Albeleo's Necro Guide

Albeleo's Guide to Raising and Powerplaying Necromancers

(with apologies to Lanstro/Dafeon for the gratuitous thievery of his guide formats!)

Introduction

Necromancers on Ancient Anguish are a nearly mythical class. Long regarded as one of the most powerful classes (if not THE most powerful class), necros also have a reputation for being one of the most incredibly difficult to play. Both reputations are well deserved. A high level necromancer + undead pet can take down just about any NPC in the entire game solo, and do with with brutal efficiency. However, in seeking out the power this class has to offer, many players often grow frustrated and find the process of raising a necromancer nearly impossible. They raise a few levels, have crap weapon skills, wander around with skeletons of bats, have no money, etc.

The purpose of this guide is to give players a helping hand towards managing the basic mechanics of the necromancer class with an eye towards powerleveling a new necromancer from level 1 to level 19. Following the tips in this guide, a player should be able to adjust to the somewhat unusual playing style required to properly play a necromancer, reach level 19 far faster than is even possible with any other class, and get there with a sufficient bankroll to do pretty much anything you want.

A few caveats to this guide

• This guide assumes that the new necromancer will receive absolutely no outside help from anyone. No one will get corpses for you, no one will give you money, no one will give you eq, etc. Everything you get, you'll kill for and/or otherwise earn yourself. Obviously, there is nothing prohibiting you from actually accepting outside help (in fact, it's greatly encouraged!), but I want to make clear that it is completely possible to do it all yourself. This guide would be meaningless if step one was "get 100,000 coins from someone and have them kill Yosra for you every time you login."

• Necromancers are a highly advanced class. If you want to be successful with a necromancer, perhaps more than any other class you have to already have a solid working knowledge of the layout of Ancient Anguish, where to go to find appropriate kills for your level, how to get there on your own, and the general alignment of the NPCs in that area. If you're brand new to Ancient Anguish, pick another class. If you made it to level 19 killing nothing but orcs in Dalair and around the Scythe Camp, this isn't going to end well for you. Playing as a necromancer will greatly improve your working knowledge of Ancient Anguish, but it won't make it magically appear. Figure out the MUD first, then come back later.

• This guide is written by a powerplayer with an eye towards powerplaying. If your goal is to use Ancient Anguish as a chatmud...you're not going to find much in here that is useful. If you want to raise a necro who doesn't hit level 19 until your character's age is 2 years, then this guide will not be of much assistance. If you want to see the possibilities that exist in the necromancer class for making things dead quickly and earning gobs of experience in a short amount of time, then keep reading.

• While I expect to go into a fair amount of detail, do not expect a complete hand-holding. I'm not giving directions to kills or areas, and there will be no step-by-step instructions for how to get particular pieces of equipment. This isn't "from x, go 16w, 4n, 2e, kill orc sentry, 2e, kill orc captain/lieutenant and keep their gloves/boots, then go back 4w and sell excess equipment...". It's gonna be "get gloves/boots from Dalair." If that's not clear enough for you, tough. My goal is to help YOU play, not to play for you.

• I have previously been a wizard on AA, but I have never reviewed the code for necromancers. There is no secret wizinfo in this guide; everything you will read is the sum total of my experiences as a mortal on Ancient Anguish over the last 10-15 years (off and on).

• I do not claim to be the official, end-all be-all authority on the necromancer class. If you disagree with something I've said in this guide and have found a better way that works for you, then feel free to keep doing what you're doing. That being said, I've done a crapload of testing, and I can tell you with certainty that my way does work.

• Don't expect this guide to turn you into Lunger or Sinister overnight. My way of raising a new necro isn't going to get you to #1 on the lifetime efficiency list, and you can't expect to be consistently pulling 400k/hr experience when you hit level 19. There are some crazy things you can do with a necromancer, like raising your painfully slow exotic skill to use orbs. That kind of off the wall stuff is way outside the scope of this guide. This guide will get you familiar with the necromancer class and give you a brief introduction to powerplaying. The rest is up to you and how far you want to expand your abilities.

• At the time of the posting of this guide, I have not played AA for nearly a year, and I do not presently expect to return to playing. It is therefore possible that this guide may contain some outdated information. Of course, given the snail's pace at which necros actually get changed in AA...that's probably unlikely.

Necro Rituals

It's no secret: necromancers have extremely limited physical combat abilities. They don't have a ton of strength or dex, they skill slower with weapons than any other class, and about the only weapons they use well are knives and staves. Eventually, with max stats and high staff skill, you can do some real serious damage with your staff. For much of your necro's life, though, the bulk of your ability to make things dead will come from your rituals.

Necros don't have study hours like mages do, and there's nobody around to teach you anything. Your new rituals simply become automagically available to you as you increase your stats. The stats that control your rituals are intelligence and wisdom. Add those two stats together, and that if that number is high enough you'll get a new ritual. Many of these rituals also require you to have the right "component" available to you in your inventory to cast them; each of the components can be purchased from the alchemist 1w of the necromancer hall. Here's a list of rituals, the int+wis they become available to you, and the components you'll need for each.

Int+Wis	Ritual name	Sps cost	Component
2	Detect Good	5	none
2	Skeleton	50	vial of unholy water + corpse
2	Nettle	5	none
3	Summon	20	none
3	Will o'Wisp	10	glowing phial + corpse
4	Lifedrain	Variable	dirt from a fresh grave
5	Renewal	Variable	vial of unholy water
6	Zombie	66	waxen doll + corpse
6	Preserve	25	flask of oily salve
7	Chill Touch	Variable	some ice
8	Hold Undead	10	none
9	Warts	78	none
10	Shade	82	black silk square + corpse
11	Feign Death	30	none
12	Lifesteal	Variable	dirt from a fresh grave
14	Pox	98	none
15	Weakness	102	none
16	Mummy	106	mummy wrapping + corpse
17	Darkness	10	none
18	Disease	114	none
20	Fetch	122	darkly clouded mirror + humanoid corpse
21	Empower	15	none
22	Rot	Variable	dried worms from a hanged man's corpse
24	Insect Plague	138	small scarab
26	Mindkiller	146	none
28	Revenant	154	runed breastplate + fresh humanoid corpse
30	Pestilence	162	none
32	Lich	170	steel crown + fresh humanoid corpse
32	Doom	170	yellow sign

Rituals in detail

Intro

UTTERLY USELESS RITUALS

All the disease/bug rituals (nettle, warts, pox, weakness, disease, insect plague, and pestilence) are more or less worthless. Insect plague has some application in PK, but not in regular play.

Mindkiller also may work in PK, but it's useless against NPCs.

Hold undead temporarily stops undead opponents from attacking you. Then they'll start again. Whee! If you're really in trouble in a fight with an undead...perhaps LEAVING THE ROOM would be a better idea than trying to cast this?

Feign death...see above.

Darkness makes the room dark. If you're wondering why that would benefit anyone, ever...so are the rest of us.

Will o' Wisp creates an undead pet! One that does nothing for you other than...provide a light source? You need a glowing phial (25 coins) and a corpse. If you really need a light that badly at low levels...drop 50 coins and buy a friggin' torch from the store in Hobbitat. At high levels, you don't need it because your wand glows when you're controlling an undead pet, providing you with light. You wand won't provide enough light for you in REALLY dark places, so you might want to carry around a fire gem or holy gem as backup. But don't waste your time on this one.

Misc

Detect Good

You start with this one. Prepare it, then wave your wand in a room with NPCs. If they are nice or better, you'll get a message about them "glowing." The brighter the glow, the higher the NPC's alignment. If you're not to sure about the alignment of various NPCs, and they're not listed on AA for Dummies, this will help. Not much use for the high level necro, but potentially helpful early on if you're not used to having to track your alignment.

Rating: 2/5.

Empower

Empower takes away 15 sps. Then, it coverts hps -> sps, taking away as many hps as are necessary to max out your sps. This is a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, you get a nice refill of your sps to continue using other rituals, and proper use of empower makes necromancers one of the most efficient classes in terms of using both your hps and sps to your advanage. On the other hand, you have absolutely no control over how many hps you transfer. Empower will take as many hps as it can, every single time, to either max out your sps or completely drain your hps down to 1. Needless to say, that can be quite dangerous.

Empower has two main uses. First, when you kill for a corpse to animate, when you're done you can empower to quickly get your sps back so you'll be able to animate. Empower, take a few heals if you're short a few sps, animate, and you're ready to go. Given that the final two undead (revenant and lich) both require a "fresh" corpse (e.g. not "somewhat decayed" or balmed), time is of the essence.

The other use is during combat. Toss out a ritual or two, empower to shoot over some hps and max your sps back out, toss a few more rituals. There is some dispute as to how smart this strategy is, given the complete lack of control you have over the spell. Empower down to low hps and you might trigger a wimpy (if you have one set, that is). Empower down to 1 hp and have the NPC you're fighting pick that particular round to switch to you...and say hello to Lars. That's exactly how I earned my first death as Albeleo down in Drak.

My personal take: I empower in battle CONSTANTLY. Next to rot, this is probably the ritual I use the most. If I have high hps and mid-ish sps, I empower to keep throwing rituals and save on pots. When my hps/sps even out a bit, I eat or drink. Then I might empower again and keep rotting. My wimpy is set at zero, and if I accidentally empower down too low I'll quickly eat/drink or lifesteal if I can. Others have advocated tanking for your undead for a couple of rounds; I think that's a total waste of hps. Empowering is much more efficient. Yes, it's also more dangerous, but you have to find a balance that works for you.

Rating: 5/5, I LOVE this ritual.

Combat

Lifedrain

The weaker of the two "vampire" spells. You drop some sps, take hps away from your enemy, and some of those hps come back to you! To an extent, you could say that this is like empower in reverse (you're transfering sps -> hps), and getting in some damage to boot. Two limitations: it has no effect on undead NPCs, and if your opponent is super low on hps it will again have no effect. This means that while you can use lifedrain to damage your opponent, you cannot use it to finish them off. I don't generally use lifedrain that often, because by the time I start seriously getting into combat I already have lifesteal. But, if you're itching to fight and you haven't unlocked lifesteal, lifedrain will be your best friend.

Rating: 3/5.

Chill Touch

The first "pure damage" ritual. Grab some ice, wave your wand, watch NPCs get hurt. Early on, the process of getting a corpse will likely involve a lot of lifedrain/lifesteal to get the NPC down to really low hps, and chill touch will come in as your finisher. Other than that...I really don't have a lot of use for chill touch, even early on. The ice you need to prepare it periodically melts as you carry it around (bleh), so you have to use it quickly or you're wasting money. Plus, lifesteal is just an all-around better spell for causing damage and staying alive.

Rating: 2/5.

Lifesteal

Consider this "lifedrain on steroids." It causes more damage and heals you more. Still no effect on undead NPCs and NPCs with virtually no hps left. Lifesteal power increases as you level up, as does the number of sps required to use it. Bonus: lifestealing is considered an "evil act", so using this ritual decreases your alignment. Useful from the very second you get it all the way through to the absolute highest levels.

Rating: 5/5, you'd better carry around a few graveyards full of dirt.

Rot

Prepare rot. Wave wand at opponent. Worms squirm. NPCs get hurt. BADLY. Rots can be cast every round and they never miss. Damage is determined based on your int+wis, then when you get to level 19 rot damage increases again for each new level you gain. Oh, and did I mention that rotting is an "evil act" that lowers your alignment? It has exactly one limitation: like lifesteal, it has no effect on undead NPCs (notice a trend here?).

Rating: 1 billion/5. ROTROTROTROTROTROTROT!

Undead pets

Skeleton

Buy a glowing phial, make something deadlike, and get yourself a skeleton. They're incredibly weak, and at the time you get them you'll have no rituals available to heal them or renew their life force. Considering you can do the Balan beast miniquest + one round of CX and have more than enough int+wis to get zombie...I really can't imagine why anyone would bother raising a skeleton.

Rating: 0/5.

Zombie

The next undead pet, their big selling point is "they're not skeletons." Certainly more useful than skeleton, but quite frankly you don't really have a compelling need to have a pet at the really early levels.

Rating: 1/5.

Shade

Better than zombie, but shades can't carry anything. If you're desperate for a basher, raise yourself a shade.

Rating: 2/5.

Mummy

Depending on your race, if you're maxing int/wis at every level you should get access to mummy somewhere in the level 5-7 range. Mummies are the first fairly solid undeads; they can wear armour and wield weapons, but they cannot block with a shield (so don't bother giving them one, it won't help). Spend a bit of time to kill for a corpse above your level, mummy it, and deck it out. Once you get access to mummy, your game play should begin morphing into the true necromancer combat experience: you, running around the MUD commanding your undead pet, it attacking your enemies for extra damage and you tossing out rituals.

Rating: 3/5.

Fetch

The first of the "Big 3" undead, the fetch is a highly respectable tank. They wear armour, wield weapons, and they use shields. Fetches cause respectable damage to your enemies and soak it up very, very well. You need a darkly clouded mirror and a humanoid corpse (no baby dragon fetches). While "help fetch" says you need a fresh corpse to make a fetch, you can actually make one just fine from a balmed corpse. This is immensely helpful, because high level players in various guilds will occassionally kill big 9k+ NPCs and drop the balmed corpses somewhere around their guildhalls. It also means that if you're trying to fetch before you have access to empower, you can carry some balm with you, balm the corpse after the kill, and then you have more time to regen your sps so you can animate your fetch.

Rating: 4/5.

Revenant

Revenants wield weapons and use defend parry, but they cannot wear any armour at all. From there...oh, where to begin? If you peruse around the necro board, you'll probably read stories about these awesome dual-wielding, parrying revenants with their dual arrows causing massive damage. These revenants certainly sound awesome, right?

Wrong. Dual arrows was a bug that got fixed. Old revenants dual wielding was nerfed when the two weapon skill came in. New revenant dual wielding was OK for a time, at least until revenant two weapon skill was reduced to zero. Revanant AC was then further downgraded and their ability to parry was raped. Since revenants can't wear any armour at all, that's a bit of a problem. Theryn saw fit to restore some two weapon skill a few years back (rumor has it your rev will get a random value of two weapon skill between 40 and 70), but the damage was already done.

Here's the reality: revenants suck. They cause more physical damage with their attacks than fetches or liches, but it's impossible for them to tank. Put the rev out front and you're gonna be preserving non-stop, which means you're not rotting and you'll have to fly through heals to keep up your sps. Stick the rev behind you and wear armour, and you'll have no room to carry the crapload of heals you'll need to keep yourself alive since you can't soak up damage very efficiently. Pick the way you want to play; neither of them work particularly well.

If you use a rev, almost all your sps will end up going to healing either you or your rev. If you stick with fetch, those sps go to rots. Fetch weapon + your rots will damage NPCs quite a bit more than your revenant will with its weapon. All these downgrades have resulted in an allegedly "high-end" undead that is really nothing of the sort. While you can make exp with a revenant, you'll make a lot more with a fetch or a lich.

Lament the total demise of the revenant. This has now become another completely useless ritual, and it's sad.

Rating: 0/5. *bspit*

Lich

Liches are as great as revenants are bad. They get weapon damage that is only slightly below revenants, cast occasional spells for extra damage, and wear big heavy armour while blocking with a shield. Hands down, liches are the best undead. Get the best fresh humanoid corpse you can find, arm it to the teeth, and prepare for total carnage.

Rating: 5/5.

Pet related

Summon

Find yourself somewhere, and your undead pet is nowhere to be around? Prepare summon, wave wand, and viola! You'll generally find yourself using this when you've taken non-standard exits like climbing ropes, fences, diving underwater, etc.

Rating: 5/5.

Renewal

Unlike rangers' bonded superwolves, your undead followers do not last forever. About every half hour or so, your pet will start telling you its time on this Oerthe is rapidly drawing to a close. If you ignore them too long, they'll collapse into a pile of ashes. If you'd prefer that they stick around for awhile longer (say, so you don't have to continue fighting Yosra all by your lonesome), fire off the ritual of renewal and buy yourself another half hour with them.

Renewals cannot be stacked (e.g. +30 mins each time you use it, so if you fired off 3 in a row you'd have 1 1/2 hours). Instead, using this ritual resets the timer on your undead to the maximum. So, if you just renewed and then you do it again...you really just wasted your sps.

Rating: 5/5.

Preserve

Your undead is damaged. Preserve it to heal it. This + medicinals is the only way to heal your undead...so I'd say it's a pretty useful ritual.

Rating: 5/5.