted attack and you'll have a true monster on your hands! True damage AOE plus one-shot worthy amounts of attack sound really, really delicious. I'll be fine tuning these ideas as I take advantage of the bonus souls in PvP that Dark Priestess provides! I'm interested to hear others' ideas for this week's troops and bonuses as well!

[lilyplaysgems]

I’ve been wanting to put together (another) team built around increasing damage by increasing armor, and since the bonus today was for yellow troops in GW, it was a good day to make use of Paladin!

The Pros:

Fortunately I happened to have Paladin, Valkyrie, and The Devoted all traited out, so this team benefits from Air Link (extra mana from Yellow matches), Water Link (extra mana from Blue), 2x Divine Bond for everyone except Abynissia, as well as the Divine Captain team bonus!

Abynissia’s traits aren’t a huge priority for me right now, and not having them isn’t a huge loss in this team.

The Cons:

Though I did go 5/0 with the actual Guild Wars battles today, in testing the team in PVP I lost a few matches when RNG wasn’t kind and the other team beat down my Paladin before I could do much. If Paladin dies before Abynissia is charged and otherwise things just kind of go to hell, it’s easy to end up feeling options are super limited.

This isn’t really a team I will probably use on a daily basis. It’s not necessarily quick and it’s not necessarily foolproof, but it was a nice change of pace and it is definitely nice to be able to (after a bit of buffing) one-shot cards like Death and Famine, taking them out of commission before they can wreak havoc on your entire team!

The Strategy:

Power up Valkyrie or The Devoted, depending on what’s available. Valkyrie can be used to feed The Devoted if Valk is up first. 

What you do with The Devoted is flexible, but regardless she is going to give Paladin (and everyone, actually!) the armor boost he needs to be capable of one-shotting almost anything. One of my favorite ways to use The Devoted is to keep casting her ability on blue which often lets her take several turns in a row, recharging herself and giving everyone massive armor boosts. She WILL sometimes miss, not get a 4 match, and hand the board over to the other team with convenient matches for your opponent, but that’s just how it goes.

Another way to use The Devoted is to feed Paladin directly, on yellow or green. You can also use her on purple for Abynissia. I was careful to make sure one of Abynissia’s colors was not duplicated in the team to make sure I could target her directly either with matches or with The Devoted’s ability.

In this team, Abynissia is kind of the oh shit button and once charged, you may want to wait to use her in the event things aren’t going well and you need to replace a troop. If things are going well and you aren’t worried about needing a summon, choose a color that will blow up as much of the board as possible and have at it!

Hope your Guild Wars week went well! Tomorrow: a list of all the teams I used this week and a couple of specific use teams learned from other players or through trial and error. Until then!

[lilyplaysgems]

Bonus points today for an all-green team for Guild Wars! Who doesn't love dragons? Venoxia / Sylvanimora / Krystenax / Dragonmoth

This team would be even better if traited (what wouldn't?) but even without many traits it was effective. Why these dragons?

Venoxia doesn't do a whole lot of damage on her own, but she does generate green and blue mana. I wasn't sure if I wanted Venoxia in the first spot or Sylvanimora (and in fact switched them for the last battle) but since Venoxia gains attack each time she casts she's a good one to have up front. I REALLY wish I had that Miasma trait (poison an enemy on 4 or 5 gem matches)! We'll have to work on that.

Sylvanimora explodes a column, deals damage to ALL (including 1 per skull in the exploded area to the first troop), and generates 70% of the mana from the exploded area. I had forgotten how fun she is. Dragon Vines is another trait I need to work on getting, because entangling the first enemy on 4 or 5 gem matches would provide even more protection for my troops. Dragon Vines AND Miasma on the same team? Well that would be just evil.

Krystenax is a big damage dealer and in a non-GW team I might move him higher in the list, but since he is a summoner I want to make sure he has a good chance of surviving in case I need that ability. Since his damage is "boosted by a chosen color" and the chosen gems are removed (without effect) sometimes the best choice is to remove a color we aren't using and hope for matches with what is left. Other times it might be helpful to consider which color will give enough damage to kill off a thing or two. His boost ratio is 2:1, so for me he will do 20 damage + half of the amount of removed gems.

In this team, Dragonmoth is mostly there because it provides a final green but its second color doesn't conflict with any of the other troops. The only color not used by the team is red, which makes it somewhat more likely that at some point there will be 13+. I mostly held off on using Dragonmoth's ability unless this was the case, just to make the most use of it.

For GW I used the +2 Green banner.

For non-GW purposes I took out Dragonmoth, added The Dragon Soul in the first spot, and moved Krystenax, Sylvanimora and Venoxia around as I felt like it, based on which one I felt like using more at the moment. While you can target any of them to power up since they don't share a second color, green is going to first go to the first of them. 

For a Dragon Soul / Krystenax / Sylvanimora / Venoxia team you could keep the +2 Green banner or use Abyssal if you prefer to help Dragon Soul more.

After going 5/0 in GW battles this morning (it's been a good week!) I decided to focus on farming some arcanes to get some of these delicious-looking traits. It's gonna take some time, but thanks to suggestions from guildmates I do have a decent explore/soul farming team. I'll put that in another post in the near future. ;)

[lilyplaysgems]

Is a Four Horseman team possible? If not then how would I make a team about Famine only?! Thank you!!!

Here you go!

[lilyplaysgems]

So you wanted a Famine team!

I don’t happen to have all 4 Apocalypse troops, but I would think a full Apocalypse team would be impractical due to the mana costs. It would be a pain in the butt to kill, though!

As for a team built around Famine itself, my strategy would be to make sure it could be filled up quickly, repeatedly, and without relying on RNG for a board that just happens to work well.

The Dragon Soul is always a fun troop, and in this team it will help with initial damage-dealing WHILE powering up the troops below it (and itself).

Alchemist’s primary purpose here is to create tons of yellow to power Green Seer and Famine if there is spillover and gain an extra turn so we can keep going. Fire Link is nice to have too.

Green Seer can be powered up by Alchemist (if DS doesn’t do it before Alchemist gets to it). Entangle is something you might not truly appreciate until it saves your butt a time or two! 

By the time you’ve cast a couple of the first 3 cards you’ll probably have Famine filled up and can cast. If you’re lucky you’ll have another troop already charged and ready to help fill Famine up again. Since there is a wide variety of mana colors on this team, almost any match is going to work towards filling SOMETHING up and I had no trouble keeping Famine going.

At the time of this video, I only have one trait on Famine but this team has worked so well so far that I would be really excited to see it with Famine fully traited.

I used the Talon banner (+2 Yellow / +1 Green / -1 Blue), but there are other possibilities based on preference. 

Hope this helps! 

[lilyplaysgems]

Today's GW team worked out pretty well, if not as smooth and quick as yesterday's. 5/0 is 5/0, though, and I won't complain! No Queen Aurora for me today, despite spending 18,000 glory, 900 gems and piles of whatever keys I already had. I did get a few new things I look forward to trying out, such as Kraken!

[lilyplaysgems]

Carnex / Crimson Bat / Valkyrie / Dark Master The possible team for Guild Wars tomorrow. For some reason it's been hard to settle on something! If I don't think of something better we'll see how this works. New mythic tomorrow as well! Get those keys ready!

[lilyplaysgems]

Gems of War: Guild Wars Brown Team (Behemoth/Corrupt Sorceress/Alchemist/Cockatrice)

I lost my entire post on this a few minutes ago because of a power surge! D: 

This video was made yesterday when I was prepping an all-brown team for today’s Guild Wars battles. It easily won all five battles this morning, and quickly!

This team has good synergy, AOE damage, shutdown mechanics such as entangle and mana drain and an oh shit save the day summoner. What more could you want? Enjoy!

Now to work on an all-red for tomorrow. #backtothedrawingboard

[lilyplaysgems]

Someone Said I Should Start A Blog

Because I play this game a lot, and I'm kind of a nerd about it. I would argue that I'm kind of a nerd in general, but oh well! I've been playing GoW for a couple of years, I think. When I sat down to think about that it shocked me that I HAVE been playing quite some time. I got my start with it on PS4, and it was a slow start. The guild I was in eventually died and by then I had worked to get my PC/mobile account up to par a bit more. I found an awesome guild with awesome people, #Victoria, but recently things like real life and member changes left the guild with a lot less energy and activity. I was playing less as well. Then we were adopted by Intrim and became Intrim III. Thank you Ken (our leader) for making that decision, and thank you #Intrim for taking us on! Since then activity has bounced back and we are once again flourishing! The Intrim family is, from what I have seen, an awesome multiguild community of super helpful and friendly people. I am trying to contribute to that not only through playing but by being supportive to our members and the GoW community in general. In that spirit, I hope to use this blog as a way of keeping track of my thoughts about and progress in the game. Enough rambling! Henceforth there shall be posts about playing the game, advancing and leveling up, team composition, tips and tricks I find and hear of, and who knows what else? Enjoy!