OH, and also, @ElGrillo, you should never have to build a great opal in anything but an ideal location if you: (1) Pay attention to when you've drawn a perfect opal before pick #5, (2) leave at least 4 open spaces for ideal great opal placement, and (3) after picking the first great opal, place all subsequent gems in the spots reserved for the great opal. That way, you will always end up placing the second perfect opal, if you get one, in one of the reserved 4 spaces. After that, you can use the spaces for whatever you want. You never want to-- or should need to-- end up with a great opal all the way on the side of the board. Unsolicited advice over-- but, you know, you posted the screenshot, so. . . ;)

I think I'm gonna hold off investing in playing out a run for hundreds of levels at this point. . . @ElGrillo: How did you build so many dark emeralds by level ~400 without the combine special bug that's been fixed? Also, why so many perfect opals? :) If the game works as it used to, when you run out room to make place 5 gems for a turn, you're soft locked. You have to make sure you end the run intentionally before that. @scgmeister requested a "Surrender" button, which I think is a great idea and would be dead simple to implement.

Cheers @DC, good to know. Sadly, after ~4 days of the game, it crapped out on me (the app space in the web page was just a grey square and then reset to a new game). I did make it past lvl 430 though, and I had gotten to the point that I was taking out all the flyers, which I think is a first for me in high levels. Here's the map for anyone curious - got the maze design from someone in the comments on the old site many many years ago: https://i.imgur.com/VNeGLlJ.png

@ElGrillo: The easy method is to leave a blank rock in the beginning of your maze that you can delete when ready to drastically shorten the number of loops and allow runners to start going through. As an alternative, you can begin managing lives more carefully toward the end to voluntarily die on a flyer level when ready, but the former is more preferred due to consistency.

Anyone know what happens if you get to the point on Survival where you can't place any gems anymore as the map is full (except for 'blocking' spaces)? Lol. I am on level 417 at the moment and seem to be inexorably heading towards a full population, at least at the moment. Given that there's no 'Retire' button for me to quit and record a score, would be good to know whether I should make sure I allow enough flyers through to let me 'lose', before I can no longer place any further gems. On another note - possible bug: I'm pretty sure that at some point after I went over level 100, my level jumped by +100. I ended up at over 200 and am now at 417 as I mention but I think I should be at 317. Difficult to be certain, because this game has taken me several days so far lol.

If anyone was using my templates from my github, and couldn't submit your username/email because no inputs appeared: my fault. Sorry. I've only seen this now when I got to level 88 and lost.... If you go to scores, you'll see my run published as Anonymous :( I've "fixed it" now. I added a button you'll have to remember to click it, when you reach the submit score. That'll force the inputs to appear.

carlHR that grid display looks cool

@Peter I've sent an email to gemtowerdefense@gmail.com about a bug that froze my game at level 61. It forced me to refresh the page afterwards. The sad part was that I got a GO at level 39... https://imgur.com/a/VFGsRm3

https://imgur.com/gKrqJ4t.png Trying to get time under 1000 but seems like u need to get very lucky with early BS, will keep trying.

Seems like there is still a bug where enemies don't get slowed properly until level 40. Another idea that would be very useful: add an second repick button that replaces the gems in their current positions so you don't have to place them out again.

Wow just discovered the game also works on mobile, fascinating...

Well that's disappointing, right as I clicked to select a gem at level 632 (I believe), the game disappeared and the web page went white and completely unresponsive until I refreshed the page, causing me to lose all progress :(. I played the game using google chrome, and I think I was still on version 0.8.2 that allowed 10x speed. Not sure if that is what caused the crash or if it was something else. Also, there was no sign of any lag before it happened. It'll be interesting to see if anyone else runs into the same issue if they also try to push the game to being able to fill the board. If you see my link, https://imgur.com/SB2VWHE, I had all the right side, and almost all the left side full of paraibas when the game crashed.

First off, thanks for the new updates! Might be getting close to the end of my first 250+ run. Level 250 being stun-proof I thought was the end, but it's holding out longer than expected. This is only my second run on a chromium browser, though, and it's smooth as butter on 4x the whole way on a decently beefy igpu laptop. I had been playing only on firefox before, both recently, and years ago. Recent versions on firefox had huge slowdown problems about lvl. 40 that are completely absent on chromium. Thanks again!

https://youtu.be/8De_GXyV6uw Hi, I made a little video showing my early game, until level 30 something where I accidentally delete my maze.. I'm using a script to make sure I roll a flawed diamond at the start of the game. I also made a script to build the maze for me but seems like I lost it and it takes quite a while to set up. But that helps you not make any misclicks.

I remember seeing stuff like this on Dota's GemTD mod. There were enemies with all sorts of buffs: - Evasion (basically to counter stun) - Magic Resistance/Imunity (vs emeralds, bloodstones) - Invisibility (opal had true sight) - Regeneration (forces you to have large damage over time) - Blink (breaks your maze apart) - Hastened (moves faster than usual) - Extra Lives (tougher to kill) - Charm (slows down attack speed) - etc... It was fun. It's cool idea imo, and not just on the late levels. If done since the start of the game, it forces you to choose many types of builds to overcome each challenge. That is a nightmare to develop. But very fun to play it.

@Peter: At least 4 ways of partial stun resistace are possible: 1. constant on given lvl % chance to resist stun 2.similar, but resist % of duration. 3.both above combined, but less affect (can be different % function for each) 4. Starting at 0, then increasing stun resistance while being stunned, falling back while not stuned. Speed of growth and/or fall back may depend of lvl. Any level-based function of stun rsistance rather should be hyperbolic, so it never reach 100%, similar to armor function.

Btw, there exist other way to balance game - increasing number of enemies. I can kill 10 flyers, but 12, 15, 20? i dont think so.

@216 @scgmeister I am open to changing how stun works after lvl 200 but that will greatly affect the game and possibly make it impossible to survive past lvl 200. Thoughts?

Without any stun resistance lives cost will do nothing for me when i leak 0, passing 500 will be about making enough gold. Stun immune air levels could be exluded from extra lives cost to prevent extremely hard to pass walls. Meanwhile i tested if i can survive without any emerald, only jades stun (something opposite to 1JC) - after 44 and 48, leaked 7-8 (rarely 6) every flying wawe, but gold production was enough to recover - i could continue to 350 at least, but it was going too slow (even at x4). In fact i was close to lose around 170 and 252 (4 lives i think), but imagine what if i had a GO

I'll second the idea of slowly adding stun resistance to the enemies after level 200. As much as I like the challenge of trying to fill the board, I do admit it can get tedious after awhile. Hmm, increased lives lost instead of stun resistance would also be interesting. 2 lives lost per leak starting level 200, 3 lives at 300, 4 lives at 400 etc. That in itself could make completely filling the board impossible, as then when you reach 500, you would effectively lose 50 lives that level and lose the game. I'd say with this method, passing level 500 might be possible, but extremely difficult to do so.

@CarlHR You didnt take account GO (or at least PO) aura. @scgmeister: I leaked abolute 0 since ~230 and it was with quite bad emerald RNG and little unoptimal positioning. Funny that i failed to lose in 253 - remoned rocks near checkpoints and blocked main maze, but had 6 lives and EEs still catched 5 units. But that run was interesting untill i got GO in 178 - was leaking 3-4 consistently, once 7 and no gold for more than ~10 lives after each flying wawe - i built 11th jade, because afraid of lvl 200. GO ruined that fun.

I was wondering how strong it is to place many chance-based towers, given the discussion below, and I found this here: Here's the source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskStatistics/comments/y0odc7/probability_of_at_least_a_given_number_of/ This is an algorithm in python syntax ``` # x is the probability of success 0 <= x <= 1 # n is the number of attempts, given that at least one needs to succeed def adv(x, n): return 1 - ((1 - x) ** n) ``` Or in javascript ``` // x is the probability of success 0 <= x <= 1 // n is the number of attempts, given that at least one needs to succeed function adv(x, n) { return 1 - ((1 - x) ** n); } ``` If you place, for example, 3 LAJ on the map, each of them attack once each 350ms. So, in each second, they'd attack 2.86 times. If one wants to calculate the gold trigger rate per second, it could calculate it as follows: `adv(0.05, 3 * 2.86) * 100`. This outputs a 35.60% chance of trigger gold once each second! And, if you pick just one: 13.63% gold/s. No wonder it triggers more often that you'd think. If one is wondering how strong are 3 basic DEs: `adv(0.125, 3 * (1000 / 700)) * 100`: 43.58% stun/s. If we get 3 upgraded DEs: `adv(0.15, 3 * (1000 / 700)) * 100`: 50.17% stun/s. I found this interesting for some reason. Like, you see it happening on the screen, but you just don't understand why the triggers happen so often. An increase of 5% is a lot when you have lots of towers to trigger that single effect.

I have officially surpassed 216's current top score and it's looking like I should be able to completely fill the board with this run. https://imgur.com/SB2VWHE Overall I leak about 3-4 flyers consistently, and on level 251, I only leaked 1 enemy.

But i wish game was getting (slowly) harder and harder starting around lvl 200, so game will end around 200-400 without clear maximum. Late game enemies must have some kind of partial stun resistance, so they won't be stunned forever as easilly (but stun still should be important). Also i think late game leaks should cost 2 lives (but not before lvl 201). Unless too strong anti- stun meachanic - but then game will become about maximizing gold production, not stun effeciency. Also i dont like fact that lvl 48 leaks are the same punishing as lvl 204 leaks

After speed fixes game should be even little easier, space is still only limiting factor. But making excusively paraibas may be impossible sometimes - you get the wanted perfect gem every ~13 turns (combinations included), which means average over 2 repick per lvl, so 2500-2800 repicks total in 1200+ runs (2500 repicks cost 78 milion gold). Because you finished a lvl 1301 with 30m gold left, it could be not enough without combine expliot (more jades required). So I not sure if 1300 is possible now, while 1280-1290 should be little easier

I wholeheartedly second the suggestion for a "surrender" or an "end game" button. Perhaps not as necessary with the changes, since without the combine special bug, I don't know if it will even be possible to play the game to the point of running out of room. Which is a good thing, I think. But it wouldn't do any harm to have it even if it ends up not being necessary, and it's also easy to implement. I haven't really tried the updated game yet, been a strangely busy week. I love that Peter preserved all the scores with a tab for "Fake Scores". Cracked me up. :)

One more feature request: would it be possible to add a surrender button to the game? That way if one were to run out of space, they will still be able to submit their score @DC If you haven't yet and are able to change these settings, go to group policies/administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows update. Then in legacy policies, "find no auto-restart with logged in users" and enable that. Then in manage end user experience, go to configure automatic updates and choose option 4 to auto download and schedule the install. Both policies need to be enable for this method to work. Also in the windows update settings, make sure the notify me when a restart is required is turned on. Doing that, I'm still able to choose when I want to restart my computer, or even putting off restarting my computer for several days if I wanted to once I'm notified that it needs to be restarted.

correction: fix to the combination glitch.

I'm liking the recent updates and bug fixes so far. While the combination glitch makes it harder to get enough EE to stun lock the flying rounds, the fixes to the slowdowns making uranium mor viable along with the fix to the star sapphire seems to make it so may not have to depend on EE as much in order to get a high score. Anyway, I do seem to have a strong maze going right now which should easily beat my previous pb in the current update. https://imgur.com/a/Bz7RknI With this current maze, I seem to be leaking only about 4-5 flyers which seems to be quite a bit better than what I was leaking around this stage of the game in the previous version from my memory.

RIP the combination glitch. Interested to see if this will affect the rarity of a good deep run - before the GO was the only limiting factor but wondering now if a heinous streak of bad luck in setting up EEs could end things prematurely by running you dry on money.

Yikes! I don't check in for a little while, and look at what's been going on. :) I guess I should abandon my current run which is at level 980 which I started over a week ago. I doubt I can submit a high score for it since I started the run on an old version of the game (and even if I could, that doesn't feel at all fair. First decent run I'd had in ages. Oh well. Looking forward to checking out the new version.

@carlhr @216 I removed 10x because it seemed unreliable for the simulation.

Imo, anything that is automated and annoying should have a corresponding checkbox for that feature, wether you want it active or not. That includes music, if you wish to add it hehe. My PC supports the 10x speed, so it's working as intended (or well.. keep reading). It falls to 4x speed once in a while, if there's too much lag. When the speed falls, right when it happens, it's brief, but it shows an yellow text right next the Upgrade Chances button, explaining that it dropped because the game was losing accuracy (that's noted in the update log from 0.8.2). Now, @Peter, are you sure the 10x speed works as intended? I cannot read the script as its not indented, attempting to do so gives me nightmares. As there's currently no way I could run 2x late game runs on parallel, with the same build, maze layout, random seeds, but with different game speeds just to test it, I still think that running the game with 10x speed is harder than with 1x/2x/4x. I noticed it with 4x speed too, when comparing to 1x or 2x. It's a retroactive bug. It's like the gems/towers are failing to attack over time, or the projectiles are slower, I don't know but there is something different. I've run the following tests while playing (and the others here can verify it too if they want it): when I'm on the wave 44th (flying wave) for example, my build takes down 5-6 of the flying bats at 10x speed. But on wave 48th, the same build, with like, an extra pair of gems, and no additional towers and upgrades, are able to take down 9 or even all of them at 1x speed. I mean, like, am I going crazy? How is it possible? One gem does make the difference? It shouldn't.. right? 4 levels in difference... So yeah, that's my concern. I mean, it's NOT THAT KIND OF A PROBLEM. I was able to reach 95+ waves easily with 10x speed on all waves (even flying waves) you just have to heal right away after them. My strategy was to set 11 lives everytime, so I wouldn't die, and wouldn't spend too much gold. If you have enough LAJ, it's not that hard. But as I developer (or something), I just look at this speed change and think: "yep, there's something on this" hehe. Or. It's just a coincidence. Could happen. Who knows. I can't prove it.

10x speed instantly falls back to 4x for me, even at lvl 1 -I noticed it blocks possibility of 1x(2x) speed untill end of lvl (for me, its not a big problem actually). Also i can imagine a player losing game by starting flying wawe at x10 speed without enough lives(just by distraction) - maybe flying wawes should reset speed to x1 ? (setting speed every 4 lvls is less frustrating than potential fail, but its olny my opinion)

Added 10x speed up and Frames Per Second tracking to make sure the 10x speed up can be handled by most player's computers.

Is this what you want? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/image-rendering

Peter - Appreciate all the new QoL updates! Just one thing - is it just me or does the game look a little fuzzy after the new update? Is there a resolution setting or something that I should change?

Foiled once again by my own lack of awareness - somehow despite turning off automatic updates, my computer went ahead and did it anyway. Run died at 720-ish, another failure to make the leaderboards. As a sidenote, playing on Microsoft Edge with the speed up seems to be performing pretty well. Even at 700+, I was getting full speed.

I see, thanks!

That exploit got fixed in 0.6.3

Peter. I'm referring to the possibility of making the perfect gem first, followed by three of the other gems, combining on the last which consumes all but the perfect one.

@JonathanA Can you provide details about the: "combine exploit" And I think your idea of the last tower in the combine to have the kills carry over is a good idea.

216: Regarding carrying over kills, I think only keeping the kills on the combine on tower makes you have to think more strategically which I like, although the other way is acceptable too.

Just played my first run after not having played for many months. Got a great start with a flawed diamond and early Jade. Then I totally forgot about perfect opal until a bit later. And I accidentally upgraded blood stone immediately when I got it. I didn't use the combine exploit which I tend not to do normally, does it still exist? Finished at level 98 as I felt I was losing momentum. https://imgur.com/RNmtZtI.png I mostly enjoy the earlier levels anyway. I really like the new speed feature, makes the game 100x more playable. Even x5 or x6 or even x10 speed could be useful for later levels. Or some kind of simulation to skip the meatgrinding every level. Dunno if that would be possible. Could remove damage numbers and projectile animations to improve performance if nececssary. Another feature idea is a damage counter for every level to see which towers do more damage. Should be easy to implement. I could possibly help with coding if that is an option. Finally another weird idea, but I've made some music that could go well (or not) with the game, although I think we all just put our own music if any to these kind of games. Just an idea though, feel free to reach out.

Wow, looks like I came back in just the right moment, look at those updates! The lack of speed feature is something that kept me playing you-td instead of gem td.

Got similar frezze at 190, caused by flamestrike(s) on dying last enemy. Error in stepFlamestrikes Looks like speed finally works correctly :) Besides frezze, late game balance is last major issue (there is few minor ones). Several ppl over last years sugested/requested to carry over kills from all ingredients(not only from selected gem) when combine special. Not sure what behaviour is intentional.

Wow. The 4x speed is going to give me back so much of my life. Thank you!

@216 Released 0.7.2: Fixed late-game enemy minimum-speed scaling so slows can reduce enemies to their intended floor again. Corrected the displayed Minimum Speed value in the enemy info panel.

I think I found the culprit for the lag in my browser (from level 20+ waves), I have to stop this process in particular: `AWPerformance.SCSubAgent`, using the task manager in windows 11. I went deep on my PC and found out that the dude on this thread had the same problem as me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/1ezg5ix/alienware_awcc_major_performance_issue_update_aug/ So, yeah, it's was something going on my PC.. not on everyone else. My bad.

The same speed issue still exist, but now its clearly displayed in numbers. lvl 41+ : max speed : 1.56 min speed : 1.47 That's 94% of max speed, making slowing gems not really important. Intended min speed is about 70% of max speed, right? Error is by factor of 0.75

@216 Thanks, hopefully fixed that freeze.

Game freeze at 21 - console error at stepProjectiles. I can see dying last enemy and 2 projectiles near. Btw can fix SYS combat stats? (original stats was base 180 dmg/0.8s/121 range and it never was op :) Thanks for speed modes.

I added a 2x, 3x, and 4x speed up mode.

@216 Sorry I'll fix it.

Thanks for fixes! But minimum speed is not working at all. 0 leaks, even in lvl 100 withoth GO Uranium very usefull atm :)

When I mean, "Or.. it's the opposite", is that I don't know what gem you should select to trigger the bug, wether its clicking on the sapphire/emerald; or just choosing one of the opals. Regardless of the trigger, the bug itself is about making all opals being consumed when choosing 'combine special'.

@wgw I don't know if that's a part of the combine special bug, but it's something I noticed very few times when playing the game. When attempting to make a Jade tower, if you place 2 or more normal opals on the map, and you build the tower on the place of a sapphire or emerald, all opals are consumed on the recipe, instead of just 1. Or.. it's the opposite. I can't remember now. I had a lot of fustration on this, like, you're preparing a set of opals, and then suddendly they vanish because of this bug. But it doesn't happen with the other gems on the same recipe. I also wasn't able to verify this with other tower recipes. It's hard to reproduce it, as the game is luck-based. Unless, of course, you hack it, which is something I dislike. So I can't verify it right now as I write this.

@Peter: Bug list as of Jul 2022. Hope this is helpful-- I know a lot of it explains things you already understand, sorry for that. :) - Combine multiple gems When you draw more than one gem of the same type and quality, you're given the option to combine them into the next-higher-level gem of the same type. You're supposed to be able to combine and upgrade TWO levels when you draw FOUR gems of the same type and quality, but a bug in the code requires FIVE gems. (observation regarding the specific coding bug comes from @216) - Combine Special The Javascript version of GTD allows for doing a "Combine Special" to create a tower on ANY gem that's part of that tower's recipe, as long as all the required gems are placed on the board (in the Flash version, you could only do a "Combine Special" on the most-recently-placed gem in a recipe). However, in allowing for this flexibility, a bug has been introduced where the game will, under certain conditions, consume two gems in a recipe and leave one of the required gems on the board. When exploited correctly, this can mean that, practically speaking, you only need to draw a single perfect gem of any type for the entire game and can create special towers off it indefinitely. - Star Yellow Sapphire When you build a SYS after having built a Black Opal, the Black Opal's 40% (max) buff gets overridden by the SYS's 5% buff. Building another Black Opal restores the 40% buff. Essentially, whichever tower is built most recently will override the buff from any previously-placed tower. The buffs from these two different towers, the Black Opal and the SYS, should either stack, or at least, the Black Opal's buff should not get erased by building a SYS. - Lack of text documentation for Jades There's no mention in the text description for Jades that they earn gold, a component of the game that is absolutely necessary to understand in order to learn how to play well. - Movement speed I defer to @216, since I don't really understand what this is about, but from his description, it has a huge affect on gameplay after level 40-- something to do with the minimum enemy speed not being correctly affected by slowing gems/towers, and I think @216 has identified what part of the game code is causing the problem in prior comments. But again, I don't really understand this specific issue myself. - Blank high score text For some odd reason, submitted high scores sometimes end up posted with blank name text, or-- I've observed personally-- text from prior-submitted high scores (and not due to autocomplete filling in the field, I can vouch). There doesn't seem to be any identifiable pattern to this, but @scgmeister has suggested it might have something to do with the browser's "process ID". - Frozen rocks I think I'm the only one to have experienced this, but I've had it happen several times: sometimes very late game, a rock will become "frozen" and non-removable, because the game fails to register its being clicked on. This has only happened to me post-level 800, and in all but one case, only one rock became frozen (in one run, I had 3 frozen rocks). No idea what causes it, but I have an unproven theory that it related to the glitched-movement bug (below). - Glitched movement/game speed Late game-- depending on system specs, as early as level ~500, on my PC, level ~800-- enemy movement becomes glitched such that, depending on whether the bowser window has active focus or not, their movement or the overall game speed is glitched. With active focus, enemies become permanently frozen in place, vibrating back and forth but not advancing. Without active focus, the enemies move normally, but the overall game speed slows to 10-20% of normal. This seems to be related to the still-existing, but much more manageable, memory leak problem. If there were no memory leak, presumably the enemy movement/game speed would remain stable. - Memory leak @216 identifitied long ago that the critical hit text was the main culprit in GTD's previously crippling memory leak. Peter H. subsequently turned off the critical hit text after level 100 as a quick patch, which worked well enough to keep the leak from prematurely crashing the game. But it didn't actually close the leak, which still exists and is tied to the animation for frost and fire attacks (again, thanks to @216 for confirming this).

@Peter: I completely missed your message here till just now! I had posted a bug list (which is definitely not exhaustive-- @216 in particular, you already know, is an excellent debugger) But the comment has been truncated away. So I'll put it in a separate comment, and I'll also try to send via email during a rare window of your having time to work on the game. As always, I'm immensely grateful for it! Still playing-- I have a run going now at level 789. CAn be played out till I run out of room on level 1250 or so. Which I know was never your intent. ;) Thank you so much for clearing out the fake scores as well!

@viktor-n: will have to be a few days, but I spend a little more time on it and come back later! @DC: I feel the pain. And there have definitely been times that I ended up killing a really good run over just that mistake! (or accidentally downgrading any other gem into something useless)

I just accidentally downgraded a normal opal which means I'm going to have to build a Uranium. My gut instinct was to immediately quit and restart so I don't have to have that eyesore but unfortunately this is a good run. Life is pain.

@WGW Thanks! Are you having trouble loading the game? on what device/browser?

@viktor-n: The changes in the game you've described sound, to me, quite promising! I particularly like your approach to softening RNG for getting a great opal. But for what it's worth, I wasn't able to do much to test out the game on the actual site. I'm very intrigued, though, and hope you keep at it!

I have moved Gem Tower Defense to a new host and cleared out a lot of high scores and some fake scores. @WGW Please list the bugs that you would like me to fix, I have time now.

I have developed a version of this game, hosted here if anyone would like to try: https://viktor-n-code.github.io/GemTD/ While very similar to this version in many ways - I've fixed some issues and added features. Issues fixed: Kills carry over from all gems when combining Star Yellow Sapphire and Black opal auras stack New features: MVP bonus, gem with most damage each round gets +1% damage Additional scaling, gem effects like crit, splash, auras scale with gem level. Tracking of damage with leaderboards for Kills, Damage for each round and overall. Bad luck protection for Great Opal. After reaching max gem chance, any time a Perfect Opal is spawned, the chance of all other gems placed in that round to be Perfect Opal is increased. This chance increases with each round, bringin the mean number of rounds to a Great Opal down from ~700 to ~100. Once a Great Opal is created, this feature deactivates. At high wave levels (100+) enemies start getting resistance to stuns, which degrades with distance traveled. So long mazes are needed to make them able to be stunlocked. More features in plan, like a button to speed up the game.

@wgw regarding the game starting slow from the 1st level, it happened with me this week. For me, it solved the problem by cleaning the browser cache, and cleaning cookies and data related from THIS site. But.. one strange type lag I can report here, is when I reach level 20+, then, for some reason I need to drink some water or just leave the room where my PC is at the time, and the browser's tab is kept open for hours without any interaction. When I comeback, the game is slow. You can see it when you attempt to place a gem. There's lag when you just try to move the cursor on the screen. For some reason, cleaning the cache doesn't solve this particular type of lag. I don't know what causes it. But, it only happens if I don't play the game for too much time. If I keep playing up to 50+ levels, there'll be no lag at all. It's weird.

I ended up ending that run at level 152 after a misclick, too many leaks on flying levels, and I couldn't get even a single gold until around level 90 or so which also didn't help. So far, speedmaster pro was still working. I have yet to test the extension beyond that. Biggest thing with this extension, along with other speed hacks like cheat engine, is the game needs to be in focus for the increased speed to take effect.

@scgmeister, well, let us know in, what, about two weeks? You said even for you, SpeedMaster Pro stops working after level 100 or so. . . That's a lot of levels left to go at normal speed. . . I'm not sure anymore if it's a blessing or a curse to get a run with luck that good, cause then you kinda have to play it out. ;)

lucky me. Getting a great opal at close to the earliest possible moment in the game. https://imgur.com/a/U6oz7Sn Now to see if I can capitalize on it.

@WGW, that's interesting. for me I've had no issues with speedmaster pro yet. At least I've used it up to level 100 at 5x speed without it breaking (haven't had a run worth pushing past that level yet since coming back to mess around with this game). I think once, the speed of the game did reset to normal after a couple levels, but I was able to click on the extension again to increase the speed back to 5x without issues after it happened. I did attempt at 10x speed first, but it started to cause the game to glitch out fairly quickly. On that note, I do have every option in the extension check marked. I have found a few other speed hack extensions for chrome, but so far this is the only one I've found that is capable of speeding the game up past 2x.

@scgmeister: I just tried out Speedmaster Pro for the first time, and was delighted to see it work immediately. But then it just. . . stopped working at level 10 or so, and the game went back to normal speed. Refreshing the page, closing and reopening, resetting Speedmaster Pro's setting, nothing changed it. Strange. But it was nice for the 10 levels that it lasted. . . !

@dc check out the extension called Speedmaster Pro if you happen to be playing this game using google chrome. This extension will change the speed of the game, and I have a feeling that if you put the speed to something like .7, or .5 speed, it might fix the issue of the run freezing. It's just a theory, but I do know if you use the extension (or some other speed hack) to speed the game up too far, that causes a run to freeze until it gets slowed back down again, so slowing the game down slower than the base speed should fix the freezing, in the same way it fixes the vibrating glitch that happens in late levels.

@DC: Yes, I've had this happen a couple of times. No idea what triggered it. I've also seen very rare times where the whole game is slowed to a crawl from the first level. But of course in those cases, you just refresh the page. You're not gonna want to do that at level 797. Sorry I can't offer any solution, but at least you'll know it's not just you!

https://imgur.com/a/bgcFZbT Not really sure what to do at this point, my game is 100% frozen now. As I said previously it's been getting slower and slower since like level 500 but it hit a new absolute low this evening and at this point literally hasn't moved in over an hour. I can't even kill the run and get it on the rankings, pretty depressing ngl. I don't know if I have it in me to try again, especially since it might literally just happen again. Anyone else have this issue and find a fix?

One more example of combine special glitch. (special recipe - A+B+C=S, first A, B and C are marked in []) build order: [A] A [B] A [C] B* C A change to [A] A - A - S [C]A [A] A [B] A*[C] B C A change to [A] A - S - [B][C]A (no double gem consumed) if u click [A] or [B] or [C] they combine normally, else no matter what you click(*), consumed gems will be [B], [C], *. ( can be any amount of other gems than A,B,C placed between) Using glitch is easy to save [A], but way to save gems [B] [C]. If build Normal Auqa (or Flawles Diamond) before Perfect Opal, this PO will be consumed even when combining on other PO ( but not reverse, combining on 1st PO will not consume next PO)

I just lost another high score in the late game. Should have made it to level 1267 but it crashed at 1263.

@Pandakite yes it sounds like you fell victim to a known glitch. The specifics are outlined by multiple people below but essentially if you have one of every gem required for a recipe and then you make an extra of one of them and combine on that, you will eat two of that gem and spare one other gem (should be the first one placed). The downside, in your case, is it ate your extra opal. The upside is that for longer term runs it can be exploited, allowing you for example to craft dozens of Enchanted Emeralds with only one perfect emerald, which saves a lot of time and reroll gold. Also an update on my own run, I have passed 700. The game really slowed down in the mid-500s - I don't just mean hp-wise things got tankier I mean the game literally runs at half speed or less now. I was clearing 150-200 floors a day and now I'm clearing like 50 haha. I guess this is why it takes two weeks to set a top tier record.

Not sure why, but I made a black opal after getting a diamond and combined it on a opal. when I made it, it took my other opal along with the other gems it needed, is this a glitch?

I think I had two, but I was starting to run out of space within their perimeters at that point. The leaks were brutal though, had to pay for 5-6 lives every flyer round. The good news is my latest run finally hit a great opal (coincidentally not until like 250) so I am hoping to finally finish a good run.

@DC: Also, I hope you learned your lesson to always have 11 lives in the bank at the start of any run!

@DC: 250 with no GO isn't easy! I'm curious, how many perfect opals did you have at that point?

First real run in awhile - lost it on 250 because I wasn't paying attention and forgot to have enough lives ready, oops. Didn't have a great opal though so a deep run was probably unlikely.

@G, that's truly unbelievable. I mean, I BELIEVE you, but it's still unbelievable! Ouch!

I just had a run end at 1260 that should have made it to 1270 because I misclicked with only 5 open gem spots remaining, meaning I could not place the 5th gem anywhere. So upset right now that I've wasted the past few weeks on a run that I won't complete.

I haven't had a halfway decent run in months now! Not that I play very often, but then again, I haven't been able to win a single run of FTL in normal mode for months, either, and I've sunk thousands of hours into that game over the years, too. Maybe I've had a stroke. ;)

@TJ: Once you reach that point, it changes to a game of minimization. You cannot "beat" this game, so you either lose intentionally at a certain point and record your high score, or the game crashes and you don't record it.

The game crashed but I got a screenshot pretty close to my last level.

Help! I can't lose. I have tens of millions of gold but nothing to spend it on and I'm rapidly running out of space to build on!

Out of curiosity, has anyone made an unbeatable gemTD maze before? At what point does it just bug out? I'm at level 472 and have what seems to be infinite moneys.

Don;t know how this happened, but I'm sitting on level 335 with so much money I don't know what to do with it. Never made it this high. After this it's probably time to retire this game.

@Pandakite: I recommend trying to build a few Lucky Asian Jades as early as possible. Unlocking the ability to repick is essential. You also should construct your maze such that it divides the board into two sections with even numbered platforms on one end and odd numbered platforms on the other.

I have been playing this game for a while and only had 1 time that I managed to get past level 150 and now the best I can do is maybe 60's-70's. What are the recomendations by more seasoned players as to how to build a successful maze and what gems to save and build?

@WGW: thank you!! I ain't done yet ;)

Hay, @G! I see you've got a bunch of 1200+ level high scores by now after having been cheated with that first one that ended up with blank text-- Congrats!

@Mikis: Yes, I believe the user named Peter who commented on 2025-10-14 is the creator, though I am not sure if he checks in regularly or not

Does anyone know if the creator of this game still lurks here? I wonder if there's any chance for an update. I've lost interested quite some time ago because of all the bugs and imbalances, but I remember this game so fondly. I just wish it got back to actualy maze design, not bug exploits etc.

It should work. But PE must be build before any FS/fT .No matter what gem you have duplicated (or even more than 2), combining on not 1st build saves very first PE/FS/fT But in early lvls i often take flawed part of specials. So untill they are removed its impossible to exploit perfects. And its easy to forget which gem was first, unless you make 1 each (Perfect first), then duplicate + instant combine.

@parsons, So would it be "perf emerald, flawless saph x2, flawed topaz", chose combien special on 2nd, flawless saph and end up with DE + Perfect Emerald? Just tried and didn't work

@Peter simply need to reduce required gems for double upgrade by 1 (noticed numCombine function intentionally don't count selcted gem) Chrome displays its line 992, column 33555 it if helps :) Other high priority bug could be SYS (only upgraded): 1.stats 2.often overriding 40% aura with 5% (maybe just temporary disable aura if can't fix?) (So I never build SYS, new player may get frustratred by that)

@mmkay can you post a screenshot of that exact: "Easiest to fix is 4-combine bug (double upgrade requies now 4 OTHER same gems = 5 total instead 4)"