Necronomiconomics Builds.

Hey.

So I haven't played Dredmor for a while, and now I'm trying to jump back in. So my question would be - What are viable builds with Necronomiconomics?

Let's say for either normal or hardest difficulty, with permadeath, of course.

 

Necro is probably the most versatile magic skill. You can pretty much make a viable caster or hybrid character without any trouble. You really should mess around with using it on a non permadeath char before trying permadeath cause you will kill yourself with it if you are new to using it.If you knew what you were doing you could probably make it through the entire game with only necro.

 

Well, any tips are very welcome.

 

What kind of character?? Like a mage character who casts 90% of the time? melee 90% the time? Hybrid 50/50? Your inquiry is way too open ended.

 

I'd prefer a mage character. All my previous ones were melee.

 

Well, most difficulty for a caster will be getting to level 2 or 3 on permadeath/hard . And you might want to mix it up in melee until later on, as necro's most efficient early damage spell is pact which will require you to melee. And you won't be killing zombies with nightmare. It's not unusal for my necro-based characters to be dual wielding two very un-mage-like weapons by level 2. Tte seconday damage sources on weapons are not reduced by lack of proficiency penalty. So if you find good secondary damage weapons --> spears, daggers, some maces, magic damage weapons etc. they can do pretty do pretty good damage without any melee based skills.

When you start out, you will wanna abuse any dity trick you can just to get to level 2. This means things like running in to brax's shop to use his weapons, finding reusable gargoyle traps to bring your enemies to and then kill them by making them step on the traps over and over. I'm generally not a fan of burglary for a caster but you could also take that and archaelogoy to make your level 1 life easier -- and shorter. But don't get rid of the gargoyle traps until you at least hit level 2, maybe not even till level 3. You never know when you will need them.

When you are using pact to kill things, try to only use it when you have enough enemies to make it worthwhile, or alternatively don't engage the enemies until you have taken several points of damage. This is so you can suck the life back you gave up. Since you played melee I shouldn't have to explain fighting enemies ssingle file one by one.

After you have 3 points in necro, it's really how you wanna go with your character, You might wanna take alchemy up to 3 for getting dark orbs ASAP. I persoanlly like combining necro with math to give it more late game punch with the zenzen buff.

Early on you might just wanna get whatever decent armor value items you can throw on, and slowly replace them with higher magic power items once you can nuke things from range. Orbs of nothiness are best items you can get. Find them, get them, love em.

Rest should be pretty straightforward. Ebulent wave will be your uber zoo killer, just make sure you cast it max rage away from you. Heh.

 

Alrighty, thanks for that!

I'll go try something out with the tips you gave.

 

Also, bats don't trip gargoyle traps, so often times when I'm at level 2 and only have nightmare, bats are sometiems the best thing to kill with spells and drag the dingles. slimes, etc back to a gargoyle trap to kill. Zombies will be particularly problematic for you before you get pact.

 

On an unrelated topic, is it possible to take off a skill from the spell quick list? Not exchange it into some other spell on the bar, but make that part empty?

 

A mage necro will probably look something like this

Necro, Math, Astrology, Golem, Blood Mage, Magic Training, Alchemy

The goal is to have
Necro/Math/Blood Mage/Magic Training Max
Golem/Alchemy at lv 3
Astrology at base

Somehow survive the first 125 exp (probably through blade golem spam). Start off lv 2 with 1 point on golem, that alone will get you through floor 1 and 2, then you can take your time with the rest.

Alchemy lv 3 provides dark orb, which is what you want until you get orb of nothing.

Not "secondary", but Non Normal (anything not slash/crushing/blasting). So stuff like woodsman's axe will have both damage it's crushing and slashing affected, while a theoretical weapon with only piercing will not be affected.

This also holds for critical/dual wield penalty. Special damage don't get increased/decreased. You can duel wield dirk/bronze dagger with neither weapon skill nor dual wield with almost no penalty.

 

Not that I've found, alas. It's very confusing when you move skills around and can't "clear" the spot they came from.

Another option to dual-wielding melee weapons at low levels would be to take another Spell School that gives you a Pet to hide behind for the first 2/3 Floors - Golemancy and Promethian Magic both give solid Pets for an investment of only a couple of Skill points. Granted this will slow your progression up the Necro tree a bit, but levels come so fast early on it's not too big of a deal IMHO.

 

Would definitely not take golemancy. If you really wanna use walls you can use wands with wand lore. It will also theoretically give you a half decent pet if you want to start with the bone wand. All that and you don't have to spend a single skill point.

 

Wands, even with wand lore, aren't spammable. And the zomby pet is one of the worst in the game, stats-wise. Overall I've been underwhelmed by wand lore

 

The zomby pet does it's job just fine -- it gets you to necro 3 without problem, at which point you don't need a pet anymore. I don't think you understand but you don't need to spam walls. You don't need to spam any wand to be useful for a caster. A healing wand saves you from wasting inventory slots on food. It's a really useful zero investment skill.

 

Walling up a door usually takes at least 3, and that's not happening with wand if you want to do that often. Between recharging coral and zodiac, you already used up those recharge without grind.

No I don't "need" to spam wall, but I "want to" spam wall, it makes me "extra safe".

Between rift and recursive, it's not like you need more offense.

Wand lore is for coral wand, and the occasional zodiac and tentacle only. All the recharge should be focus on the coral to get as much heal as possible. Recharging any other wands mean taking away your healing for 80 turns, and is just not worth it. Bone wand totally sucks but it is enough for floor 1.

If coral wand is anymore spammable than it is now, it will be stupidly OP. 23 hp per 80 turn doesn't sound like a lot, but in practice it's much different. You use it, you charge it, you use it again, and you charge it at the end of combat, that's 46 hp heal without burnout. You got a backup coral you can easily use it twice per recharge, that's a 92 hp burst you can use in almost every battle. How much more healing do you expect from a level 1 skill?

 

You can wall/wall/nightmare the odd portion without a true third wall. The reality is you don't need to go crazy with using walls. If the room is really that difficult, just nuke it with ebulent and be done with it. And between ebulent and recursive, it's not like you need walls at all.

 

Sometimes I need to wall to rift... Like if you got a zoo spawn below you where the camera only let you cast 3 tiles down, you want to maintain that position to cast.

Besides, what is there to replace Golem with that offers more insurance than wall spam? You don't really need wand lore if you already got alchemy, and you need alchemy because you must have dark orb. Unless you want a hybrid that deliberately keep magic power < 20.

 

I don't see your issue. just cast ebulent and teleport out. Who cars if it takes another cast or two of ebulent to clear stuff out? You are the one who is advocating wasting 2 precious skill points and a skill slot for walling. sometimes walling can be useful. Operative word is sometimes, which is why wand lore gets the job done just fine while giving you a free pet if you want it for the hardest portion of your characters life.

 

Blade spam for 125 exp with all your booze/food/radiance aura/everything you pick up is not that bad. Then 1 skill on mustache which is far more stable than zomby. The wall itself can wait til the end. Zomby barely gets you through floor 1 and that's it. It doesn't make reliable decoy because you don't necessarily have a corpse where and when you need it, and you don't need the coral wand/zodiac wand either with alchemy.

Naturally you only need wall spam "sometimes", more specifically the times when you are at risk of dying from bad camera angles. A 18 skill point build is not even that level intensive.

Also, if you look at the bare bone minimum, you don't need necro on a mage either..... It's a whole 6 level tree with lots of conditions/equipment requirements just to kill zoo faster. A golem/math build could consistently beat GR/PD at level 14 with wall spam/recursive. So what one sees as "unnecessary" varies a lot by the style of playing.

 

Now you are rambling and changing the subject. This isn't about the "best build for x, y, z", it's about a good necro-based build. You could probably finish the game even faster with using viking/math/wand than golem/math/whatever, all of which is beside the point. Who cares if zomby isn't that good after the first floor? You don't need him or any other pet.You can keep him around until you get teleport just for speedbump when opening doors to swarms of enemies. Qualifies as a decoy in my book.