Is The Necromancer OP?

[Gaby The Red]

I just played a necromancer lich, and it's been extremely easy to get anywhere. I can literally wipe a whole town in a single go because the zombies are that strong.
Maybe nerf their health and resistance a bit?
Also, i can just make more zombies, *with the same stats*, by killing random forest animals. I believe different corpse types should give different zombies, both for balance and player engagement.

[Artur Smiarowski]

I've been receiving mixed feedback about zombies so far. :)
I'm thinking about what to do with them and as of now I'm pretty set on adding an attack command to make it easier to control them and I would like to keep the unlimited number of zombies, which would be extremely difficult to balance if we had different zombies for different types of corpses. I'm thinking zombie dragons for example.

Always open to suggestions though, and necromancers have a special place in my heart, so keep them coming. :)

[Zartanyen]

Started withNecro and can be annoying with them wandering off everywhere but by you. Do you get xp for their kills?

[Artur Smiarowski]

Originally posted by Zartanyen:

Do you get xp for their kills?

Yes

[Monkofmimmir]

This isn't a multiplayer game so imo different classes being easier or harder isn't an issue.

If you are worried about it you could either have ways for other classes to also get minions/armies or unique threats that make necromancers harder to play.

[Sombra]

I have the same felling with the Necromancer. The idea of Rider in Red feels good. Like summoning a zombie have a third of the life and damage of the original dead. In this way the summoned zombis from powerfull villagers will be stronger than the ones of a rabbit for example.

[The Quiet Guy]

or just make zombies only summonable from humanoid corpses.

[Gunman]

so i started with a necromancer lich and yes its prob abit easy but ur hearding cats.
i think it always will be an easy start but you could make it so the villagers freak out abit more and try to organize a restistance, and some might escape to warn other places.
it would be good to have more control. say you had to modes one stay tight like now and one that releases the zombies over an area, and when you swithc it back again the zombies return to you and gather up.and the attack command could be basicly run forwards a compass direction for a while and attack anything you see.
Would be nice to have an ability to always see where your zombies are, this would be a free ability because it would be a nice thing to have kind of ability and not something most people would actually pay for.

Abit weird that lich dont have nightvision but ok, would be nice to have some thermal vision to detect living beings.
overall although necro is easy i would expect some massive boss battles with army vs army type of situation late game. it should be the extreme "low stealth horde" of the spectrum arcetype next to the low stealth giant boss monster arcetype. on the complete other side there should be something like a high stealth solo like a vampire, and high stealth manipulator, instead of zombies you manipulate the peasants to fight eachoder.

[PoorUglyPeasant]

Necromancer liches are OP in the sense they can have an entire army, the midgame or endgame might feel easy, but starting as a lich is quite hard because you don't have your army, I do would like to see different zombies for each corpse, with like half the strength or less than their living counterpart, the start game for liches is actually quite hard because you have to build your army, the endgame might be too easy if we don't get specific enemies that can deal with undead and AoE the zombie army.

Necromancer liches is something that I personally like a lot too, I used to modify my rimworld with a magic mod and play as a lich with some death knights, it was fun af.

[CatCatCatCatCat!!!!]

its a single player game so im not too concerned, but it would be nice to have some variety

[SpectatorBehold]

Haven't tried all the classes and races yet, but... From what I can see, the necromancer indeed does seem have it the easiest out of the bunch, but that could change. For example, a zombie raised from an animal is just as strong as a zombie from a human, but if that is no longer the case, it's a bit of a less impressive ability... Though just being able to swarm the human settlements with weak zombies would still save the player a great deal of trouble, compared to the other classes and races who must go in solo...

Which also leads me to ask, is the necromancer the only class/race who will have access to minions? No vampiric minions or mind-controlled thralls for the vampire? No summoned demons for the demon? No Control/Dominate Animal or Tame Animal for the poacher? No summoning of, uh, some equivalent of a shoggoth or the like for the Cultist? Could be fun to see a bit more in the minions department, anyway, and make the beginning a bit easier, because from what I see, it's all too easy for our lone baddie to get killed. The Necromancer shows that minion or minions clearly help out there, even if only as distractions that makes it possible for our baddie to escape and lick his wounds while the mob focuses on said minion/minions...

[Artur Smiarowski]

Poachers can summon wolves, necromancers have 3 summons, gods coming to 0.6 will give access to additional summons after defeating them. Don't worry about Necromancers being too strong by looking at the demo, it's a very limited world. In the alpha, it's much harder to keep big numbers due to stronger enemies, and the zombies don't scale as it's only a level 1 ability. I have some plans to make them more useful later on though. Necromancer is the main summoner profession, however, so it's unlikely that other professions will get more summons.

Due to how leveling is constructed, all professions may have access to necromancer abilities randomly, so 2 summons and 2 abilities that give control of the enemies for a limited duration are up for grabs if someone would like to make a hybrid character.

[SetUpATent]

I recommend the necromancer to new players; it is by far the best class to do an intro into mechanics mission. The snowball is too powerful. Therefore I propose a solution. A decay effect on the thralls would balance it out. 1-2 days until death(unless otherwise damaged).

[pgames-food]

hi, maybe if the human created zombies, have less randomness, and the animal created ones (have more randomness) that could be interesting to see :)

(almost as though the human ones can somehow listen and understand your commands, but the animal zombies cant much) :)

[niddhoger]

I'd definitely like to see zombies scale based on enemy strength. They can start out weaker, with small zombie animals being near-worthless except as fodder.

As for starting out... you have bones in your inventory you can drop to summon a full zombie with. In the demo, at least, you are surrounded by 4 corpses you can raise. So just like that, I started with 5 zombies.

It was... rather boring though, as I couldn't command my zeds to attack anything. The ability to mark targets would definitely be huge plus.

Perhaps... we can also gain other abilities to buff zombies? Like every so many character levels, the necromancer automatically summons a stronger version of the zombie. Or perhaps the necromancer can sacrifice a few zombies to combine them into a stronger version. Early on, you overrun villages of weak peasants with basic zeds. Then you can start flesh-crafting zombies of higher tier.. your shambling abominations, zombie giants, franken-Chads... w/e you want to call them.

That said, the necro does feel very strong. Especially sense you can carry around a stack of bones to summon more zombies as needed.

Oh! There could be an "unholy heal" ability that lets the necro sacrifice some of their life force to heal nearby zombies.

It's just if Necro is going to be the shambling army class, we definitely need better ways to interact with or control the mindless horde. That said, teh class is already very strong.. so balance shouldn't go too overboard giving them extra flavor/strength.

[Artur Smiarowski]

Originally posted by niddhoger:

As for starting out... you have bones in your inventory you can drop to summon a full zombie with. In the demo, at least, you are surrounded by 4 corpses you can raise. So just like that, I started with 5 zombies.

The start with 4 corpses is essentially ideal for Necromancers, but one of many. :)

It was... rather boring though, as I couldn't command my zeds to attack anything. The ability to mark targets would definitely be huge plus.

There's a command ability in the alpha version, so it's coming in the next update.

Perhaps... we can also gain other abilities to buff zombies? Like every so many character levels, the necromancer automatically summons a stronger version of the zombie. Or perhaps the necromancer can sacrifice a few zombies to combine them into a stronger version. Early on, you overrun villages of weak peasants with basic zeds. Then you can start flesh-crafting zombies of higher tier.. your shambling abominations, zombie giants, franken-Chads... w/e you want to call them. [...]

Zombies and later on skeletons are tough to get right, but I plan to give Necromancers some love. One thing that I definitely want to keep is no restriction on the number of summons, which also means permanent summons will never be strong. They are meant to be disposable. So far I like the idea to have some extra abilities that either combine multiple zombies into bigger "bodies" and abilities that sync with summons like maybe the corpse explosion working on zombies.

Also, early game balance is a little different for Necro with the full world, the demo is pretty safe because of the size and weak enemies included.