[1.6] Reign of the Dark Lord: a darkness caster adventurer

[whitelion]

My idea for this was to build around Dark Reign, which gives you 8% affinity for all every time you kill or deal at least 10% of an enemy's health in darkness damage. Affinity is calculated before resistances, so with high resistances, most enemy attacks will heal you. The resistance cap is 70%, but becoming a lich can raise it to 85%, and so I decided to do that. In order to keep Dark Reign going, you want hard hitting darkness attacks, and in particular a few with low cd to be your bread and butter attacks. These are found in Nightfall, which I took, and Star Fury, which you get for free for being a lich. It's also desirable to be as close to the resistance cap as possible at all times, so for this I used Molten Iron Blood, Thick Skin, robes, and out of phase bonus plus frequent teleports with Dimension Step. I rounded things out by trying to increase darkness damage and respen as much as possible (since we need to be able to take at least 10% health off in one shot) along with some active defenses and utility.

The result was this character: https://te4.org/characters/229407/tome/ ... f4b5517212

This build felt reasonably solid early and quite powerful late. I beat insane without dying (except the mandatory death you get for killing yourself to become a lich, which doesn't really count imo)

Race
Absent some compelling reason not to, I usually go Cornac for adventurers, since you always have good uses for the extra points.

Category Points
1: Spell/Meta, Spell/Nightfall, Psionic/Absorption, Steamtech/Thoughts of Iron, Spell/Necrosis, Chronomancy/Spacetime Weaving, Celestial/Hymns, Spell/Aegis
10: Corruption/Doom Covenant
20: +Spell/Necrosis
36: Demented/Path of Horror
Wyrm bile: Cunning/Ambush or Spell/Shades

Stats
Magic, the Willpower and Cunning as needed.

Prodigies
25: Adept - needed for level 7 Lichform and a nice bonus to everything else
42: Ethereal Form - helps in the opening of fights when you are most vulnerable. Also allows you to reach meaningful levels of defense.

Class Talents
Spell/Meta - 3+/1/5/0+
Spell/Nightfall - 5/1/1/5
Celestial/Star Fury (you get this from Lich) - 5/1/1/5
Psionic/Absorption - 1/1/1/1+
Steamtech/Thoughts of Iron - 5/0/0/0
Spell/Necrosis - 1/1/1/5
Corruption/Doom Covenant - 5/0+/0+/0
Demented/Path of Horror - 1/1+/1/5
Cunning/Ambush - 1/1+/3+/0
or
Spell/Shades - 1/1/1+/5

Generic Talents
Technique/Combat Training - 5/1/1+/0/0/0
Chronomancy/Spacetime Weaving - 3/5/1+/0
Celestial/Hymns - 1+/5/1+/0+
Spell/Aegis - 2+/5/1+/1+
or
Celestial/Light 1+/5/1/3+

Class Talent Discussion
Doom Covenant's Dark Reign, once you get it going, plus high resist all, make you pretty much invincible so long as you don't get one-shot. Affinity is calculated based on damage before resistance, so with max stacks, attacks that come from most enemies will be a net heal. Enemies with high respen can still hurt you though. It's generally advisable to get stacks of Dark Reign as quickly as possible, even if it means targeting someone other than your primary target.

Nightfall and Star Fury give you your 4 main attack spells. Invoke Darkness and Moonlight Ray are your standard beams, but you may as well max them since you will be casting them a lot. Starfall does decent damage and is useful for the stun and aoe. Rigor Mortis does high damage and slows based on spellpower. This is very nice because no one is immune to being slowed, and by late game you can easily slow global speed by 40-50% from range. I usually opened with this once I had enough mana to not worry about running out. Early game you have to rely on your Nightfall spells because you don't get Star Fury until you become a lich.

Necrosis lets you become a lich. The most important benefit is +15% to all your resist caps, letting you cap out at 85% resist all and making Dark Reign even more effective. You also get Star Fury and immunity to stuns and poison, which is nice. I put in the extra cat point to get the level 7 lich, which gives you 60% chance to ignore enemy critical hits. Combined with Writhing One, this means you can't be critically hit. Impending Doom is also a nice counter to healing with just 1 point.

Thoughts of Iron gives Molten Iron Blood, which helps you get and stay closer to the resist cap. Note that you don't actually need to have or generate steam to use this sustain.

Meta is great for most casters. Disperse magic is extremely useful, both for getting rid of Burning Hex from yourself, and removing annoying magical defenses from enemies, especially Bone Shield and Frostdusk. Quicken Spells lets you cast things sooner, in particular, you can shield and teleport to get your out of phase bonus more often.

Absorption gives you a TK slot, which means another staff, which means more spellpower, spell crit, and +darkness damage. The shields are also nice early, and Forcefield is nice to open fights with since you take a few turns to get Dark Reign online.

Path of Horror's main prize is Writhing One, which gives you more darkness damage and, combined with your Lichform, means you can't be critically hit. The spellpower from Horrific Evolution is nice as well.

Ambush has Shadow Leash, which hits extremely hard, as well as disarms and silences, and Umbral Agility for darkness respen. With Ethereal Form, the defense from Umbral Agility can be relevant. I had over 100 defense late game (with my out of phase bonus) which is high enough that some enemies did have trouble hitting me.

OR

Shades has Frostdusk, for more darkness damage and respen, as well as Forgery of Haze, which is great if you want to use it. Obviously the minion talents are useless.

Generic Talent Discussion
Spacetime Weaving gives great mobility, with the best teleport in the game, and a little bit of cleanse with Dimension Shift. You want to teleport often to keep your out of phase bonus up so you can be at the resist cap.

Hymns' second skill, Hymn Incantor, gives +darkness damage that scales with spellpower and can easily reach 40%+ by the end of the game. Hymn Acolyte is useful early for the stun immunity and late for the crit multiplier, and Hymn Adept is nice for the extra shield or movement speed in a pinch.

Aegis gives you healing and better shields, and turns your healing into shield. Arcane Reconstruction can crit and was giving me thousands of points of shielding in the endgame, making it worth casting for the shield alone. And since liches can't use infusions, it's good to have a heal.

Light gives you Bathe in Light and Providence, and I think is a reasonable alternative to Aegis. As a lich, you are immune to most of the statuses that matter though.

Combat Training has Thick Skin for more resist all. One point in Heavy Armor Training is nice for more options, and points in Light Armor Training give more defense when you wear robes.

Inscriptions
Early: Heal, Shield, Wild, maybe swap one for Manasurge if you can't find a channel staff
Late: Shield, Blink, Shatter Afflictions

Gear
Darkness damage, respen, out of phase bonus (up to the max of 40% resist all), and silence immunity are your top priorities. More spell cd is nice if you find it, as is anything that raises your resistance caps. Beyond that, go for spellpower, spell crit, relevant stats, and defense. As far as fixarts, Vox is nice for 100% silence immunity, and the Archlich set gives a lot of darkness damage bonus.

General Strategy
Early on, you use your Nightfall spells as your main offense, so you may want to float points in some of the middle skills. You can also get Molten Iron Blood and some out of phase going early to make you a bit tougher, and you have good mobility through from Spacetime Weaving. Once you get a few levels in Dark Reign, things get even better, and in T1-2 most of your Nightfall spells should have no problem triggering it against most enemies. Getting manaburned is annoying early, but you can use Wormhole to escape and regroup, and once you have Star Fury, the second skill generates negative energy.

The biggest challenge is that you have to fight Celia and Weirdling early to become a lich. Worse yet, they have Frostdusk and Bone Shield respectively, which are two defensive sustains that totally shut you down. Fortunately you have Disperse for them, and other enemies with these skills. It's also a good idea to disperse magical sustains that give respen like Wildfire and such, since you rely on resistances as your main defense, as well as Burning Hex from yourself (this is universally a good idea.)

Late game, I had 100% spell crit and something like 270% crit multiplier, so the basic darkness beams were hitting for 4k a pop, easily enough to trigger Dark Reign, as well as access to thousands of points of shielding if needed.

Honestly Weirdling was probably the hardest fight in the game on my run. Once I became a lich, I felt pretty much invincible so long as I made sure to keep my defenses up and not get silenced. Even hp stair bosses didn't feel scary, since with Ethereal Form and 100% chance to ignore crits, it's unlikely that you will get one-shot in the opening rounds of combat, which is pretty much the only way you could die.

Thanks for reading. I'd be interested to hear any questions, comments, or ideas below.

[kurtgr]

I'm playing version 1.7.4 and I can't find spell/shades. Any idea what replaced it?

[Just a dood]

I'm playing version 1.7.4 and I can't find spell/shades. Any idea what replaced it?

Necromancer was completely reworked in 1.7. The closest equivalent tree is Eradication, but the first 3 talents are completely different, and the last has a different secondary effect.