Diablo II: The Necromancer Strategy Guide on Gamepro.com

Strategy Guide: Diablo II: The Necromancer

Strategy Guide by Jay Turner | 04/29/2003 | 13:40:01 PM PST

All those seeking mastery over the dead, take your seats. Let GamePro.com's Diablo II School of Necromancy come to order.

Boot Camp
Diablo II's Necromancer is completely unlike any character you've ever played. In many ways, playing as this master of the dead is more like a real time strategy game than anything else, as you'll often find yourself keeping track of troops, and allocating resources. The folks at Blizzard often call the Necromancer "The General," just because playing a Necro can often feel like you're running an army.

Still, the Necromancer presents perhaps the greatest variety of playing styles, as well as the deepest challenge. Every single point counts, and unlike with the other classes, you have to plan ahead carefully or you'll end up with abilities that don't mesh. By the time you reach level 12 or so, you should have a good idea what sort of powers you want to use.

The Summoner
One of the most unique things the Necromancer can do is to summon minions to do his bidding. There's something to be said for raising the corpses of dead enemies to fight for you, or creating sturdy golems from the earth to pound down your problems. If you've decided to stick with Summoning as a way of life, there are a few things you'll want to think about.

If you choose to go with skeletons, you'll want to decide on a good balance between quality and quantity. Having 20 skeletons (the max number you can have with the Raise Skeleton skill) does little good if they're all level 1 wimps. On the other hand, one skeleton of absolute power rather defeats the purpose of an army of the undead. Just remember that to create a new minion, you need a fresh corpse, and corpses are a precious resource for the necromancer; should a fight go bad too quickly, you might find yourself without minions to raise. A large number of skeletons makes a great wall of bone to hide behind, but in later Acts, your bony familiars might have trouble staying alive.

The one good thing about concentrating on skeletons is that the Skeleton Mastery skill improves not only your regular skeletons, but your skeletal mages and your revived creatures as well. So a point put into that skill is never badly spent.

Go Go Golem!
The golem deserves special treatment, just because it's such an interesting case. Compared to a veritable army of undead, a single golem (you can never have more than one at a time) sounds rather boring. But take a look at what these suckers can do:

1) Golems don't require corpses. If a golem gets stuck behind a wall, make another one in a safer area. Running from a boss? Raise a golem between you and the minion of Hell. As long as you have mana, you're never alone with a golem.

2) Golems are stronger. In general, golems are quite a bit stronger than the skeletons you'll summon. Sure, it's just the one golem, but with the right Curses, you can more than make up for that. The average Iron Golem has upwards of 700 hit points, and you can make them even stronger with Golem Mastery.

3) There are many types of golems. Clay Golems are the training minions, with no real strengths or weaknesses. Blood Golems keep themselves healed by stealing life from enemies? they even heal you when they do damage. Iron Golems require a metal object to create them, but they have nasty hit points and eventually gain thorns that do damage to the things that hit them. Fire Golems absorb fire damage as health, something that should prove useful in Hell.

4) Golem Mastery: One skill, four golems. Like Skeleton Mastery, Golem Mastery works for all golems you can cast. So if you can drop a bunch of points into Mastery, it'll improve the health and running speed of any golem you ever create, forevermore.

You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?
Like Summoning, Cursing in Diablo II is an art form. No Necromancer will ever want to be without Amplify Damage or Iron Maiden, at least at skill-level 1. Amplify Damage at least doubles the amount of damage a monster takes. Iron Maiden curses the enemies so that they take back %200 of the damage they inflict on you or your minions. Whenever you're surrounded by enemies, cast those two curses immediately. You may find that some baddies have killed themselves just by attacking you.

Other curses are helpful, should you care to delve deeply into the Curse tree. Weaken is a nice gem that will reduce the damage done by enemy monsters. Confuse baffles a bad guy, making him as likely to attack his friend as to attack you. Dim Vision blinds an enemy, making missile attacks almost impossible. Decrepify makes the monsters weak and slow, as if they'd been frozen by cold. The coolest Curse of all may be Attract, which makes all the monsters turn on whichever creature you so cursed.

The Curse tree is a subtle way to affect combat from behind the scenes, but it can't do damage on its own. You'll want to use Curses in conjunction with Bone/Poison or Summoning skills to really optimize your killing potential. A skillful use of Curses can easily turn the tide of battle, but you'll want to make sure you have another method of madness before you dive down the Curses channel.

Bad To The Bone
If you want to play a Necromancer like a Sorceress, then you'll want to walk down the Poison/Bone path. This path contains all of the Necromancer's direct damage spells, some great poison utility spells, and some really, really fun "other" spells.

Corpse Explosion requires a fresh corpse, but it's really handy for making more. When you're fighting a group of monsters, kill one and stand back. Cast Corpse Explosion on the dead guy, and the body suddenly becomes a bomb, doing %60-100 of the dead monster's total hit points in damage, to every monster within range! This skill creates an awesome chain-reaction of gore and giblets as the first explosion kills two monsters, the next kills more, and so on until all are dead. It can't be stressed enough: put at least one point into this skill as soon as possible. One point is enough, but the range increases with the skill level, so with enough points Corpse Explosion could theoretically clear out a room.

The Bone skills generally seem more useful than poison. As soon as you can, put some points into Bone Armor, an aura of bone that will absorb a certain amount of damage before it dissolves, making you more or less invincible. If you're not summoning a bunch of creatures, Bone Armor at high skill levels is the way to go. Whenever possible, drop a few points into Bone Spear. This suggestive missile does massive damage and passes through targets, meaning that if you have a bunch of monsters lined up in a doorway one Bone Spear will hit them all. Bone Wall and Bone Prison are nice skills, but unless you're not summoning minions, there's little use for these. Bone Prison does come in handy against enemies that flee, like Fallen and Fetishes, but its general use is for protecting your skinny necromantic booty.

It's My Party, And I'll Curse If I Want To
Using a Necromancer in a party is much like using one in single-player. Especially if you do a lot of summoning, you already know how to control battles. Consider your party members. Make sure they know you require corpses to function; some skills, especially the Barbarian's Find Potion Warcry, destroy corpses, and ice attacks don't even leave corpses, since frozen enemies shatter and melt when they die.

In big boss fights with lots of monsters, have everyone attack lesser beasties so you can cast Corpse Explosion on them. Often the effect of lots of little Corpse Explosions will whittle the boss down quite a bit.

Curses take on a whole new meaning in a party game. You now have at least one friend onscreen to take some of the heat away from you, so you can take a step back and help him out. Cast Dim Vision on archers and sorcerers, cast Weaken on monsters that are Extra Strong, and cast Amplify Damage and Iron Maiden on everyone. Since you and your minions aren't the only providers of damage, you have more leeway to concentrate on making the fight easier for everyone.

PvP: The Most Dangerous Game
In Player Vs. Player (PvP) combat, you must realize that a human enemy won't try to take out your minions first; he'll most likely go straight for you. For all classes but the Barbarian, a Bone Wall or Prison will stop that. Just erect a Wall or Prison around the enemy, raise a golem in there, and viola, you've got gladiatorial combat? at least until the enemy hacks down the Bone Wall. Barbarians can leap over your walls, so be careful when imprisoning these scrappy behemoths.

As for Summoning, unless you're ambushed in an area with a lot of corpses, skeletons are useless. In PvP you'll want to almost exclusively use golems to take out your enemies, and you'll probably want to use a Blood or Fire Golem, since metal objects may not be around to allow an Iron beast. You probably won't be able to use Corpse Explosion, though you can certainly try. Wandering into an area of multiple NPC enemies is actually to your advantage in PvP, as your summons, Curses, and Corpse Explosion suddenly become a huge advantage.

PvP Necromancers have to be crafty. Remember that a Paladin may have an Aura that will force your undead minions to flee (golems are unaffected), and Holy Bolt will tear your skeletons apart. Iron Maiden doesn't seem to work against missile attacks and magic, so you may want to hold back on that against Amazons and Sorceresses. Use Dim Vision against them instead. A Barbarian, Paladin, or Amazon will likely slaughter your golem in melee combat, so always use Amplify Damage, Iron Maiden, and Weaken in that situation.

If you find that you're overpowered, run. Run to the nearest Fallen camp or cluster of Thorned Hulks. These monsters will want to kill your human opponent as much as they want to maim you, and if you can cast Attract on your enemy, you might be fine. Let the other guy get surrounded, then, when he kills something, use Corpse Explosion as many times as you can. Keep a distance and cast Bone Spears to do damage.

Of all your skills, Curses are the ones that may mean victory for you. By the time a Barbarian or Paladin reaches you, they may be cursed two or three times, and they won't know what curses they are. Iron Maiden will have them taking %200 of the damage they do back onto themselves, and they might not even know it.

The Graduate Necromancer
You're not so tough, and you'll never be too strong, but if you choose your skills right and play it smart, your master of the dead can be the master of the world. It takes patience, attention, and skill, but the Necromancer has the tools you'll need to defeat Diablo. Know what you want to do, know what you can do, and just go get it.