The Necromancer Profession
Why Choose a Necromancer?
If you’re looking for a challenging yet highly rewarding class then the Necromancer is a great choice. It is definitely a class you’ll want to be patient with as collecting the spells that fit into the Codex Damnorum will take time and/or a bit of gold. This class offers the player to explore all eight circles of the normal spell book as well as offering an additional 16 spells exclusive to the Necromancer. Once trained, the Necromancer is a formidable caster class and offers unique experiences in both game play and role play.
What Skills to Choose?
Resisting Spells – 50%
Spirit Speak – 30%
Magery – 30%
Resisting Spells at 50% and not Spirit Speak?
Although Spirit Speak is a slow skill to gain in, it is fairly easy to train. If you think Spirit Speak ought to be at 50%, feel free to switch the skill percentages around, but note that Resisting Spells requires you to put your character in imminent danger by having mobs cast on your character and it is also not the quickest skill to train.
Not Starting with any Meditation?
The reason for this is that training Meditation to 40% is fairly easy and requires little work to do so, thus it is better to put your beginning skill points somewhere else rather than Meditation.
What Stats to Choose?
Strength – 50
Dexterity – 10
Intelligence – 10
I’ve Created my Character, Now What?
You’ll need to make a bit of gold, the easiest and quickest way to do this is to visit the fields just outside Britain and begin harvesting crops. You’ll probably want to harvest wheat as you can then take the wheat into town and grind it into flour using the mill at Good Eats (located at 1460, 1610, 20) within Britain city limits. You can sell the flour off to the vendor within that shop for a few gold. You’ll want to accumulate a decent amount of gold and purchase a few things that you will need for training purposes, below is a list of items and services you will either need or consider:
- Spell book with 1 of each scroll for circles 1-3 of Magery which can be purchased from The Sorcerer’s Delight (located at 1488, 1572, 30) within Britain city limits. The total cost for this is 2184 gold coins.
- A bag of 200 reagents which can be purchased from The Sorcerer’s Delight (located at 1488, 1572, 30) within Britain city limits. The total cost for this is 6010 gold coins.
- You’ll also want to vendor train in Meditation which can be trained at the The Sorcerer’s Delight (located at 1488, 1572, 30) or Lord British’s Conservatory of Music (located at 1454, 1561, 30) within Britain city limits.
- You’ll also want to vendor train in Evaluating Intelligence which can be trained at The Sorcerer’s Delight (located at 1488, 1572, 30) within Britain city limits.
- Find a player who plays a Scribe and try to secure at least a Scroll of Lightning, Scroll of Paralyze, Scroll of Recall and a Scroll of Mark. (The latter two just allow you easier travel, the first two mentioned are strictly for training purposes.)
How do I go About Training my Crucial Skills?
To join the Necromancer class, you will need to raise specific skills and stats to certain levels, these being:
Your Stats Must Be:
Strength – 60
Dexterity – 25
Intellect – 85
Your Skills Must Be:
Magery 65%
and
Spirit Speak 65% or Meditation 65% or Resisting Spells 60%
Training Meditation:
If you’ve vendor trained in this skill, it is pretty easy and advisable you raise this to 40% before you build Magery. To do this you will want to visit The Chamber of Virtue (located at 1556, 1613, 10) within Britain city limits. There you will find an altar where you can sacrifice your mana, this will allow you to raise your Meditation skill to 40%. The reason why it is advisable to train this before Magery is that, as you train Magery, you will inevitably gain Meditation as you will use Meditation when you run low on mana to increase your mana regeneration.
Training Magery:
Below is a small guide to training your Magery to 65%. This skill is required to join the Necromancer class. Should you find yourself failing more often than not when transitioning to a new spell, you may want to cast the previous spell for a couple percent until you can reliably cast the next spell.
20-30 : 1st Circle (Magic Arrow)
30-40 : 2nd Circle (Any Spell in this Circle will do)
40-50 : 3rd Circle (Poison)
50-60 : 4th Circle (Lightning)
60-65 : 5th Circle (Paralyze)
Training Spirit Speak:
Spirit Speak is, as mentioned before a slow skill to train. There are two reasons for this, one is because it is just naturally a slow skill to train and second because there is a two minute wait time before you can reuse the skill again, though there is a caveat here which will be explored in a little more detail. Below are the two ways to build Spirit Speak, the second being the quicker way but can be troublesome if you are unable to find help. Spirit Speak is the skill that allows you to cast your Necromancy spells, so this is a required skill to train for any Necromancer.
- Set up a macro within the Options menu located on your character’s paper doll, set it up to use Spirit Speak and using UOLoop, set UOLoop to use the key bind you set to your Spirit Speak macro and set the duration to 120000 which is equal to 2 minutes in milliseconds.
- Find another player who has enough Healing skill to resurrect a target with bandages (and hopefully also needs extra Healing training), place any items not newbified (including equipped items and inventory items alike) in your bank, head to a secluded area where there are no guards around and:
- Use the Spirit Speak skill
- Have the other player kill you
- Enter war mode as a ghost
- Wait to be resurrected by the other player
- Repeat steps 2 through 5 until you reach your desired skill.
- It is important to not mark your training partner as a murderer when he kills you, this can be quite bothersome but most players do not find it very amusing and you’ll make enemies fairly quickly if you do so. Also if you are in a guild and can find someone in your guild to train Spirit Speak with, this works best as you can be within city limits and not have to worry about not marking your training partner with a murder count.
A Few More Important Things to Know
- To be able to cast any Necromancy spell, you not only need to meet the skill requirement with your Spirit Speak skill but also need to have a Lich Staff equipped.
- Casting Greater Chants from the Codex Damnorum also requires Magery, so it is imperative that you also train Magery to 100%
- Codex Damnorums and Necromancy spell scrolls are not craftable, instead they are found through loot and in terms of Necromancy scrolls can also be obtained from specific points around the world if you use the Spirit Speak skill within a graveyard. These locations are generally guarded secrets so you will either have to travel the world and find them yourself or find another Necromancer who is willing to share these secrets with you.
- When playing a Necromancer, you may find that other players roleplay as if your Necromancer character is evil, do not feel constrained to this. One does not need to conform to the usual story of Necromancers being evil on Pangaea, here you have the ability to create your own story and let your in game actions and roleplay speak for themselves.
- Mana Stones allow a Necromancer to transfer magical properties from another staff with magical properties to their Lich Staff, this is quite useful as this is currently the only way a Lich Staff can have any magical properties.
Any Other Important Skills I Ought to Know About?
There are of course other skills you ought not forget about when training. Evaluating Intelligence though only a penalty skill will increase the potency of your Magery spells slightly. Mace Fighting and Tactics will allow you to do sufficient amount of damage with a Lich Staff. Camping can be a useful skill should you be out hunting and want to regenerate mana and health a bit quicker.
Guide created by Ocerish Mordoch
