Good leveling guide for Necromancer

[GrungeBro]

yes im looking for a good necromancer build guide please and thanks

[Handoiron]

Same as any class really -- use caster DPS merc set to AE burn and follow hero's journey achievements into the 50s.

In the 50s, your caster DPS merc starts having issues staying alive without heals so (if you aren't a class that can reliably heal it) go with a healer merc and do all the damage yourself.

Continue to follow the hero's journey achievements if you're into that. You may end up skipping some once you hit the 60s because the difficulty for finishing most outstrips the gear rewards until the lvl 70ish rewards for doing buried sea / dragonscale hills achievements. The Seeds of Destruction ones in the 75-80 range are also amazing gear rewards.

Or you can skip the Hero's Journey stuff altogether until the above and just grind in hotzones.

[Leicesismore]

do not use a merc. They will drain half your exp and do very little damage. Any necro will out dps a merc by a factor of 2 at least and up to a factor of 6 or 7. This disparity increases with levels. i.e. if your merc adds about 20% damage to your party then your exp will be about 60% of what it could have been solo. This is due to the way parties divide up exp. A group of two only gives a 2% exp bonus which does not outweigh the 50% share of exp you receive. It is worth noting that perhaps merc will be viable for the first 30 or 40 levels. Those levels fly by so fast these days its not really worth testing.

Necros get the quickest exp by kiting. youtube how to kite with a necro for a visual demonstration.
To find a proper zone use eq.zam website and sort zones by levels. However, the mobs in the zones may summon or the zones themselves may be too small or too overpopulated for kiting. Also mobs may be immune to snare and have the ability to summon. Whenever you test out your first mob have a healer merc up. That way if you get summoned just turn pet taunt on and let the healer save your butt. Then move on to the next zone. If you reply with your level i can suggest a spot to save you time.

[Handoiron]

I'm sorry Leicesismore but you're quite wrong.

Caster DPS merc set to AE burn will definitely out damage and out tank any character up to 50 or so.

While some caster classes might be able to burn higher spikes, mercenaries have a much higher regen rate for health and mana than PCs do so, while a PC is sitting to regain mana after dumping damage or health after getting damaged, a DPS merc is already full health / mana and killing more.

While kiting is a viable option for necro, it only works where you have room to kite. It also loses viability when fighting higher level enemies that come in groups and jjust have too much health to kite down before necro goes out of mana. DPS merc set to AE burn works everywhere.

While you are right that XP is split between group members (including mercenaries), the gain outweighs the split. You'll kill more than twice as many enemies moolo with a caster DPS mercenary than you will solo. You'll also be able to kill higher level enemies more consistently which nets even more XP.

That's the very basis of the group XP bonus / split after all. You get less per kill than you would solo but you're killing more and more difficult enemies with a bonus thrown on top so you gain more XP in the same time. Otherwise there would be almost no benefit to grouping.


Suggesting zones based purely on the ability to kite there is really an outdated idea. As a new player, the gearing benefits from running hero's journey achievement quests is incredible. Even if your main goal is leveling as fast as possible and ignoring the hero's journey rewards, hotzones with their XP bonus are the fastest method.


My suggestion still stands. Use a caster DPS merc set to burn / AE burn up to the 50s where mobs start doing too much damage for it to tank. If you're a class with some healing capability, you can extend that a bit. This is the same level range where you'll need a healer merc to tank yourself.

When your DPS merc stops being viable as a tank, you can switch to a healer merc and do all the damage yourself or, if you're a class that can kite, you can set DPS merc to balanced instead of burn and still get some use out of it. Kiting will limit your possible areas to fight though.