People, it’s time to talk about masteries.
Ever wonder why your opponent keeps filling up their goblin in one turn when it should take two? You can blame their mana surge chance for that one. Now it’s your turn to even the odds!
I was a bit confused by mana surges when I started playing, so I thought it might help newcomers to get some info about them.
What are masteries / mana surges?
Mana surge is a game mechanic that doubles the mana you get from a match. The mana surge chance is called mastery.
If you make a 3-match and you get a mana surge, you’ll get 6 mana instead of 3.
It’s important to note that the kingdom bonus is only applied after you get the mana surge, so the formula is like this: (match x 2) + kingdom bonus.
Let’s take the Satyr as an example, using only 3-match moves. The Satyr is a common troop from Pan’s Vale that needs 9 green mana to fill up.
With no bonus and no mana surge, 3 turns: 3+3+3.
With no bonus and one mana surge, 2 turns: (3x2) + 3.
With a one-mana bonus, for instance if your kingdom is Zaejin, 3 turns: 4+4+1 (and an overload of 3).
With a one-mana bonus and a mana surge, 2 turns: ((3x2)+1)+2 (and an overload of 2).
With a two-mana bonus and no mana surge, for instance if your kingdom is Forest of Thorns, 2 turns: 5+4 (overload of 1).
With a two-mana bonus and a mana surge, 2 turns: ((3x2)+2)+1 (overload of 4).
Mana surges are more important when you play troops that need a lot of mana to activate, or when you play several troops using the same colours – the overload means you can start filling up the second troop without losing any mana in the process.
How do I know what my current masteries are?
All you need is to get to your hero panel to look at it.
On this panel, you can see where your masteries are at, and exactly how it translates in term of mana surge chance.
Beware though that these numbers take your guild masteries into account, and can therefore change if you switch guilds along the way!
You said I could increase my masteries, how do I do that?
Masteries can be increased through three ways: levelling up your hero, guild bonuses and kingdom levelling.
Levelling up your hero
Whenever you level up, you are offered the possibility to level up one of your masteries. You are given the choice between two randomly chosen mana colours.
On the left hand side, you can see what your actual masteries are (that is, without any extra bonuses).
You can decide whether you want to focus on a few specific colours or whether you prefer to level them up evenly.
When you gain in masteries through hero levelling, they also give you access to new weapons!
For instance, getting to Air mastery 3 (the yellow mastery), you unlock the Sunbolt Javelin, a weapon that deals true damage.
You can find the list of all the weapons you can unlock at http://gemsofwar.com/game-guide-weapon-list/
Guild bonuses
From the main guild screen, you can access the current mastery bonuses offered by your guild.
Just click on the cup icon and look at what masteries you’re currently benefiting from.
On this screen, you can see how much the guild increases your mana surge chance bonus. For instance in this case, the Water mastery (blue mana) is increased by 10.
On the top left, you can see a token. Token are gained through guild tasks, and can be spent to increase the masteries. Not everyone in the guild can increase the bonuses, though. You might have to discuss with the other members which mastery should be upgraded next! In any case, if you want to accelerate the process, it might be a good idea to complete tasks that give more tokens first.
For instance here, the Leadership task brings in more tokens than the two others.
(Please discuss it with your fellow guild members first, some guild are pretty strict about what to level up.)
Note that these bonus masteries are NOT taken into account to unlock weapons; only your actual hero masteries are being used in this case.
Kingdom bonuses
Whenever you level up a kingdom, you gain access to different bonuses. This is NOT a kingdom levelling guide, so we’ll focus only on masteries here. For more general information about it, please consult Serale’s guide at General Guide for PS4 & XBOX users (1.0.6 ver)
In order to see which kingdom level you need to gain access to new masteries, you have to consult the kingdom bonuses screen.
You gain +5 to all masteries at kingdom levels 3, 5, 7, 9 and 10.
Note that bonuses are distributed the same way in all kingdoms, but they are only applied when you fight or defend in this kingdom.
For instance, if you have +5 to all masteries in Zaejin, fighting and defending in Zaejin will show an increase in mana surges. However, if you have no mastery bonus in Pan’s Vale, fighting or defending in Pan’s Vale won’t benefit from the kingdom mastery bonus. Each kingdom bonus you gain when levelling it up ONLY applies to said kingdom. These mastery bonuses are useful when defending and invading.
Ok, got it! Are there any mana colours I should prioritize?
This one is up to you. I prefer levelling evenly, but it’s a matter of personal choice. Some people might want to focus on levelling masteries of their favourite troop first, but that favourite troop might change! 
Others will level masteries in order to unlock specific weapons. Here are two that are worth considering:
- Yellow Mana 3: Sunbolt Javelin, your first true damage weapon
- Purple Mana 7: Wicked Scythe, your first “big” AOE weapon
There are quite a lot of excellent weapons to unlock with masteries, so report to the GoW weapon list to see the requirements of those you wish to unlock first.
As @Nimhain detailed later down the thread:
To unlock all the Gem Mastery weapons look at getting all your masteries to about 40.
This won’t unlock previous event weapons.
Have fun now!
