The Necromancer
Necromancer is quite possibly the most difficult character to play.
Certainly he is the easiest misled along the path. This is quite possibly
due to the flexibility in his morality. If the Necromancer focuses in any
one area, to the exclusion of another area, he may well find himself at a
dead end as a result. The ability to raise the dead has its own peril, as
the undead are mindless servants, and are easily confused in later levels.
Poison and Bone spells are perhaps the most effective for the Necromancer
in the end, but are difficult to start with. Certainly developing his
curses is the way in which the Necromancer can be most effective in a
team, but this can be limiting on his own.
The Necromancer's
characteristics are largely dependent on other factors. He will need mana
more than any character save the Sorceress. To this end, if he can not
find enough mana generating items, he must boost his energy. At the same
time he is similarly cursed as the Sorceress is, with poor physical
characteristics. He, too, needs strength to wear decent armor, good
dexterity to hold his own in melee combat, and better vitality so that
champion monsters do not destroy his life essence in a quick series of
hits.
In terms of items, the Necromancer would seem to be less
dependent. Mostly he should look for items to keep him alive or to
regenerate mana. The Necromancer requires guile to play, and he should not
shrink from his natural strategy despite the complaints of other
characters. Those who are less gifted often decry intelligence and
cunning. Certainly the Necromancer should always seek after quality
armor.
Skill Strategies
The Necromancer's unique abilities allow
for some interesting combinations when it comes to skill selection. Unlike
the other classes where skill specialization is the way to go, it is to
the Necromancer's advantage to advance through all three skill trees and
use the skills to complement one another. The Summoning Spells will help
provide minions that will absorb the damage from the hordes of monsters
that are sure to come. The Poison and Bone Spells will provide the direct
damage needed to produce the corpses that the Necromancer draws his power
from. The Curses will increase the rate at which the Necromancer and his
minions will be able to slay the offending
monsters.
Summonables
Of the summonable minions, Golems are the
single strongest companions to have at your side. These towers of might
are able to take punishment that might otherwise seriously wound your
Necromancer. Combined with Curses, they can inflict considerable damage as
well. The only drawback is you can only have one type of golem with you at
a time. Don't waste too many points on the lower level golems since at the
higher levels, you will want to upgrade to Iron or Fire Golems. If you
absolutely must increase the effectiveness of your golems at an early
level, put points into Golem Mastery rather than putting points into the
golems themselves. This will ensure that the more advanced Golems will
benefit from the passive upgrade as well as the lowly Clay
Golem.
Revived monsters can be almost as good, if not better than
Golems when the situation demands them. The biggest advantage of Revive is
that you can summon almost any fallen enemy and have them fight for you -
utilizing the special abilities that they have at their disposal (except
for resurrection of fallen companions). This means that with Revive you
can pick and choose whether or not to concentrate on melee or ranged
attack minions, thus filling any gaps that you might have with your
existing Golem or Skeletal minions. The short lifespan and high mana cost
of Revived monsters are the main restrictions for this skill so use it
with care - but don't hesitate to provide support for your Golems with
this skill if you have the mana to spare.
Skeletal Mages are also
very useful to have around with their variety of ranged attacks. Since
they are attacking from a distance, you don't have to worry too much about
their durability in combat. Each summoning will produce a random mage with
a concentration in one of the four magic types: cold, fire, lightning and
poison. If you aren't happy with the mage types that you've raised, simply
resummon until you are. With the relatively low mana cost you should be
able to have a good combination of mages within a few summonings. Also
since the mages use a ranged attack, they will provide ample support for
your golem without getting in the way of melee combat.
The Skeleton
warrior minions are the least effective of the summonables. Being melee
attackers, they will always attempt to get to an enemy within range and
can often cause "traffic jams" in tight corridors. They also serve as poor
cannon fodder and they don't inflict much damage. While helpful at the
very early levels, they won't carry their weight very well in the later
levels. There are far better skills to place points into once your
character reaches level 6.
Magic Items and Minions
Some Magical
Prefixes and Suffixes will not work when your Minions making the killing
blow on a monster. Some of these include %Life/%Mana Steal Items, Items
that increase Gold from Monsters, Items that give a Better Chance of
Getting Magic Items, and Triumphant items which give +1 to Mana for each
kill. Almost everything else should work with Minions.
Damage and
Destroy
The Necromancer's Poison and Bone spells are some of the most
powerful damage spells found in the game. In particular, Corpse Explosion
(CLVL 6) and Bone Spear (CLVL 18) can be your most useful skills
throughout all your adventures as a Necromancer.
Corpse Explosion
has the interesting property of causing a proportional amount of damage
rather than a fixed amount AND causing this damage as an area effect. What
this means is that since it causes 60 - 100% damage of a corpse's hit
points, you will be able to wreak an unnerving amount of damage to
monsters with a minimal number of casts - no matter what level the monster
is. By putting more points into this skill, you can increase the range of
destruction - which can be particularly useful in tight situations. Once
you become proficient with selecting targets with the most hit points, you
will be able to kill weaker monsters in one blow while still heavily
damaging the stronger monsters.
An interesting side effect of this
spell is that exploding corpses will often produce many more corpses for
you to explode. Once you get these chain reactions started, you should
easily be able to mow down entire legions of monsters unfortunate enough
to be in your way. The only drawback of this skill is that you need an
initial corpse to catalyze the chain reaction and for this you will either
need to rely on your's or your minion's ability to kill in melee combat,
or use a powerful direct damage spell like Bone Spear, Bone Spirit or the
Poison spells to get your first corpse.
At level 18, your
Necromancer will become a death machine with the Bone Spear spell. It can
cause serious damage with each hit and it has the ability to pierce one
target and continue on its path to damage all others in its way. In tight
corridors where enemy monsters are lining up to get you, Bone Spear will
clear a path with frightening efficiency. This skill will probably be your
best weapon from level 18 and up.
If your style of play favors the
slow death of your enemies as opposed to instant death, be sure to put a
few points into the Poison spells. Poison Dagger, Poison Explosion and
Poison Nova are all capable of causing massive damage to a monster,
however, there is a duration time associated with each spell. As the Hit
Points drain from your enemies, you will need to continue to avoid their
attacks until the poison has run its course. If you want your Necromancer
to be physically fit, using Poison spells is a good way to spend a little
time jogging around while your foes battle the toxic effects of your
actions.
Curses
For Necromancers that rely heavily on minions to
do their dirty work, using Curses will definitely help speed the effort of
the hard working Golems, Skeletons and Revived Monsters. There are a wide
variety of curses available and depending on your style of play, the
Curses that work for one Necromancer may not work as well for another
Necromancer. That being said, Curses can be categorized in one of two
ways: damage-related or attribute-related.
Curses like Amplify
Damage, Iron Maiden and Life Tap are all damage-related. Each has a way of
manipulating either damage done or damage taken. Amplify Damage helps
increase the damage dealt by you or your minions and is typically more
useful in situations where you or your minions are physically superior to
the monsters they face. Life Tap is also useful if you or your minions are
dealing significant damage - since with each hit, a portion of that damage
is converted into health. If the monsters are physically stronger, then
Iron Maiden can be used to return double or more the damage back to the
offending monster. Iron Maiden can also be useful in situations where you
or your melee minions are completely surrounded. Since you or your melee
minions can only attack one monster at a time, Iron Maiden can help reduce
the HP of all monsters that are trying to hit you - so if you're tied up
with tackling one monster, the others are damaging themselves as they
attempt to attack you while you're vulnerable.
Attribute-related
Curses are more general purpose than the damage-related Curses. These
decrease one or more attributes of the affected monsters. For example, the
Lower Resist Curse lowers all the resistances of the affected monsters
(fire, cold, lightning, poison), Decrepify decreases the speed of the
affected monster, etc. There are a wide variety of these curses and you
can view each one in the Necromancer Curses page. There is less strategy
involved with these Curses - just cast before combat and let them work
their magic.
Unsummon
Use Unsummon to choose which type of
Skeletal Mage you want. If you find you no longer want a Fire Skeletal
Mage, Unsummon it, and create a new Skeletal Mage. You can do the same
with Revive. You may also want to use Unsummon to get rid of Minions when
they get in the way.