Sesserdrix's All in One Necromancer Strategy Guide

Section 1: NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR (8/15/2023)

Hey all! Sesserdrix here. I wanted to let everyone know that I am currently working on revising this guide. For the next few weeks or months, you may find sections out of place, entries being moved around, section headers without any information, etc. Please be patient! This is a huge document and I've got a lot of stuff to revise! I'll continue to update this first section with any updates I have as to the progress.

-Sesserdrix Daudsormr, Necromancer of Rodcet Nife, the Prime Healer

Section 2: Introduction

Welcome fellow necromancers to Sesserdrix's All in One Necromancer Strategy Guide! It's my goal with this guide to provide you with the tools necessary to have a fun and engaging experience with your time playing a necromancer on Project1999. However, there are a few important notes:

This is not a quick glance guide. This guide is meant to be fairly expansive, to cover as much detail as possible on as many things as I can so you're as prepared as possible for whatever situation you end up in. If you want to uncover the secrets of playing a necromancer by yourself, this might not be the place for you!

This is a learning guide. The goal of this guide is to provide you with a solid foundation upon which to experience Norrath as a necromancer. I'll be introducing you to the various core fundamental mechanics of the class and the strategies we can employ as we level up and expand our spellcasting toolkit.

This is not an exhaustive guide. This guide includes many of the important pieces of information I learned as a necromancer while leveling them. It's my hope that by sharing them, it helps you get the most out of your path. As such, there will be more to learn than what is in this guide. In the same vein, this guide's list of camps isn't exhaustive either. The camps here are camps I've done and enjoyed doing in the past. Your personal mileage may vary. For example, you'll notice I have a bit of a bias in my guide toward lower levels in Antonica and later levels in Kunark. I assure you there are spots out there in Faydwer, Odus, Kunark, and now Velious that can also provide a solid leveling experience. Nevertheless, the information in this guide will hopefully prove valuable to you regardless of where you travel.

This is not a speed run guide. This guide isn't going to get you to 60 in the fastest way possible. Some camps and some strategies will be shorter or longer than others. My goal here is to arm you for facing Norrath, not give you an express ride to max level.

This is a Kunark-era guide. This guide is built upon my experiences leveling up as a necromancer in the Kunark era of Project1999's Blue server. I don't have much experience leveling in the Velious era, so some of the information in this guide may well be out of date.

Section 3: Creating Your Necromancer

In this section, we're going to discuss the reasons why you might want to make a necromancer, why you might want to choose one race or another, what you should consider when allocating your starting ability score points, and what kind of gear you should be looking out for. Please be aware that once you choose your class, race, and starting ability scores, those decisions are locked in. The only way to change them after creating your character is to make a new character.

Why Necromancer?

Before we look into why you might want to play a necromancer, lets first go over what a necromancer is. Necromancy is a type of magic presented in various fantasy settings and mythologies, although the representation of necromancy varies significantly. A lot of early mythology treats necromancy as a type of divination, gathering information by consulting with the spirits of the dead. In modern times, I think it's fair to say most people who know the term would associate it with mastery over the dead or undeath. However, with regards to necromancers in EverQuest, it's a bit more nuanced.

Ages ago, the dragon goddess Veeshan founded a massive floating chunk of rock, a planet that would one day become known as Norrath. It wasn't long before other gods followed Veeshan to this world, seeking to lay claim to their own portions of it. The natural world took root, the various races were created and propagated across the surface of the planet. This energy that we call life is inherently a natural and divine force, something that is created by those attuned to the natural world or to divinity. Clerics, druids, paladins, rangers, and so on are all either naturalistic or divine, and as such they have the power to create new life from raw mana.

There is a third kind of magic that stands apart from naturalistic and divine based magics called arcane magic. Arcane magic comes from conscious intellect, from study and the exertion of will to alter reality. It's a magic of ambition, of drive, of desire to see the world be different than what it is when left to the devices of nature and the gods. However, since arcane magic isn't natural or divine, it can't create life.

Necromancers are arcane casters who see the force of life as something that we should be able to control and manipulate. We don't respect that the gods and nature should have sovereign control over this energy of life. Just as a wizard or magician might channel elemental power, we are those who seek to usurp this power of the gods and channel life energy itself. We are conduits of life energy, sapping life from some and granting it to others. We burn our own flesh into raw mana to fuel our magic and replenish ourselves with the life of our foes. So great is our power to redistribute life that we can even take the life of one person to resurrect another. We tap into the power of the gods directly but we don't do it through them.

As a result, a necromancy is scary to many people. You will be hated across Norrath because of your chosen magical field. The power over life is seductive and has been a tool used by many an evil villain in the past. But it isn't the power that is evil, but the person who becomes corrupted by it. One of the most infamous necromancers in Norrath's history is Miragul, but Miragul was also a wizard, a magician, and an enchanter. Miragul utilized the powers of a necromancer to fuel his own ambitions and drive, but that was him. It's totally possible for someone to wield these powers not to pursue selfish ambition, but to right wrongs they see in the world. A necromancer that sees an evil creature wounding an innocent can sap the life from that evil creature and return it to the victim. We can strike down evil creatures just as other adventurers can, but where they destroy life, we redistribute it.

You have a great power in your hands as a necromancer... It's up to you to decide how you want to use it. Use it well.

That's the fluffy side of a necromancer, but in terms of practicality, there are quite a few reasons to play a necromancer on Project1999! As a necromancer, you have great solo potential without really needing any gear. Your ability to level up isn't hindered by a lack of available groups or by not having key pieces that unlock soloing potential. You could go from level 1 to 60 totally naked and alone if you really wanted to. In addition, necromancers have a wide variety of soloing strategies so that way you can switch up how you're playing if you ever get too bored of one playstyle. These various strategies also help in different parts of the game world, so you almost always have something to handle the situation you find yourself in.

As a necromancer, you also have a rich toolkit. You can Feign Death to avoid being killed by enemies on a bad pull. You can Harmshield to make yourself immune to damage for a time if that fails. You can Levant to quickly move across zones. You can burn your own life energy into more mana so you have less downtime between fights. You can burn your own mana to twitch other spellcasters, providing them with much needed mana. You can also burn your life into healing other creatures, albeit to a lesser degree than a Cleric, Druid, Shaman, etc. You can summon corpses to zone lines for people who died deep in a dungeon and can't easily get their body out. You can provide CCs, snares, self-heals, and pets for additional damage. Your toolkit is absolutely massive as a necromancer.

Pick a necromancer if you want to spend a majority of your time soloing, but would still like to offer strong support tools to a group or raid, even if you don't get to stretch those muscles too often.

Your Necromancer's Race

If you have only played some of the more modern MMORPGs, you may be under the impression that race selection doesn't really matter all that much. That's not quite the case in EverQuest. Some racial benefits are significant for certain classes. Before talking about that with necromancer, lets go through the list:

Human is a fairly general race. As a human, you will lack any low-light vision, making the nights particularly dark relative to other races. This can be offset through some necromancer spells. You'll also have moderate ability scores, so you'll be well rounded.

Gnome is a favorite choice for a lot of necromancers. Gnomes have quite good ability scores for a necromaner and they get access to Tinkering. Tinker is a gnome-only trade skill that lets them craft a number of useful items, like Stalking Probe. These probes are handy if you need to lifetap something in a hurry to get some health back but you don't have a nearby creature to tap off of. Anyone can buy these probes though and in the Velious expansion, Holgresh Elder Beads will provide an unlimited supply of probes. That said, Elder Beads are quickly nerfed after the release of Velious which results in their price skyrocketing, bringing value back to being able to make probes. Another neat perk to being a gnome is that you can often go first person and face a wall to see through it.

Erudite offers an interesting advantage through some race unique high level quests in Paineel, their city. Like human, erudites also lack low-light vision. The major boon and flaw with an erudite is their high Intelligence. While this helps in early game, by later in the game when you have gear, you may well hit the 255 Intelligence cap and no longer benefit from Intelligence on items. More on that in the next section.

Dark Elf offers the ability to Hide. Early on in the timeline, this provides both Invisibility and Invisibility vs Undead, however that does end up getting nerfed. Dark elves get access to the best darkvision in the game, Ultravision, although some necromancer spells make this redundant. Dark elves also get access to questing for Reaper of the Dead , which can sell reasonably well at mid-levels.

Iksar has the single best racial trait for a traditional necromancer: Regeneration. While an iksar also gets extra AC and the ability to forage, regeneration is the trait that makes iksar the optimal race choice. The quickest way I can put it is that while most racial traits supplement what a necromancer does, regeneration directly enhances the core of the necromancer class in a significant way. However, to understand the value of regeneration, we first need to discuss arguably the most important spell line in a necromancer's arsenal: the Lich spells.

The Value of Regeneration

Necromancers are all about burning their own life (HP) into mana to fuel their powerful spells. This is done through the Lich spells. In order you acquire them, they are Dark Pact (8), Allure of Death (20), Call of Bones (34), Lich (49), Demi Lich (60), and Arch Lich (60). These spells provide a short duration buff which gradually drains your HP and increases how much mana you regain. Generally necromancers will offset this HP loss through the use of drain spells, either the Lifetap or Leach spell lines. The rub is that Lifetap and Leach spells have rather low damage per mana, meaning you'll be spending a lot of mana to heal yourself back, which cuts into the advantage the Lich spell line provides. Regeneration offsets the HP loss of the Lich spells, so you burn your HP slower, so you don't need to use as many mana inefficient Lifetaps and Leaches to stay alive, freeing up more mana to be used on our better spells.

See below for a table from the Iksar wiki page. Look at how the HP per tick increases across level for both iksar and non-iksar. When you're level 60 and you have the spell Demi Lich, you're going to be taking -32 HP for +31 mana every 6 second tick. A non-iksar offsets that by +7 HP, for a net of -25 HP per 6 second tick. An iksar offsets that by +18 per tick, for a net of -14 HP per 6 second tick.

Other Races				Iksar/Troll
Standing	Feigned	Sitting	Level Range	Standing	Feigned	Sitting
1	1	2	1-19	2	2	4
1	1	3	20-49	2	2	6
1	1	4	50	2	2	8
2	3	5	51-55	6	8	12
3	4	6	56-59	10	12	16
4	5	7	60	12	14	18

To put that into a practical example, lets imagine two level 60 necromancers, one that isn't an iksar and one that is. Lets look at how they both do using the final leach spell, Vexing Mordinia to offset the HP loss of Demi Lich:

Non-Iksar:

1. - Demi Lich generates +31 mana for -32 HP.
2. - Non-iksar regenerate +7 HP while sitting at level 60.
3. - Demi Lich produces this character a net of +31 mana for -25 HP while sitting.
4. - Vexing Mordinia is 495 mana for 1,220 HP.
5. - Demi Lich's -25 HP ticks will eat up the HP generated by Vexing Mordinia in 48.8 ticks.
6. - In those 48.8 ticks, Demi Lich will generate 1,512.8 mana at +31 a tick.
7. - However, since Vexing Mordinia costs 495 mana, this character really nets +1,017.8 mana per required Vexing Mordinia.

Iksar:

1. - Demi Lich generates +31 mana for -32 HP.
2. - Iksar regenerate +18 HP while sitting at level 60.
3. - Demi Lich produces this character a net of +31 mana for -14 HP while sitting.
4. - Vexing Mordinia is 495 mana for 1,220 HP.
5. - Demi Lich's -14 HP ticks will eat up the HP generated by Vexing Mordinia in 87.14 ticks.
6. - In those 87.14 ticks, Demi Lich will generate 2,701.43 mana at +31 a tick.
7. - However, since Vexing Mordinia costs 495 mana, this character really nets +2,206.43 mana per required Vexing Mordinia.

See the difference here? Both necromancers need to counteract their health loss through the Leach spell, Vexing Mordinia, but the iksar doesn't have to nearly as often, giving them more flexible mana to use on better spells like mana efficient dots and spells that keep enemies under control, like roots, fears, and snares. To be clear though, this doesn't mean the iksar generates more mana, it means that significantly more of their mana can be used for things other than maintaining their health loss from the Lich spells.

Now then, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up some ways to offset Demi Lich other than iksar regeneration:

• In Velious, there is a lengthy quest line called the Coldain Ring Quests. The final reward is
  Ring of Dain Frostreaver IV

  Ring of Dain Frostreaver IV

MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO DROP
Slot: FINGER
AC: 10
STR: +10 STA: +10 HP: +100
SV MAGIC: +10
Effect: Frostreaver's Blessing (Must Equip, Casting Time: Instant)
WT: 0.1 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL