Hey Everyone,
The Coming Soon page for the upcoming GemCraft chapter, Frostborn Wrath, is now live! You can put the game on your wishlist so you won't miss the release day. You can also read a long list of of new and changed features. Stay tuned for more info to come!

List of changes:

- Fixed: outcome panel could show negative mana spent on amplifiers with high level masonry skill
- Fixed: Spiritforge controlled towers with their gems stolen by a specter stated that a new gem can be inserted
- When the Forgotten locks the gui, the call for early waves is withdrawn
- Fixed some typos
- Waves enraged by the Forgotten can't be cleaned of rage anymore
- Fixed a bug involving specters almost leaving the battlefield with a stolen gem
- Minor change at field V7: One of the Spf towers upgrades its gem later
- Added Alt Enter shortcut to switch full screen

Fixed:
- demolishing a tower while its gem was shooting a beam left the beam vfx stuck
- waves right after a spark couldn't be unangered
- orblets dropped by monsters banished by the Scythe Gate disappeared

A new version of GemCraft Chasing Shadows arrives with a bunch of long awaited changes and fixes:

Improvements:

- Resonance skill damage boost became 4.5% per level (previously 3%)
- Touch of Wisdom spark always appears every 100 waves
- Fields F3 and U7 have reduced hp increment between waves
- Hold alt while adjusting a gem's range to step by 1%
- Press delete over a wave stone to remove enraging
- Shadow cores can be used to get skill points, starting at 1000 sc, price going up by 100 sc with every skillpt bought

Fixed errors:

- Hopefully reduced lag when monsters spawn beacons in masses
- Fixed some typos and achievements
- Resetting traits shook the sc counter
- Checking building placement ignored guardians
- Shrines ignored guardians

Still more bugfixes and changes arrive in the next build.

EDIT
v.1.0.4a has one change:
- Touch of Wisdom spark always appears every 50 waves instead of 100

EDIT2
v.1.0.4b fixes 2 exploits and 1 serious bug. Suspiciously high xps due to the exploits gone through a one time cut. Sorry for the mess with the recent changes!

A new version of GemCraft Chasing Shadows is out, putting an end to some annoyances and improving gameplay:

Improvements:

• Shadows don't destroy nearby walls on death anymore
  
• Traps and Amplifiers skills are uncapped
  
• Spires can't move while the GUI is being locked by the Forgotten (earlier only specters and apparitions were affected)

Fixed errors:

• Spawning lots of beacons should give much less lag
  
• Installation folder is now properly named. Existing installations should keep working fine, reinstalling the game will place the game files into the new folder.
  
• Field L5 drop holder hidden under a tree is visible now
  
• Calculating total skill points fixed again
  
• Fixed: shrines activated just before ending a battle had their performance info text stuck on the screen

There are still more known errors, thanks to you keeping sending feedback, the next update will arrive as soon as a new pack of fixes and tweaks stacks up!

List of changes:

• Hopefully fixed an error involving towers shooting at wizlocks
  
• Fixed field X6 not allowing building anything
  
• Fixed skill panel infobox not counting vision and achievement reset skill points to the total value
  
• Fixed: having guardians on the field and setting a gem priority to swarmling or giant threw error message
  
• The 'Touch of wisdom' (xp boost) spark doesn't appear in Iron Wizard mode anymore
  
• Vision fields should now always give the same wave composition (setting traits for normal fields caused random waves for visions too)- sorry for all the frustration!
  
• Added 4 save slots
  
• Added new option: Set default game window size

Also, Steam trading cards and all the related things are now available!

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick summary of what’s happened since the Steam release, and a bit about the future of GemCraft – Chasing Shadows.

The release so far has been a great success, almost all of your reviews have been positive, and the game even got on Steam’s popular new releases list. Thank you again for being so supportive since the beginning. All your enthusiasm, altruism and help has made it possible to make the latest GemCraft a reality on Armor Games, and then make it through Greenlight to the Steam store!
As a special thanks, Armor Games has given a small amount of Steam keys to randomly selected players last week. More Steam keys will also be given away by AG, both in the ongoing “Guess which Chapter and Field is on the Piece of Screenshot” contest on Twitter, and the just launched “Draw a Gem” contest on Facebook.

Thank you for all the recent feedback you’ve been sending me, I’m trying to fix bugs as they come up and will upload a new build as soon as is possible. The Steam client should automatically update the game to the latest version. I’ll also be going through emails, comments, and forums when I can to answer your questions and feedback.

Steam trading cards will be added soon as well, I just need to finish some of the art.

Answers to Common Questions:

Q: What more will I get if I purchase the Steam version over Flash?

A: Here are the highlights of the Steam game:

• Lots of new fields
• The game’s native resolution has increased from 900×600 to 1088×612 (16:9 ratio)
• All fields became wider as the game got wide, they are 54×32 tiles instead of the old 44×32, which brought pleasant changes in many of the fields
• No in-game purchases, and of course you get access to all content that has been given by the Magician’s Pouch
• You don’t get the Chain hit skill and the Orblets trait on start, you have to find them in the wilderness
• Battle traits cost no shadow cores
• Higher shadow core drop rate, with which you can solely focus on getting and upgrading talisman fragments
• Many of the game’s graphics have been made in a higher resolution
• Full screen support, custom mouse pointer (can be disabled), saving to files (which are synced to the Steam cloud too)
• Iron Wizard mode: a game mode where you can’t rely on grinding for XP (no endurance), getting lots of skill points from achievements, or building a powerful talisman; you get 5 skill points for beating a field, and that’s all. No battle traits, except a special variant of the original Orblets trait. You can gather Orblets from locked wizard towers, and you also have to get your skills from the tome chambers.
• All achievements (plus one) can be unlocked as Steam achievements

Q: I have bought the Magician’s Pouch before, how come I don’t get a free Steam key?

A: First of all, Thank you for supporting us with your purchase! Without going into whether it’s fair to ask money “twice for the same stuff” (err.. see the list of new enhancements above), what’s the justifiable price tag or value (if any) of the Steam version, the AG version, or computer games in general, there is a simple technical constraint: I don’t have access to the database of Armor Games (just as I won’t get into Kongregate’s database either, and who knows what sites the web version will get on), so I can’t tell who bought what.

Q: Can I transfer my saved game from AG to Steam?

A: I don’t know if Valve (Steam) would be happy about it, but the two game versions are not compatible anyway, so no, sorry.

—

I’m also working on the Kongregate release, it will be out as fast as possible, but I don’t think it can happen this week.

That’s all for now, I’ll write when we get some of the things listed above done, have a great time playing!