Necromancer Tips
 

I've started playing some of the new classes and the Necromancer has been giving me problems in the early play. Unlike with the mage, the primary early spell, the Nether Bolt, is only effective against some monsters. The weaponry isn't very good and given that you play better in the dark, it's harder to see monsters at a distance to use archery or distance spell casting.

I'm wondering if anyone has tips for the Necromancer that they would like to share?

I would dearly like to get some tips on this as well. I just got owned by a homunculus I couldn't see creeping up on me in the dark. Necromancers need to be in the dark for spell success, but they're at a disadvantage there? Why does everything in the game have night vision, but the character build dependent on it has to hope that they find early telepathy?

Early game is tough, no doubt about it.

Necromancer gets better and better night vision as the game progresses. All you can do at the beginning is to pick a race that has some infravision. That helps a little. Early +Light-artifacts are gonna make you curse, especially if you play with randarts.

Some evil monsters are true pain for a necromancer. Early minor demons and orc packs take a long time to kill. Large Kobolds also, those take more than a dozen Nether Bolts to kill. Use archery if it is humanly possible. For melee, the best way is to get as heavy early weapon as possible, because you're gonna have just one attack anyway. Resort to wands. You need all the tricks to get past the early game.

Nether Bolt gets pretty damaging once you level up, but it remains a single target spell. Noxious Fumes does a good damage but keep Potions of Neutralize Poisons around, since just a few casts poison yourself for a long time. Getting closer to midgame, Disenchant will become your biggest killer spell and Warg Form will be giving you +2 attacks, which significantly beefs you up.

Homoculi show up to read minds. Worth noting where they are and walking away from so they don't wake up. Curing staves are worth keeping for poison. If you can get the hps/AC to risk being next to bruisers then the combination of skeletons and trolls in a room gives you infinite hps+SPs with the right spells. Most p are suseptible to poison and have low-ish hps.

Perhaps necros need a darkness storm spell/beam spell, but make more monsters resist darkness? Almost none do noe, because there are no spells doing big damage.

angband tips & tricks ;)

Lol, honestly I was a bit bitter 'cause I got a cave floor, and between me and the downstairs was a sabertooth tiger. Fighting it was an exercise in mind-numbing frustration because I got, at most, one round at range to blast it due to it's speed and me having no sight range to save my life. Phase door wasn't landing me near the stairs either, though, so I finally managed to nether bolt the tiger into oblivion after 20+ phase door scrolls, and the homunculi snuck up and para-locked me. I was salty about that last night. :P

I'm sure a necromancer build pays for itself later on, but the initial run is an utter slog. I was doing my best to maintain a wand offense (I realized that was a necessity quite quickly), but the levels just weren't giving me what I needed. Just a tough run with an initially underwhelming class.

A few things to keep in mind is seeing is often better then good fail rates, only the square you are standing on needs to be dark & light wands don't light up the square you are on.

Last time I played one I was selectively lighting/darkening the area. Which was a pain, but better then not being able to see.

That's actually a good idea, but a terrible play style. :P Use wands of light/dark as on/off switches?

There is the argument that you can just blind-fire down hallways (which I did a lot of), but my specific death came in a cave floor. Most characters greatly detest caves, but they're death traps for an early necro who can't see, can't risk lighting things up, can't control monster pathing, can't rely on phase door taking them somewhere safe, and just have piddly damage thanks to a broad range of nether resist. I'll have to see if stacking some infra gear early on helps an early, helpless necro.

Also, as an aside, it'd be nice if monster memory listed partial resists.

I am wondering about the broad range of nether resistance. As I understand nether, it's essentially a 'death element', roughly equivalent to doing necrotic damage in D&D

If that's the case, I'm not sure why general 'evil' monsters should resist it; orcs etc should still be vulnerable to necrotic damage. Maybe it needs to be restricted to undead being resistant?

At the moment it feels like it's positioned to be the opposite of Orb for priests; but that does damage across the board and extra to evil (and is a ball) so is far far more powerful and useful, even if it comes at a later level