"Necromancy is the study of the soul. We are able to raise fallen emeries to do ur bidding, rip the spirits from our foes, or simply drive them insane. Command of these forces requires a great deal of intelligence and charisma." - Necromancy Trainer
How to Unlock[]
Go to the Mage Academy Tower, and speak to a student near the headmaster who mentions a crypt where all the cool kids hang out. The crypt—also known as the Forbidden Library—is North by Northeast of the Mage Tower. Once in the main dungeon following the lobby area, take your first right (southeast), pass through the hallway, then continue taking the top passageways until you reach the end. Here, behind the main dungeon chest, lies the Skull of Necromancy on a table; walk up to it, and when prompted, agree to take it. With the Skull in your possession, return to the Mage tower and you will encounter the Necromancer trainer in the headmaster's chamber. The player can do this even with starter gear if you run past all enemies (otherwise the official recommended lvl is 8).
WARNING: If the player returns to the Necromancer trainer in the headmaster's chamber, they will have the option to kill him again. If killed, the Necromancer trainer in the Capital will disappear and they cannot train any more Necromancer skills!
Necromancer Skills[]
Skill | Description | Cooldown | Requirement |
---|---|---|---|
Raise Skeleton | Manifest a skeleton warrior for 10 seconds from the remains of a fallen enemy. You can have multiple skeletons, though you can't exceed 5 companions. | 1 sec |
10 INT 7 CHA 50 Gold |
Tainted Blood | Increases your resistance to both holy and unholy damage by 25%. | Passive |
12 INT 8 CHA 75 Gold |
Wandering Plague | Applies an everlasting poison to your target. When this target dies, the plague can transfer to other nearby foes. | 30 sec |
14 INT 9 CHA 100 Gold |
Withering | Increases the critical strike chance of all periodic damage effects by 10%. | Passive |
16 INT 10 CHA 125 Gold |
Summon Mummy | Conjures a powerful mummy, which is highly durable and deals heavy damage. | 15 sec |
19 INT 11 CHA 150 Gold |
Corpse Explosion | Up to 3 nearby corpses explode violently, dealing fire damage to their still-living allies. | 10 sec |
22 INT 12 CHA 175 Gold |
Army of Doom | Increases the health and duration of your summoned minions by 50%. | Passive |
25 INT 13 CHA 200 Gold |
Dark Harvest | Destroy a nearby corpse and consume its life energy, healing you. (fallen Skeletons from Raise Skeletons also work) | 10 sec |
28 INT 7 END 13 CHA 225 Gold |
Cursed Knowledge | Increases the damage you deal to undead creatures and constructs by 15%. | Passive |
32 INT 7 END 14 CHA 250 Gold |
Mass Hysteria | Your target and all surrounding enemies are consumed by madness, attacking each other for 6 seconds. | 30 sec |
35 INT 7 END 17 CHA 275 Gold |
Soul Mass | Generates a cloud of malevolent spirits which seeks out and explode upon the nearest enemy, dealing unholy damage. | 12 sec |
37 INT 9 END 19 CHA 300 Gold |
Aura of Disease | You are surrounded with a cloud of infection which deals poison damage to all nearby enemies. | Passive |
39 INT 12 END 20 CHA 325 Gold |
Slay Living | Attempts to instantly destroy your target. If the effect fails, the target instead takes minor unholy damage. Ineffective on all bosses. | 15 sec |
43 INT 13 END 22 CHA 350 Gold |
Strategy[]
The Necromancer offers perhaps the most unique gameplay experience of any class in the game, turning it into more of an RTS than an RPG. This means that the Necromancer, while requiring a higher level of skill to properly execute, can also be one of the strongest classes in the game if played properly.
The main thing that an aspiring Necromancer needs to understand is that the player character itself is relatively weak; it possesses weak defense, dedicates large amounts of skill points into the non-combat charisma stat, and its high intelligence stat is largely wasted by a lack of direct damaging spells to make use of it. In the face of these weaknesses, the player must make use of the unique resource Necromancers can access: corpses. The companions created by the class's flagship skill, Raise Skeleton, not only damage enemies, but deflect enemy attention and damage away from the player's health bar. Keeping the number of corpses on the field, as well as the Summon Mummy companion, as high as possible is the most important part to the Necromancer's game plan. This means that Necromancers, unlike all other classes, may sometimes benefit from focusing down weaker enemies that can be turned into useful corpses rather than on valuable targets like magic users, which can be left for attempted instant kills with Slay Living.
This strategic thinking is taken to another level with the other two skills that utilize corpses: Dark Harvest and Corpse Explosion. Dark Harvest, though not particularly flashy, is the most powerful skill a Necromancer has access to due to its reliable health recovery and fast cooldown. If a player is able to consistently keep companions on the field and not draw concentrated fire, this skill has the potential to make them functionally immortal. Corpse Explosion is a little more of a niche case, due to its position-based nature and the strange interactions it can create—see Tips. Nonetheless, it can be a useful AOE skill for taking out tightly packed groups of enemies.
Furthermore, individual Necromancer skills can provide great support for endgame builds, such as in the The Arena of Madness. Mass Hysteria is great for crowd control, and, when paired with Impending Doom passive from Ninja, can increase its usage rate. Slay Living is probably the single best spell in the game to kill high HP mobs such as the Green Cyclops, and when paired with the Premeditation skill from Ranger ensures that it procs. Aura of Disease is excellent for Rogue or really any melee build. Finally, Wandering Plague is a great general skill for boss fights because the poison never runs out.
Additional Skills[]
Skill | Description | Cooldown | Cost | Commentary |
---|---|---|---|---|
Teleport | Once activated, your next 5 movement commands cause you to instantly teleport to your destination. | 18 Seconds |
18 INT 10 SKL 175 Gold |
Teleport is practically a must-have for all magic users. Quickly removing one's self from danger is vital to a Necromancer's game plan. |
Meteor | Calls down a meteor from the heavens, blasting your target and any nearby foes with heavy fire damage. | 15 Seconds |
10 INT 7 SKL 100 Gold |
Necromancer suffers from a lack of direct-damage spells. Any Wizard damage spell would do nice, but Meteor requires little skill investment and also provides a more reliable AOE. |
Charm | Charms an enemy, forcing them to fight for you for 10 seconds. | 30 Seconds |
8 CHA 50 Gold |
Charm is usually pretty mediocre, but requires no additional stat investment and can fit well into a Necromancer's strategy. |
Staff Master | Allows you to wield magic staves. | Passive |
8 INT 6 SKL 75 Gold |
Since Necromancers are magic users that use high intelligence, this skill is all but mandatory. |
Premeditate | After activating this ability, your next skill will not trigger a cooldown, allowing you to trigger the same ability twice in a row. | 15 Seconds |
20 DEX 8 INT 31 SKL 300 Gold |
While certainly not practical for a normal play through, for a New Game Plus run it can be quite funny to pair with Slay Living. |
Tips & Bugs[]
- The Mummy and Skelton Warrior companions, once they die either in combat or via time elapse, become corpses eligible for Dark Harvest and Corpse Explosion. Both skills will prioritize dead companions before selecting fallen enemies, so make use of their corpses for damage or health gain.
- If there are companion corpses on the field when Raise Skeleton is used, one corpse will be removed from the field in addition to the corpse used to summon the skeleton companion. Make sure to use Dark Harvest or Corpse Explosion on companion corpses before manifesting more skeletons, if practical.
- If an enemy is killed in the first blast of a Corpse Explosion, it will sometimes explode as well. This prevents the fallen enemy from dropping a corpse.
- Wandering Plague has a surprisingly limited radius for transferring between enemies. Make sure to group enemies together to ensure the Wandering Plague continues to transfer.
- The dialogue for the Necromancer trainer never changes from the conversation during the first encounter. This bug can lead to some amount of annoyance trying to click through the dialogue if the player begins it on accident, and can even result in the Necromancer trainer attacking if the wrong dialogue options are chosen.