| ⚠ | Upcoming! |
| The subject of this article is a recent or unreleased addition. It may contain speculation or errors. Have new, relevant information to add? Why not help out? |
| This article is currently under construction. It may contain little or inaccurate information. |
GemCraft Lost Chapter: Frostborn Wrath (also known as GemCraft - Frostborn Wrath on Steam) is the fifth installment in the GemCraft series developed and published by Game in a Bottle. The game was released on Steam for Microsoft Windows systems in January 10, 2020.[1]
Overview
Frostborn Wrath is the first game in the series to be developed for Microsoft Windows only and published on Steam exclusively, due to the previous games' platform, Adobe Flash, being deprecated and web browsers disabling the feature by default. As such, the game supports Full HD resolution, with all art assets made specifically for the higher resolution.
Many elements from Chasing Shadows return, such as skills, Talisman system, battle traits, strike spells, and Endurance Mode.
Changes
Gameplay Changes
- Larger fields, with artworks all made at Full HD resolution
- Game runs 3x as fast by default
- Linked waves (two waves summoned at the same time).
- One click gem creation, pre-adjustable gem creation grade, upgrade gems in the inventory with the mouse wheel too.
- Enraging gem slot (can be used to enrage all waves).
- Endurance Mode is available beginning from Wave 1 (as a separate battle mode)
- New Trial mode is available as a separate game mode for most fields (inspired by Vision fields from the previous installment).
- Different map layout for each battle mode [2].
Structures
- New buildable structures are introduced:
- Lanterns: hits multiple enemies, but has fixed range and attacks 20% as fast as towers and deal 50% less damage.
- Pylons: fires high damage shots that ignores armor and hits three times to the next enemy or the same enemy until it dies. They must be charged with tower shots, and their shots deals the highest damage a gem deals to it. Charges generated by tower shots provide diminishing charges based on damage dealt and amount of shots stored.
- A new set of hostile structures are also introduced as well:
- Watchtowers which shoots almost everything including friendly buildings and can only be destroyed by bolt shots.
- Snowy Pit: regularly spawns white swarmlings that resist half the duration of freeze and whiteout strike spells.
- Shrines now charge independently, do not cost gems to activate, and function as a combination of shrines from GCL. may fire in up to 8 directions away from shrine. gathers energy from all gems on the field, ignores armor, stuns for 3-5 seconds, and shreds a portion of monsters' health. Any monsters surviving the hit will be stunned briefly. The number of health-shredding hits depends on the number of gems on the field
- A new destructible structure, Jar of Wasps which contains gem wasps extracted from grade # {component type} gem. Can be destroyed with tower shots by select target or set structure priority.
- A new secret beacon, the Omnibeacon, combining the effects of shield, cleansing, healing, and haste beacon into one.
Talisman
The talisman in this release is designed as a 5x5 uniform jigsaw puzzle, where fragments are the pieces. For the purposes of this guide, rows will be lettered from top to bottom: a, b, c, d and e. Columns will be numbered from left to right: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Sockets will be named by their row, followed by their column. For example, the top left corner socket is (a1). Equip fragments into your talisman to receive their stated bonus stats. Upgrade fragments with shadow cores to increase their stats.
Read more in the main article.
Monsters
- Monsters no longer regain health gradually.
- New flying ones / special enemies are introduced:
- Wraiths, providing 15% damage reduction to all enemies per Wraith, stacking up to 90%
- Wizard Hunters, unbanishable monster destroying random structures as they walk towards the orb.
- Swarm Queen, moves slowly on a specific square path and periodically lays monster eggs which spawn swarmlings as the battle marches on.[3]. When the Swarm Queen is killed, she spawns 60-80 swarmlings.
- Monster eggs may also appear on some fields.
- Wallbreaker, slowly inches towards orb along path. destroys any structure in its way, including your towers built on his path, allowing it to take the shortest path to the orb no matter what. Cannot be banished. Only appears on specific fields and specific waves. Sometimes immune to damage until a certain wave/last wave is started.
- Gatekeeper, final boss of the game, with high health, armor and various support abilities, grows fangs to bolster its support powers. Takes extra damage when a fang is destroyed.
Gem Wasps
- Gem Wasps now follow the mouse pointer, but it must be close to them for them to actually obey. They also have a much higher base lifetime.
Other / Uncategorized Changes
- Certain field-specific soundtrack music from CS applies differently to FW; now, "Vision Field" applies to every journey level for fields that unlock new map segments when won. "Gembearer" music applies to trial and endurance versions of fields with tokens that resemble tome chamber field tokens from CS which are now warmth spell and boss/special/journey fields.
- Tome Chamber field token from CS now applies to Warmth Spell field and boss/special/journey fields.
- New mod buttons along the top row in the field selection hub.
- Map-specific features (eg, warmth spell early on which triples gem wasp count for every gem bomb dropped on it).
- Journal: hover over parts of the map on the first page to reveal a pop-up of the title of the game that took place at each location.
- Field unlock path seems to be slightly more linear.
- Barricades: function like walls, can only be destroyed by tower shots, cannot be bombed.
- Gem target priorities can now be rapid-cycled by tapping the right mouse button.
- Enhancement Spells start with 7 charges by default instead of 12.
- Frostruined Wizard Tower: "frozen grave of a fellow wizard"
Gems
- The number of available gem colors are decreased from 9 to 6.
- The Cyan gems (Healing Suppression), Chain-Hit gems (red in GemCraft Chapter2), the White gems (Poolbound), and the Black Gems (Bloodbound) have been removed. However...
- The White gems' effect (Poolbound) and the Black gems' (Bloodbound) effect now applies to all gems by default.
- Red Gems now cause bleeding: targets suffer more damage from all sources for a period of time.
| Gems | ||
|---|---|---|
| Yellow Gem Critical Hit |
Orange Gem Mana Leaching |
Red Gem Bleeding |
| Purple Gem Armor Tearing |
Green Gem Poison |
Blue Gem Slowing |
Skills
- Strike spells Curse and Wake of Eternity are replaced with Whiteout and Ice Shards, respectively.
- 2nd ability for each skill increases every 5 levels instead of 3.
- Orblets are now a skill-based feature, under "Orb of Presence", instead of a Battle Trait. Increasing this skill increases the number of orblets docked around the Orb of Presence at the start of each level.
- Losing orblets also don't incur the 10% mana gain penalty (except on some trial fields which has them).
- Wizard Stashes, replaces Tome Chambers, contains traits, skill tomes, talisman fragments, or shadow cores. They can be opened by shooting them down, but must be done before end of journey waves, or before orb of presence is destroyed in endurance mode.
- Gem component skills do not let you take otherwise forbidden types into fields not yet beaten on journey mode once. They do let you take corresponding components into fields for replay or endurance mode and are indicated by smaller images under "Available Gems".
| Skills | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mana Stream Wrath |
Orb of Presence Focus |
Fusion Focus |
True Colors Focus |
Resonance Focus |
Demolition Wrath |
| Critical Hit Component |
Mana Leech Component |
Bleed Component |
Armor Tearing Component |
Poison Component |
Slowing Component |
| Freeze Strike Spell |
Whiteout Strike Spell |
Ice Shards Strike Spell |
Bolt Enhancement Spell |
Beam Enhancement Spell |
Barrage Enhancement Spell |
| Fury Wrath |
Amplifiers Construction |
Pylons Construction |
Lanterns Construction |
Traps Construction |
Seeker Sense Wrath |
Battle Traits
The game features 15 Battle Traits. Some are returning from Chasing Shadows, some are new. All traits can be raised to level 12. Each level of battle traits gives x0.1 additional XP multiplier and increases talisman drop rarity.
| Adaptive Carapace | Dark Masonry | Swarmling Domination | Overcrowd | Corrupted Banishment |
| Awakening | Insulation | Hatred | Swarming Parasites | Haste |
| Thick Air | Vital Link | Giant Domination | Strength in Numbers | Ritual |
Synopsis
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The story started centuries ago with a wizard that fled to the freezing North from the Spiritforge in an attenpt to escape from the wrath of wizard council. He hid in an abandoned wizard tower there but shrotly after they found him and casted a devastating freezing spell around his area that frozed him for centuries but failed to kill him.
During the time that he was frozen he is still awake and saw everything, including the summoning of the Forgotten and several attempts to seal her forever that eventually still failed.
After reawakening, the wizard embarks on a journey towards Spiritforge, battling monsters and demons along the way, while the darkness grows in strength.
Spoilers end here.
Development
The game's development was hinted at on December 23, 2015 in the developer's blog post.[4] Two years later, on December 22, 2017, first screenshot of the new game was revealed. Game in a Bottle has stated that it does not plan to use paid loot boxes or other pay-to-win schemes.[5] On August 22, 2018, the new game's title was revealed to be GemCraft lost chapter: Frostborn Wrath.[6] On December 2, 2019, a trailer for the game was released.
Gallery
External links
| ||||||||