Overview

The Necromancer's fantasy is the Master of Death: a pet-focused caster who works from range while an undead minion holds the front line. It wears enemies down with corruption and decay, and takes life, strength, and power from everything you kill.

This update delivers more of that fantasy by trimming generic caster utility and deepening the things the class already owns.

Your damage-over-time spells are sharper, and they now hit undead targets for bonus damage up-front. Your minion scales with your level between spell ranks, so you'll always summon a pet of your own level. A new family of Pacts lets you pay with your own health for a stronger pet, faster afflictions, and your shield can now bind your minion to you when you're in trouble. Around the edges, several utility spells moved to new levels, a handful of redundant ranks were consolidated, and a few narrow spells were retired.

Two things we promised in the original Necromancer preview are not in this update: collectable pet types found through world exploration, and the ability to temporarily raise fallen enemies as additional pets. Both are still on our list, but we couldn't get to them before Early Access launch - and collectible pets in particular will roll out over time as we continue to add new zones and content to the game. Burning Bones is available as a quest reward, and is a great example of future collectible pets. The pets you have today (the skeleton, zombie, and ghoul lines) are the foundation we intend to build that collection on going forward.

Death's Toll: Damage Over Time

Corruption and decay are still your primary damage, and the three big damage-over-time lines are still the core of what you cast.

• Deluge - a burst of poison damage followed by a lingering poison.

• Shadows - Corruption damage over time that also snares your target. Each rank hits harder and lasts longer.

• Rot - your disease line, now Rot Flesh, Rot Bones, and Rot Soul. Pure damage over time with no burst, and the most mana-efficient of your damage spells over a full duration.

Bonus damage against undead. Deluge, Shadows, and Rot now deal bonus damage when they land on an undead target. The spell ticks as normal, and also hits immediately for a little extra. This replaces the old undead-only blast spells (Repel the Dead through Assail the Dead), which are gone. You no longer need a separate spell for undead. Your ordinary damage-over-time does the job now.

Pact of Eldritch Quickening makes all of these tick faster. See the Pacts section below.

Life Drain and Transfer

Everything the Necromancer takes from a victim goes somewhere: back into yourself, your pet, or into an ally.

• Life Drain - instant Corruption damage that heals you for the same amount. The line was cleaned up into a smoother climb across ranks.

• Leech Lifeforce - the ticking version. It drains over time and heals you for what it takes.

• Dark Embrace, Sacrificial Embrace, Corporeal Embrace - pay your own health to heal an ally in one burst.

• Covenant of Life, Darkness, and Shadow - pay your own health to heal an ally over time.

• Steal Strength (Lesser, regular, Greater, Superior) - take Strength from an enemy and add it to your own for a while. Transfer Strength does the reverse, giving your own Strength to an ally.

• Mind Surge, Mana Surge, Mental Surge - gift mana to an ally. They now restore more, and cost more of your own mana to cast. These have a cooldown now, so they can come in handy in an emergency, but transferring your own valuable mana is not a constant activity.

• Summon Lifestones - unchanged. A consumable heal you can conjure for yourself or a friend.

The Pacts and the Red Line of Danger

The Necromancer lives on the red line, trading vitality for power and knowing exactly how far to push it. The Pact family is the clearest expression of that. Every Pact costs you a slice of your own health and gives you something in return.

Two of the Pacts are old friends. Four are new.

Pact of Deathly Enduring

• Bind your vitality to your pet, reducing your maximum Health and making them tougher: more Armor Class, more Health Regeneration and more maximum Health.

A pet tank that keeps up with hard fights, paid for out of your own health.

Pact of Vampirism

• Bind your life force to your pet, reducing your maximum Health and giving your pet a chance to drain life with its melee attacks, healing your group with what it takes.

A minion that feeds your group.

Pact of Coldlight

• Bind your warmth to your pet, reducing your maximum Health and causing it to shed a cold, pale light over its surroundings.

A smaller trade for a smaller gift. Useful in dark places.

Pact of Eldritch Quickening

• Quicken your afflictions, reducing your maximum Health. While active, your poison, corruption, disease and life-draining damage-over-time spells deal their damage faster.

The most direct "spend your body for damage" spell in the class. Instead of ticking every 6th second, your DoTs now tick every 5th second - getting their damage out a bit faster.

Blood Pact, Death Pact, and the Lich chain

Your mana regeneration line follows the same curve it always has: Blood Pact, Death Pact, Shed Bones, Shed Flesh, Lich, and Arch Lich. Each trades your health every few seconds for faster mana regeneration, and each step up takes more health and gives more mana. The line lost one intermediate step (Demi Lich) and some ranks moved to new levels, but the trade is the same as it always was. Lich Spirit, the short high-cost burst at the top, is unchanged.

Unliving Shield

Your defensive buff, formerly Spellshield, lasts an hour and now bundles a few things you'd always want active. It raises your maximum Health, Armor Class, Magic Resistance, and now Holy Resistance, and it lets you sense magical effects while it lasts.

It also carries a new safety net, Soul Tether. If your Health falls low, your shield binds your minion to you for a short time, and your pet takes a share of the damage you would have taken. It can't trigger again for a while afterward, so treat it as an emergency measure rather than part of a defensive rotation. Your pet pays the price for your survival.

Emergency exits

Unholy Bulwark (a short window of immunity to all damage, usable even while stunned or feared) and Feign Death are unchanged. When the red line gets too red, these are how you step back.

Your Minion

Your minion is still the heart of the class, holding the front line while you work from range. The three main pet lines (Skeleton, Zombie, and Ghoul) are now short ladders of ranks instead of long lists of individual spells, and between upgrades your pet scales with your level, so it no longer falls behind while you wait for the next rank.

The three lines are different flavors of the same job, and each fights with its own abilities: skeletons use Strike, ghouls use Ghoul Tendrils, zombies use Zombie Drain, and all three use Provoke. These unlock at various levels, so you'll get your skeleton pet earlier than the rest.

Summon Skeleton, Summon Zombie, Summon Ghoul

• Reanimate the dead to fight alongside you. Each requires a reagent: bone chips for skeletons, zombie skin for zombies and ghoul skin for ghouls.

Spectre Minion

• Reanimate death incarnate. Your spectre is immune to Fear effects, and fights with Spectre Drain and Provoke.

Burning Bones

• Reanimate bone, conjuring a burning skeleton to serve you. Rank 1 of this pet is available as a quest reward for adventurous necromancers.

Mend the Dead

• Restore your pet's health. The line now has five ranks instead of three, so your pet heals keep pace with your pet across more of the game.

Fury of Death

• Stoke the fury of death within your pet, increasing their Attack Speed and Strength. Formerly Unrelenting Dead, and the first rank now arrives a little earlier.

Summon Companion, Reclaim Essence

• Unchanged. Summon Companion pulls your pet to your side, and Reclaim Essence destroys it and converts some of its health into mana.

The Pacts above are the other half of the bond with your pet, and the biggest change to how it plays.

Dominion Over the Dead

• Command the Dead and Dominate the Dead - take control of an undead target for a limited time and have it fight for you. Renamed from Charm, Beguile, Coax and Persuade the Dead.

• Restrain the Dead - incapacitate a single undead target. Now four ranks instead of one, so it stays useful as you level.

• Terrify the Dead - make an undead target flee. Formerly Fear the Dead.

• Lull the Dead - shrink an undead target's aggro radius. This can only affect one target at a time.

• Invisibility versus Undead - unchanged.

Control and Escape

• Fear and Deathly Howl - make one target, or everything near you, flee. Unchanged in function, and moved to new levels.

• Grasp of the Dead - hold a target in place. Ranamed from Root - Unchanged in function.

• Swirling Shadows and its ranks - your snare rides on this damage line (see Death's Toll).

• Feign Death - play dead and drop the threat of aggressive targets.

Retained Spell Lines

Damage

• Deluge (poison burst with a lingering tick)

• Shadows (Corruption over time with a snare)

• Rot (disease over time) - renamed from Malady, Infectious Disease, Shuddering Sickness, Afflicting Ailment, Irking Illness and Virulent Virus

• Life Drain (instant Corruption damage that heals you) - higher ranks renamed from Life Sap, Life Siphon, Life Tap, Life Guzzle, Life Duct and Life Flume (now Life Drain II through VII)

• Leech Lifeforce (Corruption over time that heals you) - higher ranks renamed from Leech Essence, Leech Spirit, Leech Soul and Leech Anima (now Leech Lifeforce II through V)

Pet

• Summon Skeleton

• Summon Zombie

• Summon Ghoul

• Spectre Minion

• Burning Bones

• Mend the Dead

• Fury of Death - renamed from Unrelenting Dead spell line

• Summon Companion

• Reclaim Essence

Buffs

• Unliving Shield - renamed from Spellshield

• Aspect of Vampirism

• Blood Pact and the Lich chain

• Cold Protection, Cold Resistance, Holy Protection and Holy Resistance

Healing and Transfer

• Dark Embrace line

• Covenant line

• Mind Surge line

• Steal Strength line and Transfer Strength

Debuffs and Control

• Spirit Splinter line (resist debuff)

• Dispel Magic and Abolish Magic

• Fear, Deathly Howl, Grasp of the Dead (was Root), Lull the Dead

• Command the Dead and Dominate the Dead - renamed from Charm the Dead spell line

• Restrain the Dead

• Terrify the Dead - renamed from Fear the Dead

Utility

• Gate

• Soulbind

• Polar Alignment: North

• Locate Corpse

• Summon Corpse

• Summon Lifestone line

• Invisibility, Invisibility versus Undead

• Eye of the Underworld (formerly See Invisibility, now also senses magical effects)

• Unholy Bulwark, Feign Death

Several of these moved to new unlock levels as part of a full level-schedule pass.

Removed Spell Lines

• Repel the Dead, Beset the Dead, Rebuff the Dead, Beleaguer the Dead, Assail the Dead - your undead-only blast spells. Their job now belongs to your damage-over-time spells, which hit undead harder.

• Sense Magic - folded into Unliving Shield and Eye of the Underworld rather than taking a slot of its own.

• A handful of intermediate ranks on the Life Drain, Mind Surge, resist debuff and mana regeneration lines that only existed to fill a level slot.

Thanks for taking the time to look this over, and for your participation in our Beta. We look forward to getting your feedback after you try out the Necromancer update during Early Access!