Guide written by Hermit Boy on the DiabloII.Net Single Player Forums.
First off, I need to mention a few things about the Necromancer. He is unlike nearly any other build out there. Most builds for the 6 other character types can be considered to be like a soldier, whether long range or short range. This build is considered to be a General. This build requires some patience to play. However, it is incredibly fun and rewarding. The killing is slower than some of the other characters, but you will not be doing most of it, your minions will be. So if you have the patience and desire, read on…
My Necromancer achieved Patriarch status at clvl 71 which is 5 or more levels lower than any of my other characters, so he is definitely a viable build. There are a lot of variations on this build, as well as other Necro builds that are just as viable. The rewarding part is that the Necro, with the possible exception of the Assassin, is the character that the least amount of people have killed Hell Baal with.
Strength As with pretty much any build, only enough to equip the items you are interested in using. Lower down I will list some of the coveted items and the strengths required.
Dexterity Base. You will not be swinging at monsters, and if played right, you will not get hit much, so you don’t need a high DR or block %.
Vitality Around 100 or more if you are so inclined. You will want a lot here, but it is not critical. Again, if played right, you will not be hit very much at all. If you can get your life to around 400 or more, you will be doing fine.
Energy Around 150 or more would be good. This can be greatly changed depending on how you are going to play so we will get into that a little later. This build is not greatly dependant on mana, but there are times where you will run low, and the Necro is not the store of mana that a Sorceress can be.
As you will see from the numbers above, you will have a surplus of stat points. Spread them between Vitality and Energy as you see fit.
Since this is single player, it is a good bet that many people will not be able to make the ‘Ideal’ list of equipment. I will list the best uniques and sets just in case, but also give more general item suggestions.
Rule #1: The most important thing you can have on an item is +skills. +skills beats any other attribute you can get on an item. I cannot stress that enough. For this build, +summoning skills is preferred to the other trees, but you will be using skills from all 3 trees, so get the + to all skills if possible.
Ideally you would want Harlequins Crest unique shako. That is an incredible item. One of my other characters found this beauty, but it was ethereal. I gave it to my Necro, and he used it for 9 clvls and most of Hell difficulty and never broke it. That gives you an idea of how little a necro will get hit. A good alternative to that would be a +necro skills Circlet which should be reasonably easy for anyone to get hold of. Lore runeword or Peasant Crown would also be good.
The most strength you would need for a helm is 50 for the Harley.
Frostburns are good for the mana, but I would suggest Trang-Ouls Claws if you can find them to give you the +2 to curses. Maybe Magefists for the mana regeneration and fast cast. Other good stats would be + mana or life.
Strength for Frostburns would be 60 which is not too much to ask.
Faster run/walk is a very good stat, as it will help keep you out of harms way. Silkweave boots are very nice for the mana, but pretty much anything will work.
65 Strength is needed for Silkweaves, but they are worth it.
Tal-Rasha’s Belt is pretty good, but the best would be Gloomstrap. Maybe even Lenymo if you can handle not having many potion slots. Again, +life and mana would be good
You need 45 str for Tal Rasha’s belt, which is definitely doable.
Trang Oul’s Armor would be great, but for 84 strength, it may be a bit much. It is also probably not the best. There are a lot of unique armors with +1 to all skills which would work well. Skin of the Vipermagi or Que-Hegans Wisdom would be best. If you cannot get +skills on armor, forget about defense rating and go for stat increases or +life or mana.
Skulders is a whopping 97 str to wear, but most of the other +skills armors are all below 55 str to wear. Except for Silks of the Victor which I would not recommend.
Pretty much the only choice here is a good Shrunken Head with + skills. The Homonculus is ideal, but any other with + skills would be good. Always stay on the lookout for a good shrunken head.
The Homonculus is 58 str which really is not much. Some of the elite unique shrunken heads require a lot of strength to use, but they are probably not worth it. As long as you find the right +skills, the defense and blocking are not important.
Again, the only choice is a good wand. Ideally the Blackhand Key or Arm of King Leoric is best, but the other unique wands are also very good. Or if you find a magic one with the right +skills it would work just as well also. The Runeword White is also very good if you can find the runes and a good wand to put it in.
The strength requirement for wands are negligible. 25 or so for most of the best ones.
For Rings nothing beats the Stone of Jordan. Bul Kathos is also good for the +skill. Anything that increases mana would be good also. For amulets, it is not hard at all to get a +2 to all or +3 to Summoning tree. Anything that also adds mana is good.
Charms are also good, especially +skills ones. Use +life and +mana, and +str as needed to equip your items.
Generally, defense is not something you need to worry about. You will not be getting hit. + resistances are also not nearly as important as you would think. You should not be getting hit very much at all. Watch out for poison tho as it can be kind of nasty.
I strongly recommend putting 1 point into each and every curse, and no more than that. Each curse will come in handy in certain situations. With only 1 point in each curse, you will benefit from the +skills items you will have and that will boost the curses to a high enough level.
Generally, higher skill in curses only helps duration and radius. A high duration is great, but too high a radius is not necessarily a good thing. There are sometimes separate groups of monsters that you want to curse with different curses, and if the radius is too big, it is not possible to do. As for duration, curses do not drain much mana, so recasting them as needed is not costly.
I will describe each of curse and their uses later in the Strategy section.
Bone Armor – Worth 1 point here. With +skills items it will be enough. This skill is mainly good to deter 1-hit-kills when you accidentally get too close to the action. I would recommend getting used to keeping it running constantly.
Bone Wall and Bone Prison – Not worth any points. They are actually detrimental as they will impede your minions as much or more than the enemy.
Corpse Explosion – Only 1 point. This is an awesome skill, but there are some problems with using it in this build. The effectiveness is less in Hell difficulty because of the 50% global physical resistances, as well as the large amounts of PIs and FIs. Also, you will be raising a ton of skeletons and revives, so having corpse explosion dispose of the corpses is not a good idea. However, it may get you out of some tough spots, so it is worth investing the 1 point.
Poison Nova – 1 or more. This is not a bad little spell. In Hell about all it does is to keep the monsters from regenerating, but that is not a bad thing. I like it because you can keep casting it every 2 seconds and feel like you are doing something instead of just picking your nose in the background. If you want to use it, put at least one point in it and more if you have extra points or like to use it.
Bone Spear and Bone Spirit – Max Bone Spirit, 1 on Bone Spear as a prereq. I strongly suggest Bone Spirit over Bone Spear. The benefit of Spear is that it has a lower mana cost and hits multiple enemies. However, it does less damage. It is better than Spirit as a crowd control spell, but crowd control is not going to be your problem with this build. The weakness in this build is boss monsters, and Spirit handles them MUCH better than Spear. More on this in the Strategy section.
Skeleton Mastery – Max this. In fact, it is one of the first skills you will want to max out. This will keep your pathetic skeletons from dying too fast, and will help their paltry amount of damage. OK, I am being a little cynical, but this is still a very important skill.
Raise Skeleton – 1 with more points as needed. With a decent amount of +skills items, you should have close to a dozen skeletons. These skeletons act mainly as ‘cannon fodder’ to keep monsters away from you and to keep some of the damage away from your merc and golem. They die awfully fast, but they are cheap to create. In your role as general, you will mainly stay busy by creating these things by the truckload. I found that around 10-15 skeletons were sufficient. Any more points into this skill and you will start to run out of corpses to create them from.
Raise Skeletal Mage – 5 or more. Start with 1 point until you start to have spare points, then start putting more here. These mages actually do a fair amount of damage unlike the normal skeletons. They also stay alive a little longer as they like to stay away from the actual fighting. Too many points here and you will start running out of corpses to create them all.
Summon Resistance – 1 point. With all of your +skills, you will get enough from this. Any more points is a waste because of the diminishing returns.
Revive – 1 point. With +skills you will have enough for a decent revive army. Since these things last only 3 minutes, it is unlikely you can keep more than a dozen or so going at a time. What with all the skeletons and mages you will have also.
Golems – Here you have a choice. I would suggest ruling out the Clay and Blood Golems. They have a lot less life and do a lot less damage. The Iron Golem and Fire Golem are both very good and so it is kind of a toss up as to which you want. I would suggest putting 1 point in both to start just to see which you prefer. No loss if you choose the Fire golem, and only 1 point lost if you choose the Iron, but then you can also use the Fire golem if the situation calls for it.
The benefit of the Iron golem is that it has thorns. Thorns is good for Normal and Nightmare, but loses some effectiveness in Hell. It also can have a higher defense if made from armor, or a higher damage if made from a weapon.
The benefits of the Fire golem is that it has a lot more life, defense, and damage depending on what the Iron golem is made from. Due to the 50% global physical resistance, Fire golems usually do more damage in Hell. The Fire golem also uses holy fire to damage monsters. The damage is negligible in most cases, but does serve to attract monsters to itself which is kind of nice usually. This clusters the monsters around which can be useful. You can also use the Fire golem as a fire bomb. I will describe that later.
I personally think using anything but an Act II Desert merc is a waste. So I will only comment on them. The reason for this is that with their aura, you have 30 or more minions that it is helping out, not just you and the merc.
Blessed Aim Merc– Not a very good choice. Your skeletons do so little damage anyway, it is not worth making sure they can hit. They are only there as a shield. Also, it does not help you at all, or your mages.
Defiance Merc – Moderately good choice. This will keep your minions from being hit, which keeps them alive longer. Will also help you, your merc and golem. However, later in the game, especially Hell, this will not be really effective, plus it does not protect them from magic damage.
Prayer Merc – This is a very good choice. This merc will help keep your minions from dying quite as fast. Also, it will allow you to not have to invest as many points into Vitality.
Thorns Merc – This is a good choice. Monsters will beat themselves to death trying to kill your skeletons. However, its effectiveness is a lot less in Hell or when playing ‘players 8’ and also does not do anything when they are attacked by magic or ranged attacks.
Might Merc – Not a very good choice. It will help your merc, revives, and your Iron golem if you have one. However, the damage that the skeletons dish out will not be boosted enough by this aura to be worth it. It may help your revives, but only if they make physical attacks. Go with this if you focus more on revives and skeletons than skeleton mages. This in conjunction with amp damage may be nice.
Holy Freeze Merc – Not a very good choice. It is always nice to slow down your enemies, and will help your minions to stay alive longer. However, with the freezing when you kill monsters they have a chance to shatter, which leaves you without a corpse to raise.
As you can see, I would suggest a prayer merc to keep your minions, and you, alive longer.
I kept ‘players 8’ on all through Normal and most of Nightmare difficulty. This makes your minions much harder to kill, but it also makes battles longer. However, ‘players 8’ also makes Poison Nova and Corpse Explosion almost useless.
Do not run too fast and let your minions too far behind you. I found that if you get too far ahead, the skeletons would sometimes die instead of teleporting to you like the merc or golem will.
Use ‘click lock’ when casting Bone Spirit. If you click on a monster, and hold the button down, you can still fire Spirits at them even if they teleport or run off the screen. Very useful for the imps in Act V and the fetishes in Act III.
You can use the Fire golem as a fire bomb by repeatedly summoning it in a group of monsters. This creates fire splash damage when it dies. Doing this can be very costly manawise, but can be effective in some situations.
Build up your army in an easy area before going harder. In Hell Act V I would often take a waypoint back to Act I to build my army up before going back to Act V. If you are building your army in a tough area, it is a good idea to start with the revives. They can take a huge amount of damage and tank for the skeletons and skeletal mages as you are creating them.
Dispose of every corpse you can. Especially when around monsters that revive corpses like the fetishes, fallen, or unravellers. Also dispose of those zombie corpses that come back to life in Act V. Do this by turning them into skeletons or mages if you are not at your max amount. If you are at the max amount of skeletons and mages, turn them into revives even if you are at the max amount of revives.
Revives only last 3 minutes, so they will often start to spontaneously die when you do not want them to. You can get past this by reviving constantly even when at the max amount. This will kill off the revives with the least amount of time left and replace them with revives that have a full 3 minutes to live. Sometimes this gets rid of good revives quicker, but it will at least keep a full amount of revives around.
As most people understand, poison damage does not stack. When using poison nova it is not worth spamming. Just cast it when they are no longer green. Some of the mages you raise will have poison damage. If there are too many throwing poison around, you may want to unsummon some of them as they will not be too effective.
Avoid cold damage on your merc. When mosters shatter they do not leave a corpse to raise. Some of your mages will have cold damage, so there will be some corpses shattering, but try to minimize it.
If you can find an item with teleport charges keep it in your weapon switch. Not only can it help you get out of sticky situations, it will also help you regroup your minions together.
Very narrow areas, such as the maggot lair, can be frustrating since your minions cannot maneuver very well. When entering these places, you may want to just drop down to your merc and golem with no skeletons or revives. When monsters appear, just retreat back behind your merc to let him fight. Use Bone spirit to support him and keep him healed with potions.
Here is a list of the curses and how to use them.
Amplify Damage – This is mainly for the benefit of you merc, Iron golem, and melee revives. Your skeletons do so little damage that Amp damage will not help noticeably, at least in Hell. Use this in combination with Corpse explosion also to do more damage. Good choice for your main curse.
Dim Vision - An incredibly useful and sometimes underrated curse. This only works on normal monsters unfortunately. It blinds them and keeps them in one place. This is mostly useful for monsters that run or teleport around a lot like fetishes or imps. I usually run around in those areas spamming this curse, and let my minions take those monsters out. They die really quickly when they just stand there to take the punishment. Sure they fight back if anything is in melee range, but they usually fall very quickly.
Weaken – Not a really important curse, but may be useful against monsters that do a huge amount of damage.
Iron Maiden – Very useful when fighting monsters dealing heavy melee damage. The effectiveness it a lot less in Hell or with ‘players 8’. The vultures in Act II are particularly susceptible to this curse. Cast it on your Iron Golem for really nasty damage payback to attackers.
Terror – This helps you when you find that your necromancer has been cornered by a group of monsters. Kind of like a panic button. Cast this so all the monsters go running, then retreat to safety. You can also use it for a panic button for your merc or Iron golem if they are about to die. There is also a trick where you can poison a group of monsters, then keep them running using terror while the poison works its damage. Not too effective tho but kind of fun.
Confuse - This is another of the least useful curses like weaken, but it is nice for a little fun. Use this on large groups so they can occupy themselves by beating on each other. This is particularly useful to keep large groups at bay while you regroup or raise some more minions. Generally tho, they will not
Life Tap - This is really helpful as it gives your minions, and specifically your merc, a good life leech. If you merc does enough damage you can use this occasionally to heal him, then switch to another curse.
Attract – Not too useful as there are a lot of better curses out there. This can be used if a certain monster is bugging you and you want to occupy them.
Decrepify – This is a very good curse. The duration is short and radius is small, so if you use this a lot it needs to be cast often. I have read conflicting reports of what it does since the full description is not in the game description. It combines weaken, slow monster, and a smaller version of Amp damage. This is a good choice for your main curse.
Lower Resist – This is also a very good and very useful curse. Lowers the resistances of monsters, but it does not take away a monsters immunity. Another good choice for your main curse.
I would choose one of these curses as your main curse. Amp Damage, Decripify, and Lower Resist are all good choices. Cast your main curse at anything that moves and have it as the default on your right mouse button. So which one do you want to use?
Decripify: Not a bad choice, but the amp damage it does is less than the Amp Damage curse. It is nice when it slows monsters, but keep in mind that the radius and duration is very small.
Amp Damage: This is not a bad choice, but it is not going to do a lot to help your skeletons do more damage. It will help your merc, Iron golem, and revives tho.
Lower resist: This is my personal choice. If you have a Fire golem, you will probably want to use this. This curse also greatly helps your Skeletal Mages to get to a decent amount of damage. It will also help if you want to use Poison Nova or Bone Spirit. I also gave my merc a high elemental damage weapon.
Bosses are going to be your biggest problem. Even the little mini bosses with a bunch of minions can be a problem. This is why I strongly recommend Bone Spirit. Whenever you meet a boss of any type, start spamming Spirit at them to get rid of them as quickly as possible. You may lose most your mana, but once the boss goes down you can let your minions take out the rest of the pack while you regenerate or drink a potion. ALWAYS focus on the boss first. They are just to dangerous to leave around for long. Cast Lower resist to make Spirit more effective.
Below is a list of the main bosses and how to beat them. For the most part always build your army to capacity before meeting them and spam Bone Spirit at them.
Anadariel - She is not much of a problem. Stay away from the poison which is not too hard. Building your army before meeting her is easy before opening the door to her lair.
Duriel - Revives are great as they are pretty good tanks. Keep your Bone Armor on so he cannot one hit kill you. If he does charge and hit you, he will probably dispose of your armor in one hit. DO NOT run away from him again until you have recast Bone Armor. You can absorb his melee hits without much problem, but not his charge. Keep your Merc healed with potions so he can keep Duriels focus away from you.
Council Members – Focus first on killing the non-unique council members, then revive them to help you fight. This is one of the few exceptions to my rule of killing the boss first. You cannot revive unique, champion, or boss monsters, but you can turn them into skeletons or mages. Make sure you have a full army before fighting them, which should not be too hard to do. They are not too bad.
Meph – Your army will steadily diminish when fighting him, but you should be able to kill him before your whole army is gone. If you can revive some Council members for your army, they will help a lot. He is not too difficult as long as you stay away.
Diablo – He is extremely difficult. He will wipe out all your skeletons and mages within seconds, so do not bother with trying to create new ones during the fight. Try to keep your merc alive and constantly recast your golem to tank. As long as you have a tank and stay back you are in little danger of dying. Keep the balrogs seal on the right hand side of the sanctuary for last, so that you can have them for revives during the fight. Bone Spirit and Lower Resist will be your main method of damaging Diablo, so keep lots of mana or rejuv pots handy. Also, open a portal a ways away as you may need to make a few trips to town during the battle.
Ancients – Surprisingly I had little trouble with them. Make sure you have a huge army when you get to them, even if you have to bum around Act I for a while. They can kill effectively enough, but with an army of 30 or more it will take them a while to get you alone since they have no mass killing abilities. Spam Bone Spirit and try to kill them one at a time. Keep your Bone armor up and stay on the move and there is little danger of you dying.
Lister and co. – They are not too difficult. Try to revive some of the Balrogs to have them available when Lister appears. The difficulty is that when the last balrog dies Baal will dispose of the corpses, so you need to revive quickly. If you are not ready when the last balrog dies, run out of the room and get your army built up. You cannot revive any of the minions of destruction unfortunately. Focus on killing Lister first, and you will be fine.
Baal – That magic Iron maiden curse he throws around is dangerous if you are spamming Bone Spirit. If he casts it on you, run away and wait it out. Keep your merc healthy if possible and keep casting your golem to provide some tanking help. Like Diablo, he will probably make short work of most of your skeletons and mages. Your revives should last a lot longer, so make sure you have a bunch of them before fighting him. Try to stay behind something so that he cannot hit you. But when you are behind something it will block your Spirits, so you may need to stand far away then dodge behind the pillar when he fires at you. Open a portal in the corner so you can retreat back to town. Keep many full rejuvs available.
Anyway, that’s it. This build really does take a different mind set to play, but can be extremely fun. Remember, have some patience when playing this build. Good luck!