Necronomiconomics Builds.

On an unrelated note, I feel that necro math should have some melee skills because that's what you will be doing for at least the first 5 floors, possibly 6. You don't have a reliable DOT until recursive and that's like way late in the game.

And when I said melee skill I don't actually mean weapons, I mean stuff like vamp, assassinate, and wand lore (for coral).

 

Depends on the mode you play. If you are playing PD, I'd say it's not worth it. You want to avoid melee as much as possible after floor3 or so. Too much random nastiness in melee. At least until you also have teleport.

 

Have you try using nightmare since 1.05 though? It's absolutely terrible. Huge mana cost even without considering the negative buffs and you need to cast at least 2 to kill anything.

Sure you can rift large groups, but against just a few monsters, if you don't melee you got nothing.

I don't see that much of a deal with melee anyway, I did a dual sword vamp no spell GR/PD before it wasn't that bad. Only time melee really started to get dangerous is floor 7.

 

FWIW, my random-roll character is halfway to level 5 and still has about a third of level 1 left to go. I've killed one named monster and a single room from level 2 (next room was a zoo...yeah right, at character level 3?), and don't have burglary or archaeology. Experience is not that hard to obtain early on.

 

Seem to have some trouble getting your story straight. was the char level 5 or level 3? You can hit 5 in the first floor, just like you can hit level 10 on the first floor if you are slow as hell.

Try it, play it. You will die on PD. Just because you can melee with a melee based character without too much worry until floor 7 doesn't mean you can do the same with low hit point and no defensive melee skills mage-type character. Counter attack, miss, lightning bolt from boss that just popped up etc. Way, way too dangerous. You don't play PD very often, that's for sure.

 

Wait why are you low defense?

If you just using pact/summon you should be using warrior equips. You only need 8 magic power for 9 leech (4 from vamp 5 from pact). Between vamp/pact/coral wand/warrior equip, and yes golem, I don't see why I would have problem as long as I can dump a mustache each time I drop below 1/2 hp because hell, I was doing the same thing even with astro/alchemy on floor 5.... Which means 4 less leech and I haven't die yet. Mustache draws the aggro and I leech back to full health just like that.

And like, if you can actually get through floor 4-6 with the 1.05 nightmare....... Well good for you. With 2 dark orb you still looking at 7 mana a cast that hardly does any damage. If you want to cast your way down you really need a bridge spell, like psionic.

Any melee who didn't pick smith is pretty much on the same boat, 1 point on vamp, max weapon, and just getting started with a defense skill, relying on whatever it is they picked up.

 

I said no defensive skills.

 

The character was, at the time of writing, almost level 5. At the time he hit that zoo, he was only level 3 (and obviously bailed right back to dungeon level 1). I'll grant I could have written that more clearly but there's no discrepancy. He did end up hitting character level 5 before I went back down and wiped the zoo out.

Dude. Cool it. Attacking peoples' experience with the game is uncalled-for and completely counterproductive. And I'll have you know that defensive skills are not remotely vital to survival. Defensive gear, sure, that's gonna make a big difference. But skills are not must-haves. My first melee winner went unarmed/dual-shields and that was all the defense he needed. Skills are helpful, but their lack can be worked around.

 

Exactly, and you can use every single defense gear you pick up with exceptional leech. Even the low HP tank is made up by pact boost. Mark/Pact is on par, if not better, than MoA or Shield.

And since you can draw aggro away at any time on demand, the only way you can die is from a 1 hit ko, which pretty much never happens except against special (which seeing their stars you should have thrown that pet out to begin with). The only source of damage to fear are spells. But hey, no build is perfectly safe from being nuked to death, except wall spammers.

Besides, with nightmare curse nerfed so hard, you either go melee with pact or not rush necro and choose another bridge skill. (ex. golem lv 5, psionic shove, viking lv 3). Then you need the mana to spam the bridge, then you are ready for math, then you beaten the game..... And never touched necro.

Now if someone actually manage 1.05 nightmare curse their way til recursive on GR/PD (without uber lucks like finding orb of nothing on floor 1 shop) I would be pretty impressed.

 

The reality is the more you melee, the more likely you are to get crapped on by the RNG. Oh I missed, but I still have a good chunk of life, I'll swing again, oh crap crit/counter etc. Oh crap i got a counter well I still have a decent bit of life. Oh ouch that ranged attack really hurt --> miss again, dead,.As i said, it's dumb to do it on PD, perfectly fine if not. You will die. You will waste lots of hours. And when it happens you won't come here and admit it, though, that's for sure.

Additionally, the thread was supposed to be for a necro build on PD played as a caster/mage. I really don't think a "caster" should be meleeing unless forced too after floor 3 or so, then you are talking more hybrid than mage especially the heavy armor route..

 

Like I said, can you get through floor 4 -6 GR/PD with nightmare curse? I can't. And if anyone can pull it off, great, share the experience here.

Otherwise if you want to cast at start then you need a bridge skill. And end up never touching necro at all. Maybe this "caster necro" is just a bad idea in general.

And your example is really take some huge risk for no reason. If you got countered once you should throw down the pet. Get spell bombed you need to pump an inky and escape while the pet is still blocking. If I played as you described I would be dead by floor 3.

 

Sure you can, just make sure you have zen by then. And if you wanna go pure caster, you probably want to shoot for the 2 mana regen orbs if you can get em. Best off skipping zoos for awhile and coming back to them if you want after you have filled out your character more. You can kill them, just too risky imo. Anyway, if you have zen and you stacked magic gear you should be pushing near 15 damage per tick on nightmare. Lasts what? 8 turns? like 120 damage for 5 mana?

 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Level 5 is quite easy to obtain on the 1st Floor assuming you

A) explore every single room,
B) kill everything on the floor,
C) take Burglary for the massive amounts of "bonus" Lockpick'd XP from all locked chests and doors, of which there are a ton,
D) kill respawns on sight, and
E) kill all named mobs from Quests you get.

Now if you're not willing to be extra thorough, or don't take Burglary for some inexplicable reason, then I guess you might not hit Level 5. Personally, even without the benefit of any Trap XP (my 1.0.5 builds don't typically include any Trap Affinity Skills), I typically do not start the 2nd Floor until I'm Level 5 and about 10-40% into Level 6.

 

Don't take one of my quotes out of context. I said he doesn't take arch or burglary in his builds. monsters respawn the slower you kill. It's simply a case of people killing slower.Additionally, it was another red herring. It doesn't matter when you hit level 5, fact is you still need it to have golem/pact, which was the original point which, again, got through red herring one of a dozen in this thread it seems.

 

It seems to me that "talking" to you is pointless because you're one of those people that's always right, no matter what, contrary evidence be damned.

 

It seems you are one of those people who like to quote others out of context and have zero reading comprehension or just don't even bother to read in the first place.

 

Code:

<spell name="Nightmare Curse" type="target" icon="skills/spells/nightmare_curse32.png" wand="1" >
    <requirements mp="13" magPowBonus="0.28" mincost="5" />
    <effect type="damage" necromantic="1" necromanticF="0.15" />

It takes 29 magic power to push it to 5, and then even more magic power to keep it at 5 due to debuff.

That thing does 1 + 0.15*magic power for 8 turns, and another -3 hp for 5 mana + debuffs to self, that's like totally horrible. To put into perspective.

Thaumite does inital 1 + 0.15*magic power, and another 3 + 0.15*magic power for as low as 3 mana, with extra persistence and no debuff.

Arctic does 1 + 0.4*magic power, and 4 mana, no string attached.

Nightmare is easily the worst DOT in the game unless you still count golden ratio as one.

Now if anyone still wants to try anyway, this is how the development will probably look like.

Depending on rather you went Golem or Wand Lore.

(Golem lv 2) -> Necro lv 2 -> Alchemy lv 4 (for starry orb and magic sandals) -> Blood Mage max -> Math max -> (Golem lv 3)

 

Is this another case of you just not playing the game and just posting opinions about stuff in a vacuum of experience? Nightmare does not scale at .15 per magic level. Anyone who used it would know that. that's the INITIAL damage, the DoT damage scales at closer to .4 and doesn't even do necro damage, it does asphyx damage.

 

Code:

  <spell name="Nightmare" type="target" >
    <effect type="damage" asphyxiative="3" asphyxiativeF="0.15" affectsCaster="1" />

You mean this?