TLDR Build Options
There's nothing saying you can't mix and match, these are just the things I've personally experimented with and know for a fact work fine.
Skeleton Summoner
Example Character Sheet: https://te4.org/characters/156520/tome/ ... 003c9b4c1f
Prodigies: Ethereal Form, Adept (all values will be adept modified, if you choose not to take adept you will need more points in a few talents for breakpoints)
Inscriptions: 10: Master Necromancer, 20: Inscription, 34: Eradication, Bile: Harmony OR Inscription
Some combination of Movement (required, use an Ethereal rune or something if you're a ghoul or just don't go for 1000 move speed skeletons haha), Shatter, Storm shield, Wild. Acid Wave has merit to spare your minions from flurry-murderers. Rune of Reflection is great if you're lucky or Hedgey is feeling kind.
Class
5/1/1/3 Master of Bones
1/0/0/0 Master of Flesh
1/1/1/0 Nightfall
5/2/0/0 Grave
5/1/1/5 Glacial Waste
1-4/1/1/4 Animus
1/1/5/0 Death
5/4/1/1 Master Necromancer
5/2/1/1 Eradication
Generic
1/5/1/5 Ogre, 1/5/1/5 Shalore, 1/1/3/x Higher
5/1/5/0/0/0 Combat Training
1/1-5/1/1 Survival
1/1/1-5/0 Staff Combat
5/1/1/1 Necrosis
2/1/1/1 Spectre
1/5/x/x Harmony if unlocked
Pros:
Snapshotting(detailed below) allows for very fast, very strong, permanent summons.
Press rest to win fights
Very safe, speedy minions can deal with most situations on their own
Lord of Skulls (Mage) basically drags you through the early game regardless of how suicidal you're feeling
Cons:
Can be oh-so tedious if you need to re-snapshot multiple times per floor (happens often on insane)
Will strain your low encumbrance value with stuff you want to keep to snapshot with
Your brain might go on cruise control and fail to identify actually threatening situations
They can and will zoom off and inevitably aggro things that, if they smack your zoomers down, will unhappily come stomping your way
Can fall off a little late game where some enemies will unceremoniously spank your bony boys
Did I mention tedious?
Maybe a bit exploitative, these guys z o o m
Ghoulsploder
Example Character Sheet: https://te4.org/characters/156520/tome/ ... e2d3bbabf6
Prodigies: Lichform, Ethereal Form/Armour of Shadows/Corrupted Shell/Adept/Whatever you want. I like Lich/Eform personally.
Inscriptions: 10: Inscription 20: Age of Dusk 34: Eradication Bile: Inscription
Pre Lichform: Movement, Shatter, Wild, Storm shield/Shielding. Post-Lichform: Trade the movement for a blink, I like 2x shatter or 2x storm shield, keep a clear mind torque handy until you're silence immune
Class: Spread very very thin, play around with what you do and don't like and consider luxury options like Soul Leech
5/4/4/x Master of Flesh
4/1/1/4 Nightfall
4/1/1/3 Glacial Waste
2/1/3/4 Animus
4/1/5/0 Death
4/x/1/4 Age of Dusk
1/1/1/5 Eradication
Generics: Also fairly thin
1/5/1/5 Shalore, 1/1/5/x Higher, Cornac escort of choice (5/x/x//0 chants, 4/2/1/0 + x/x/x/0 physics/chemistry)
5/1/1-x/0/0/0 Combat Training
1/1/1 Survival (if you get track from an escort sprinkle these points into lich or spectre or whatever you like)
5/2/5/3 Necrosis
3/1/0/0 Spectre
2/5/1/4 Lich
Pros:
You like splosions
You hate ghouls
You enjoy big numbers (big time rigor mortis synergy)
You enjoy the safety of having minions without the need to actually take care of them
Way less tedious than the skeleton shenanigans
Cons:
Can be fairly soul intensive
The combo takes a few turns to set up properly
Fine control of ghouls and where they might splode is what one might describe as not possible
Very class point intense, can take a while to get fully up and running
Pure Caster
Example Character Sheet: https://te4.org/characters/156520/tome/ ... fd6e8c3025
Prodigies: Lichform, Ethereal Form/Armour of Shadows/Corrupted Shell/Adept/Whatever you want. I like Lich/Eform personally
Inscriptions: 10: Inscription 20: Age of Dusk 34: Eradication Bile: Inscription
Pre-Lichform: Movement, Shatter, Storm shield/Shielding. Post-Lichform: Trade the movement for a blink, I like 2x shatter or 2x storm shield, keep a clear mind torque handy until you're silence immune
Class:
1-4/0/0/0 Master of Flesh
4/1/1/4 Nightfall
4/1/1/4 Glacial Waste
2/1/3/4 Animus
4/1/5/1 Death
5/4/1/4 Age of Dusk
1/1/1/5 Eradication
Generic: Fairly thin
1/5/1/5 Shalore, 1/1/5/x Higher, Cornac escort of choice (5/x/x//0 chants, 4/2/1/0 + x/x/x/0 physics/chemistry)
5/1/1-x/0/0/0 Combat Training
1/1/1 Survival (if you get track from an escort sprinkle these points into lich or spectre or whatever you like)
5/2/5/3 Necrosis
3/1/0/0 Spectre
2/4/1/4 Lich
Pros:
Definitely the build with the most control over whats actually happening on your screen at any given time
Easy gearing process
Smooth consistent power curve that feels good all game long
Cons:
The most vanilla experience one could ask for
The least safe with regards to the number of bodies getting hit that aren't your own
Races
An important consideration with regards to choice of race aside from typical synergies is whether or not you plan on taking the Lichform Prodigy. If you do, keep in mind that the Lich tree itself can be generic hungry, so racials that want a lot of points such as ogre might force you to make sacrifices with regards to your generic spread. In general, good races are good as usual but I'll list them for posterity. I'll highlight the races I would consider to have above average contributions to the class as a whole, and will likely be a stronger choice than ones that aren't highlighted
Cornac: Solves the generic pain in two ways: additional points and no racial tree to strain. Can easily afford to unlock an escort tree (tinkers, chants, maybe conditioning). Solid pick. If you want tinkers and lichform, Cornac can make it happen without sacrificing anything.
Higher 1/1/5/x: Solid racials across the board for any build, they can snapshot for your minions and highborn bloom allows for easy soul management. Probably the race that allows for the most mistakes in your gameplay overall, simply because they get huge damage reduction, some sight radius for safer exploration, and easy resource management from their pseudo-prodigy.
Shalore 1/5/1/5: Generic hungry amazing racials, the global speed snapshots so you don't have to rely on finding Edens guile or speed rings for minion builds. I don't believe minions benefit from the crit mult which lends them more toward the caster variations. Timeless is amazing as always. Likely the strongest option overall, other races have a really hard time competing with a bunch of crit mult and %speed, and timeless is outright better than some prodigies.
Thalore 1/1/5/x: Honourable mention to the all res stacking that they're capable of through reaping/robes/thick skin and the racial. Treants are strong but will isn't a priority to say the least.
Doom elf x/5/1/x: Instant use teleport is amazing, 4 range follow up isn't shabby either. Resilience is good as always and Pitiless can extend things like impending doom. Probably a criminally underrated race as a whole, these guys offer some great defensive and strategic options.
Halfling 1/1/1/1: One of the best things about halflings is how much value you get with a 1/1/1/1 spread. Easily maintains high crit throughout the game, necromancer low max hp means Duck and Dodge will be relevant often and although Indomitable loses value for lich casters (stun immune) and living-minion-builds (swap places with your summon while pinned) it's always available just in case.
Dwarf 1/1/5/1: Most notable for their ability to contribute more saves to a class that can stack saves to an impressive amount already, they also offer very respectable protection against dangerous weapon classes via their first two racials.
Drem 1+/1/1/1: A very interesting use case, especially for casters and ghoulsploders. Frenzy offers the ability to double tap your burst as usual, or, by delaying the use of frenzy until the buff on river of souls is about to expire, to get two uses out of that spell. You can also summon 15~ ghouls by double tapping call of the mausoleum which is fun but probably overkill.
Yeek 1/x/5/1: Built in confusion res, speedy leveling and all around solid racials (silence res!) make them not-the-worst-choice for any build. Their abysmal hp rating in combination with necromancer negative life shenanigans also merits mention as no other race can make consistent use of across the veil quite like these guys.
Ogre 1/5/1/x: Solid race as usual. The increased effectiveness of their inscriptions can lead to very very fast minions via snapshotting and their first racial snapshots as well. You probably won't have the cat point to spend on the ogre inscription but writ large is good regardless.
Krog: I mean, archmage can do it so I can't see why necromancer couldn't. Don't unless you're crazy.
Skeleton 1/x/5/5: Very generic hungry. Can't become a lich, can't use infusions, and there's nothing to assist with minion snapshotting shenanigans. If it wasn't for the obligatory Krog ranking they'd probably be the worst choice overall. With all that out of the way, it's still one of the safest races overall thanks to the fat bone shield, self resurrection, and reduced effect duration racials. Nothing it offers synergizes with the class the way say Higher does for example.
Ghoul 1/5/1-5/0: So, kinda memey but hear me out. You still can't use infusions or become a lich. BUT Ghoul resilience is sure to provide value given your low base hp, and you can snapshot via retch and leap to provide 50~% global speed to your summons. Intentionally or otherwise, the summons do NOT inherit your negative global speed modifier, sitting at the standard 100 without snapshotting and 150 with just the ghoul racials mixed in. Retch serves as a decent-enough way to sustain both yourself and minions through fights as well. Safe pick overall, though kinda shoehorned into minion builds.
Lich x/5/1/5: First and foremost, you do not lose access to your racial tree when you acquire your lichform. However, I have not tested if you lose the inherent racial resistances that say Yeek offers. Neverending Unlife provides a lot of value at 2 points, and can serve as a sketchy resurrection in a pinch. Frightening Presence is amazing, you gain a radius 9 (10 with adept) aura centered on yourself that lowers enemy damage, saves, and movement speed. Notably, Doom elf pitiless can either extend the duration of the debuff on a target or help cleanse the immunity a target gets when they resist the effect. Doomed for Eternity provides free shadow buddies that honestly don't do much although having a body to swap/block for the pure caster builds can never hurt. They seem to learn invoke darkness and a cold touch ability with some investment, which makes them deal okay damage considering they're free. They also make free targets for impending doom if you're looking for tedious out of combat soul regen. Commander of the Dead is more or less a constant 50~ power boost to you and your undead buddies, which certainly isn't bad and you can even use the buff to help snapshot (and double dip no less) for your minions if you're taking lich on a minion build.
Rather than rank something the absolute best choice, there's so much variety in this class I'll just list where I think each race would excel and you can apply that however you like
Caster/Ghoulsplosion Build:
Cornac
Higher
Shalore
Thalore
Doom elf
Dwarf
Drem
Yeek
Skeleton
Lich
Speedy Minion/Skeleton Builds:
Higher
Halfling
Ogre
Ghoul
Fisticuffs:
Krog
Stats
Mag>Dex/Con/Cun. Worth mentioning that Con boosts two prodigies worth considering and Dex has synergy with one. I typically do Mag>Cun>Dex>Con. Make sure you have enough Wil from gear to get Lichform if you're going for it early.
Escorts
Alchemist: Stone Touch can be fun, Channel Staff or Staff Mastery can save a generic, or +5 magic
Defiler: Curse of Defenselessness can help minions with low acc, +5 magic otherwise
Loremaster: +5 magic
Seer: Premonition is mana intensive but nice, +5 magic otherwise
Sun Paladin: Honestly all great choices, Cornacs might consider taking the category
Temporal Explorer: Foresight or +5 magic
Thief: Track first (saves up to 3 generics!), Misdirection or +5 dex
Tinker: I always take the category just in case, if you know for sure you're not taking it Innovation or +5 dex
Warrior: Vitality can be nice, Unflinching is solid if you can get more than 1 warrior escort, +5 con otherwise. Cornacs who get no other escort worth considering might consider the cat.
Prodigies
There are a couple solid choices for any build, I'll cover the ones I have experience with first and note the ones that should be fine after
Ethereal Form: Amazing prodigy, do more AND take less damage. Necromancer's can have very respectable defense values thanks to the Grim Shadow sustain and their high magic values. Also, minions inherit ~10% of the absolute damage resistance and don't lose it when they get smacked, which is nice I guess.
Adept: This prodigy probably does too many little things to properly document for any class, let alone one with as many talents as necromancers have. It makes you a little bit tankier, do a little more damage, and lets your otherwise fairly tight point spreads go a little bit further. It overall probably has a bigger effect for a minion build compared to a caster build but I'll highlight interesting things that I've noticed:
Master Of Bones:An extra skeleton from Call of the Crypt (a cat investment or sufficient mastery can get you up to 7 it seems). Save 1 point on Lord of Skulls (mage) investment.
Master Of Flesh: 1 more ghast from Call of the Mausoleum. 1 radius for Putrescent Liquefaction. 8 effects instead of 7 from Discarded Refuse
Dreadmaster: 2 levels to all the Dread spells from Dread. 2 turns to the invincibility from Neverending Peril. 2 levels to all the Dreadmaster spells
Grave: 5% more damage for minions from Black Ice. 1 radius to Chill of the Tomb. 1 max stacks to Corpselight
Glacial Waste: 1 radius to Desolate Waste (with 1 point invested). 3-4% damage reduction from Bleak Guard
-Animus: 2-3 maximum souls and faster passive soul generation from soul leech at all levels. Torture Souls generates 3 souls with 1 point invested (pretty nice place to save points if all you use it for is soul generation). Save 1 point in reaping for the same value.
Death: Save 1 point on the Grim Shadow radius 3 knockback. 1 point gets you the movement speed rider from Utterly Destroyed
Master Necromancer: 1 radius to Aura of Undeath at 4 points invested, 3% resistance and 5% better stat inheritance with 5 points (compared to non adept 5 point investment). Suffer for Me is about the same at 1 point with adept as 5 points without. Crazy value haha
Age of Dusk: 1 radius to Dire Plague. 1 duration to Crepuscule. Save one point on Golden Age of Necromancy (for the invincibility proc)
Rime Wraith: Better uptime on Rime Wraith and it's duplicate overall
Eradication: 1-2% more lifesteal from Eternal Night
Necrosis: 1 radius and 1 cooldown reduction to Across the Veil at max investment, 2 radius and 3 cooldown reduction with 1 point (compared to 1 point non adept)
Spectre: Save 1 generic on Ghostwalk or get 11 range with max investment
Combat Training: 3~% all res from Thick Skin
Lich:1 point in Neverending Unlife is really value with adept and kinda whatever without. 1 radius and 2 turns shaved off of the immunity buff enemies get when they resist Frightening Presence at max investment. 3 shadow buddies with max investment compared to 2, they also become immune to your damage.
Lichform: Lets be honest, this is what a significant portion of people that play this class come here for. Unlocking this at 25 is painful, especially on Insane but it's manageable. You'll have to consider your zone order (the Urkis Rune can help but that can also be dangerous in the low 20s), talent and gear choices carefully if you want to pull it off at 25, especially as a caster (minion builds have an easier time in my experience with Celia and Weirdling). However, waiting until 30~ for a safer experience isn't the worst idea, and you only lose like 20 life from the life rating bonus that lich offers. If you don't have a compelling (see: movement infusion snapshotting) reason to avoid this prodigy, just take it. It makes you tankier, reduces your reliance on gear for various immunities, gives you damage, the racials are great, and you can do fun stuff like NOT drown yourself the moment you get it to have it serve as a pseudo blood of life.
Armour of Shadows (AoS): A safe choice, especially for the caster types that probably want some combination of Lich+eth form/AoS/CS. Of those three, AoS might be the weakest option overall but it is by no means bad and you will deal darkness damage every turn to proc the unlit tiles, which has synergy with some nice gear options (duathedlen heart).
Corrupted Shell(CS): Big HP, Armour/Hardiness, defense and saves. It offers a lot of bonuses that necromancer makes good use of but isn't particularly exciting otherwise. Unlocking it can be a pain especially if you're like me and tend to kill the grand corrupter after destroying zigur and before selecting the prod
don't be like me.Meteoric Crash: You will have a very high darkness damage value which gets applied to part of the damage this deals. This thing does big burst and allows you access to stun on a class that has shaky (see: minion reliant) access to that debuff. Fun, if a little sub-optimal.
Blighted Summoning: Theoretically this makes your minions do a little bit more living and a little bit more killing but the actual benefit is up for some debate IMO. It doesn't help you personally with doing either the living or the killing except by proxy, which is definitely an argument against the prodigy. The bone shield will block 2 hits with a fairly low threshold, and the actual talents that are granted do very little barring maybe bone spike for skeleton mage and virulent disease for ghouls if they can get it to stick although I haven't personally tested that.
Eye of the Tiger: Aside from Invoke Darkness (cd 3) and Black Ice (cd 4), Necromancers have fairly long cooldowns on most of their rotation. This can help fix that if you want to press say rigor mortis more often without needing to abuse cross the veil.
Hidden Resources: Picture this: You're a drem, with big dreams of summoning 15 ghouls at the start of every fight. But, try as you might, you just can't find the souls to actually do it
. Look no further, your dreams can be memes with this one easy step (doctors hate it)! Also helps deal with manaburn on a class that tends to forgo traditional mana regen options (manasurge) and spell feedback because, y'know, that's a thing even if it tends to be a non issueMaster of Disasters: I tried this on doomed, it's probably fine here too. Big spellpower will apply to your minions for better debuff stickiness, and cross tier effects aren't the worst thing in the world to have access to.
There's always the classic defensive options such as Cauterize, but that prodigy is literally never bad and doesn't need it's own description. You don't really need spine because lich comes stun immune out of the box which is nice.
#Mechanics
Snapshotting 101: The game will take any stats/buffs/relevant gear bonuses that get inherited by minions, even if they're temporary, and apply them to your summons at the time you summon them. Aside from damage and power one of the most important (read: exploitative-ish) stats that 'snapshot' in this game for your minions is your movement & global (spell/mind/attack don't seem to work)speed at the time of summoning. If you pop a 500% movement speed infusion and summon your skellies (or ghouls or whatever) they will inherit the 500% movement speed buff, forever. If you wear gear to get a total bonus of +300% physical damage, you can summon your skellies while wearing it and then take it off afterwards and they will maintain the bonus 300% physical damage. Without diving into the code and creating a definitive list of things that do and don't work, I will provide an example higher minionmancer prebuffing in order to summon zoomy skeletons to help clear a level.
1. Equip any global speed gear you might have, +physical damage% stuff, spell power on crit and any other such gear your feeble arms managed to carry with you
2. Make some popcorn IRL, find a cozy spot to set yourself on fire (if using harmony), +30%~ global speed
3. Spam invoke darkness, torture soul, black ice, and any other nonsense you can to max out your spellpower on crit. Bonus points if you can fire a spell that deals physical damage (it has to deal damage) for the 20% boost from the higher racial
4.Pop Wrath of the Highborne
5.Pop Eden's Guile +70%~ global speed
6.Pop a movement infusion +600-1000~ movement speed
7. Summon some skeletons
8. Repeat
9. Experience Diablo 2 in Tome, enjoy popcorn
10. Dread the next time you have to do this
Other races have similar-but-different means. Ogre inscriptions will boost the speed a little more than the others, Shalore don't need Edens Guile, Liches have to make sure to proc commander of darkness, Ghouls need to jump and puke and have a sad sad virgin ethereal rune compared to chad movement infusion. End result remains speedy skeletons regardless, some are just speedier than others.
For casters and sploders, your rotation is fairly self explanatory. Summon Ghouls>Corpse Explosion>Putrescent liquefaction>Night Sphere(casters start around here)>Dire Plague>Impending Doom>Crepuscule>Rigor Mortis>Torture Souls>Invoke Darkness. You can mix river of souls in and cancel/let it run its full duration depending on how your souls are doing. Generally speaking this won't be necessary on all but the longest fights, so modify it to fit your current situation and damage output.
Class Categories
Now for the juicy stuff
Master of Bones: 5/1/1/3-4 OR 0/0/0/0
Call of the Crypt: Summon up to 5 skeletons. This talent is all or nothing with respect to both the quality and general usability of the summons you get. Annoyingly you can't just choose to make a mage or an archer, which can lead to even more tedium if you're trying to snapshot and fishing for one in particular but the game keeps using your souls on the wrong type
. Really solid permanent summons regardless of snapshotting, their only problem is their tendency to form a conga line of doom in the 1x1 hallways that every other class prefers to fight in. Pro tip, right click on a minion icon at the top left of the screen to dismiss unwanted ones.Shattered Remains: More or less a point tax, more points don't really do much and the effect it has doesn't really help the skeletons actually live much longer if they're in the process of being spanked.
Assemble: On the one hand, this guy with max investment has an aoe bone toss that does like 500+ damage. On the other hand, he always comes out looking a little under the weather. He doesn't have a weapon, so his sheet unarmed damage hovers around 80-90 vs a voratun armoured skeleton's 150+. He doesn't have combat accuracy, so while he COULD theoretically perma stun things with his level 6+ stun talent...he has 20 acc in high peak compared to the armoured skeleton 60+. This relegates him to being a meat shield, and credit due he is by FAR the tankiest minion in this tree....but he lacks the blink rune that the Armoured skeletons come with, which makes him the best conga line dancer you have. The big (not giant for some reason) guy probably needs some love.
Lord of Skulls (LoS): The scaling on this talent is super funky, and you're basically just here for your favourite flavour of LoS minion because the actual value for putting points here is...non existent. A whopping 30-90 more hp for a minion is simply not worth the investment, but the mage LoS will casually one shot his way through the t1 and t2 dungeons if you enjoy that. The sheer value the mage LoS has takes this tree from a 5/0/0/0 to 5/1/1/3-4.
Master of Flesh: 5/4/4/x or 1-4/0/0/0 or 1-4/1/1/x
Call of the Mausoleum: Super value one point wonder that doubles as not-the-worst-value for additional points in a pinch. Ghoulsploders that want maximum ghoul for maximum sploding will of course dump points into this talent, but even the one point providing a free body at the start of every fight has all sorts of wonderful implications...Maybe he takes a nasty soul rot meant for you. Maybe you get pinned by a fox rand boss and can switch places with him. The ghoul leap makes them inferior conga line dancers compared to the skeletons, but you don't summon them for their ability to stand in a single file line anyway. They'll never really be great at dealing a ton of damage themselves because they're unarmed and don't have combat acc, but the builds that typically care about ghouls aren't relying on them for their damage. Oh, if you're undead they can puke to provide nice healing for a duration too, which they seem to start being able to use around level 30.
Corpse Explosion: The first and probably more impactful of the ghoulsploding abilities, this skill does BIG damage in a reasonable aoe that also leaves a huge dot on the unfortunates that get hit by it. Fine control of the location of the explosion isn't really possible, but ghouls tend to leap at the start of a fight and stand next to things until they splode, which makes this perfectly usable regardless.
Putrescent Liquefaction: Kinda funky skill, you're going to be sploding ghouls anyway if you come this far so understanding how it works is important. This is a sustain only usable while you have ghouls (typically in combat), and immediately slays 1-3 of them. If you want them to splode, cast corpse explosion and then this afterwards. Solid damage that will honestly never turn off in any reasonable length engagement, it goes on cooldown when the duration expires (or you turn the sustain off) and the soul cost is only paid upon the initial activation.
Discarded Refuse: Technically a very very good sustain, I've never had to use this. The requirement of having a ghoul that isn't in the process of sploding makes this a little less reliable than straight up immunity and most physical debuffs probably won't reach you when there are upwards of 8 ghouls standing in the way of the typical stuns and whatnot. If you invest a point just turn it on and forget about it, it'll inevitably generate value for you (probably from rush dazes)
Nightfall 4+/1/1/4+ or 1/1/1/0
Invoke Darkness: The most basic of all the beams, it gets thicc at 4 points which is great for room clearing and the damage is never bad.
Night Sphere: This spell is really good, especially with the following talent in this tree. Blind and confuse are both crippling debuffs and this thing boasts a solid duration, solid radius, and it deals some damage because why not. If you feel you need a bigger sphere, the size grows at 4 points, don't invest here for duration because...
Erupting Shadows: This doubles as sustain fodder and turns Bane of Blind/Confuse into one of the most obnoxious debuffs in the game. It only needs 1 points to do its job and will basically guarantee the banes last forever/until cleansed.
River of Souls: Big damage in a huge aoe that requires no further input from you after the initial cast means you'll have lots of free time for re-positioning/casting other stuff. Very soul intensive, deactivate it early if everything is dead/dying to spare your resources a bit. Drem can push this skill a bit further than others, but I rarely needed the full duration of one casting of this, let alone two, so take that how you will.
Dreadmaster 0/0/0/0
Spent some time on the most recent winner (under the ghoulsploder TLDR) testing this thing out...ehhh it's ok at best. The benefits it offers are subtle, to the point that barring a successful disperse magic cleansing something important you'll probably never notice what it actually contributes. That's not to say it doesn't contribute anything, it's a reasonably bulky body on the field debuffing things for you. I found after using it a lot that I frequently wished (DG please) you could just disable the phase door, or lower the priority or something. It was common throughout the run for it to phase door 10 tiles away into a wall (essentially out of the fight for a while), or different room (aggroing random enemies and getting murdered), which is not great value for 4 souls. To give credit where it's due, it performed well in typical boss fight style engagements, including the final boss where it helped disperse E's sustains, and it even landed a confuse on Atamathon.
This skill tree is funky and needs some awkward investment/skill building to shine. First, the dread wants minions to die so it can hex more, which might incline you toward ghoulsploding+dread. However, it also needs master necromancer to have enough spellpower to be relevant, which is more of a skeleton thing (ghoulsploders would probably go 1/5/x/x or just not unlock it compared to the typical skeleton mandatory 5/x/x/x). This makes actually utilizing the dread to it's fullest awkward, and only some weird skele/ghoul/dread/master necromancer hybrid summoner-thing will likely ever get the fullest out of it. Maybe.
Dread: When the skill description says this thing is annoying, it wasn't kidding. Come late game it's a reasonably bulky-phase-dooring-hexing-thing that will have enough spellpower to do it's job assuming you go master necromancer. Burning and Pacification Hex are both fantastic debuffs, and made even better by not needing to cast them yourself. It is, however, not without problems of it's own. Without master necromancer sustained it has like 40 spell power which makes it terribly ineffective. Similar to the doomed shadows it has a bad tendency of flying around aggroing things you might not want to interact with, except instead of fighting it to the death the way shadows tend to it will more likely hex and phase door away, potentially aggroing more things. You also can't really control what it's hexing and when it's hexing at any given time, which while fine over the course of a run might irk the people who like their debuffs on specific targets.
Souleater: This is what lends the Dread toward a more ghoul-centric strategy. 2-3 points provides a lot of value for cd resetting and free-hexing. I can't remember the last time I needed up to 9 enemies hexed in some way but it certainly helps the Dread do it's job. In theory.
Neverending Peril: There are probably some shenanigans that you could get up to via tunneling and having the Dread stand in front of you while invincible for 10~turns, but that is assuming the dread doesn't move or blink in some way, and how slow you feel like playing as a whole. The more likely intended use is to make sure the Dread doesn't die before sploding some ghouls to proc some healing/cd resetting from Souleater. Probably.
Dreadmaster: The stats of the Dreadmaster compared to the Dread are more or less identical, so you're really here for the extra spells. 1 point is more or less worthless (8 power confuse, disperse is untargettable, 50% up time on silence), so you have to invest at least 3 here if you're going to use it. 5 points offers you 100% up time on the silence, a 44% confuse with 70% up time (a little redundant with banes maybe), and 5 magical sustain shred assuming it targets that on what you want it to. I never saw it land a silence, but it did cleanse sustains with regularity and even confused Atamathon. Definitely shaky, inconsistent value for 10~ class points of investment.
Grave 1-5/x/0/0 or 0/0/0/0
Disclaimer: I've never used corpselight or grave mistake
Black Ice: A fantastic little spell that gives minion builds something to do in between resting, the damage it does is solid and the debuff is excellent. 4 points gets you the 1 radius aoe and 5 gives 5% more damage for your minions which isn't awful. Casters can freely ignore this unless they want to diversify their damage types for whatever reason.
Chill of the Tomb: For one reason or another, this is one of the more iconic necromancer spells in tome. The base damage here is quite high, the radius is enormous, and for minion builds you might consider splashing a few points here to help protect your skeletons from ground effect aoes such as those from wretchlings and fire drakes.
Corpselight: At it's core this spell looks like a radius 10 reasonably damaging dot BUT in order to get it to expand you have to be standing inside the radius while casting spells, which kinda defeats the purpose of being a range 10 caster. If you do get it fully expanded, it is a very large a reasonably damaging dot.
Grave Mistake: Big damage, but, never have I ever placed a ground effect near me (to get corpselight to expand) in the hopes of one day making the radius huge in order to suck every enemy in said huge radius...towards me. 7 turns later. Oh and it costs 2 souls. Just a really awkward, hard to utilize (if you need a pull/knock back you typically need it on demand, unless you can see 7 turns into the future) ability that doesn't do much more damage than your other options for casters. For skele builds you're forced to ask yourself if you'd rather be casting spells or pressing the rest key.
Glacial Waste 3-5/1/1/3-5
Hiemal Shield: Doubles as mostly-passive defense and tile obscuring nonsense that makes it hard to see what might be hiding behind the shield without inspecting enemies that have it haha. This ability is great at all stages and warrants as much investment as you can reasonably spare. Early it helps protect you against burst by smoothing damage over your shields and your actual health bar, and late game you're looking at a mostly free 500-900 damage shield, and that's not counting the other abilities in this tree or the crit reduction that comes at negative life. Very good overall.
Desolate Waste: A little bit of free damage and shield sustain whenever your shield gets hit, more points don't do too much and the effect will probably go unnoticed for the entire duration of the game. Typically if your shield is going to go down, it'll go down, and hanging around hoping for some regen when it's low can be dangerous. Don't rely on this, but it's free so whatever.
Crumbling Earth: More free damage, you're not going to be kiting much with the 15% movement speed slow but it's there. Provides a debuff for rigor mortis purposes I guess. More points do more or less nothing.
Bleak Guard: Very very good. What's better than a passive 800~ shield? A passive 800~ shield that takes 10-33% less damage from everything.
Animus x/1/3-5/4-5
Soul Leech: A staple of the necromancer, when you start getting the sustains and big spells that cost a lot of souls consider investing here so that you have a larger resource pool to make use of. 3-4 points is probably enough for the entire game. If at any point you find yourself struggling consistently with soul generation or maintaining reaping bonuses in longer fights this can alleviate the pain. Soul Leech as a debuff serves as cleanse fodder, generates souls over time, and is required for a couple abilities to work.
Consume Soul: I've never felt the need for this to have more than 1 point, but it is very good with little investment. Can help with getting manaburned or proc across the veil for some cooldown reduction.
Torture Souls: Huge radius/base damage ability that requires soul leech active on whatever targets you want to hit. You'll want to push this later on in your rotation for some free soul generation, but it can also just end some fights on it's own thanks to the base damage. 1 point gives you 1 soul and 3 gives you 4 which is a nice break point, assuming you can hit that many enemies with it.
Reaping: The sustain that is partially responsible for necromancers forgoing manasurge runes, this ability really does it all. Do you want resource sustain? More damage? All res? Yes, yes, yes. You have to manage your soul count and keep them high to reap (haha) the bonuses this offers, but its definitely worth it. 4 is a nice break point.
Death 1-5/1/3-5/x
Rigor Mortis: Your biggest damage button requires some setup. In general you'll use this fairly late into your rotation (likely right before torture souls) once you have all your other nasty debuffs active. This thing is probably one of the hardest hitting spells in the game and it also happens to lower enemy global speed for a while, which is nice i guess if they survive the damage.
Drawn to Death: A strange teleport but technically a pretty good one. Range 10, 0% of a turn that does exactly what it says on the tin and never needs more than 1 point of investment.
Grim Shadow: More sustains, this one is pretty good and helps necromancers not die to dangerous weapon classes (especially melee). 3 is a nice break point for value but the defense and armour bonuses don't scale too badly all the way to 5 and it also adds another radius to the knock back which is nice.
Utterly Destroyed: Never have I ever needed to use this sustain for the mana regen, but for 1 point you get more sustain fodder for the stuff you actually care about which is nice.
Master Necromancer 5/x/x/x or 0/0/0/0
Aura of Undeath: In general, if you're using skeletons as your primary source of damage you probably need this at least 3 and eventually 5. A very significant boost to both their damage and tankiness. Ghoul builds need not apply unless you want...
Surge of Undeath: You'll want 1 point here early for skeleton builds to make the early game less tedious. It's a solid ability that scales ok with more points, helping sustain your skeles and make them do more damage. If you unlock this cat as a ghoulsploder it basically makes your corpse explosion and putrescent liquefaction last forever, which is probably overkill but an option if that interests you.
Recall Minions: 2 points here lets you recall most of your skeleton army to you in case something nasty happens to be breathing down your neck. You probably won't need to use this often, but it can be handy in a pinch.
Suffer for Me: Another sustain, this one is technically pretty good but I've never needed it on insane. I haven't experimented with it too much, but I assume it can splode ghouls for you when you get hit. If it redirected to the healthiest minion in your aura, the bone giant would be able to serve as a conga line body guard, which honestly would improve him substantially.
Age of Dusk 1-5/1-5/1/4
Dire Plague: It's either a point tax that you'll probably never use or a very good large-radius-high-damage-soul-generating-rigor-mortis-setup-dot. Often using this first in your rotation and following up with torture souls will clear rooms all on it's own.
Crepuscule: Another point tax or decent ability. This places a buff on you (extendable with timeless!) that does damage to enemies every turn. It's nothing flashy, but the damage is alright and blind is a solid debuff. 2 soul cost is a little expensive but if you can manage to mix this in it's not bad at all.
The End of All Hope: Point tax, this technically helps you with room clearing which necromancers don't need at all and more points don't really do that much for you. It can get silly vs training dummies if you want to see 200+ turn dire plagues, but the reality is you'll never need that haha.
Golden Age of Necromancy: Probably what you came here for, this sustain is amazing. At 4 points you get a bunch of saves (makes save stacking really easy), solid immunities to two of the deadliest debuffs that can happen to you (getting teleported into a room full of nasties sucks no matter who you are), and to top if off you get invulnerability at negative hp. Notably, timeless does NOT extend the invulnerability debuff, but it seems that tools with the extending trait do (not sure if intended)
Rime Wraith Just don't
I have no experience with this tree, I find it difficult to justify unlocking let alone dumping points into it to make it functional. Apparently the wraith will also stop functioning if the target it attaches to dies, which means it probably will never last it's full duration which hurts this even more. Seems to do a whole lot of different things poorly, but someone with more experience can chime in with it's merits if it has any.
Eradication 1-4/1-3/1/4
This tree is a weird caster/minion hybrid
Boneyard: The first of the point taxes for casters, if you're a minion (skele) build this is worth investing in because it's one of the only ways you have to lower enemy phys resist which is what skeletons do almost exclusively.
To The Grave: Point tax #2 for casters, minion builds can do some shenanigans with this thing and often have the points to spare. Sometimes you drop your boneyard, reposition and have something nasty teleport/blindside/rush to you. This can solve that problem for you, rare though it may be. Extra ghouls and skellies are nice but nothing to write home about as they won't be snapshotted.
Impending Doom: Solid ability at 1 point and doesn't really do enough to warrant additional investment. You can keep this in your pocket for high regeneration enemies (recovery, oozemancers) or use it as part of your rotation for bigger rigor mortis damage. Can also serve as sluggish out of combat soul generation by casting it on an unfortunate skeleton or shadow buddy, which is nice I guess
Eternal Night: This is what the casters paid for, and even minion builds might consider investing here. 4 points is a solid break point for value, this is a fairly standard sustain across casting classes that comes with a nice little life steal rider if you're at negative life. I wouldn't personally rely on the life steal, but if you get knocked into negative life the extra healing can bring you back up for more across the veil procs.
Generic Categories
Necromancers can be very generic hungry due to their ability to have two racial trees (lich + whatever). Be prepared to make compromises with your generics especially on point-intensive races
Combat Training 3-5/1-3/0-5/0/0/0
Fairly standard here, you can get a bunch of all res through reaping/thick skin/robes which is great. 1 point in heavy armour training is mandatory to wear heavy gloves/boots/hats, and you could wear plate if you're feeling frisky. The less frisky option is light armour training. Although typically not the greatest investment, the hardiness can help get value out of your reasonably high armour from grim shadows (and Aos/CS) and the defense can help push you into needs-perfect-accuracy-to-hit-me territory.
Survival 1/1-5/1/x
Again, fairly standard. Device mastery is great if you bother with it, track is amazing, and you can get your saves high enough that danger sense might actually do something once in a while which is cool. If you get track from an escort/lantern and don't bother with device mastery shenanigans often, consider this as one of the first places to take points from to free generics up.
Staff Combat 0/0/0/0 or 1/1/1-5/0
If by some miracle you have an abundance of generics to spare, this tree offers you sustain fodder, defense and armour, which isn't the worst thing in the world. 1/1/1 does a similar job to 1/1/5 if you want the sustain but don't want to invest, which is perfectly reasonable.
Necrosis 3-5/x/1-5/0-5
Blurred Mortality: An excellent passive that offers more effective life and all res when you're low is fantastic. You can opt not to max this out but life is life.
Across the Veil: Difficult to utilize consistently, this ability ranges from never really seeing use to very value if you intentionally dip down into negative life. The damage is good and passive, and the cooldown resetting can be nice with all of the necromancer's fairly long cooldowns.
Runeskin: Minion builds probably won't use this unless they go lich/ghoul, but for the builds that do utilize it extra negative life and spell crit is nothing to scoff at.
Spikes of Decreptitude: Another sustain, this one shaves 2 souls off your maximum for as long as it's active. If that soul cost is prohibitive in some way, don't invest here until you're comfortable with it. This is basically auto soul leech on enemies at the start of every fight, the damage isn't terrible, and the debuff in negative life is solid with investment.
Spectre 3/0-1/x/0-1
Ghostwalk: Really good teleport but keep in mind that it needs line of sight. This can force enemies to use multiple gap closers to reach you and you can still get away if all goes well (enemy dashes to you, teleport away, enemy uses a second rush/teleport/blindside to your new position, teleport back). 3 points is a solid break point, more points don't help too much. Oh, procs out of phase twice, which leads to really solid up time of that buff
Spectral Sight: You can use this alongside Ghostwalk as a really bad track in the early game, and passively sensing undead in a rather large radius is great especially early/mid game. Being able to see things near where your skeletons might be fighting is also very useful for decision making. Doesn't really get much better with more points.
Intangibility: Think of this as similar-but-different out of phase buff. With a little discipline the up time honestly isn't bad at 4 points, but whether you want to use your teleport on 25~% chance to avoid damage is a decision I will leave up to you. Extendable with timeless which is neat.
Path to Beyond: This ability is pretty soild with one point, you leave behind little wisp buddies whenever you teleport back to your original location with ghostwalk which can help keep enemies tied up if you don't have skeletons and ghouls zerging whatever was next to you. You can get 100% up time on these guys but they're not really bulky enough to last come late game.
Gear
Depending on the build your gear priorities will vary a little. Generally, as with most classes, life/negative life, resists, debuff immunities, (spell)power and %damage is always good.
Early
Gear with +life/negative life is fantastic. Early on a couple pieces of gear with 15+ defense, the Grim Shadow sustain and a point in Light Armour Training can help prevent marauder/rogue/berserker/brawler/bulwark/mindslayer bosses from mangling you. I also like to squeeze in a bit of light radius to help in dark dungeons early. Find yourself a nice staff with as much %damage, spellpower, and spell crit (bonus points if you can find one with the manasurge ability on it just in case). Non-Shalore minion builds will want to keep their eyes out for rings of speed early on so that you can snapshot some global speed onto your minions before you (hopefully) find Eden's Guile. With this in mind, some relatively common early finds that can last a while include Silk Current, Black Core, Eden's Guile, Mighty Girdle, and Rune of Reflection (I consider myself lucky if Hedgey drops this in trollmire haha)
Later than Early
The gear priorities shift a bit. Life/negative life, while still nice, can be phased out in favour of resists and immunities. In particular, Physical, Blight, Darkness and maybe Cold have some of the highest burst damage abilities you're likely to tank in the game, so prioritize those resists over the others. With regards to immunities stun is important for non-Lich builds. Skeleton builds might prefer confusion immunity if you had to choose between the two because common stuns tend to be melee range (which minions will likely eat) and confusion tends to be a large aoe that minions can't protect you from. Silence is one of the deadliest debuffs for you to get hit by especially if you're undead because you can't use a wild to cleanse it. For this reason, a clear mind torque ranges from very useful (living) to vital (undead) until you're immune to silence. On the damage side of things, you'll want to get close to 100% crit as a caster/sploder build. Ideally you'll have 100~% crit and 85+ spell power in the latter portions of the game. Afterwards, stack as much power/crit mult/%darkness damage as is reasonably possible. Skeleton builds can wear typical caster/sploder gear when they aren't snapshot summoning their minions. They should carry a second set of gear to swap into for when they summon. Don't worry about trying to cap minion crit chance (mine were floating around 40-50% end game) and instead focus on getting as much spell power and %phys damage in this "off set" as possible.
An exhaustive list of relevant artifacts would be way too long winded, instead I'll list some notable stuff to look out for:
Hat: Crown of Command, Helm of Dwarven Emperors (especially if dwarf). This is a randart slot come lategame.
Necklace: Vox, Zemekkys' Hourglass, Fanged Collar, The Far Hand, Spellblaze Echoes (this will friendly fire your minions), Choker of Dread. Highly recommend Vox, lots of great options here though.
Cloak: Wrap of Stone, Ethereal Embrace. Wrap is fantastic but you could easily have a good randart here instead.
Gloves: Stormbringer Gauntlets, Steampowered Gauntlets, Dakhtun's Gauntlets. Dakhtun's in particular are very hard to replace with a randart. Great slot for damage overall.
Belt: Neira's Memory, Girdle of Preservation, Emblem of Evasion. Jaw of Rogroth gives +max souls but kinda sucks otherwise. You can get the unlife ego from randarts to heal from ghoul-puke if you're not already undead.
Boots: Eden's Guile, Boots of the Hunter (nice way to get movement speed snapshot as a minion-lich), Wanderer's Rest. A solid pair of undeterred or spellbinding randart is excellent here too.
Tool: Randart, ideally quickening.
Lite: Duathedlen Heart (especially with AoS prodigy!). Randarts can have corpselight ego to heal from ghoul-puke if that entices you.
Rings: Ring of the Archlich, Ring of the Dead, Wheel of Fate, Mnemonic. Solid options here, randarts are fine to use too.
Chest: Worm Nest, Untouchable, Death's Embrace. I usually wind up in big % damage robe randarts come lategame.
Offhand: If you find Life Drinker, Lunar Shield, or Telos's Bottom Half, it is worth keeping an eye out for good short staves to make use of this slot.
Mainhand: The Staff of Bones says it does something if you're a master necromancer, but with some testing all it seems to do is scoff at me. Sceptre of the Archlich is pretty solid (with the ring set!), but whether or not it's better than a well rolled randart staff with a ton of power/crit/crit mult is up for debate.
Early Game
My typical zone order is something like Trollmire>Kor'Pul>Derth Arena>Scintillating Caves>Rhaloren>Norgos>Gloom for t1s. Don't forget to shop around for usable runes and infusions, necromancers have pretty good built in defenses so focus on things that help in dealing with debuffs or escaping bad engagements.
Put some points in Ghost walk and Blurred Mortality. Maxing Call of the Crypt if you're going skeletons early will more or less guarantee you get to t2s while casters will want a point in Call of the Mausoleum asap for safety reasons. I put at least one point in heimal shield and right click>auto use when out of combat. 4 points in invoke darkness asap is also great for casters, sprinkle in a little torture souls and night sphere and you'll do fine. Sploders can enjoy a few points in Call of the Mausoleum, Corpse Explosion, and Invoke Darkness to round out their early game. Feel free to float points into stuff like Torture Souls or Soul Leech as a Sploder early, you'll probably want the soul-help.
Walk into the Graveyard at last hope early (<level 10) step downstairs and leave if you plan on doing the Lich quest. (Celia will be level 22~ with 2k ish hp and lower level spells overall compared level 30~ with 2.5k ish hp and bigger numbers if you enter at level 25~)
Mid Game
This is probably the roughest part of the game for most classes and necromancer is no exception. Dangerous enemy types such as midges and horrors are common through here and warrant playing carefully around even if you feel strong. Zone order continued: Sandworm(come back later if alternate)>Maze(come back later if alternate)>Forest/Asslord>Halfling Complex>Hidden Compound>Daikara>Ogre Complex (if it spawns)>Nur>Dreadfell for t2+. You'll need to modify this a bit if you want to get lichform at level 25. Specifically, do forest and nur asap (track diligently, get to weirdling, and come back at 25).
Skeleton builds will want to get Mage LoS asap and begin the snapshot shenanigans. Casters and sploders will be a little sluggish compared to the LoS but they can safely start investing in Age of Dusk at 20 to get to the juicy Golden Age sustain. Eat the heart when you get it, you won't have the cat or generics to invest in vile life as caster and harmony can add a little bit of power & tedium to a skeleton build if you're feeling it (living minion builds tend to have a few extra generics to throw around). Leave a dungeon and come back if an unkillable (bone giants
) or extremely dangerous rand boss shows up, a general rule of thumb is if heimal shield goes down and they're not going to die within the next 1-3~ turns, grab your things and walk away.Fighting Urkis at 25~: Honestly this can be harder than Celia in a weird way. If you're a minion build they either spank him in like 3 turns or he procs hurricane on everything you've ever loved and they die before they can grab the paddle. Sploders probably have the easiest time here, since hurricane guarantees a splosion every turn more or less, while casters have to fight him straight up (hopefully you get bane of confusion on him instead of blind!). Bring plenty of cleansing and don't be afraid to reset the fight if you're a caster. Minion builds will want to brawl him out in the open.
Fighting Celia at 25~: Hopefully you level locked her to make this ever so slightly more manageable. She has all the same tricks as you, so at least you're familiar with what she's capable of. She tends to cast Call of the Crypt>Call of the Mausoleum>Torture Souls, so expect big burst early on in the fight. Backing up into one of the side rooms (clear these before you fight her!) can help, but if she throws night sphere down you'll probably need to relocate to avoid nasty debuffs. The Rune you get from killing Urkis can go a long way if it manages to cleanse Eternal Night. Also, be careful even if you're stun immune as she can get a biting gale rune, which will allow the skeletons and ghouls to stun you regardless.
Fighting Weirdling at 25~: This guy hasn't given me trouble in a long time. I find the actual dungeon harder than the boss fight, but your mileage may vary. Minion-esque builds will have enough bodies that he probably can't get through them to you before he gets mangled, while casters might have to stair dance if he eats sustains you care about. Make sure you don't push big damage buttons like Rigor Mortis or Torture Souls when he has bone shields up, but by now you've probably got the Urkis Rune to rely on if it comes to that.
So now you've got everything you need for the Lichual! Except fortress energy, which you can get from gems and other gear you might be carrying that you don't need. Go drown yourself in derth if you want the benefits immediately, or save the "free" life for a rainy day!
Late Game
By now you're probably comfortable with the class and what you're capable of. Zone order should look something like Armoury>Briagh>Sandworm>Other Backup Guardians (Kor'pul's can drop a really good amulet so keep an eye out for that!). I never talk to Tannen and do his quest for the convenient portal back to the Sunwall, I just go back through the mines every time but at this point you can do whatever you want. Back East, my preferred pride order is Rak'shor>Charred Scar>Gorbat>Vor>Grushnakk. At this point you'll have a bunch of gold so go spend it at the merchant/font of sacrifice before tackling the slime tunnels and beyond.
In the final dungeon, enemies can be really strong so I advise caution. Track, use burning star if you got it, and find a path of least resistance to the stairs. Stair guardians have huge variance, some are total chumps and others are murder machines so be careful. In the final fight, you only really have to watch out for the hexes (especially burning, cleanse that asap). Try to focus Elandar first, cleansing essence of speed with your trusty Urkis Rune is always worth a shot. If Elandar goes down before Aeryn keels over you should feel pretty confident about winning the fight.
I do believe that that is that! It's probably entirely too long and a little wall of texty, but I tried to be at least somewhat comprehensive. I'll be doing some testing with adept later to make sure it has enough info to help you make an informed decision about it. Feel free to let me know what I no doubt overlooked, and thanks for reading if you got this far!