This is an out of date guide for PC and Mobile users. 1.0.6 is still being used on Xbox and PS4 so gonna let it how it is and probably make a new one for 1.0.8! I hope people can still learn some thing about it.
Hi guys, My name is Sergio, and my nickname on GOW is Serale, am currently a level 369 player and also the GM of “Match Masters”. On this guide we’ll be hitting some of the major points around the game, while we are not getting down on them a lot (Since it would make this guide rather huge), this will give you a pretty good idea about some of the key parts of the game. As a head’s up, english is not my first language so sorry for making your eyes bleed. Te-he! 
1- Starting as a new player on GOW
As in most of the games, on Gems of war the boring part is starting, having a limited number of troops can’t let you down, here I’ll give you some tips for the begginers.
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Guild Recruitment: Being on a guild have really good perks, such extra mana surge chance (You get doubled mana when matching gems) and an oportunity to get easy keys and gems, On top guilds there might be hard standards for you to achieve, but theres a lot of guilds with no requirements that can help you on your road, remember to visit the forums on both the Gems of War web page and Steam forum to find this guilds.
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Kingdoms: The major way to get experience and level up your hero is by completing the quests on each kingdom, as a tip I recommend to new players finish each quest line before moving on to the next kingdom, also buy them one by one to save money for the battles. (Finishing each quest line awards an EPIC rarity troop)
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Armor: Having an armor will give you extra bonuses on finishing each battle, we will be touching more on this later but I recommend for all new players the Dragon Armor, it gives you double gold, which will help you to keep battleing and donating to your guild. The cost is 500 Gems. (Really worth the price)
2- Kingdom Leveling
While having awesome troops (Legendaries and Epics) at max level is very good to try alot of new comps and combos, having more of the “normal” troops level’d to get easier level on your kingdoms is way more optimal. Leveling your lesser troops is not only cheaper, but also it gives you the same level point than leveling a Legendarie or Epic. Here you can see a table for the training level (up to level 15):
Total of souls used for each troop:
Common: 2275
Rare: 2485
Ultra-Rare: 2715
Epic: 3045
Legendarie: 3405
Summary, you can get level on your kingdoms faster leveling all the cheaper troops first and having the good & awesome for laters. Remember that you get a point of chance for tributes with each level on your kingdoms! (Completing the challenges and quest awards one point more each.)
3- Defense and Invades
3.1- Invades: While invading the use of your troops is quite important, even if you are smarter than the AI it can overwhelm you with good troops, try to use the most of each of the troops you have selected, doing a comp that fit your style is rather important also, try to make them sinergize with each other, for example, one of the comps I like the most for both farming gold and souls (My style) is:
Each of this troops sinergize with eachother and make a competitive comp to play. Remember that the order the AI makes it matches are: 4+ Skulls > 4+ Gems > 3 Skulls > 3 Gems. Is hard to know when its gonna prioritize using a spell or matching a gem but this can give you a pretty good idea for playing against her, sometimes is easier to let the AI match 3 skulls instead of letting her cast a spell, more when is one important such as the silence from The Silent One.
3.2- Defense: To be honest this is useless, if you are a person who can log on every day you pretty much want to loose each of the defenses so you can atack for 50 gold the atacker. Alltough, if you are not one of this person and you can only log on once in a while, am gonna give you some tips to make your chances of winning defenses more higher. First of all try to use troops that are rather dumb and dont need a lot of thinking when using them, a good example of this are: The Silent One, Venoxia, Webspinner and Sheggra. A good example of a fine defense comp is:
Second, the order you put your troops are more important than while invading, I highly recomend to use a hero on the first spot always and troops with higher impact should be on the third spot so they are more guarded.
You can change the comp is defending going to your home kingdom, clicking on it and going to the tab of “Defenders”
4- Mini games; Treasure Hunt and Arena.
4.1- Arena: For Arena the troops you draft are almost as important as your gameplay. While drafting all you are looking for are high value troops, this means, troops that have good stats and high impact spells that are easy to fill. Also, you should be looking to have a mana variety. You dont want yo have all of your troops using Green mana. As an example of the bests troops for arena we have:
All the troops that give you an extra turn always are quite good on arena, but you need to play them properly, as a tip, I dont recomend to draft mana color changer troops (Such as Alchemist, Goblin Shaman or Valkyrie) if you are not completly sure you are gonna get a troop to sinergize with those. For the hero is really important that you have him on the first slot, hes really tanky and also have almost always more damage than your other troops, for the weapon is really up to your draft, but I higly recommend all the weapons that do damage to all the troops such as “Sun & Moon” and the “Summer’s Fury”.
Arena is accesible for anyone at any level, even if you don’t have the troops or they aren’t level 10 you still can draft them to play.
For a bigger inside into the arena check this awesome guide made by Archenassa: Click Here
4.2- Treasure Hunt: The biggest noob trap from the game, well, in my opinion, I don’t feel like the rewards worth the time and the glory to get the map you invest on them, all tought if you like it this is completly irrelevant, some tips for this mini game, are:
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Do not match the green vaults, three green vaults worth more than one red. Unless of course you are aiming for keys.
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Start with the gems at the top, you dont want to move those gems that are on the botton since it could fire a chain of cascades that dont really help you, you wanna get the most “4 of-a-kind” and “5 of-a-kind” as possible.
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Do not let the copper coins stack on the botton, if you dont have any good match, try to get rid of those as soon as possible.
5- Gameplay
At the end, the most important part of the game, a couple of tips for newbies and not so newbies are:
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Start to match the gems you consider the most important for your comp, almost everytime the troop who should get fill first are the exploders (Troops with the ability to EXPLODE gems) if you dont have any,try to deny an important mana for your enemy, either for his own exploder or an high impact ability troop such as “The Silent One” (Yes, again.)
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Try always to get the most of each turn, there are a lot of tricky plays you can do:
Here you can see how matching the three yellow gems you can get three more green gems for free.
On the second one it show how you can match gems on the bottom to make those on the top match too, this is specially powerful when matching 4 of-a-kind gems to get an extra turn. (Yes, it would’ve work matching either the reds or the yellows)
And finally here on the third, we can see how moving the brown gem, we can get up to 3 matches (The browns, the purples and the blues.) Making it the best play of the turn.
And at the end we’ve what is probably the biggest tip I can give you…
----> HAVE FUN! <----
UWAH! 
