Any viable (currently) Necronomiconomics build?

Necro is fine if you have means to boost those necro defense. This means either exploiting archeology, or maxing out mana regen to keep 2x Mark of Chthon up indefinitely with an vampire hunter hat. Once you shield yourself from return damage You can Tenebrous Rift and Pact of Fleeting Life all you want.

Nightmare Curse can be gotten as early as level 2. The sleep also works much better than golden ratio up close (golden ratio bug considered), and the mana is way more manageable so long as you don't cast on something standing on a pile of corpses.

 

@Steinernein

I'm not saying Nightmare isn't powerful. It's just that comparatively Golden Ratio blows it away. You get unlimited money, a lower 'cost' when you factor in Nightmare's debuffs and the same 'stun' effect due to the skipping turns bug. The biggest problem with Nightmare is the decrease in magic power debuff. The more you use it on a Zoo the weaker is becomes.

On the other hand, Mark of Cthlon and Pact of Fleeting Life are amazing. If you can keep 2x Mark 1x Pact up you're unstoppable at melee. Even as an unskilled staff user I was 2-shotting monsters on DL6.

 

@J-Factor

You know the magic power debuff only last for 6 turns right? The only time that ever cause a problem is if you cast on something standing on a pile of corpses, which results in a nasty bug that triggers your debuff multiple times.

Otherwise your magic power just fluctuates up and down a few points, but nothing major even against a zoo.

 

According to the wiki the "Curse of the Mind" debuff lasts for 13 turns and reduces Sagacity by 1 and Magic Power by 2. Assuming you cast one Nightmare per turn you would be down 13 * 2.5 = 32.5 magic power constantly. This isn't taking into account the Max Mana decrease which often left me in the single digits until I spent a few turns recovering.

Are my sums wrong here? Even if it was 6 turns it'd be a loss of 15 magic power. Nightmare is definitely usable, I just had to abuse Unliving Wall more than I had to when I used Golden Ratio (at least during the early-game).

 

I've tried to run a lot of single tree mages in GR+P, and the two biggest problems I ever had in all of my many attempts to survive with a Necronomiconiomics mage were...

1) Massive reliance upon RNG to deliver you Necrotic Resistance/Mana Regen unless you took Archaeology and spent a lot of time rerolling or only used Nightmare Curse. Worse dependence on it than even the crafting skills.

2) In the early game, enemy respawn rate is actually higher than your regeneration rate. You cannot maintain any kind of consistent offensive without constantly resorting to an alternative like happy dancing/wand lore/some kind of melee.

 

@J-Factor

Right it is 13 turns. I felt stupid now since I literally wrote the majority of the Necro page on wiki...... Soul Price was the one that's 6 turns.

@Incendax

I took ley walker, smith (for 2x The Mana Torus), and bloodmage on one run to guarantee 8 mana regen without Archaeology or Orb. The material for the rings are fairly common so the only RNG I had to deal with is getting a Vampire Hunter Hat, which I have seen in every run so far. But then again it is a Necro+Dual Staves Hybrid so melee was never a problem.

The next thing I want to try is alchemy and fruit staff, which can keep me drunk indefinitely with a few hundred applejacks and pear brandy. Keeping 2 marks up with that shouldn't be a problem.

Edit: Lol just finish floor 2 zoo with melee and a fruit staff. I now have 25015 booze on stack, that's gonna be enough to keep marks up for a while.

I think Necro is really meant for hybrid builds. Mark, Pact, and Nightmare can dominate melee without a single point on your weapon skill.

 

yup i just finished my first play through yesterday with a necro type guy.

I picked

blood magic
necro
sword
math
prom
psionics
astrology

early on it was kinda tough but having the sword skill helped. I maxed out bloodmagic first and built up the others eventually maxing out the prom, necro and math with the other levels spread for the handy stuff like healing crystals and the sort. Never did a whole lot with the sword tree.

all my gear was geared towards magic and towards the end i was using nightmare curse as my main attack and mixed in a fire ball or a little sword action as needed.

Tenebrous Rift was amazing at cleaning out monster zoos and the healing crystals set up before usage a few steps away worked great for quickly healing the damage caused by the spell.

the thing that surprised me was when i finally met dredmore on the tenth level i cast nightmare on him followed by the recursive curse and i walked like 6 blocks away thinking i'd line myself up and unload a bunch of fire balls on him. Suddenly he was dead and my dude was flexing and I was like

"wut wut wut" i've read others saying that a good mage can tear through the game and I'm thinking they were correct as dredmore went down like nothing and didn't even hurt me.

 

Just beat GR with Necro again. This time with Alchemy to remove the random element.

Staves
Dual Wield
Necronomiconomic
Alchemy
Vampirism
Magic Training
Blood Mage

1 pt on Vampirism -> Max Alchemy -> Max Necronomiconomic -> Max Blood Mage -> 1 pt on Magic Training.

Drink Blood for floor 1, Rush Alchemy for an early Fruitful Staff, and also Staff of Immaculate Conceptualization + Magic Sandal when you got the ingredients. After floor 2 I had like over 1000 hard liqueor, which I drank all at once and push to over 25000 booze count (enough to last the whole game). From then on 2 mark, pact, syzygy (from Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster), and those high end staves pretty much kills everything melee, and Tenebrous Rift dominates every zoo in 10 seconds flat. Once I found a Vampire Hunter Hat I just skip down to level 9. All those Plums let me have 100 lurkfish from every shine I find.

Just make sure you pick the recipe when you make those booze so they auto stack.

I feel like Alchemy is WAY more broken than Archeology. You get early staves damage, perma booze, infinite gold, infinite lurkfish, large amount of life/mana potions, magic sandals. And it was actually far less grindy than Archeology too.

 

@123stw:

I'd say that's less of a problem with Alchemy and more of a problem with the Fruitful Staff.

The devs have mentioned they're <a href="http://www.gaslampgames.com/forum/discussion/comment/4554#Comment_4554">reducing the high level crafting output</a>. Still seems like you could grind unlimited booze pretty easily.

 

@J-Factor

You can Craft Fruitful Staff with Alchemy. And with such an easy recipe from your starting hefty staff, you are almost guarantee to have 1 by floor 2. So yeah a Fruitful Staff problem is an Alchemy Problem.

Besides the Fruitful Staff isn't that good at all without Alchemy.

 

The point is the only thing making Alchemy 'broken' is the Fruitful staff itself. You wouldn't have infinite booze/gold/lutefisk without it. You could fix that either by removing the crafting recipe or nerfing the staff itself to not give you a guaranteed 9 Brandy per kill.

 

@J-Factor

Personally I think the 1 liquor -> 3 hard liquor is just silly. As long as 1 liquor only convert to 1 hard liquor, then each Staff kill will only give an average of 2 brooze (3 for apples and pears, 0 for plums).

You are right though, if you remove the Fruitful Staff completely, then Alchemy will be totally lame for 4 skill points.