Necromancers - how to get started?

[malice]

I'm hoping someone can help with this. Normally I play either warriors or sorcerors but today I decided to try something different so I fired up a necromancer. Now, maybe I'm missing something but how am I supposed to do anything when at level 1? The only spell I seem to have is Horrify which doesn't inflict any damage, I can't take anything on in melee as I'm too weak and I can't afford any wands/staffs/rods in the shops. My character is a wood elf so I'm reduced to hanging out in the trees, searching for items and hoping to find a monster weaker than me.

Am I missing something? With sorcerors you get manathrust straight away so you can immediately deal some damage.

[paboperfecto]

I've never played a necromancer but this is from the chatter on the wiki:

I think there are two common settings you can pick. A necromancer that wants the touch of death (whatever it's called) ability or a necromancer who's in fact a summoner. The first one will need lots of combat while the second will be better off increasing corpse preservation and monster lore. The second one is actualy easier to play, use the horrify power to help your pets and turn the strongest ones in companions. They will kill and leave bodies which you can turn into undead minions, soon you will have a dungeon filled with your undeads and you can move on. Btw, Horrify dazes monsters which leaves them completly helpless, you can kill several uniques really easily with it.

Looks like you're going to need to up combat to gain a few levels, some black/white ant hunting. Or get a bow and do the thieves quest for 4-5 levels.

[N]

A necromancer that wants the touch of death (whatever it's called) ability or a necromancer who's in fact a summoner.

Both of these can work in the long term. The one I typically go for is the summoner... as a sorcerer

As for getting you past level 1, I've rolled up a wood elf necro and leveled it to lvl 8. Here's the summary.
1) Created character: male, wood elf, necro, classical, no god, specified no min stats (you've likely done a better job here than me)
2) Welded dagger, dropped "noobie's guide to middle earth" (normally I destroy it... must be getting soft)
3) Set tactics to running and berserker
4) Killed a few towns people (optional
5) Headed south to the swamp
6) Scummed for a lone Crebain, killed it - didn't bother with horrify

[malice]

Thanks for the advice so far. I didn't think about checking the wiki. As it turns out, I had managed to miss something fundamental. Rather than setting my tactics to berserker + running, I had set coward and running . It's only one less keypress but it makes quite a difference when trying to hurt stuff .

Happily I have rectified that and gained a couple of levels so at least now I can deal some damage through spells.

[Derakon]

N's point about using a sorcerer to go Necromancy is good, by the way. There's several specialist classes that trade a marginally better skill rate in their main skill for worse skill rates in other important skills. Notable examples include Mindcrafter (compare Paladin) and Thaumaturgist (compare Warper or Mage).

The weird thing about Necromancy is that many players hope to get enough of it to get Undead Form, and don't care about any of the other abilities it can give. Then again, death insurance is a very useful thing...