Tips for necrobuild?

[Herr Gutentauben]

I want to try out necromancers for the first time. The idea would be the dark culture (shock) with a wizard king but that's just the baseline.

Any specific spells/tomes i should look for for synergy?

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Look for a different game until they unpidgenhole heroes.

[Herr Gutentauben]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Look for a different game until they unpidgenhole heroes.

Pigeon is in my name so i'll stick to AoW4 :)

[MEATSHED]

Tome of summoning is very nice, doomherald gives you a good undead unit that doesn't cost souls. Tome of the horde (for blaze and fury) and beacon (for mighty meek) can be nice because you are probably going to making a lot of tier 1 undead in fights, which is pretty solid with both of those. (I'm assuming you are just taking all the shadow necromancy tomes anyway). The main thing with necromancy is managing your soul economy well so be sure to make soulwells when you can.

[cernodan]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Look for a different game until they unpidgenhole heroes.

Ok, this made me laugh more then it should.

Originally posted by Herr Gutentauben:

I want to try out necromancers for the first time. The idea would be the dark culture (shock) with a wizard king but that's just the baseline.

Any specific spells/tomes i should look for for synergy?

You don't need Dark.

Mystic + Summoning / Tome of Necromancy / Mana Channelers / Runesmiths

Why?
Undead are Magic Origins, so Mystic Summoning is good for them and so are the buffs they get.
Mana Channelers is a good match due to bonuses to Summoning and Magic Origins.
Runesmiths + Shadow Binding (Shadow Empire Tree) will reduce your unit upkeep, because playing Necro is playing with a horde and if you have lots of enchantments, the cost will be rather large. This will help with that.

[Blanch Warren]

If you aren't going Cryomancy, Necrotic magic is for mages.... That means you could consider something like Tome of Evocation....

[Herr Gutentauben]

Originally posted by cernodan:

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Look for a different game until they unpidgenhole heroes.

Ok, this made me laugh more then it should.

Originally posted by Herr Gutentauben:

I want to try out necromancers for the first time. The idea would be the dark culture (shock) with a wizard king but that's just the baseline.

Any specific spells/tomes i should look for for synergy?

You don't need Dark.

Mystic + Summoning / Tome of Necromancy / Mana Channelers / Runesmiths

Why?
Undead are Magic Origins, so Mystic Summoning is good for them and so are the buffs they get.
Mana Channelers is a good match due to bonuses to Summoning and Magic Origins.
Runesmiths + Shadow Binding (Shadow Empire Tree) will reduce your unit upkeep, because playing Necro is playing with a horde and if you have lots of enchantments, the cost will be rather large. This will help with that.

Oh, that could be interesting. I had forgotten about the mystic rework.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Mystic summoning subschool makes for a better necromancry.

That said:

Ruler: Wizard king.

Class: doesnt matter.

Culture: Dark.

Culture traits: Mana channeler and gifted caster/powerfull evokers.
Skinsuit traits: Elfish basic traits of increase range hit chance and magic damage(I forgot the names) replace the far sight one with cold harted as cold harded mixes well with the ruthless trait of the wraithborn.


The way this build works:
Your wizard king has 3 upgrades that increase your max casting points.
Giften castered adds an other 10 and makes offensive spells cheaper to cast.
Powerfull evokers give an extra 10% to spell damage and give you extra casting points per spellcaster unit in your army. And given you be running around with a lot of those it could be a good alternative to gifted casters.
Depending on how focused you are on offensive spells.
Mana channalers reduce your summons(Which undead are) upkeep by 50%.
Add to this shadow affinity reducing summon upkeep by 20% you can have vast armies of undead while paying only 30% of the upkeep.

Tome of necromancy(Duh) for the undead.
Shadow astral work really well togather and boost your summons and undead.

If you go mystic summoning school your summons get healed and buffed every time you cast a spell.
And wizard king can cast a spell every other turn with a single upgrade.

You class doesnt really matter as you first 7-10 points are going into the wizard king.
You want to cast as many spells as often as possible.
Either to heal, debuff or hurt.
Pick a specialization based on if you want to make your troops stronger or be a offensive spellcaster.

You should get all the necromancy tomes.
The none necromancy tomes you should get are the astral tomes that give you summons or healing summons.
Meaby a dip into tome of faith for the healing spell.
Shadow order also works well togather but if you want to go full necromancy shadow is a must.
With either astral or order as your secondery affinity.
Both have spells that work well with undead armies.

As a general rule playing this build require's agressive gameplay.
Most of your army will be raised corpses(skeletons) until you get reapers.
Then you have 1 army of reapers and whatever undead meathshields you raise.
You want as much xp as possible to unlock the extra casting point and being dark your main source of mana and resources are the dead heroes in your crypt.
So kill a lot of heroes.

If you go mystic astral is a must as secondry for the simply fact it has a map wide heal all summons spells.
So many fights i wonder just spamming that.
That is untop of the fact summoning subschool heals and strenghten all your summons per spell.
And remember wizard king can cast 2 spells every other turn....

EDIT:
An other advantage of this build is that all your gold can go to building as you wont be building troops.

[cernodan]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Mana channalers reduce your summons(Which undead are) upkeep by 50%.
Add to this shadow affinity reducing summon upkeep by 20% you can have vast armies of undead while paying only 30% of the upkeep.

Mana Channelers does not reduce upkeep. It's Summoning spell cost to cast .
And Upkeep, can never go below 50%.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by cernodan:

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Mana channalers reduce your summons(Which undead are) upkeep by 50%.
Add to this shadow affinity reducing summon upkeep by 20% you can have vast armies of undead while paying only 30% of the upkeep.

Mana Channelers does not reduce upkeep. It's Summoning spell cost to cast .
And Upkeep, can never go below 50%.

Are you sure?
I could have sworn they did.
Regardless.
Even paying 50% less will help.

[cernodan]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Originally posted by cernodan:

Mana Channelers does not reduce upkeep. It's Summoning spell cost to cast .
And Upkeep, can never go below 50%.

Are you sure?
I could have sworn they did.
Regardless.
Even paying 50% less will help.

Feel free to verify yourself.
And you get 50% reduced upkeep only with Runesmiths and Shadow Binding (Shadow Empire tree), since he's going WK, so no Champion reduced upkeep.
Mana Channelers is mostly for the +1 MO rank and on the fly summoning. I haven't tested, but I don't think it works on Raise Dead post-battle cost.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by cernodan:

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Are you sure?
I could have sworn they did.
Regardless.
Even paying 50% less will help.

Feel free to verify yourself.
And you get 50% reduced upkeep only with Runesmiths and Shadow Binding (Shadow Empire tree), since he's going WK, so no Champion reduced upkeep.
Mana Channelers is mostly for the +1 MO rank and on the fly summoning. I haven't tested, but I don't think it works on Raise Dead post-battle cost.

It seems like your right.
Thanks for the correction.

[Xerberus86]

I usually like to go something like this:

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=48:36:43,2c,2d,5f,56,50,db,ab:a4:9a:9b:99:a2:97:150:95,,s,a,h,n:r

now with the new tome of calamity, because their enchantments and spells sound nice & fitting (freezing & cold damage).

EDIT: I Tried mystic summoning school but it didn't feel right compared to dark culture. the gimmick of upgrading your summons with echoes is great but the culture units and their damage channels don't feel so good as a necromancer.

the dark units can carry the early game until you go into high class undead like banshee, reaper and dark nights.

trying to get warbreed is also an option, they become also undead with wightborn.

i picked tome of warding early because their shield warrior unit is great and also turns undead. also magic wards for negating some of the undead weaknesses.

[OakenWall]

I actually have a good build for necromancy that I played just before this latest DLC update and it was really strong. The build probably stil works.

Eldrich sovereign : Madcaster
Tome of Necromancy

Race : BoneCallers
Goblinoid
Death beetle Mounts
Pack Tactics
Mystic - potential
Mana channelers
Talented Collectors

Tome unlocks is fairly straight forward, dark, astral and some chaos. Note, I did not go for the ice tomes, I picked up the umbral and souls ones instead.

The sovereign have some rituals that makes gathering souls a lot smoother and I like the leader in general. Mystics - potential will give you strong Tier III mages and stronger magic damage and good mana storage to take advantage of your tome unlocks. You will have a lot of units(more armies than I'm used to at least) which get enhanced by pack tactics. Your main damage will come from your mages though, having them mounted helps.

[Balekai]

I don't play necromancers, but I do play summoner astral/order or astral/nature summoner builders which work very similar for what you pick. Much of this has been covered above but here it is:


1. MYSTIC SUMMONER - It's pretty straight forward on Culture. Mystic Summoning Subcultire is S++ tier, optimal summoning Magical Origin Culture.

- Astral Resonance Spell Attunement - Every time you cast a combat spell, you heal ALL allied magical origin in combat 10 temp hp and strengthen them everytime. Cast early good magical origin sustain spells like Arcane Resoration (early mass combat army heal) or Conjure Astral Keeper (combat xsummon healer) to trigger. Or cast undead spells in this case and/or spamming cheap affinity spells you have access to. On my Nature summon builds I spam stuff like healing roots (10 combat casting points) to further sustain/biuff your Magical Origin on the cheap.

- You can't beat T3 Mystic Summoner unit Astral Bond link to Magical origin frontline ( +2 retliation attacks, +30 Accuracy, + 1 stack of Stengthen, free AP, 0 cooldown) and spewing out T1 magical origin units based on affinity of spells cast (in this case Frost and Lightning Spirits), from Spirit Summoning trait. Every 3 turns on summoners will spawn an extra 1.5 stack of T1s as long as you can still cast spells. Your undead horde will be a horde of undead + horde of Frost Spirits.

- Astral connections - For each Magical Origin in combat your Mystic units again +5 Morale. Congrats late game 3 stack armies you always have max morale and crit chance from it due to this one culture trait! :p

- Echo infusion - Being able to upgrade unit ranks of Magical Origin on a whim with endless Arcane Echo resource.


2. RITUALIST LEADER/HEROES - Ascended Deathcaller for 0 AP, 1 turn cooldown raise skeleton. The reason why I would go Ritualist is because it can be built like a T3 Mystic Summoner on crack, with re-summonable T3 elemental spirit, starts with a T2 Bone Wyvern, Leader/Hero's summons have a disease aura (-4 to Resistances, spreads) dramatically upping non physical damage. We will have hordes of undead and elemental units causing this. +10 HP, Astral Bond link like Mystic Summoners above. Swift healing etc.

Make it a Wizard King. All Shadow Signature skills for +2 damage on flanking for the first three siggy ranks +6 total. There will be a lot of flanking going on just because of the massive amount of units. Paragon of Shadow for universal Camo, Slippery (ignore opportunity attacks) and Fleeting (Ignore Zone of Control) to entire Army.

Weapon - You can't start with Necromancer Staff because it's Mage Class. Start with the best starting staff anyways being Staff of Cryomancy to unlock Ritualist class, then just craft the Pantheon Necro Staff from Forge blueprints (like all pantheon weapons can now) for leader/heroes. Or Staffs of Cryomancy which are probably better, because the Necro Staff still only gives one use per battle of Raise Undead. As Ritualist you have Raise undead on a 3 turn cooldown + Ascended Deathcaller + Wyvern + other goodies. Cyro's Freezing Blast magic ability does 14 damage, 90% to freeze, 1 turn cooldown and the staff's attacks also have 30% chance to freeze, unlike necro staff which doesn't have that.

Leader Build at database: https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/HeroBuilder.html?u=Wizard,Ritualist,8:8:135:134:132:df:139:138:133:137:136:131:b:a:9:149:177:142:7,c1:c0:bf:be,19b:81,My%20Build,

Ritual Heroes just a Mortal Champion variant of the above. or Godir copies (more on that below).


3. FACTION BUILD - I will try to keep this short and sweet since this is already too long. Something like this:

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=1a:19:20,25,14a,ec,eb,50,d8,ab:a4:9a:9f:99:a2:aa:97:95:150:83:155:f0,,s,135,h,n:r

Cult of Personality for sure making 3 extra Deathcaller undead Godir for the faction if you want to put that amount of time into it. That will truly make your main 3 stack Army a beast for raising undead. Then whatever you think is best for a second society Trait.

[Toddasaurus Rex]

here's a spicy take, my build for necromancy: High culture

why: when you go fuill evil alignment your units begin combat in an awakened state, this includes undead units of your culture with an appropriate awakening trait, gives em a little more pazzaz.