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.
Necromancers raise servants, weaken opponents and use corpses in their magic. A body can become a minion or the material for another spell. A few abilities cost health instead of SP, so the caster's own condition is part of the budget.
Minions fight while the caster lays curses and damage over time. Their number, condition and orders need watching, and a fight with no bodies on the ground offers different choices from one where they have piled up.
Necromancer is a legendary remort class. It needs finished Mage and Psion lives and one more of any class, 8 remort points, the Binding and an invitation from the Necromancers' Circle, and begins at level 1. remort necromancer shows each requirement ticked against your character. Odalys trains the guild, whose entrance is in Aurin Cemetery. See Remorting for the route.
One Kit#
A necromancer does not specialize. Every necromancer learns every skill on this page, about one a level from 1 to 62, with Dark Bond as the elite skill at 100.
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.
Master's Blood arrives at level 4. It costs 12% of your maximum health (at least 10), heals your active minions and makes each last a fifth of its lifetime longer. It cannot kill you: it refuses to fire unless it can leave you above a tenth of your maximum health, though it still leaves you weaker for the next blow.
Minions are the other resource to track. Nothing heals a minion but your own Master's Blood and Well of Blood; every other heal, a healer's included, does nothing for them. Bone minions decay over time, and you may have three active at once, rising to four at level 20, five at 40 and six at 60. Bone horrors and corpse puppets count toward that cap; the flesh golem sits outside it and has its own one at a time rule. Every minion is also stored value, since Verata's Gift consumes one for a heal and deathnova primes one to explode when it falls.
minions lists what you have and how each is doing. minions lead sends your dead through each exit just before you, so whatever waits there meets them first, and minions follow puts them back behind you. minions dismiss <name> lets one go and minions dismiss lets them all go; the mount you are riding stays.
Talents give you a point every ten guild levels, ten at most and ten at most in one tree, spent with talents spend <tree>, in Necromancy, Curses, Bonecraft or Soul Magic. Each point in a tree makes every skill in it 2% better: it strikes and heals 2% harder and comes back 2% sooner, so ten points give 20% of each. Passives are untouched, and each point in Necromancy also makes your own weapon blows 2% stronger. The dead you raise strike harder for your points in the tree of the skill that raised them, Bonecraft for the minions and the horror.
Passives are listed by passives rather than in powers. Soul Reaping is yours from level 1 and is always on: it takes no slot. Dark Bond joins it at level 10, also always on and free of a slot: every minion you raise is bonded the moment it stands, as if you had cast the Dark Bond skill on it. The other five are equipped two at a time: Deathsight at 19, Deathly Vigor at 30, Rotting Touch at 40, Carrion Ward at 50 and Dark Attuned at 60. Once Deathsight is equipped, deathsight switches its display off and on.
Every necromancer is handed a Soul Jar on joining the guild, at level 1, beside the grimoire. It is not a skill and there is nothing to learn or do: it is bound to you, cannot be dropped, sold, stolen or lost on death, and anyone who looks at you sees it. Each soul your Soul Reaping draws in goes into it, and looking at the jar, or typing souls, tells you how many it holds. The souls do not stay when you quit.
The grimoire is handed to you the same way. It is your book of the dead, not a skill: it is bound to you like the jar, grimoire name <text> and grimoire color <color> change how it reads to others, and bare grimoire calls it back to your hands for 5 SP if you are ever without it. Looking at it lists what a member of the guild can type.
Grave Walk is yours from the day you join as well, and is not a skill either. Standing outdoors in a graveyard or cemetery, gravewalk sinks you into a hollow beneath the soil where only necromancers may tread, for 10 SP, and gravewalk again brings you back up where you went down; the earth then needs two minutes to settle. At the gate of Aurin Cemetery it carries you straight to the door of the Necromancer's Guild, and back again from the door, for nothing.
Talent Trees#
Necromancy#
The core of dark magic. Direct dark and void damage from deathbolt upward, the whole corpse toolkit, and the movement and scouting utility that corpses enable. Its signature strike is decay, which lands one enormous hit and leaves the target dealing a fifth less damage for 30 seconds. The rites Chilling Grasp and Sacrificial Lamb sit here too, and so does Dark Bond, the elite skill at 100.
Curses#
Debuffs and disease. Marks, healing prevention, withering, disease and haunting, plus rot, which corrupts food, and blight, which only changes how the land looks, up to a plague that sickens up to six creatures in the room at once, and an enervate that leaves a caster's spells and cooldowns half again as slow. The blood rites Name Thy Fate, Wasting Curse and Carrion Madness belong here as well. These effects can be applied alongside attacks from minions and the caster.
Bonecraft#
Summoning and bone work. Raising bone minions and later bone horrors and the flesh golem, the heaviest summon, the bone armor, 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. The rites that spend your dead, Minion Tackle, Undead Sermon and Onslaught, are here, with the Faceless of the Void at the top. Bonecraft talent points improve the summons assigned to it.
Soul Magic#
Life and soul drain: Soul Reaping, the health drains, the healing well, the soulbound ritual that binds armor to you and the blood rites, from Bloodweave, which weaves the blood the other rites spend, to Unsanctified Resurrection. This is the sustain tree.
Skills#
The rites, learned from level 51, are spread through the four trees. Every one of them gives something up: a servant's health, a servant outright, or your own hands.
Necromancy#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Death Bolt | Combat | 10 to 30 SP | 4s | Reliable dark damage to one target; your everyday attack. The cost rises with your level. |
| 5 | Grave Maggots | Utility | 5 SP | 3s | Gather maggots from any corpse, fresh or rotten, then clean a wound with them (stops bleeding and poison, heals a little), eat them, or throw them at someone, who may be too disgusted to fight for a moment. |
| 7 | Dark Vision | Utility | 10 SP | None | Toggle sight that lets you see clearly in dark rooms. |
| 9 | Vampiric Call | Combat | 15 SP | 8s | Every minion with you bites your foe; each bite deals damage and heals you, so a bigger army hits harder and heals more. |
| 12 | Trophy Skull | Support | 30 SP | 2m | Mount a corpse's skull for five minutes. Enemies here miss more, and those weaker than the dead may cower; your group gains a little to every stat. One per room. You can lift your own skull and stand it somewhere else; it does nothing while carried. The skull of a boss or a player can be kept for good in the Skull Gallery with mount skull. A player's corpse is taken only by name (trophyskull <name>): it stays where it lies with all they carried, but headless, and cannot be resurrected. |
| 13 | Heart Corpse | Support | 20 SP | 8s | Tear out and absorb a corpse's heart to restore a little health: the creature's level, or twice its level for a boss. Health only. |
| 14 | Preserve Corpse | Utility | 10 SP | 5s | Halt a corpse's decay, up to three preserved at once. A preserved corpse you set down stays where you left it: it does not rot and is never cleared away. |
| 15 | Corpse Walk | Utility | 30 SP | 2m | Mark a preserved corpse in your room as a beacon; corpsewalk with no argument then takes you back to it from anywhere. One beacon at a time. |
| 16 | Talking Skull | Utility | 20 SP | 1m | Take the skull from the corpse of a creature that had one (not a slime, an insect, a plant or a ghost) and wake it with your blood. It is named for what it came from and is seen on you by anyone who looks. It goes everywhere with you, has opinions, speaks for you, and can read a corpse. One per necromancer. |
| 19 | Corpse Puppet | Utility | 20 SP | 1m | Raise a preserved corpse from your pack as a puppet that follows you and speaks and emotes on your command. It does not fight. |
| 19 | Death Sight | Utility | None | None | Switch the display of your Deathsight passive off and on. |
| 19 | Deathsight | Passive | None | None | While equipped, every living thing in the room shows its wounded state beside its name. |
| 24 | Void Burst | Combat | 35 SP | 30s | Heavy void damage to one target. |
| 30 | Deathly Vigor | Passive | None | None | Your maximum health is a tenth higher. |
| 33 | Undead Camouflage | Utility | 30 SP | 1m | Wear death for ten minutes so the undead will not attack you. Healing on you is halved, and joining any fight ends it. |
| 41 | Inhalation | Combat | 45 SP | 1m | A six second channel that rips the life from one target for heavy void damage; it breaks if you move or the victim leaves. |
| 42 | Corpse Explosion | Combat | 45 SP | 8s | Detonate a corpse in the room for area dark damage, destroying it. The blast hurts what you or your dead are fighting, other players outside your group included, and never your group, a pet, a squire, a fan, another minion, a collector or a townsman who cannot be attacked. |
| 49 | Grasp of the Dead | Combat | 45 SP | 1m 30s | For one minute, skeletal hands follow you and every third combat round rake each foe you are fighting in the room for VOID damage. They hold no one in place. |
| 50 | 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. |
| 52 | Chilling Grasp | Combat | 25 SP | 45s | Draw the warmth out of a foe with your bare hand. For a short while it cannot strike, leave or flee. Your own hands go numb and cannot swing a weapon for longer than the foe is held; your spells and your dead are untouched. |
| 55 | Sacrificial Lamb | Combat | 40 SP | 5m | A ritual that marks a living creature for the knife. It is much harder to kill and strikes a little harder, and any servant you raise from its corpse stands up larger and stronger. One lamb at a time; not on people or foes of great power. |
| 100 | Dark Bond | Elite | 25 SP | 10s | The necromancer's elite skill. Tether yourself to your minions so that a large share of the damage you take is carried by them instead. |
Curses#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Detect Poison | Utility | 5 SP | 5s | Inspect food, drink and weapons for poison, venom or taint. |
| 18 | Mark of Pain | Combat | 15 SP | 12s | Mark a target so every subsequent hit on it deals bonus shadow damage. |
| 27 | Blight | Utility | 20 SP | 2m | Wither the land around you: the room's description changes to blackened ground and dead plants. It harms no one. |
| 30 | Dark Curse | Combat | 30 SP | 1m 30s | Laid before a fight, never during one. The target cannot be healed by any spell or skill; food and drink still work. |
| 31 | Rot | Utility | 10 SP | 5s | Corrupt a food item so its healing becomes damage and any poison in it is doubled. |
| 34 | Death Mask | Utility | 25 SP | 3m | Wear the face of the dead. The living who look on it lose their nerve, their grip and their stomach. |
| 35 | Wither | Combat | 30 SP | 30s | Rot the target's flesh for 60 seconds, dealing void damage every combat round. |
| 37 | 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. |
| 38 | Infect | Combat | None | 8s | Infect one target with a disease that deals damage every third combat round for 30 seconds; it does not spread. Recasting refreshes it. Each casting spends a diseased poppy, and learning Infect teaches you to grow them: preparepoppy, twenty seconds standing still and 25 SP for each. |
| 40 | Rotting Touch | Passive | None | None | Your weapon is permanently envenomed with rot, dealing bonus damage on a hit. |
| 44 | Plague | Combat | 95 SP | 5m | A four second breath that plagues up to six creatures in the room for two minutes, whether they were fighting you or not, and starts a fight with each. Other players outside your group are caught; your group, minions, companions and pets are spared. A plagued target takes disease damage every third round, deals 20% less damage and receives 30% less healing. |
| 47 | Enervate | Combat | 125 SP | 30m | Curse a target for five minutes so its cast times and cooldowns run half again as long. It can fail outright, and targets above your level resist it more often. |
| 56 | Name Thy Fate | Combat | 30 SP | 1m | Speak a name to the underworld to learn what its owner shrugs off and fears, or bargain to lay a weakness to one kind of harm on a foe or a ward against it on a friend. Each asking is paid for with woven blood, or one of your dead sent below, or your own blood. |
| 59 | Wasting Curse | Blood rite | 40 SP, 2 measures | 5m | Lay a sickness on someone from anywhere in the world. It starts as nothing, lasts twenty minutes and takes more every minute, to the edge of death but no further. Any cleansing lifts it. |
| 60 | Carrion Madness | Blood rite | 50 SP, 2 measures | 10m | Feed blood to a beast or one of the unowned dead. It goes mad, attacks whoever it meets, wanders within its own lands and passes the madness on to others of its kind for a few minutes. |
Bonecraft#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raise Bone Minion | Combat | 10 SP | None | Animate a bone minion from a corpse in the room; the corpse is consumed and the minion decays over time. |
| 3 | Minions | Utility | None | None | List your active undead and their condition. |
| 4 | Master's Blood | Support | Health | 20s | Sacrifice your own blood to heal every active minion and make it last longer. Every cast adds a fifth of the time the minion was raised for, however old it is when the blood lands, and a minion can hold up to one whole lifetime of borrowed time. The cast also turns back its decay: about half of its age when learned, easing to 40% by level 100. |
| 6 | Stasis | Utility | 10 SP | None | Still your dead where they stand so they stop rotting while you step away. It holds for as long as you stay exactly where you are; any movement of yours, or a fight, breaks it. Cannot be begun in combat. |
| 8 | Bone Armor | Buff | 30 SP | 2m | Bone plating that raises your armor class for five minutes when learned, rising to ten minutes at level 100. |
| 17 | Death Nova | Combat | 40 SP | 2m | A four second cast, made outside a fight, that primes one bone minion, bone horror or flesh golem with volatile death energy: the one you name, or the first not yet primed. It explodes when it dies, or at once with deathnova detonate, whatever its health. The blast hurts every creature in the room, fighting or not, and other players outside your group unless player combat is off there. It never touches your group, a pet, a squire, a fan, another minion, a collector or a townsman who cannot be attacked. |
| 20 | Verata's Gift | Support | 10 SP | 20s | Destroy one of your minions in the room to heal yourself: 30 health at level 20, rising to 80 at level 100. It heals no one else and restores no SP. |
| 22 | Raise Mount | Utility | 25 SP | 1m | Raise a skeletal steed to ride, which walks behind you when you are not riding it; only one at a time. |
| 26 | Bone Totem | Aura | 15 SP | 30s | Hang a bone totem around your own neck or another player's. It adds 3 to melee damage, the same at every level, and stays until it is removed. |
| 28 | Minion Envelop | Combat | 30 SP | 5m | Give up one of your dead to seal a creature in a cage of its bones. Until the cage falls away the one inside cannot act or speak, and nothing can reach it. Great foes and players break out far sooner. |
| 29 | Bone Horror | Combat | 40 SP | None | A larger, tougher summon for the front of a fight that decays more slowly than a bone minion. |
| 36 | Bone Lock | Utility | 10 SP | 10s | Seal a closed, unlocked door with a lattice of bone; only you can release it early. |
| 43 | Bone Craft | Utility | 25 SP | None | Craft rings, amulets, necklaces and bracelets from harvested remains. |
| 45 | Flesh Golem | Summon | 60 SP | None | 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. |
| 46 | Bone Wall | Utility | 20 SP | 3m | A wall of femurs and skulls sealing one exit from both sides for one minute; it collapses at once if you leave the room. It cannot be raised across a door or a guarded exit. |
| 50 | Carrion Ward | Passive | None | None | Incoming damage is reduced while a corpse lies in the room with you. |
| 51 | Minion Tackle | Combat | 20 SP | 1m 30s | One of your dead crashes into a foe and holds it down: it cannot act, leave or flee for three rounds when you first learn this, five by level 100. A foe of great power is held for as long but not knocked flat. The servant loses a good part of its health. |
| 53 | Undead Sermon | Combat | 20 SP | 30s | One of your dead stops fighting and whispers of what waits below. While it speaks, none of your enemies in the room can leave or flee. It goes on until you tell it to stop or it falls. |
| 54 | Onslaught | Combat | 40 SP | 1m 30s | Drive your dead to strike faster than their frames can bear. For a short while each strikes a second time every round, and each round tears a share of its health from it. |
| 61 | Faceless of the Void | Blood rite | 80 SP, 4 measures | 30m | Call up a tall, silent servant with no face that turns aside much of what strikes it and hits very hard. It needs no corpse and takes one place in your army. Later, hirelings refuse you and anyone who stood in your group for a while. |
Soul Magic#
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Soul Reaping | Passive | None | None | Always on, no slot. Whenever anything dies in the room with you, friend or foe, you draw in its soul and gain spell points equal to twice your level, and your Soul Jar takes the soul. Your own raised dead give nothing. |
| 21 | Vampiric Gaze | Combat | 15 SP | 30s | Void damage to one foe, healing you at once by an amount set by your level, not by the damage dealt. |
| 23 | 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. |
| 32 | Soul Bound | Utility | 200 SP | None | A long ritual binding a carried piece of armor to your soul. Worn, it adds a little armor class, for good. |
| 39 | Well of Blood | Support | 35 SP | 30s | Consume a corpse to open a well in the room for 20 seconds. Every 2 seconds it heals you and your own minions, companions and pets standing in it, 10 health at level 1 rising to 20 at level 100. Your group is not healed. |
| 40 | Unholy Feast | Combat | 45 SP | 1m | A two second gathering, then every hostile in the room takes void damage (your group, companions and minions are spared). It heals nothing; instead you gain 50 armor class per foe caught for 30 seconds, and casting again replaces that ward rather than adding to it. |
| 48 | Strip Enchantment | Combat | 45 SP | 2m | Tear up to two buffs or enchantments off a target. |
| 57 | Bloodweave | Ritual | 60 SP | 10m | A chant that draws a quarter of the health of everyone in your own group who stands with you, yourself included, and hangs the blood woven above you for ten minutes. One measure for each person drawn from. It asks no one's leave and will not take a last drop. blood tells you how many measures hang above you. |
| 58 | Blood Scry | Blood rite | 20 SP, 1 measure | 10s | See where someone is, the place and everyone in it, as clearly as standing there. They taste blood and feel watched. |
| 60 | Dark Attuned | Passive | None | None | All void damage you deal is a tenth higher. |
| 62 | Unsanctified Resurrection | Blood rite | 80 SP, 3 measures | 10m | Drag a dead player back into their corpse, alive with what they carried. Something comes back with them and takes more of them every minute until it is cleansed. |
Outside the Trees#
The Dark Bond passive belongs to no talent tree.
| Level | Skill | Type | Cost | Cooldown | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Dark Bond | Passive | None | None | Always on, no slot. Every minion you raise is bonded as it stands, as the Dark Bond skill would bond it, so a large share of the damage you take is carried by your army. |
Playing a Necromancer#
animateboneminion is yours at level 1 and uses up a corpse in the room, so there is no servant until something has died. You start with room for three minions, more as you level; minions shows the ones you have and their state.
Your servants and you recover in different ways. Master's Blood heals minions at the cost of your own health, and no other character's healing does the job for them; Well of Blood is the other option. Check how long a minion has left before spending anything to keep it.
deathnova primes a minion to explode when it falls, decay included, while Verata's Gift consumes a servant for healing. Both compete with keeping that servant in the fight. Corpses have competing uses too: another summon, a corpse attack, a healing well, or material for bone work.
Bonecraft strengthens the summons, Curses weakens opponents, Necromancy holds the direct spells and corpse work, and Soul Magic the drains and recovery. Spend talents on the trees whose skills you use. Take care with the health costs when enemies are already on you.
In a party, agree on targets for your minions. darkcurse stops a foe being healed by magic, and decay cuts its damage for a while after the hit. Neither removes the need to watch your own health, your SP and the bodies you have to work with.