INTRODUCTION
I've always wondered just how far a skeletons-only Necromancer could venture. After playing a wide variety of sorcies, paladins, minionless necros and other characters in recent months, I decided to return to the Necromancer as he was meant to be played: a master of the undead.
There are two problems that combine to thwart skeletons-only: 1) You need bodies. Sometimes you run out of bodies and then what? 2) Skeleton warriors lack the necessary attack rating to function on their own, particularly in light of the first point I mentioned.
As such, there are some obstacles that cannot be overcome by skeletons. A necro must either have a golem (any golem will do) or he must invest in direct attack skills from the Poison/Bone tree. Curses can substitute at times, but there are other times (notably the Act End bosses) when no amount of clever cursing can get you through without a golem or a direct attack.
As such, I decided to give my new Hardcore summoning necromancer a basic clay golem. I intended to invest a bit into Summon Resist skill, and both clay golem and golem mastery are prerequisites, so this fit nicely into my plan. No wasted skill points!
In single player, there is no scaling up of golem life, the way there is in multiplayer. On the Realms, join any 8-player game and your golem turns into a sturdy fixture, taking far longer for monsters to kill. Even weak golems can go a long way under those conditions, for despite the added health of monsters, their attacks are not boosted in strength, so your golems can seem almost indestructible, particularly if you invested heavily into them. For Skeletorr, his golem would be strong only for the shortest duration. By the end of Act Two, it would be just another target out there, no stronger than a skeleton! The golem would still be special, though, for it would not require a body to be cast, and could be targeted (literally) to any spot on the screen I wanted to put it, at will. Thus, any boss packs, ranged mobs, or other significant threats to the rest of my army, could be distracted, if only momentarily, by sticking a golem in their faces. I might need quite a bit of mana to cast and recast and recast that golem, so I had to keep that in mind.
My necromancer also needed some curses. No way around that. Going curseless would not be possible unless I took some bone skills. A necro with nothing but summoning skills is also known as a cripple. The poor guy would have to take up a piercing wand/scepter and charge into melee against the very toughest bosses and worst situations, if he were to attempt to shun all curses and bone skills. That might be a variant for someone else to try, or for me to explore later. Right now, I wanted to delve into the role of a skeleton master, dealing all my damage indirectly, and that required not only a simple golem, but also a few simple curses: Iron Maiden, for sure (remember my first two points: lack of bodies and lack of attack rating. Past a certain point, the only way for skeleton warriors to earn kills is to stand there and get beat on, reflecting damage rather than dealing it directly). Also needed Terror. Why? Because it's your one stop shop for crowd control. No other crowd control skills in the game can do so much with just one point invested. Terror could break up zakarum priest packs, send shamans and resurrectors into retreat, isolate any boss by scaring off the minions, save my char's ass over and over and over in more ways than I can list. Amplify and Weaken are necessary to get those two, so I'd use those, too, as appropriate.
That's it for curses, one point into each of those curses, everything else into summoning.
If my summoner should survive to a point of maxing out his skeleton army's strength, then and only then would I increase his investment in Iron Maiden, to help him keep going. Which leads me to the main topic of this introduction.
What exactly represents the strength of skeletons? How do you try to build a skeletons-only character for the long haul? There are four skills involved: Raise Skeleton, Skeleton Mastery, Raise Skeletal Mage, Summon Resist. Revive is the fifth skill in that line, but I won't be going there. No Revives.
Summon Resist can be vital for extending the life of your army against magic-using opponents, but the value of skill points added here plummets after the first few points. Slvl 4 offers 44% resistance (and I do believe this is affected by the -20%/-50% penalties in higher difficulty) and Slvl 6 offers 50%. After that, increases are miniscule. Those who twink a ton and a half of +skills gear to their new necros would never even consider more than one point here. Revives are so tough, they rarely die in combat. More likely they will expire after three minutes. Skeletons are another matter, and without some resistance help, they will just get blown away in some circumstances. So on the chance I might eventually get a +2 skill wand, or +skill on helm or amulet, I'll take Summon Resist to slvl 4, get the bulk of the benefit, and leave it there.
The only question left is how many warriors to get, how many mages, and how much to invest into Mastery. Keeping in mind that skeletons are limited by the available bodies, the idea of swarming with raw numbers turns up a fatal flaw. One cannot throw endless numbers at the enemy. At best, you can make one new skeleton per kill (some loss of bodies from ice shattering will happen). Thus, a skeleton master MUST earn, on average, better than a whole kill per skeleton raised. Any situation where this fails to hold true may decimate the army, leaving no bodies and only a golem to work with. Thus, the key to success lies not in boosting numbers, but in boosting strength. Skeleton Mastery adds seven more life to each warrior, per level of increase. Eventually, my skeletons will be hardier than my golem. No kidding. The warriors also get a boost to their damage. Two extra points of damage per level. So those weakling skeletons and their pathetic 1-2 damage with 21 life can turn into sturdy warriors with 161 life each, doing 41-42 damage, with Mastery maxed out. On the other hand, the numbers do play a role. One skeleton warrior at level 20 mastery is not as tough as five warriors at level 15 mastery.
There are places in the game, indoors in particular, where having a larger army can be detrimental. Raising the limits of how many warriors and mages you can summon increases the mana cost of ALL of them, thus shooting down any thoughts of pumping those skills as high as you can and filling the screen with skeletons, adding more and more every time a body hits the floor. That's just not practical. So what is the best army size? Well, larger is always better, but efficiency is also important. Skeleton warriors serve as the buffer for the mages (and the necro). Four or five should be plenty for most situations, keeping in mind that more can be raised as those expire, from the corpses of the dying opponents. Far more vital to strengthen the warriors with mastery so that each corpse lasts a bit longer.
The true strength of the skeletons lies in the mages. Skeleton Mastery boosts their missile damage. How much? It doesn't say. I would presume the boost is at least one point per level, no more than two. This means a huge difference between your standard skeletal mage and one boosted by maxed Mastery.
Contrary to what you might expect, the mages will be the strength of this character. Iron Maiden at level one will do its share of damage, and there will be times when only Iron Maiden and golem can get the job done, but most damage will come from the mages. I'll want at least six or seven of them, and more later, once mastery has been maxed. So long as the golem and warriors can hold the line, the mages can stomp any opponent, all the better with my focus on mastery. The only problems my summoner will face will come when the warriors collapse and the bodies to replace them run out. LEBs, some ranged opponents, and all Act End bosses will decimate the warriors, leaving the mages with little or no defense. Once those are wiped out, my necro will have nothing left but golem and iron maiden (or perhaps the possibility of retreat to a location with leftover corpses or fresh weaklings ready for slaughter -- to raise a new army).
This raises another point. Once mastery is maxed, and I'm happy with the size of the army, there will be no more need to invest in the summoning tree. My character would be free to improve his curses. Iron Maiden seems the obvious answer, but the increase to damage would be only 25% extra for each added skill point. This would help tremendously in those situations where I'm reduced to golem only. On the other hand, Lower Resistance would offer a more sizable damage boost to the mage missiles, and would radically improve mage performance against magic resistant bosses and similar targets. I may eventually have enough skill points to invest in both, but which should be the priority? I'll have to play to find out.
Finally, equipment. I decided to restrict strength to 25 -- not so much for variant purposes, as for strategic reasons. With 25 strength, I could use bone helms and shields, demonhide or sharkskin belts once I got to nightmare (probably going to use at least one imbue on such a belt), and otherwise rely on gambling. Defense was irrelevant, so I'd be happy with Greyform or a rare quilted armor, rare leathers for cap and boot, possibly a rare bone shield or Eyeless. For gloves, I would gamble for Bloodfist. A sorcie might do better with Frostburn, but if that was my ONLY reason for pumping strength to 60 on this character, it would be a waste of time. Better to get +40 life from Bloodfist, enjoy the fastest hit recovery, and save 35 wasted strength points that could be directly translated to 70 mana. Counting the 40 life, that could be another 40 mana, equivalent. So figure 110 mana saved by going for Bloodfists over Frosties, or else mana translated into life (even better), with the added benefit of a fastest recovery. For a sorceress spamming some high-mana attack, and boosting mana above 400 total, the Frosties would still make the better deal, even at 35 strength invested just for that. Not so this necromancer. He would need mana at certain times to spam the golems and to replace skeletons as quickly as they dropped by the dozens, but that is his only use for mana: some light curses and replacing casualties in his army. Bloodfist, and lower strength, were the right choices to make. As for shields... I kind of doubt this character will be viable beyond Nightmare, so the idea of a diamond shield seems remote. Unless one gets lucky, it generally takes until well into Hell mode to complete such a shield, playing my usual way. So if resists really suck, maybe I'll go with a 2D small shield, or if some nice rare adds +strength, a 3D Large. We'll see.
Being Hardcore, this might all be moot. The character will have to survive for me to test out all these fancy theories. :)
ACT ONE
Your typical Revive-minded Necro would be making do on golems through Normal difficulty, with just one skeleton and one mage. True, he'd invest in other skills, perhaps golem mastery. His curses would be stronger and he might have plenty of help from Corpse Explosion or bone skills. Through the first two acts, he would clearly have it rougher than my skeletons-only necro. After that, his blood golem, then iron golem, would make up for a lack of other minions, at least in most situations, and he'd have other options.
Even so, I knew that the game would be fairly easy for my necro, at least to start out. At what point his skeleton mastery might fall behind the curve, I did not know, but it wouldn't come until at least acts three or four, if not later.
First skill point went into skeletons, then one into mastery, then a point into Amplify. At this point, it was quicker for Skeletorr to swat things with his wand than wait for the feeble minions to handle it, so he did a lot of that, using Amplify to speed the process. Then another point into skeletons and another in mastery.
Clay Golem at level six, one more Mastery at level seven, then Weakness at level eight. That was it. No more skills invested until clvl 12, when a whole box of options opened up: Golem Mastery, Skeletal Mage, Terror and Iron Maiden.
Saving up all those skill points, and getting these prereqs and curses out of the way, did not play much different from your typical necromancer. Along the way, I searched for wands, and somewhere in there (level nine? maybe ten) I spent Skeletorr's savings on a new wand: +2 Raise Skeleton and +1 Mastery, with a small mana boost, too. This offered up one extra minion and increased their strength, which did help out.
The summoning necromancer is forever at the mercy of his minions. Iron Maiden and Corpse Explosion both scale with the might of the enemy, as do Revives later on. This makes for more work in Normal difficulty than other classes.You have to babysit the army or you end up stranding minions and losing them, which is always annoying. You also have to watch for flanking attacks. Sometimes you walk past monsters, waking them, but they are slow to charge you and end up attacking your back lines from the rear. Many a time I've looked up to see half my army (or thereabouts) has just bought the farm, thanks to some flank attack I overlooked. Yet there is a steadiness of pace to the summoning necro, a rhythm that only seems lengthy. You are constantly managing your army, but there is rarely if ever a need to focus directly on the enemy. What sometimes seems like a slow process can actually compare favorably to other classes. Your army can chew through large mobs pretty quickly. The main problem comes when the bosses jump out, wiping out your warriors and throwing a wrench into your normally smooth operation.
I'm not talking much about the opponents at this point largely because they were irrelevant. Not that they were mind-numbingly easy -- not hardly. Almost anything can threaten your army if you grow inattentive. Your character may be sturdy, but that army is fragile, leading to what is surely the most interesting character and skill path for act one of Normal, barring some hogtied whacked-out ubervariant with both eyes tied behind his head. No, rather, there is no need yet to talk about the enemy because that's not where the focus lies. You go through and spend attention managing your army. That's how the character is played, dealing all his damage indirectly. Curse targets with Amplify or Iron Maiden, some Terror for tactical use in unusual situations, some particular golem placement, but mostly your mind is on assessing the needs of the skeletons as they do the dirty work. The opponents just sort of blend together. Either they are low threat, in which case you just curse them and wait for your army to win, or they are high threat, too strong for your army without your intervention, and you must get aggressive with golem placement and the raising of replacements for your casualties. The actual gameplay is interesting, but your focus is very different because of the indirect nature of your offense.
At level thirteen, I invested a second point into skeleton magi. The next two levels saw investment into Mastery. I now had four warriors and two mages, plus the golem. Most of my skill points earned in act two would be invested into Mastery. Most points earned in act three and four would see investment in Summon Resist.
I'd also be seeking a wand that would boost my three main skills. I wanted a wand that would give the most total boost to any combination of the skills. The perfect wand would have +3 to Skeletons, Mages, and Mastery, for a total boost of nine. More likely I'd end up with a wand giving me four to six total boost. I'd also only have until clvl 25, late into Act Three, to find that wand. Once I reached clvl 25, no more level one skills on wands. No Raise Skeleton, no Mastery. Whatever wand I had at that point, would be Skeletorr's wand permanently -- or at least until something with +skills to all turned up. (+1 to all skills would be +3 to my three main skills, which might not be good enough to displace a wand with five or more total boost to my primary skills. We'll see).
Andariel was the first drastic opponent for Skeletorr. She could kill any minion in one shot, or wipe the whole room out with one poison spray. Thus I made the strategic decision NOT to go to town after reaching Catacombs level four. I wanted every last Dark One body in that front room available for raising replacement mages. I knew that Iron Maiden would have to get most of the kill, but why not help it out with some mage shot, as possible? Besides, cheaper to raise mages than another golem, and I could only summon one golem at a time. A couple of mages might be irrelevant, but it was worth a shot.
Turns out those mages helped enough to make it worth bothering with them. You can see the carnage strewn about the chamber, plenty of dead golems and skeletons, lots of gore from summoning mage after mage, but the presence of the mages took some of the heat off of Skeletorr, giving him more time to run or to summon or refresh the curse. I think the fact that two mages were still alive, and I had not run out of bodies by the time Andariel fell, tells the tale nicely on its own.
At this point, Skeletorr's items were all junk. Everything he had would be replaced soon (I hoped). Even that wand wasn't going to cut the mustard for long. He was in the market for something better.
- Sirian
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