[johnarryn]

I almost never use Acashic record, even when I have access to it... too expensive, I find, and not worth the payoff.

I tend to begin manual site searching (move, search, move search) very early with several mages to get my gem economic going, particularly if I have access to diverse paths and will need many types of gems. Once its later in the game and I have more mages and more gems, I can stop some mages from researching and have them cast spells to search instead... I find this method gets me a very large income of gems starting early in the game.