Need help with Necromancer

[Jarulf]

I have been looking for wands with +raise skeleton skills but seems to never find any, however, I see tons of wands with +raise skeleton mages. Anyone else experienced this?

Also, is it just me or is it just too easy to put skill points into unwanted skills? Two times now, I have been simply looking at the skill trees, and by mistake (probably clicking wanting to exit or pick skill for use, but instead put an unused skill point into it? I thus have put a second unwated skill point into fire golem and bone wall :(

[Obi2Kenobi]

While although I can't offer any good news for the fire golem, your extra point into bone wall will make any bone armor you have stronger. :) You could shop Akara for a +Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery.

[Brista]

I have been looking for wands with +raise skeleton skills but seems to never find any, however, I see tons of wands with +raise skeleton mages. Anyone else experienced this?

Yes

What is happening is that you are too high level. Fill a level 1 character up with money and shop with that one

At high level you will only see level 12 to level 30 skills

Now the problem with the lowest two wand types is that they can't get two sockets so runewords are not possible

If you want a Bone Wand with level 1 skills this can be done

You need to shop Drognan (spawn the map where he is next to the exit - Lut Gholein has two maps) with a character around level 13 I think. Bone wand has level 18 from weapons.txt and shopping sets ivl to clvl +5. I just tested this with a level 15 character and he sees level 1 skills at Drognan. Note that this would take a very long time to find precisely what you want so a character at the lowest level where the bone wand type appears will be best to improve your chances of level 1 skills as opposed to higher level skills. Bone wands would get 2 sockets at Larzuk, some bone wands will have 2 sockets already. (This is so complicated and obscure and time-consuming to do that I have never heard of anyone actually doing it but a +3 Raise Skeleton + 7 Mastery White is theoretically possible)

If your level 13 can't afford the wand after 5 hours of shopping all is not lost. If you can get someone else to come into the game and wait in Act 2 looking at the vendor while you get go and your rich high level character, or just get someone rich to come in and buy it for you. Solo I don't think you could leave and come back with a level 70 and not re-set the vendor, perhaps some of the other players have a cunning idea

End game wand choices for a Necromancer who wants great skeletons are between:
Magic (blue) +3 summons wand with something else useful like Decrepify
Rare +2 Nec skills wand with useful mods and skills
White +3 Raise Skeleton +3 Skeleton Mastery Bone Wand (the Rune word give +4 Skeleton Mastery)
Uniques like Arm of King Leoric, Carin Shard

Lastly, I will give the simple answer which is to shop for a +1 summons wand once they start to appear, a +2 later on and finally a +3. Perhaps someone could confirm what level you need to be to see those affixes

[LavCat]

Yes

What is happening is that you are too high level. Fill a level 1 character up with money and shop with that one

At high level you will only see level 12 to level 30 skills

Not true, at least as of 1.09.

Bring your level 99 character to normal Drognan and he will happily sell a +3 skeleton mastery, +3 raise skeletal mage, two socket, non-magic bone wand. If he likes you, you may get a +3 skeleton mastery, +3 raise skeleton, +3 raise skeletal mage one, but I would not count on it right away.

At one point I spent three days straight (with some breaks for food and bed and bathroom) shopping to make white wands from Drognan.

[Ruvanal]

Yes

What is happening is that you are too high level. Fill a level 1 character up with money and shop with that one

At high level you will only see level 12 to level 30 skills

Not true, at least as of 1.09.

Bring your level 99 character to normal Drognan and he will happily sell a +3 skeleton mastery, +3 raise skeletal mage, two socket, non-magic bone wand. If he likes you, you may get a +3 skeleton mastery, +3 raise skeleton, +3 raise skeletal mage one, but I would not count on it right away.

True. In act 2 normal the ilvl of Drogan's wands are capped at 20. This is low enough to allow the first tier skills to appear 10% of the time and is limits the ilvl below the point that items will always be magical.

The ideal point to be at though is clvl=13 for this. This will set the ilvl=clvl+5=18. This is the lowest ilvl that allows the BoneWands to spawn and it is the highest ilvl that gives a 30% chance to see the first tier skills appearing on the wands. Also with a slightly lower ilvl there is a lower chance that the items will be magical, so there fore a better chance of finding the normal/superior wands for making the "White wands" out of.

[Jarulf]

I currently use some wand with a +1 to summon skills and +3 to golem mastery (and some head in the other hand with +3 skeleton mastery. I also found a bone wand with 2 sockets but no magical properties, not sure it is good, just heared two sockets in a bone wand is good. What rune words should I be looking at? I saw a white one, but it seemed geared towards bone spells, I really aren't using them.

I guess the thing is to continue looking in act 2 shop then. Can't tell if I have seen low level spells though, but skeleton mages are level 6 no? Not level 12.

By the way, Baal was even harder than Diablo. I manged both of them by going with a party in public games. Only draw back is that people are very greedy with items, so it is mostly, grab what you can and be happy if you get a nice rare or something.

I usually never touch other classes specific items, but that seems to not apply to most people. Lord Seis or whatever his name is droped a rare bone wand, someone took it despite me being the only necromancer, oh well. Now I am slugging through act 1 nightmare, it is not that easy, takes a while, even with my 6 skeletons. A firegolem seems to live longer and do more good than my old clay golem though. Finally, I still carry arround my act 2 merc with some pointless aura. Seems I can't go back in normal do get a new one since he will have a very low level. So I have to check if the nightmare one is any better. After all, that merc is THE one doing the killing, the skeletons although not bad, take a LOT longer to kill stuff.

Do the AI of a defensive versus an offensive/combat merc vary? It seems at times he like standing back not running forward and fight, so I have to kamikaze forward to pull him along and then retreat.

In any case, I am enjoying myself. And I like being able to pop chests and pick up items and so while my minions fight monsters :) I think I am arround level 35 or so now and just rescued Cain in nightmare. My sjeleton skill is up to 12 or so and mastery at 9, so they manage quite well although in some situations they seem to drop dead very fast. Other than that, I seem to only use my level 1 or 2 Amp Damage or level 1 or 2 Decrepify. Occationally a Iron Maiden is used too. Other skills, I have not explored yet as for their use (except Bone Armor which is also level 1 or 2 or so).

[Caaroid]

For not asking this question 2 years ago when I wanted to make a teeth necro with a WHITE wand... ah well, I'll make one now :)

[Caaroid]

Hello

First of all, one of the major changes made to D2X in 1.10 is that the beginning of NM became HARDER. Most players don't go there until lev 4x, what is attainable in normal without repeating areas if you play solo in large games. I think you played solo in solo games, that's how you ended up so early in NM.

About the mercenaries: in Nightmare you'll have Thorns (damage returned; combat) Holy freeze (chill damage and slows enemies; defensive) and Might (more damage to all, offensive) to select from. If you judge that your skeletons do insufficient damage, the obvious choice is the might mercenary. I would adwise against thorns since the damage returned only works on melee attackers and they are not going to be your main worry anyway :).

About curses: I don't know how many skeleton mages you have, but Lower Resist help them tremendously. Note, that Lower has a very wide radius, whereas Amplify damage or Decreptify has a small radius. This allows you to cast lower first, cover all the enemies and up your mages' damage against them. Then you can cast amp/decrep to those who engage your skeletons.

My skelemancer uses Confuse as his main curse. It is very entertaining to watch the monsters fight among themselves while my skeletons kill them one by one.

I also enjoy this multi-threaded feeling the necromancer has compared to all the other classes. As the main thread you only have to deal with the production of your worker threads, and all the worker threads do all the actual killing for you :). I only wish they'd let you program the AI of your minions AKA Baldur's Gate, but in a server-side architecture one can understand why this is unimplemented.

It's good to have you back enjoying the game :)

Happy hunting
Caaroid

[Jarulf]

I think I have only 1 point (plus one from wand) in skeleton mage. They seem to die very fast and always end up blocking doors and such :(

[Jarulf]

OK, so I crused through act 1. In act 2, I switched my hireling for a combat one for the might aura. His DR droped from arround 1400 to 500 and the damage also droped by about 40-60 points (using same equipment). Is that normal? Will he catch up again? I think he is still some levels higher than my old merc from normal difficulty. It seems strange though.

[rwbatema]

That does seem strange.

It should be pretty easy to calculate what the damage should be for the mercenary.
At the start of the game, they have the aura off, so the calculations should be easy then.

Ramble time...

One thing you might have noticed (or not) is the Attract now has a very large area of effect. This means that monsters from far away come wandering over to fight the poor curses monster. This can have nasty side effects if the curesed monster dies, or they happen to see you on their way to the attracted one.

I think my necro is similar to yours.
On my necro (L45, act 2 nightmare, USEast sc-ladder) I have Amp, Decr, Attract, Dim Vision for curses. 1 point each, although I kind of wish I had more in Amp to increase it's radius.
11 / 9 RS, SM. 3 Revive, 6 Poison Nova, 5 Corpse Explosion, 1 Bone Armor, 1 Bone Wall.

Anyway, I'm sure you don't care what I have, but my point is that there are lots of useful little skills that Necromancers have. It's weird, but during combat I don't have time for fighting - I'm too busy with cursing, bone walls, poison nova, looking for treasure, etc. - leave the fighting for the 'hired help'

You might want to consider an Ort-Sol hat. +1 skills, mana, and some lightning resistance might help, assuming you don't want to beg for equipment.

[Jarulf]

That does seem strange.

It should be pretty easy to calculate what the damage should be for the mercenary.
At the start of the game, they have the aura off, so the calculations should be easy then.

Ramble time...

One thing you might have noticed (or not) is the Attract now has a very large area of effect.  This means that monsters from far away come wandering over to fight the poor curses monster.  This can have nasty side effects if the curesed monster dies, or they happen to see you on their way to the attracted one.

I think my necro is similar to yours.
On my necro (L45, act 2 nightmare, USEast sc-ladder) I have Amp, Decr, Attract, Dim Vision for curses.  1 point each, although I kind of wish I had more in Amp to increase it's radius.
11 / 9 RS, SM.  3 Revive, 6 Poison Nova, 5 Corpse Explosion, 1 Bone Armor, 1 Bone Wall.

Anyway, I'm sure you don't care what I have, but my point is that there are lots of useful little skills that Necromancers have.  It's weird, but during combat I don't have time for fighting - I'm too busy with cursing, bone walls, poison nova, looking for treasure, etc. - leave the fighting for the 'hired help'

You might want to consider an Ort-Sol hat.  +1 skills, mana, and some lightning resistance might help, assuming you don't want to beg for equipment.

Hmm, the increased DR might have been due to the aura the other merc had, never thought of that, had a big impact though. Perhaps he was under some other effect for damage, oh well.

I have put 1 point into every curse by the way. I don't have multiple points in any combat skill. I have teeth I think and perhaps some other, but mostly Bone Armor and Bone Wall only. Don't think I have any poison skills at all but I do know I have a point in Corpse Explosion. Tend to use it when there are tons of Fallens with a bunch of Shamans hiding further back, or my minions never get to them.

I have not looked much at rune words and so on. I think I have a nice (for my level and for what I have found so far) helm with two sockets, so might try that thing (no idea about runes, I have a tons but none similar). I just always think I should save gems, imbues, and all such rewards or things for later when I can get it even better :) That way I end up not ever doing them.

[Ruvanal]

I guess the thing is to continue looking in act 2 shop then. Can't tell if I have seen low level spells though, but skeleton mages are level 6 no? Not level 12.

Skeleton Mages are in the level 12 set (3rd tier).

The rune word that most are trying to find a wand to use with is "White" (DolIo). While it is strongly favoring the bone skills, it does add a +4 to Skeleton Mastery. Coupling the natural staffmods on the wand with what the White runeword adds is what most players are shooting for. So that plain wand without the staff mods is not really all that great. But do not just discard it right away. What the majority of the players are not considering is to use one of the Horadric Cube formulas to reroll these items.

3 standard gems + 1 socketed weapon -> magic, socketable weapon (ilvl=30)
3 flawless gems + 1 magic weapon -> socketed, magic weapon (ilvl=30)
3 chipped gems + 1 magic weapon -> socketed, magic weapon (ilvl=25)

The first formula could make that wand a magical socketed wand with a new set of staffmods. After that any of the 3 formulas could be used to continue rerolling the wand looking for a better mix of properties. The sockets that come ont he wand would not be of any use for a runeword, but you might find some useful jewels to put in it.

The staff mods that would be available on these would be
2nd tier (level 6 required) 10%
Dim Vision
Weaken
Poison Dagger ('rerolled')
Corpse Explosion
Clay Golem

3rd tier (level 12 required) 20%
Iron Maiden
Terror
Bone Wall
Golem Mastery
Raise Skeletal Mage

4th tier (level 18 required) 50%
Confuse
Life Tap
Poison Explosion
Bone Spear
BloodGolem

5th tier (level 24 required) 20%
Attract
Decrepify
Bone Prison
Summon Resist
IronGolem

All of the wands used in these three formulas will have a cnace to get one of the +1 skilltab prefixes.

For the +2 skilltab prefixes only these wands will work: Tomb Wand, Grave Wand, Lich Wand and Unearthed Wand.

For the +3 skilltab prefixes only the Unearthed Wand will work.

For the +1 Necromancer skills, using the chipped formula, the following will work : Burnt Wand, Petrified Wand, Tomb Wand, Grave Wand, Ghost Wand, Lich Wand and Unearthed Wand.

For the +1 Necromancer skills, using the other two formulas, all the wands except the Polished Wand will work.

For the +2 necromacer skills the Lich Wand and Unearthed Wand will have a chance with all three formulas.

So it can be worth while to be picking up many of the gems and just keep cubing as you go along. Just keep you eye open for some of the wands that are more flexible in what they can get.

...Other than that, I seem to only use my level 1 or 2 Amp Damage or level 1 or 2 Decrepify. Occationally a Iron Maiden is used too. Other skills, I have not explored yet as for their use (except Bone Armor which is also level 1 or 2 or so).

Consider branching out to include the Dim Vision, Confuse, Attract line of curses. Most players prefer the Confuse, but they all have their uses. Typically 1 point plus skill adders is sufficient. Make sure to use those other hot keys.

OK, so I crused through act 1. In act 2, I switched my hireling for a combat one for the might aura. His DR droped from arround 1400 to 500 and the damage also droped by about 40-60 points (using same equipment). Is that normal? Will he catch up again? I think he is still some levels higher than my old merc from normal difficulty. It seems strange though.

What level was the old merc and the level of the new one? The nightmare mercs are taking a beating on their stats if you hire them before their target level. For teh nightmare Desert Mercanaries the target starting level for them should be 43. At levels lower than this their stats are adjusted along these lines:
HP/lvl: 25
Def/Lvl: 19
Str/Lvl: 1.75
Dex/lvl: 1.5
AR/Lvl: 3
Dmg/Lvl: 0.75
Resist/Lvl: 0.875

So if you hired him at level 37 instead of 43 his base stats would be reduced by -150 HP, -112 defense, -10.5 (effectively -11) strength (one of two factors effecting the damage done), -9 dexterity (also having repercussions on the AR and DR), -18 AR, -4.5 on their damage adder for their weapon and the resists by -5.25 (effectively -6). These kinds of adjustments may have put many of the mercs attributes at lower than the attributes of a level 37 normal difficulty Desert Mercanaries.

Messy stuff to try to figure by hand. Does Bolty want someone to try to update Spireas Calculator's database for the the 1.10 expansion game?

Do the AI of a defensive versus an offensive/combat merc vary? It seems at times he like standing back not running forward and fight, so I have to kamikaze forward to pull him along and then retreat.

Not really. There only appear to be two AI in use for the mercs, melee and ranged versions. The problem that you are seeing is that the AI distance leash was increased for all the mercs with this release. This can leave them hanging back often. So far back that the monsters are out of the mercs threat detection range. That is until you 'drag' them up close enough for them to 'see' the threat of monsters in the area. In my opinion this was not a change for the better.

[Jarulf]

But the merc will pick up right? Or would it be better to rehire him later? I really don't remmeber the level of the old merc (or the new without checking). I usually don't pay attention to such things. Hardly know my own level (I think arround level 38 now).

OK, so the 2 socket plain bone wand is not THAT good. Your list doesn't include level 1 skills, can't you get them on wands?

[Obi2Kenobi]

Not if you reroll a wand with chipped, flawless, or normal gems. It sets the level of the item too high.

[Brista]

Lord Seis or whatever his name is droped a rare bone wand, someone took it despite me being the only necromancer, oh well.

This is completely normal. To the other player the wand represents 25K from the vendor or useful trading material

The best way to approach the rather grabby culture is, I am quite sure, to partake. I have never heard anyone who doesn't partake do anything other than complain about it. I usually grab first then ask someone who is both playing an appropriate class and who is friendly if they'd like it when we're in town and trade it to them there. (Don't drop it - someone else will grab it)

There are alternatives, private games where people agree to share fairly, but it is actually very unusual for people not to be rather selfish with items (which makes it all the more fun to grab it and then give it away :) )

Your merc will catch up and your wand is not really very good I'm afraid

Keep us posted :)

[LavCat]

This is completely normal. To the other player the wand represents 25K from the vendor or useful trading material

The best way to approach the rather grabby culture is, I am quite sure, to partake.

I't may have been suggested in this thread before, but in basin games the items are shared pretty well, and a necromancer would almost certainly have first choice of a wand.

If you are a basin member, Jarulf, go to weaseltech, find the password, and join a game.

[BellaStrega]

While although I can't offer any good news for the fire golem, your extra point into bone wall will make any bone armor you have stronger. :) You could shop Akara for a +Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery.

That is the funny. I shopped the merchants through five acts for a +skeleton/+skeleton mastery, checked every dropped head and wand, and never saw one until last night - my sorceress found one in the jail. :)

Now if only I could find one that's +3/+3.

[Ruvanal]

That is the funny. I shopped the merchants through five acts for a +skeleton/+skeleton mastery, checked every dropped head and wand, and never saw one until last night - my sorceress found one in the jail. :)

Wands that are ilvl 1 to 11 should have 80% of the skills they get be from the first tier (Amplify Damage, Teeth, Bone Armor, Skeleton Mastery, Raise Skeleton) while those of ilvl 12 to 18 should have 30% of the skills being from the first tier. Shopping items sets the ilvl=clvl+5 and act 1 normal has a cap of ilvl=12 on its items. With that the case hihger level characters should be seeing first tier skills 30% of time and if you can manage a lower level character (1-6) to do the shop refreshes, you should be able to get them very often.

searching the workshop for 'staffmods';
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...33&hl=staffmods

[Jarulf]

Thanks for all imput. I really hate it when one stop getting certain item mods when go high level, at least as far as skills goes. For mods that just get progressively better, there is not as much problem. Perhaps I should recheck the routine, just to see if anything changed with 1.10.