Rotten to the Core

Originally published at: Rotten to the Core – Gems of War

New Raid Boss Troop: Corrupted Crystalem The Corrupted Crystalem will be available in the Raid Boss Shop, and will appear in Glory, Gem, Guild, and VIP chests in 3-4 weeks’ time. New Epic Troop: Wood Rot Wood Rot will be available this week for 400 Glory in the shop as well as in Event Chests,…

2 Likes

“Decay” Gems? Ooh… let’s see, the tooltip says they match with Brown and drain 1 armor per turn, per Gem, from whichever team is larger.
That’s . . . interesting.

1 Like

so soon we get a troop they creates x gems at the start of each turn. combine with wand/sycorax. then you deplete armour in no time.

Decay gems are probably going to act like stone blocks most of the time and they could be used to deny mana. Losing armor every turn probably won’t have much of an impact if you’re at level 1,000+, but some new strategies of slowly whittling down the enemy team might emerge. If you can get enough decay gems to deal more damage than 4 stacks of bleed, poison and burn, the dot could start to really make a difference.

I’ll just have to wait and see how the new troops with decay gems and the libram of decay (new campaign weapon) interact. It’s a creative idea that has potential, so I’ll be patient and see what they’ve been brewing up in their secret lab.:stew:

2 Likes

I do wish the developers would do a more thorough job of balancing where the Godslayers come from. (Also which “races” the Siegebreakers come from.) There does seem to be a “clumping” tendency, in which kingdoms like Silverglade are already on their third Godslayer while certain other (older) kingdoms haven’t seen their second yet. With all the associated “clumping” issues cascading into weapon paradigms as well.

But I guess that we should probably wish for the developers to solve the bigger issues and the rampant bugs before they get to relatively small fries like this.

4 Likes

Decay gems sound like they’d be useful in low level battles, like arena maybe, but irrelevant in high level battles. If they can be matched with brown, they’re basically just brown gems, and if not, they’re basically just stone blocks.

The hero gem guide has been updated, though. We now have info for: decay gems, submerge gems, enchant gems and enrage gems. So, guess that’s the next four campaigns sorted, unless they plan to mess with the order or something.

2 Likes

I have a low level account on PC/mobile that I just use to spy on people, but besides that, I don’t play it that much because every battle feels like I’m in the arena.

And no, decay gems don’t match with brown gems, so they’ll just act like stone blocks. I don’t know if the loss of armor from decay gems will trigger things like the aquatic trait or remove barriers, but I’m sure they did enough through testing.

Right?:rofl:

3 Likes

If it’s stat changes, I don’t THINK it will, because I know you can remove armour from enemies when they’re barriered, and barrier doesn’t stop it and get removed (as far as I remember), so it would remove the armour and not affect anything else, maybe. But if they’ve set it up as damage to the armour, then yeah, that’s gonna be an issue, I guess.

Hmmm. Suspicious looks. :joy:

I find it weird it targets the team with the most troops. So, once you’re winning, you’re affected by it. Might mean it’s better to focus on scatter damage, rather than killing troops one by one, but guess we’ll see.
Still wondering what it’ll do in the event of a draw. If we both have 4 troops, we both lose armour? Or neither team does? Who knows?

1 Like

submerge gems are going to be a pain…

2 Likes

mechanist will be the favoured class for them 11 weeks, or any dispel on match 4

2 Likes

Cast Godslayer, kill boss, create Decay Gems. Player then loses points in armour per turn where those created Decay Gems exist because they now have a man advantage over the CPU.

First creating Portal Gems if you kill an enemy, because why not give the CPU an immediate chance to recover, followed by a self inflicted-debuff. You do make some interesting decisions, devs.

7 Likes

If you weren’t forced to use it for the score why on earth would you include this in your team.

4 Likes

Except that they do. Not sure if it’s a positive (probably not), but they do match with brown gems.

5 Likes

They do match brown gems. They look like they wouldn’t, so I assumed they didn’t, until my enemy matched them. They are also brown gems for purposes of removal (krystenax.) They also convert as brown gems would, explode as brown gems would and are destroyed as brown gems would. So they are not like stone blocks.

2 Likes

Thanks for confirming that decay gems match with brown gems. It’s just that the heroic gem tooltip is misleading because it states that they’re brown gems, but doesn’t mention that they can be matched. I assumed that they were just stone blocks, and I didn’t want to misinform people.

But I have confirmed that decay gems do not remove barriers or trigger the aquatic trait. I think it’s because decay gems technically are not considered direct damage. It’s just weird that as long as decay gems are in the board, both teams are losing armor if you have the same number of troops.

On my fresh level 300 account, I purposefully let the AI take skulls to kill my first troop and then let the decay gems slowly whittle them down. On low level accounts, the dot definitely can add up in scenarios that feel like arena.

1 Like

Which team do they drain when both teams are the same size?

1 Like

Both teams lose armor if you both have the same number of troops with decay gems on the board. If you start defeating enemies one by one, you will start to lose armor.

2 Likes

These decay gems reminded me of a terror from my childhood


10 points to anyone that can tell me the name of this oxidizing monstrosity.

1 Like

A rust monster, eh? That brings back memories from my very early days playing tabletop.

3 Likes

Strange lore implications of this particular Gem, especially as our primary sources of it currently are this week’s new Troops.

2 Likes