Saint of Shadows: An Insane Adventurer Lich Build

[azrael]

I know the formatting is trash. Unfortunately, I wrote this entire guide on Word, and copy-and-pasting it is having some less than optimal results.

I decided to try out some darkness synergies, because… well, there are rather a lot of them. The result was decently impressive, even on Insane difficulty. This build killed Elandar by accident (no direct damage spells requiring at least one turn), killed Atamathon in 3-4 turns, killed Linaniil without taking any noticeable damage, and killed the Hypostasis of Entropy by standing next to it and throwing debuffs until it died (no Antropic zones needed). The only time the build took noticeable damage past level 40 or so was to a Paradox Mage rare in High Peak (not even a stair guardian) which Braided me with all my shadows. Turns out Braid damage bypasses Bone Shield and Stormshield runes! Who knew. I dominated the Paradox Mage, watched it kill everything else, and continued strolling up.

This is the character: https://te4.org/characters/17431/tome/e ... f0e3917477

Notably, the build did have two deaths before level 25. One was to a Skirmisher/Rogue unique in Sandworm Tunnels, who instakilled me when I turned a corner and ran into Fan of Knives. The other was Celia, who was an absolute nightmare on Insane (no pun intended). That battle was stupendously long—it probably took around 500 turns to kill her; maybe more. Doing that fight at level 25 in order to maximize the benefits of Lichdom might not be possible on Roguelike.

Fair warning that I do have the Choose Your Escorts addon, and I did savescum. Losing escorts feels… really terrible. Nothing in there is necessary; I mostly picked a bunch of +5 Magic bonuses, although Premonition was nice. You don’t need to savescum for this build; I only do it because the game is less fun for me when I’m not at ‘max’ potential.

As for the nitty-gritty of it:

• Class Talents

o Nightfall

 Invoke Darkness (4/5)
• Is your primary damage talent for most of the game. It’s basically costless with Lich mana regeneration, hits a wide area after you up its level to 5.5 through Adept, and doesn’t harm allies. Usually did around 3-4k damage in the endgame.
 Nightsphere (1/5)
• An amazing AOE debuffer and area damage dealer. Did around 1k damage per turn at the end, since it can crit. Only 1 point is necessary since it doesn’t scale.
 Erupting Shadows (1/5)
• Congratulations, the Banes from Nightsphere are now permanent until dispelled. No need for more than one point.
 River of Souls (0/5)
• Does fantastic damage, but it’s unusable since we don’t have any reasonable way of regenerating souls. No, Celia’s Heart does not count.

o Sun

I took this category at level 10.
 Sun Ray (2/5)
• Is cast instantly, blinds in an AOE, does 2-3k light damage, and can trigger spell procs. When you’re running hot, it will activate every 2-3 turns.
 Path of the Sun (1/5)
• Is one of your few movement talents. One point is enough as long as you’re willing to wait for Adept, but more points here to give you greater distance wouldn’t be terrible.
 Sun’s Vengeance (3/5)
• In hindsight, you can get away with fewer points in this. Spellcrit is nice, as is the free Sun Rays it offers, but I had more spellcrit than I knew what to do with at the end.
 Suncloak (5/5)
• In combination with equipment, this got me to around 80% spell cooldown reduction and +50% spell speed. The resilience never triggered for me, but it’s nice to have anyway.

o Star Fury

 Moonlight Ray (3/5)
• This is your highest damage talent for most of the game. It scales notably better than Invoke Darkness, albeit with a thinner area. I used this sparingly on trash due to the negative energy costs, but against bosses it was critical DPS. At the end, it typically did 4-5k damage.
 Shadow Blast (2/5)
• A huge AOE blast, with good terrain damage afterwards. At the end, this hit for 3k on the initial blast, then 1k every turn afterwards. More points can get you a longer duration on the lingering damage, which improves scaling. Beware Negative Energy costs and Friendly Fire!
 Twilight Surge (1/5)
• Your only source of Negative Energy regeneration, besides waiting. Scales poorly, but still did around 2k at the end, which was enough to reliably clear trash mobs around me. Use this whenever you have a free turn to keep your Negative Energy solvent.
 Starfall (2/5)
• Your only stun. 2 points is enough to increase the area, with Adept, but you still have to worry about friendly fire. Does good Aoe damage, but is costly.

o Bone

 Bone Spear (1/5)
• Scales well thanks to doubling damage with magical debuffs, of which you have tons. Did around 2k if the enemy was debuffed properly, but I rarely used this past the beginning of the game unless I needed an alternative damage type.
 Bone Grab (1/5)
• This is your “stop meleeing me” talent. It’s also your “come over here so I can melee you” talent, which you will want lategame to cast Demon Seed and use Cursed Arm.
 Bone Spike (1/5)
• Never did more than 300 damage. Think this is terrible? It’s not—it does trigger spell procs, which means free Invoke Darkness and Moonlight Ray with good equipment.
 Bone Shield (5/5)
• Congratulations, you’re invincible. If anything actually manages to chew through all 4 of these before they can respawn, you pop a Stormshield and continue being invincible.

o Shadows

 Call Shadows (5/5, but 4/5 recommended)
• It was a huge mistake to invest so much into this. Shadows currently have a bug where they no longer Fade once they hit 100% damage immunity from the you, and I would still have had 3 shadows thanks to Adept.
 Shadow Warriors (4/5)
• My shadows couldn’t use Fade. This was sad, but the increased damage and accuracy was nice, and Dominate is an excellent debuff.
 Shadow Mages (4/5)
• Free ‘quickened’ spells, albeit weak ones. Reform was critical, since my shadows couldn’t Fade.
 Focus Shadows (1/5)
• You use this to resummon shadows, which it does just fine with 1 point. On the whole, I don’t know that shadows were ‘optimal’ on this build, but they were certainly fun. They distracted enemies, soaked bolts/arrows and debuffs, and offered useful defensive benefits. Their damage was… actually not terrible, but I did so much on my own that I never really noticed it. Working together, they probably maxed out at around 800 per turn near the endgame.

o One With Shadows

I took this category at 34.
 Shadow Senses (1/5)
• Now you know where your shadows are. You also get to examine enemies through walls—wait for a shadow to pop around a corner, or Phase Door through a wall, and then enjoy your free intelligence.
 Shadows Empathy (1/5)
• This offers decent resist all (around 10% if your shadows are all alive) and keeps you from accidentally nuking yourself, thanks to the Darkness Affinity it grants you. Doesn’t scale great.
 Shadow Transposition (4/5)
• This offers a long-range, if rather constricted movement option. More importantly, it clears 3 Phys/Magical debuffs on a very short cooldown.
 Shadow Decoy (1/5)
• Your extra Cauterize. Disappointingly, this triggers before Bone Shield, but only if the damage would otherwise bring you below 0 health. Since you can survive with a lot of negative health (I had around -800) this is less useful than it appears, but is still handy if you get your magical sustains stripped. Plus, you get to use your shadows as ‘phylacteries’, which is extremely on brand. Points for aesthetics!

o Absorption

 1 point to the first three skills is enough. I kept Kinetic and Charged Shield on the whole game. You’re here for Forcefield (3/5), which I never had to use (but which was an excellent emergency button that’s immune to magical dispels) and more importantly the TK staff. My own TK staff gave me 59% crit multiplier and about 79 spellpower, which is admittedly above average, but it’s worth it to double up on mainhand seeds from Demonic Pact and get Beyond the Flesh.

o Demonic Pact

I took this category at 20, since I needed a short staff to use it properly anyway.
 Demon Seed (5/5)
• This gives you access to every tier of demon, with Adept. Max this. My accuracy was never great, but you don’t actually need a lot of accuracy to hit with this. Counterstrike drops their defense to 0, as does Curse of Defenselessness, and Fateweaver gave me 48 bonus Accuracy lategame.
 Bind Demon (5/5)
• My endgame demon bindings offered:
o +25 Strength, +25 Magic, +200 Health, 38 Flat Damage Resistance (All), +4 Vim Regen, 5 levels of Bloodcasting, free casts of every Curse through Cursed Arm (that includes Vulnerability, which did -70% resist all to launch my damage into the stratosphere), and two huge, low-cooldown damage spells (Frostfire Nova, which did around 1-1.5k freezing fire damage in radius six, and Fetid Breath, which is a range 10 cone that typically did between 6-9k damage.)
• You want this. It’s modular, so if you find yourself lacking a particular stat, you can swap things out to get the ideal stats for whatever fight you’re in (including +30% physical/blight resist, or darkness damage penetration). Also, you get to collect demons like Pokemon, which is fun.
• Technically you can summon demons, but aside from using Onilugs to land Curse of Vulnerability or Champions of Urh’Rok to strip magical sustains, this is mostly pointless.
 Twisted Portal (1/5)
• One point is enough to run away or teleport through undiggable walls.
 Doom Concordat (0/5)
• You might want to juggle a single point in this to revive dead demons. Otherwise, skip it. You don’t need the healing and demon damage is very poor (especially since they don’t keep their equipment after the first time they’re summoned).

• Generic

o Shalore

 Grace of the Eternals (1/5)
• One point is enough. This got me 64% global speed at the end, and the cooldown is irrelevant since you always cast Suncloak before using this.
 Magic of the Eternals (2/5)
• This is normally quite good, but you already have a lot of spellcrit, and the critical damage modifier is outperformed and outscaled by Hymn of Detection.
 Secrets of the Eternals (1/5)
• More useful than it first appears. On Insane this will trigger often, and Invisibility is better than it used to be. More importantly, this offers up another sustain that might get eaten by a dispel instead of something important like Bone Shield.
 Timeless (4/5)
• Adept means you don’t need the final point in this. Use this to double all of your important buff durations.

o Combat Training

 2 points into Heavy Armor so that you can wear shields, which are critical. I put one point into Thick Skin later on, but it’s not necessary. Don’t bother with anything else.

o Staff Combat

 Note that you can get your mastery to this tree to 1.2, but only if you buy it and the boost at Angolwen’s Staff trainer. Do this early.
 Channel Staff (1/5)
• This did 2k every turn, easily, at the end. It’s essentially free (you regenerate more mana every turn than it uses) and it triggers important procs. It also has zero cooldown. Surprisingly useful for utility.
 Staff Mastery (1/5)
• One point is enough to get an enormous damage boost (52%). This affects Demon Seed, Beyond the Flesh, and most importantly Channel Staff.
 Defensive Posture (1/5)
• Offered a little over 20 Defense and Armor, which isn’t nothing. The real use of this, though, is as a sustain buffer. The more magical sustains you have, the less likely it is that Corrupted Negation and its equivalents will strip Bone Shield.
 Blunt Thrust (0/5)
• If you want to stun someone, use Starfall. This isn’t worth a turn.

o Necrosis

 Blurred Mortality (5/5)
• You need this at 5/5 early. Very early, since it’s a requirement for the Lich prodigy, which you want to take at level 25. The bonus life is handy, too.
 Across the Veil (1/5)
• I think this triggered… maybe twice? And only early in the game. But it does have good synergy with Shadows, since it means you get extra talent cooldown by hitting them.
 Runeskin (1/5)
• Basically a tax to get to the next talent. Scales poorly.
 Spikes of Decrepitude (1/5)
• One point is enough, but this talent is actually very good. It did around 150-200 damage at the end, for free, every turn. That’s enough to strip Stormshields and Bone Shields, automatically lengthen your Night Sphere banes, trigger Seal Fate (twice!), and kill chaff. It also opens up fun kiting possibilities. Unfortunately, this can’t crit or trigger spell procs.

o Hymns

 This whole tree is OP. I love it. It’s like wielding a third artifact staff and getting an extra 3 infusion slots, plus free attacks and debuffs.
 Hymn Acolyte (3/5)
• You probably want Hymn of Detection. At the end, this offered a free 88% critical multiplier boost. Yes, that’s right, 88%. It’s obscene. Hymn of Shadows is also competitive, with about a 34% boost in spellcasting speed. Hymn of Perseverance is mostly useful only for Hymn Adept, since you’re already immune to stunning thanks to lichdom.
 Hymn Incantor (1/5)
• Does around 150 darkness retaliation damage, which you don’t care about. You’re here for the 37% extra darkness damage. If you have extra points, this is a decent place to put them.
 Hymn Adept (3/5)
• The invisibility and shield on this talent lasted 16 turns at the end, which is far longer than their respective cooldowns. Want to be permanently invisible? You can be. Permanently shielded? Sure. Have an 800-900% speed movement infusion? Yeah, let’s toss that in there. The free infravision is nice, too.
 Hymn Nocturnalist (2/5)
• 2 points is enough to hit 4 enemies every turn for around 1k damage. This triggers spell procs, which means I often turned a corner in High Peak and killed rares by accident while autoexploring. It also blinds. Between this talent, Sun Ray, and Night Sphere, if whatever you’re fighting doesn’t have blindness immunity, it’s going to be permanently blinded, period.

o Hexes

 1 point in everything is enough. Fair warning that Pacification Hex is mostly ruined by Spikes of Decrepitude, which breaks Daze. Burning Hex is your attrition strategy if you somehow get into a long fight, and Empathic Hex is useful primarily because you have 6 Shadows that all take a ton of damage and can now reflect it back. Domination Hex is fun—pick a randboss, and have it kill all the other randbosses for you, or get an extra 4 turns to let your cooldowns reset.
 You’re mostly here so that you can bury your enemies in so many magical debuffs it’s impossible for them to clear the important ones. Keep in mind that Bone Spike can trigger spell procs when you lay on debuffs!

o Vile Life

 Blood Splash (1/5)
• One point was enough to heal me for 170-340 damage per turn, every turn, depending on if I killed something that turn or not. You will crit every turn, between Hymn Nocturnalist, Bone Spike, and your regular spells, so this is a permanent regen infusion for free.
• Interestingly, Channel Staff is now a free, spammable healing spell (albeit a weak one).
 Elemental Discord (1/5)
• More debuffs for your enemy. The cold one was mildly annoying, since frozen enemies take reduced damage and are immune to further debuffs, but you want this anyway to give you a sustain buffer.
 Healing Inversion (1/5)
• Necessary. This hits a huge area, and prevents damage affinity from ruining your day.
 Vile Transplant (1/5)
• I’m blind? No, you’re blind. On Insane debuff duration can be pretty high, so reversing those debuffs onto your enemy is handy. Clears 3-4 status effects. Keep in mind this can target your shadows, if necessary. Has a high vim cost, but you don’t care about how much vim you have because you have Blood Splash and Bloodcasting.

o Lich

 You take this prodigy at level 25. The earlier, the better, since the boosted life rating from lichdom is NOT retroactive. At the end, I was running around with around 2300 effective life, not counting Shadow Decoy.
 Neverending Unlife (1/5)
• This never triggered for me, but I imagine 73 turns is enough to finish off whatever actually manage to kill you.
 Frightening Presence (1/5)
• Actually quite good, since it’s yet another magical debuff for the pile, and it functions as a faux 18% resist all for you. Bonus points to taste.
 Doomed For Eternity (4/5)
• This is enough to get you 3 lich shadows with Adept. This one talent replaces the first 3 talents in the Cursed Shadows tree, so you get a lot of bang for your buck here. Remember not to max it until the Fade bug is fixed (but maybe not even then).
 Commander of the Dead (5/5)
• +60 to all powers and saves for both yourself and your shadows. It would be worth it for the spellpower alone; I was running around with 137 at the end. Remember that the proc chance increases as you put more points into this.

o Fate Weaving

 You take this with the category point from Wyrm Bile. You level up fast enough on Insane that you might have to save some generic points, just to avoid hitting level 50 and having none left when you actually get the Bile.
 Spin Fate (1/5)
• We don’t really care about our defense, since everything we fight is blind. Saves are handy (especially physical save, versus blindness) but we already have a lot from Commander of the Dead.
 Seal Fate (2/5)
• Extremely good, but there just weren’t enough generic points to put more into this. You hit things often enough per turn to nearly guarantee the maximum debuff duration increase.
 Fateweaver (3/5)
• With Webs of Fate active, this gives you +48 spellpower. There’s a breakpoint at 3/5, so that’s where I stopped.
 Webs of Fate (3/5)
• An extra 25% damage reduction and reflection. Your defenses are already good enough that this is basically never needed, but it synergizes well with Forcefield if something should somehow burn through all your shields. (They won’t.)

o Prodigies

 Lichdom is mandatory. Adept at 42 is not mandatory, but it is highly recommended. A lot of excellent players think Adept is underpowered. On Adventurers I don’t think I agree—I was getting about 70 extra talent points from it, at the end, which is enormous. You have so many skills at 1/5 that the bonus is extremely noticeable. This also means that you get an extra bone shield, can access the highest tier demon bindings, have around 50-100 extra raw spellpower, bonus crit chance, bonus crit damage… there’s a lot of synergistic talents in this build, and Adept boosts all of them. It even boosts Demon Seed talents and Relentless Pursuit!

o Stats
 Max Magic first, obviously. Cunning comes next for spellcrit. I maxed Constitution last for the bonus healmod/life, and because I got extra returns on it thanks to Blurred Mortality. I also put extra points into Willpower early on, but it wasn’t necessary—you get plenty of Mana regen from being a Lich, and in fact having higher total psi makes Forcefield worse.

o Equipment
 You want the Lunar Shield and the Duathedlen Heart. They’re not necessary, but you throw out so many spells each turn (with Bone Spike and Hymn Nocturnalist) they do notably increase your damage. It’s hard to argue with free Invoke Darkness and Moonlight Rays.
 Surprisingly, Radiance was best-in-slot as a cloak, because boosting your Hymn mastery improves everything you can do by a noticeable margin. It also offered extra spell cooldown with Suncloak.
 I found a randart pickaxe that offered 20% spell cooldown reduction. Didn’t even know that was possible, but obviously I kept it for the rest of the game. Also got an extra category point from a Forbidden Tome, which I used on Rune of Dissipation. That was useful for Linaniil’s Disruption Shield, but not necessary.
 Everything else is to taste. I kept Vox because being silenced is annoying, but if you don’t find it, you can get 100% silence immunity with a demon seed.
 Demon Seeds have changed enough since their introduction that I might do an extra guide for those. Remember that unique demons all offer unique demon seeds! Make sure to get Walrog and the Corrupted Daelech—those are especially useful talents.

o Weaknesses
 The build could have used some more mobility and mental debuff removal. I had a high mind save, but when I did get confused I had limited options to remove it (Shatter Afflictions, Relentless Pursuit, Timeless). The shadow trees also didn’t pull their weight relative to the rest of the build—I kept them for fun and aesthetics. The build has no inherent sustain removal; I carried Spelldrinker after I found it, just in case, but never ended up needing it. The Meta tree would have improved the build significantly, but I’ve been burned enough times by Spellcraft rounding errors and glitches that I didn’t use it for reasons of Fun.