Necromancer
A dark summoner who raises and detonates undead minions, drains life and souls from the living, and rots enemies down with curses and disease.
The Necromancer is an attrition class. It rarely wins a fight in the first few rounds and almost never loses one in the tenth. You raise a small standing army of bone minions, stack curses and diseases that get worse the longer they run, and leech health and spellpoints out of everything you touch until the enemy simply runs out of resources before you do.
Necromancer is a promoted class rather than a starting one. It needs a completed Mage behind it, meaning one taken to level 100, and completions are recorded against your account rather than against a single character, so a Mage finished on one character unlocks Necromancer for another. You must also be level 100 yourself when you join, and a guildmaster has to admit or induct you, since the guild takes no walk-ins. Joining resets you to level 1.
Mechanically it plays as a pet-caster hybrid with an unusual amount of self-sufficiency. Corpses are a resource rather than scenery: you preserve them, puppet them, eat their hearts, explode them and inhabit them. Your own health is a resource too, spendable for SP and for freedom from crowd control. A necromancer who plans two rounds ahead is very hard to kill; one who opens with their biggest spell and hopes for the best is very easy to kill.
The Circles#
At level 20 a necromancer binds permanently to one of three circles - Minion, Curse or Blood - using specialize, which becomes available at 12. Below 20 you may sample all three; from 20 on, only the matching master keeps the circle-locked skills. The choice also sets how many minions you can hold. Pick Minion if you want the summoner game, Curse if you want the attrition game, and Blood if you want the drain-and-sustain game.
Resources#
The necromancer spends SP, with a small number of abilities paid for in health instead. There is no separate charge bar or stance to manage.
The blood abilities are the class's signature economy. They let you convert the one resource that regenerates on its own into the one that limits your casting, which is why a necromancer can keep fighting long after another caster has run dry.
| Ability | Level | Blood price |
|---|---|---|
| Master's Blood | 7 | Twelve per cent of your maximum health, at least 10; heals your active minions |
| Blood Renewal | 31 | A share of your current health; removes a debuff or condition |
| Blood is Power | 56 | Twenty per cent of your maximum health; converts it into 100 to 200 SP, scaling with your level, for you or an ally |
None of them can kill you outright, but only Master's Blood keeps a real floor: it refuses to fire unless it can leave you above a tenth of your maximum health. Blood Renewal and Blood is Power check only that the cost will not finish you, so either will happily drop you to as little as two hit points, and all of them make you softer at exactly the moment you were already under pressure. Use them while your minions still have the enemy's attention.
Minions are the other resource worth tracking. Bone minions decay over time, and you may have three active at once; from level 20 a Minion master rises to four, then five at 40 and six at 60, while Curse and Blood necromancers are capped at two. Bone horrors and corpse puppets count towards that cap; the flesh golem sits outside it and has its own one-at-a-time rule. minions lists what you currently have and how it is doing. Every minion is also a stored resource in its own right, since Verata's Gift consumes one outright for a heal and deathnova primes one to explode whenever it finally falls.
Talents give one point every ten levels up to ten, spent with talents spend <tree>. Only Bonecraft, Necromancy, Curses and Soul Magic accept points; the Undead and Death headings below are registry groupings for the two skills that sit outside those four trees, and neither one appears in the talents display or takes points.
Passives are equipped with passives, two at a time. The necromancer has six: Deathsight at 20, Deathly Vigor at 30, Rotting Touch at 40, Carrion Ward at 50, Dark Attuned at 60 and Soul Reaping at 90.
Talent Trees#
Bonecraft#
Summoning and skeletal construction. Raising bone minions and later bone horrors, the bone armour, walls and locks, the totem, the skeletal mount, and the two abilities that turn a minion into a burst of value: Verata's Gift consumes one outright, while Death Nova primes one so that it explodes when it dies. If you intend to play the class as a summoner rather than a debuffer, this is where your points go.
Necromancy#
The core dark-magic line. Direct dark and void damage from deathbolt upward, the whole corpse toolkit, mummify for defence, and the movement and scouting utility that corpses enable. It ends in decay, the class's signature strike, which lands one enormous hit and leaves the target dealing a fifth less damage for 30 seconds.
Curses#
Debuffs and disease. Marks, healing prevention, withering, disease and haunting, plus the food-corrupting rot and the purely descriptive blight, up to a plague that sickens every enemy in the room at once, up to six of them, and an enervate that leaves a caster's spells and cooldowns half again as slow. Curses is slow but relentless, and it is what makes the necromancer dangerous against things far above its own level.
Soul Magic#
Life and soul drain. The health drains, soul jars, shadow strikes, the armour-binding soulbound ritual, and the blood-fuelled power spells. This is the sustain tree; a necromancer running Soul Magic can often fight indefinitely without stopping to rest.
Undead#
The higher-tier construction line, home to the flesh golem, a slow but devastating heavy summon.
Death#
A single utility skill: your grimoire, the necromancer's book of the dead, which you can name and colour.
Skills#
Skills marked with a circle are locked to a matching specialist from level 20.
Bonecraft#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raise Bone Minion | Combat | 10 SP | 15s | - | Animate a bone minion from a corpse in the room; the corpse is consumed and the minion decays over time. |
| 4 | Minions | Utility | - | - | - | List your active undead and their condition. |
| 7 | Master's Blood | Support | Health | 8s | - | Sacrifice your own blood to heal every active minion. |
| 8 | Bone Lock | Utility | 10 SP | 10s | - | Seal a closed door with a lattice of bone; only you can release it early. |
| 10 | Bone Armor | Buff | 15 SP | 2m | - | Bone plating for bonus armour and a damage-reflect shield for 30 seconds. |
| 17 | Bone Wall | Utility | 20 SP | 3m | - | A wall of femurs and skulls sealing one exit for 20 seconds; it collapses at once if you leave the room. |
| 20 | Death Nova | Combat | 15 SP | 10s | Minion | Prime a minion with volatile death energy; when it later dies it explodes for heavy area dark damage against every enemy in the room. |
| 22 | Verata's Gift | Support | 10 SP | 20s | Minion | Destroy one of your minions in the room to restore health and SP to every ally present. |
| 24 | Raise Mount | Utility | 25 SP | 1m | - | Raise a skeletal steed to ride; only one at a time. |
| 29 | Bone Totem | Aura | 15 SP | 30s | Minion | Plant a bone totem that pulses a slowing aura. |
| 33 | Bone Horror | Combat | 40 SP | 10s | Minion | A larger, tougher, slower-decaying front-line summon. |
| 49 | Bone Craft | Utility | 25 SP | - | - | Craft rings, amulets, necklaces and bracelets from harvested remains. |
| 50 | Carrion Ward | Passive | - | - | - | Incoming damage is reduced while a corpse lies in the room with you. |
Necromancy#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | Death Sight | Utility | - | - | - | Toggle the passive that shows the wounded state of every living thing in the room beside its name. |
| 3 | Death Bolt | Combat | 10 SP | - | - | Reliable single-target dark damage; your spam attack. |
| 6 | Grave Walk | Utility | 10 SP | 2m | - | Step between graves: a short-range move to any corpse in the room. |
| 9 | Dark Vision | Utility | 10 SP | - | - | Toggle sight that lets you see clearly in pitch-dark rooms and through magical concealment. |
| 12 | Specialize | Utility | - | - | - | Bind yourself to the Minion, Curse or Blood circle from level 20. The choice is permanent. |
| 18 | Preserve Corpse | Utility | 10 SP | 5s | - | Halt a corpse's decay, up to three preserved at once. |
| 19 | Dark Bond | Support | 20 SP | 10s | - | Tether to a minion so it shares the damage you take. |
| 21 | Corpse Puppet | Utility | 20 SP | 1m | - | Raise a corpse as a puppet that follows your orders until dismissed. |
| 25 | Heart Corpse | Support | 20 SP | 8s | - | Tear out and absorb a corpse's heart to restore health, SP and stamina. |
| 27 | Void Burst | Combat | 35 SP | 30s | - | Heavy single-target void damage on a long cooldown. |
| 28 | Mummify | Buff | 45 SP | 5m | - | Burial linens absorb half of all incoming damage, whatever its type, until their pool is spent, 180 points rising to 360 at level 100. It will not take hold while one of your minions carries the dark bond. |
| 30 | Deathly Vigor | Passive | - | - | - | Your maximum health is a tenth higher. |
| 35 | Corpse Walk | Utility | 30 SP | 2m | - | Inhabit a corpse and use it as a temporary scouting body. |
| 47 | Inhalation | Combat | 45 SP | 1m | - | A six second channel that rips the life essence from a single target for heavy void damage; the channel breaks if you move or the victim leaves. |
| 48 | Corpse Explosion | Combat | 45 SP | 8s | - | Detonate the corpses in the room for area dark damage, destroying them. |
| 57 | Grasp of the Dead | Combat | 45 SP | 1m 30s | - | Skeletal hands erupt from the ground to hold your target in place and claw at what you are fighting. |
| 58 | Decay | Combat | 45 SP | 2m | - | A ten second channel landing one heavy hit of void damage, then leaving the target dealing a fifth less damage for 30 seconds. |
Curses#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | Detect Poison | Utility | 5 SP | 5s | - | Inspect food, drink and weapons for poison, venom or taint. |
| 20 | Mark of Pain | Combat | 15 SP | 12s | Curse | Mark a target so every subsequent hit on it deals bonus shadow damage. |
| 30 | Blight | Utility | 20 SP | 2m | - | Blight the ground so enemies entering it take ongoing damage. |
| 32 | Life Siphon | Combat | 40 SP | 30s | Blood | Drain health from a target into yourself. |
| 34 | Dark Curse | Combat | 30 SP | 1m 30s | Curse | The target cannot be healed by any spell or skill; food and drink still work. |
| 36 | Rot | Utility | 10 SP | 5s | - | Corrupt a food item so its healing becomes damage and any poison in it is doubled. |
| 39 | Death Mask | Utility | 25 SP | 3m | - | Wear the face of the dead, and the living struggle to fix their attention on you. |
| 40 | Rotting Touch | Passive | - | - | - | Your weapon is permanently envenomed with rot, dealing bonus damage on a hit. |
| 41 | Wither | Combat | 30 SP | 30s | Curse | Rot the target's flesh for 60 seconds, dealing void damage every combat round. |
| 43 | Prepare Poppy | Utility | 25 SP | - | - | Grow diseased poppies, the components for Infect and higher rituals. |
| 44 | Haunt | Combat | 30 SP | 5m | - | Torment a target for 15 to 30 minutes with a random effect about every half minute: phantom arrivals, whispers, dropped items, a stumble into the next room, spectral clawing, sudden darkness or forced speech. |
| 45 | Infect | Combat | - | 8s | Curse | Infect a target with a contagious disease that spreads to nearby enemies. |
| 50 | Order of Pain | Support | 45 SP | 45s | Minion | Order every minion onto one target and raise their damage. |
| 52 | Blood Bond | Combat | 35 SP | 20s | Blood | Bind your health pool to an ally's so damage is split between you. |
| 59 | Plague | Combat | 95 SP | 5m | Curse | Engulf up to six enemies in the room in pestilence for two minutes, damaging them, cutting the damage they deal and the healing they receive. |
| 60 | Enervate | Combat | 125 SP | 30m | Curse | Curse a target for five minutes so its cast times and cooldowns run half again as long. It can fail outright, and higher-level targets resist it more often. |
Soul Magic#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 | Vampiric Gaze | Combat | 15 SP | 30s | Blood | Instant drain that heals you for the amount dealt. |
| 26 | Speak with Dead | Utility | 15 SP | 30s | - | Call to the spirits of the last creatures to die in this room, learning who they were, who killed them and how long ago. |
| 31 | Blood Renewal | Support | Health | 30s | - | Spend health to remove a debuff or condition immediately. |
| 37 | Soul Bound | Utility | 90 SP | - | - | A long ritual tethering your soul to an ally, sharing damage and defences. |
| 38 | Soulburn | Combat | 30 SP | - | - | Set a foe's soul alight: void damage every tick until it burns out. |
| 40 | Shadow Strike | Combat | 30 SP | 12s | - | Instant bolt of void energy that heals you for the full amount of damage dealt, scaling from 55 damage at level 40 to 80 at level 100. |
| 42 | Soul Jar | Utility | 15 SP | 10s | - | Trap a recently departed soul in a vessel; the filled jar can be worn as an amulet and shows whose soul it holds. |
| 46 | Unholy Feast | Combat | 45 SP | 1m | - | A two second gathering that drains every hostile in the room, sparing your party, companions and minions; the stolen vitality hardens you for 10 armour class per foe caught for 30 seconds, and re-casting replaces that ward rather than adding to it. |
| 51 | Well of Blood | Support | 35 SP | 30s | Blood | Consume a corpse to open a healing well that mends every ally standing in it. |
| 55 | Strip Enchantment | Combat | 45 SP | 2m | - | Tear up to two buffs or enchantments off a target. |
| 56 | Blood is Power | Support | Health | 30s | Blood | Convert your own health directly into casting power. |
| 60 | Dark Attuned | Passive | - | - | - | All void damage you deal is a tenth higher. |
| 90 | Soul Reaping | Passive | - | - | - | Reap a slain enemy's soul for bonus SP and a temporary damage buff. |
Undead#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53 | Flesh Golem | Summon | 60 SP | 5m | Minion | A five second ritual that consumes remains in the room to raise the toughest and hardest hitting minion available to you; it detonates when it falls, and you may only have one at a time. |
Death#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Circle | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Grimoire | Utility | 5 SP | - | - | Summon your book of the dead and customise its name and colour. |
Playing a Necromancer#
You get animateboneminion at level 1, but you do not start with a minion already at your side. Every raise needs a corpse in the room and consumes it, so your first kill of a fight is the one that arms you. Bring something down, raise a minion from the body, then let it engage the next pull while you cast deathbolt from behind it. Three minions is the cap early on, and at 10 SP a raise the whole pack costs 30 SP, which buys three things soaking hits that would otherwise land on you.
The mid-game rotation is: raise, engage, debuff, drain. markofpain before your minions go in makes everything they do hurt more. lifesiphon and vampiricgaze keep you topped up. deathnova is not a panic button: it primes a minion in advance, which then keeps fighting as normal until it falls, at which point it bursts for area damage whether it was cut down or simply decayed. Learn to spend minions deliberately: a minion about to expire is worth more detonated than left standing.
Corpses are a second battlefield. Preserve the good ones, since a preserved corpse is a future corpseexplosion, a future heart for a free resource top-up, a future wellofblood, or the raw material for a minion, a puppet or a piece of bone jewellery. Clearing a room and then walking away from six corpses is leaving value behind.
Talent points are recorded by talents spend and shown in the talents display, but nothing in the game reads them yet, so it makes no mechanical difference today whether you favour Bonecraft, Curses or Soul Magic. The choice that does matter is your circle at 20. Watch your health as a second resource rather than as a safety margin, and know that bloodrenewal is often the answer to a stun that would otherwise end the fight.
In a group the necromancer is sustained damage plus a debuff engine plus extra bodies. Your minions can hold a secondary target while the tank holds the main one, darkcurse shutting off enemy magical healing changes some boss fights entirely, and decay on a big target blunts a fifth of the damage it deals back at the party for thirty seconds. You are not a burst class, so do not expect to top a short fight's damage; expect to win the long ones.