CiP: Madness Necromancer -in memoriam

[donkatsu]

Question: does Chill of the Tomb actually need to do good damage? The way that I see it, with ball spells, you're either pillar dancing and taking no damage while slowly whittling down the target out of LoS, or you can't pillar dance for whatever reason and it's just there to take out multiple trash enemies without having to stop damaging the boss. In the former case, I've found that it didn't matter how much damage the ball spell did. I've killed the Room of Death wyrms on a Cursed with ONLY a volcano wand, which did crap damage but was just as effective as 2k Fireflashes because either way I was never in any danger. Isn't more damage just a convenience to make the process go faster?

[Mankeli]

Question: does Chill of the Tomb actually need to do good damage?

This is what I was sort of getting at. This following example is from my madness archmage but it doesn't matter because the mechanics were the same: Both Urkis and a very dangerous looking rogue randboss in Tempest Peak were killed without any turns spent in their LOS (mainly fireflash, inferno too). And by any I do mean zero literally (maybe on like one occasion before phase door/teleport was Urkis in LOS). And this was on madness too which means the "hunter" effect and they both had over 11K HP. Especially for the randboss, I managed to create a situation where there wasn't any way it could ever reach my character by dancing around like an 9X9 or something something square that was created via digging.

However, these kind of situations are not always possible to create at all -especially on an uncleared level and especially if you can't change levels via stairs to grind monsters 1:1. If the "hunter" effect kicks in/you can't go around in circles/monster gang up on you then the damage does matter because it is also good at killing things the regular way. Also it's better to face a monster head on that has, say, 70 % of its health left after out-of-los murdering than 100 %. The hunter effect sometimes means that you can get a few hits in and then the monster decides it's time to come kill you.

So for what it's worth, my answer is: On many encounters the damage does not literally matter at all but sometimes it matters very much. And on the dark side of things, darkness has very few damage-dealing spells and the cooldowns are terrible. Even invoke darkness, which becomes a cone beam with nice enough damage at level 5 and used after Essence of The Dead, has a cooldown of 4 instead of "the normal" three. Rigor Mortis has a cooldown of 20...

And even if your minions would stay alive longer with your damage spells no longer hurting them, they are still not very good at killing things.

[Mankeli]

Also one has to wonder the terribleness that is lichform: I could complain about losing movement infusions or having to invest 5 points in the lichform itself but I'm just going to mention this: What is the point of screwing a necromancer out of regeneration and especially heroism when they are the only useful defensive inscriptions for a sacrifice shield using necromancer? I mean, as explained before, shielding runes eventually become pretty much useless when you have your sacrifice shield on at all times and lighting runes are just as useless with a sacrifice shield.

With lichform darkness would at least have one more very useful damage spell. If lichform wouldn't suck that is.

[Thomas]

Good luck with this dude
I'm hoping you continue having the patience for it, because it would be awesome to see it happen. I remember Mex suggesting it was possible several months ago, but tbh I didn't actually think anyone would attempt it (except Mex lol).. I commend you, and I hope that the challenge does not exceed your patience ^^

[Mankeli]

Haha, thanks Thomas!

I haven't made any progress because I've wanted to try some melee dudes and other things but my necro isn't stuck or dead either. In fact, I've used some expendable characters to "scout ahead" of dungeons I haven't yet visited in any madness game to get a general grasp of difficulty levels and devised a plan of what the next 3-4 dungeon will be for my necro. So I've made progress in my head, lol. Of course, only one mega-boss can change my plans in an instance...

I'll definitely continue with this necro soon.

[cctobias]

Haha, thanks Thomas!

I haven't made any progress because I've wanted to try some melee dudes and other things but my necro isn't stuck or dead either. In fact, I've used some expendable characters to "scout ahead" of dungeons I haven't yet visited in any madness game to get a general grasp of difficulty levels and devised a plan of what the next 3-4 dungeon will be for my necro. So I've made progress in my head, lol. Of course, only one mega-boss can change my plans in an instance...

I'll definitely continue with this necro soon.

Yeah this is why I reccomend that adventurer build I used to "stick your foot in the water" for Madness. Its enough damage to do it fast, fairly simple with unstoppable, and mobile so you can fart around some. Thomas is right necro is gonna take some patience. Anything with less than Marauder+ level damage starts to take a lot of patience in the east, and some things you run into can be problematic.

I couldn't kill a randboss I ran into in the slime pits as it just did too much arcane burn and left me with no mana and it had high armor too. I had to teleport past it, which worked fine, but the thing literally drained me dry in like 4 rounds. Doing various dry runs through stuff to get a feel for exactly what kind of corner cases you can run into is very useful. I think there were only two cases like this in my whole run, certainly there were other things with arcane burn, but it was the combo of really frigging high arcane burn and high armor that extended the fight + a recovery infusion, that made it literally unkillable for me. Even with a manasurge rune I don't think I could kill it, maybe if I had had evasion or something. On madness sometimes you can get a set of really high math values that all conspire together to be an issue, the 250k hp + high armor meant I couldn't kill fast with fists alone. The huge mana burn meant after 3-4 round I no longer proced earthen missiles.

This also supports my statement that Conveyance is one of the best talent lines for Insane/Madness.

I would say though that its not so much particular areas as just the level ranges and the various funky combos of uniques and randbosses that are the things you really need to get used to. Like what do you do when you run into an Oozemancer/skirmisher Randboss with 200k hp?

[Mankeli]

So, what do you not want to happen when you are kiting corruptor boss from out-of-los? Fearscape, right? Right.

Suddenly I found my character in fearscape without dispersion but with a boss that had thousands of HP and over 500 vim. This epic fail took one complaining girlfriend and one idiot player.

The vim pool was first draining pretty rapidly while the monster keep hexing and using it on minions. I managed to find a nice corner to hide behind and keep a close look of healing/shielding options constantly using one or the other(s). Remember, fearscape was hitting for 70 damage per turn every turn. After the initial panic came a period of relative calm while the kiting just continued in a different setting...until the almost dead boss decided it was time to come kill my necro. I contemplated on phase door on-los vs phase door out-of-los. The former put me in-los of the monster too. I decided to go with the first because I was pretty sure my necro wasn't gonna get one-shotted. I was right but darn that was close: I had to spend 2 turns in los of the monster during which my necros hp went to -180 or something. At that point the cooldown of the shielding rune was zero and right afterward my necro was in full health via consume souls. After that, the monster died in 1-2 turns lol. Because of this final murder mode my necro was almost killed.

The total time spend in fearscape was probably between 40-50. On madness and with corruptor boss.

Epic fail, epic survival.

[Red]

*applauds*

That is some impressive work there, Mankeli. Good luck being the first Madness Necromancer win.

[donkatsu]

That sounds like a harrowing experience. Congratulations on not dying! May I ask how the corruptor got into Fearscape range? Was it something tricky, or was it just a simple matter of accidentally clicking the wrong thing?

[Mankeli]

Thanks Red! We'll see what happens, the progress is slow.

That sounds like a harrowing experience. Congratulations on not dying! May I ask how the corruptor got into Fearscape range? Was it something tricky, or was it just a simple matter of accidentally clicking the wrong thing?

It was harrowing. But luckily I didn't panic which would be my normal reaction after screwing up royally lol. I decided I was going to make a real fight for it. I knew I had some healing options (higher regen + consume soul, and also a healing amulet with a bad cooldown) with a good heal mod.

The corruptor boss was the last thing on the dungeon, I usually try to leave the bosses/uniques last via teleporting them around so that when I fight against them I can teleport at will if phase dooring to safety is out of the question. So I knew that the corruptor was alone in that floor and I also knew that from a distance a 100 % speed corruptor isn't going to really hurt my necro as long as the sacrifice shield is up. So firstly there was this (false) sense of security. I was thinking about killing the monster, not surviving.

Secondly, my girlfriend was talking to me and I was trying to make sense of it while continuing to play which is not a good idea. I've lost characters like this before. Seriously, talking to people, especially if they say somehting negative, while playing TOME is the worst idea. Well, that and being drunk while playing.

Thirdly, probably because of 1) and 2), I simply forgot that he had fearscape. Finally, I think I miscalculated the range because I really didn't have any reason to be that close the corruptor (range 5) anyways (even the threat of multiple melee attacks is devastating even with sacrifice so I always try to keep the range at maximum sight range).

[Red]

Be afraid, Mankeli. You - up in about every way possible, but pulled through in the end through good luck and smart thinking. In addition, you are preparing to set a milestone that has never been reached.

There is at least a 99% chance DarkGod is personally watching you, waiting for the moment just before your victory to smash it all down and drink in your tears that will flow like rain in a hurricane.

[Mankeli]

Okay, I was just completing the merchant caves and then in the middle of the fight the assassin lord just suddenly started to pound away the merchant killing him in a few turns. WTF happened? Why did the assassin lord suddenly go into a murder mode? Bug?

[Mex]

Merchant is pretty much useless on Madness if that's any consolation.

Skip any of the extras not worth it to get killed over IMO.

[Mankeli]

It does, actually. And it's easy to believe too: The best elite randart stuff that I've gotten from GoM and LH via drowning has been better than anything I've gotten from the merchant on my normal difficulty wins. And the level ranges eventually go much higher than GoM and LH if I've understood correctly. It's just unfortunate that gold has no meaning no .

I was doing merchant caves for exp mostly, I'm trying to buff up as much as possible before Dreadfell. I don't want to create a similar situation that happened in Tempest Peak where my choices were either to teleport on a completely uncleared level (lol at that option) or escape because I couldn't teleport nor kill Urkis who waited me pretty much next to stairs.

Update on progress
Playing this necro takes like at least 50 % more time than my madness archmage that is also at level 31 now, lol. The progress is slow. But I just got bloodcaller which will probably be a very good ring for this guy. Also switched up some equipment to get more negative HP.

I took a sneakpeak at the oozemancer place, +100 level bosses with 100 000 HP didn't feel very welcoming. Ruined Dungeon is the only place left that is doable before Dreadfell now (excluding random portals to Santascape, Bearscape and Poosh, too afraid to try those). The entrance is really bad in RD though, I need to be smart.

I still haven't picked a prodigy but now I have enough stat gear to get either Fungal Blood or Through the Crowd.

Still can't chain sacrifice shield correctly, a 10 % cooldown reduction item will take care of that though.

[Bahndriin]

How did it end, Mankell?