Explain this to me.

[HamTheBacon]

How do i find the skeleton race?

And how do i find the necromancer class?

Wouldnt a skeleton necromancer be a lich? or is lich a race or class?

if so where do i find those?

[Frumple]

You unlock the skeleton race by killing the master in dreadfell. I think there's either a 50/50 chance of unlocking skeleton or ghoul, or you unlock one then the other. It's been so bloody long and so many versions ago since I unlocked the things I don't remember the specifics anymore

Necromancer's a bit more involved. You have to have all four pieces of necromancer lore on a single character (though, if you can get to the fortress library, you don't have to find all four with a single character; you'll be able to collect them over multiple characters and then activate all four lore pieces on a single character via the library) then... do some other stuff. I'm not actually entirely clear on the specifics. Haven't bothered legitimately unlocking them yet, I think. Talking to the dwarf alchemist in last hope starts the quest line for the unlock, anyway, and you'll have to fight Celia in the graveyard to progress to the end of it, so standard graveyard-will-murder-you warning applies.

Liches are something necromancers can become, via one of their talents. It changes your race to lich if you die with the talent active, effectively giving you an extra life and then giving you the lich racial effects. So it's a race, but one only a specific class can get access to and you can't start with it. Also, undead (skeleton and ghoul) necromancers can't become a lich, iirc.

There's a pretty complete list of unlockables on the wiki, by the way, if you're after full spoilers for that sort of thing. Seems to be up to date except for Solipsists, looking at it.

[Mewtarthio]

To be a little more specific:

To unlock the Necromancer class, you need to know the four lores entitled "How To Be a Necromancer." Those show up randomly around the time you're ready for Dreadfell. The Sher'Tul fortress library will teach you all the lore that any of your characters have learned, so you can collect the parts across various characters and put them together at the library.

Once you know all four lores, you need to complete the quest "And Now, For a Grave." Ungrol, the alchemist in Last Hope gives it to you when you first talk to him; note that you can lock yourself out of it (either by completing the entire Brotherhood of Alchemists quest without ever visiting Ungrol, or by refusing to help him when asks you to do an extra "errand" for him). Be warned: This quest is very dangerous.

Completing the quest after learning the four lores will unlock the Necromancer class. Good luck!

[skein]

To be slightly more specific in the interest of limiting your deaths in the graveyard.

Do not attempt it at all until after you did dreadfall (or lvl 30ish). Open all the coffins before you open the door on the far right end of the hall.

Celia is a caster. Just like the guy at the end of tempest keep she will rip you a new one very quickly at range. Either outrange her (outside range 10 with spotting) or be able to close with a combat class very quickly.

She is actually fairly easy with alchemist bombs or other aoe effects if you can stay outside range 10. She is doable with earthquake to limit los and a good ability to close distance quickly.

[greycat]

My most recent character was a Skeleton Bulwark, in post-b42 SVN. I made it through most of the Maj'Eyal dungeons without serious problems. I could handle adventurer parties (at least the dozen or so that I fought). I saved Melinda (had a very close call getting through the upper levels). I died in a Farportal realm (using Reassemble 5 to resurrect) -- my second Farportal, I think -- so I stopped doing those.

Then I went through Dreadfell, almost managed to beat the ambush, breezed through Reknor, and on to the East. Did the spiders. Did the Vor Armory (skipping the special room of death, and struggling a bit at times with the spellcasters), did the Briagh thing, and returned to Maj'Eyal.

At this point I thought I would try the Graveyard. I thought, surely, if I could handle the Far East, I could handle the Graveyard.

I was wrong.

[Frumple]

Graveyard operates on roughly the same rules as, say, farportals do. Earlier you do it, generally the less likely something incredibly nasty is going to pop out and ventilate your character all over the countryside. There's a bit of a sweet spot, I'd say somewhere in the twenties, where you're strong enough not to get insta-splatted by whatever pops out of the coffins but low enough level they're not going to instapop you regardless of how strong you are. Caveats exist for the classes that get genuinely ridiculous in the late game, of course

If I'm going to do graveyard, I tend to do it just before dreadfell, which usually ends up being mid to late twenties. Most of the time I make it through. Sometimes a Ruined Bone Giant pops out with 2-3x more talent points invested than I do, with a class that's absolutely brutal in close quarters and, welp. It gets to exercise its artistic tendencies with my entrails.

Sometimes. Sometimes I'm playing skeleton. And it hits me so hard entrails spontaneously generate for the giant's aesthetic pleasure.

[jenx]

I just never do the Graveyard (did it once though, to unlock Necromancer).

And I never do the Crypt either.

[wobbly]

You can do the graveyard at just about any level with a summoner if you don't mind extreme tedium. I tend to find that level often deadly & rarely fun.

[SageAcrin]

Simplest way to do the Graveyard is to wander in at L15 and then come back at L30.

Barring that, just do it returning from the East. It's pretty safe as long as you open the coffins first, by then(though you risk getting cursed, but one L1 curse barely leaves a mark.).

It can be done much earlier, though. I've had L25s live through it by opening the coffins, and I memorably suicided an L18...I think that was a Wyrmic? into the fight and managed to barely down Celia, getting me the unlock. (They'd died five times already, so I was just looking for something notable to do with them, rather than an actual clear.)

[lukep]

Definitely possible to beat at low level. It scales from level 15 to 35, so it's possible to out-level by the late game, and you can scum it to stay at lvl 15, if you want. If you have Sun Paladin or Anorithil unlocked, they can be good choices for trying this with Bathe in Light at high level for the damage to undead in addition to healing. (Personal record for clearing it was as a lvl 11 Sun Paladin, using Bathe in Light heavily.)

[greycat]

just do it returning from the East. It's pretty safe as long as you open the coffins first, by then

My most recent character was a Skeleton Bulwark, [...]

At this point I thought I would try the Graveyard. I thought, surely, if I could handle the Far East, I could handle the Graveyard.

I was wrong.

[SageAcrin]

I assumed you didn't open the coffins before engaging Celia.

I did see the comment, though.

It's arguably never safe to fail to open the coffins before engaging Celia. Certainly, I wouldn't do it before very, very high levels-probably endgame setups and levels. A dozen randobosses flooding into a room with no escape routes and a large open space is just a little dangerous.

[greycat]

I opened the coffins one by one. About 2/3 of the way through them, one of the enemies was so strong that I had to risk a teleport, to get some separation. Unfortunately, the teleport put me into the chamber with Celia. By the time my teleport rune had recharged so that I could teleport OUT of there, I had picked up 3 diseases that were doing 40+ damage per round each. I had no way to remove them. I had no more shielding left. After a few turns, I just fell over dead, sitting in a hallway with no enemies in sight.

[SageAcrin]

Combination of bad luck and not having short range escapes/magical Wilds or other status curing like Providence/enough healing to deal with the heavy disease load, really.

(None of those are guaranteed, obviously, but you probably could have had one. That you didn't means that your build was bad in that situation, not that it was bad in general or anything.)

It happens, but that's more of an outlier situation. It does highlight that the place is dangerous, though, when, even dealing with it properly, you can draw something too much to handle.

I'm just saying that, usually it's safe enough to try to do at around L40-especially if you have a good feel for what's coming. But "safe enough" is subjective-lots of things in this game can kill you still if things go wrong.

[Frumple]

Diseases in particular are in a bit of a weird place right now, though, imo. Ghoulkings, at least, have a nasty tendency to stack up 40 damage diseases with a 20+ turn duration, which puts the things in the same damage zone as crap like Impending Doom, except with a massively lower cooldown (eight turns vs 30) and cost (free).

The corruptor diseases don't have nearly that level of effectiveness (they've got a duration of six, and I've seen ghouls pop off diseases with five times that.), for some strange reason.

Point being that maybe ghouls need their diseases stripped from them and replaced with the ghoul rot talent, and then stuff like what happened to greycat would likely become far less common, to th'game's betterment