Opening necrotizing research/beginner spell on a Reaver culture can make the soul well and the two two mana upgrades a great alternative to production/draft that would be focused for early game Spanish Inquisition build. Because who expects High cultured Armies of Paladin’s remains and undead cleric backlines declaring war by turn 10.
Only downside is the AI sometimes casting the Reaver damage spell instead of Necrotize which *will* sometimes happen. I don't know the weightings, so you'll need to observe for yourself, but I fear the reaper (this time the double stun bug).
Important aside: mention that console has the new Hero system meaning a reinstall is due for those that that haven’t played in in a while. I know you are a PC player, but the PS5 version really is a treat to play, especially given the fun of watching auto-battles. --- Good Necromancer story: good paladins/clerics/mages dedicating their life and ::checks notes:: body means the life and body are seperate promises. Meaning the Paladins have offered their skeletons for use in the army after falling.
@@bobroberts2581 Yeah! Flavor. Sure it's a *little* spooky on the front side, but I think it definitely makes "sense" if you are willing to get a little creative with the interpretation.
At TOR, this video is 7 hours away from premier. I just want to comment that picking Tier 1 Tome of Necro combos really well with being able to convert to Souls to Thralls as an Eldrich Soverign. In fact, 1 Thrall (= 10 souls) for an Astral Wisp is better value than 15 souls for a skeleton.
@@stevenxu5747 1000%. You don't *need* to do Sovereign on Tome of Necromancy starts, but it makes your life meaningfully easier. Death Knights are pretty legit tho, being able to play with a Bone Wyvern for clearing and *also* generic killing momentum big hero damage stuff is very powerful if you can survive the gauntlet.
Awesome entertaining video. Thanks for the effort. I would like to add that crypt is a great source of knowledge, mana and souls income for necro. So better hold on those dead bodies, apart from the ones you like to reanimate.
Unfortunately the scaling is so low on the crypt that you really should sell the extra corpses unless you are getting *really* deep on a bigger game, as the power bump you get from cashing heroes for gold + equipment is a *lot*. There are some heroes who tend to be easier to abandon in the crypt, like if you are able to find the Bronze Ancient Wonder guarded by 3 Level 1 heroes with limited equipment, but most heroes you aren't planning on reanimating you do kinda want to sell ASAP, crypt or no. Might be a different conversation at +10/+10 per turn, but like Dark's economic "bonus" for hoarding dead heroes, it just vaaaastly misinterprets opportunity cost and snowballing vs nominal late game scaling.
@@wepg Strange, I had hundreds of mana, research and souls coming in each turn from the crypt. Don't know the exact numbers, but around 700 research, 600 mana, and 300 souls.
@mangaranwow2543 Unless you are playing with a mod, every crypt is going to give +2/+2/+1 per dead hero per turn. Compared to the value you can get from selling heroes for 40 gold per level (and getting the items for your active heroes to clear more efficiently), this scaling is waaaaay too low to matter unless you have multiple crypts and are on Crimson Caldera (where you will end up with so many corpses you kinda don't *need* to sell them all for 20k gold).
@@wepg Thanks for your reply. I just noticed what most likely happening in my game. I had probably annexed one or two Haunted halls, which give +2 mana +2 knowledge +1 soul per dead hero in the crypt. Still very necro way to play, gaining power from your dead adversaries.
@mangaranwow2543 Yeah, once you get into the late game you can leverage crypts to supplement your souls, but I promise that in the first 40-50 turns you *really* want to sell as many hero corpses as you can get value out of. Level 1 heroes drop off pretty quickly on value so those tend to be the easiest to leave in your crypt, but *not* selling a level 5 you can't or won't reanimate that you pick up on T34 is pretty rough on your economy *now*, which tends to be meaningfully more important than your economy in 15 turns (as it feeds into your economy in 15 turns very well).
This kinda feels really sad. After listening to this the only conclusion I got for necromancy is "Wightborn heroes and reapers". It sounds like a super late game build
@@wegielek3 It's complicated in that in order to leverage Reapers you absolutely can't just start on Tome of Reapers, and Tome of Souls is quite powerful in a vacuum. Tome of Necromancy is complicated to get value out of, but if you play around with it enough I think you'll find that because it rewards you for doing what you wanna do anyways (kill Free Cities and do good powerful hero stuff) it's definitely playable, but the point of the build guides are to give you ways to use more niche things. Necromancy is definitely a little niche right now and complex, but you *absolutely* can use it.
Do note that if you are not against doing more battles manually, you absolutely can use necromancy from Tier 1, even with the Skellies, against Brutal AI. Sure, it might not be as good as Tome of Cryomancy or Tome of Evocation builds that can flatten 1v7 Brutal AIs with Major Advantage, but it IS good enough to handle normal Brutals, and I assume that majority of playerbase are not going past that level of gameplay tbh.
@@forwenein2669 You can kinda make anything work in manuals, so if folks really want to use Skeletons that is the recommended format for them. That said, there's so much going on in Necromancy I don't think people should obsess about the very first introduction to using souls. That's like jamming Magic Missile on level 1 mages in Baldur's Gate. Neither particularly powerful nor particularly creative. We can do better.
What do you think of researching multiple tomes that have soul harvest stacking with each other to increase the number of souls you get from kills in battle? Because it seems like necromancy focus really has no passive/SPI unlocks and they feel pretty empty…
@@okonkwojones That would be pretty cool, but overall I think the biggest issue with Necromancy is primarily generic weakness to meta stuff (once Warbreeds, now Pyre Templars) as well as the "I'll just explode your corpse or stand on it" issue. Once those are resolved I think they'll be in a better place, but Skeletons will kinda always just be pure meme nonsense kinda no matter how you slice it. Necromancy does have some nice payoffs right now, it just has a lot of weaknesses too, so if you wanna use it you just need to focus on the good stuff, which is the economy first and foremost.
Generally I'd only advise doing it if you find a T1 Free City with no walls and limited population as your 3rd/4th city potentially. It saves you a bunch of imperium, but now that you need high level Town Halls to do stuff you can't be burning down T2+ Free Cities early game (where the imperium is strongest) most of the time.
@@persepheliaeve8256 Dark doesn't really get much out of it other than Fetid Legion interactions, but High tends to be strong enough that it can get pretty creative (including Necromancy stuff). If you *are* going high you probably want to be on the same basic structure as Industrious - you can get good value out of a lot of the full Necromancy package so no need to be super shy. Just know that if you are doing Wightborn and stuff you'll have less total souls for Reaper spamming so you need to be careful with when you apply them and in what form so as to not sacrifice your early and mid and still be able to body people later when Reapers come online.
@ i had not actually ever thought about declaring early war on my vassal to get a wightborn hero. My first necro build was high necro and mystic (summoner) necro has now grown on me but I find myself focusing on necromancer wightborn hero builds so maybe it is time to try High Necro again
@@persepheliaeve8256 Yeah, it's soooo good to attack your local free city that typically you need to look for reasons *not* to do it. Necromancy's early power, therefore, is kinda a consequence of what it really "does," which is pay you out for doing the things you "want" to do be doing early anyways (conquer your Free City, fight stuff, and get good heroes).
@@persepheliaeve8256 If you haven't gotten around to watching "Let's Vivisect Age of Wonders 4" I think you'd probably dig it. Helps also explain the theory behind this Necromancy Build Guide too.
Hey, so how does high culture pair with necromancy? Do you pair awakeners and necromancers and try to juice up units or do you just stick to the strong hero focus and later spam reapers?
@@PerennialSash High naturally has a lot of knowledge, which allows you to use Tome of Necromancy itself if you so desire. This in turn gives you easier access to Corrupt Souls, important as High does need Frontline stuff for creeping. Awakeners can be powerful backline units to control the battlefield engagements, but you always need an appropriate focus on your melee stuff if you are going to do autoresolves or PvP so don't attempt to spam Awakeners. "Try this @home" is High + Necromancy stuff if you want a deeper idea than that, but High's economy just supports massive resource expansion in the same way Necromancy tends to ask you to, so I'm pretty happy with the basic interaction.
Ok, you said that decaying gets countered by regenaration. From the tooltip and my own gameplay that I've seen with my own eyes, it says that decaying disables regeneration. I'm not 100% sure it removes all regen (but I think it does), but I'm 100% sure you can't remove it with regen
@@yeeterbohlen282 It might have been changed a while back, but *generally* counters operate multi-directionally; I can check in debug later tonight to confirm though. It's not a *big* part of the conversation for Necromancy in any case, as decaying tends to be one of those things that forces cleanses when they are available and low opportunity cost, as being unable to heal is *very* dangerous in a PvP fight, and it's mostly just reasonable damage scaling in autos vs the map.
@sansalphawolf3293 Eh, Necromancy should be using minimal souls until they can spend it on something good. Skeletons are not. People advocating to use swarms of skeletons are doing a disservice to their viewers, as necromancy is *much* more than just one of the worst T1 units in the game.
@@wepg I never said I summon Skelletons I do go out of my way to kill Heros and then resurect them to make "makeshift" armys made of "scraps" to wreck some guy who thought letting me start a war think it was good idea edit: its also always easyer to kill an army even with less battlepower when there is no hero to cast Spells and can demoralise enemys to the point of leaving the latter does happen not that often tho addendum: I sadly do have to agree that the T1 book is bad, it can set you up with a steady suply of souls if you are not strong enoth or have a lot of plagus/ recorce nodes near you
@sansalphawolf3293 Yeah, Tome of Necromancy isn't *bad* exactly but it is pretty narrow- I think you mostly take it for the Hero and souls economy early. It's functional in that it provides synergistic *economic* value, which is still quite useful, but it is a serious penalty to your military early in a game that rewards good military. If you wanna use it you need to be open to leveraging the extra souls for creeping as soon as your T2 tomes hit (ideally; the setup cost on Wizard Tower is expensive but absolutely worth it to pump some Corrupt Souls for clearing).
Opening necrotizing research/beginner spell on a Reaver culture can make the soul well and the two two mana upgrades a great alternative to production/draft that would be focused for early game Spanish Inquisition build.
Because who expects High cultured Armies of Paladin’s remains and undead cleric backlines declaring war by turn 10.
Only downside is the AI sometimes casting the Reaver damage spell instead of Necrotize which *will* sometimes happen. I don't know the weightings, so you'll need to observe for yourself, but I fear the reaper (this time the double stun bug).
Important aside: mention that console has the new Hero system meaning a reinstall is due for those that that haven’t played in in a while. I know you are a PC player, but the PS5 version really is a treat to play, especially given the fun of watching auto-battles.
---
Good Necromancer story: good paladins/clerics/mages dedicating their life and ::checks notes:: body means the life and body are seperate promises.
Meaning the Paladins have offered their skeletons for use in the army after falling.
@@bobroberts2581 Yeah! Flavor. Sure it's a *little* spooky on the front side, but I think it definitely makes "sense" if you are willing to get a little creative with the interpretation.
At TOR, this video is 7 hours away from premier. I just want to comment that picking Tier 1 Tome of Necro combos really well with being able to convert to Souls to Thralls as an Eldrich Soverign. In fact, 1 Thrall (= 10 souls) for an Astral Wisp is better value than 15 souls for a skeleton.
@@stevenxu5747 1000%. You don't *need* to do Sovereign on Tome of Necromancy starts, but it makes your life meaningfully easier. Death Knights are pretty legit tho, being able to play with a Bone Wyvern for clearing and *also* generic killing momentum big hero damage stuff is very powerful if you can survive the gauntlet.
Awesome entertaining video. Thanks for the effort.
I would like to add that crypt is a great source of knowledge, mana and souls income for necro. So better hold on those dead bodies, apart from the ones you like to reanimate.
Unfortunately the scaling is so low on the crypt that you really should sell the extra corpses unless you are getting *really* deep on a bigger game, as the power bump you get from cashing heroes for gold + equipment is a *lot*. There are some heroes who tend to be easier to abandon in the crypt, like if you are able to find the Bronze Ancient Wonder guarded by 3 Level 1 heroes with limited equipment, but most heroes you aren't planning on reanimating you do kinda want to sell ASAP, crypt or no.
Might be a different conversation at +10/+10 per turn, but like Dark's economic "bonus" for hoarding dead heroes, it just vaaaastly misinterprets opportunity cost and snowballing vs nominal late game scaling.
@@wepg Strange, I had hundreds of mana, research and souls coming in each turn from the crypt. Don't know the exact numbers, but around 700 research, 600 mana, and 300 souls.
@mangaranwow2543 Unless you are playing with a mod, every crypt is going to give +2/+2/+1 per dead hero per turn. Compared to the value you can get from selling heroes for 40 gold per level (and getting the items for your active heroes to clear more efficiently), this scaling is waaaaay too low to matter unless you have multiple crypts and are on Crimson Caldera (where you will end up with so many corpses you kinda don't *need* to sell them all for 20k gold).
@@wepg Thanks for your reply. I just noticed what most likely happening in my game. I had probably annexed one or two Haunted halls, which give +2 mana +2 knowledge +1 soul per dead hero in the crypt. Still very necro way to play, gaining power from your dead adversaries.
@mangaranwow2543 Yeah, once you get into the late game you can leverage crypts to supplement your souls, but I promise that in the first 40-50 turns you *really* want to sell as many hero corpses as you can get value out of. Level 1 heroes drop off pretty quickly on value so those tend to be the easiest to leave in your crypt, but *not* selling a level 5 you can't or won't reanimate that you pick up on T34 is pretty rough on your economy *now*, which tends to be meaningfully more important than your economy in 15 turns (as it feeds into your economy in 15 turns very well).
This kinda feels really sad. After listening to this the only conclusion I got for necromancy is "Wightborn heroes and reapers". It sounds like a super late game build
@@wegielek3 It's complicated in that in order to leverage Reapers you absolutely can't just start on Tome of Reapers, and Tome of Souls is quite powerful in a vacuum. Tome of Necromancy is complicated to get value out of, but if you play around with it enough I think you'll find that because it rewards you for doing what you wanna do anyways (kill Free Cities and do good powerful hero stuff) it's definitely playable, but the point of the build guides are to give you ways to use more niche things. Necromancy is definitely a little niche right now and complex, but you *absolutely* can use it.
Do note that if you are not against doing more battles manually, you absolutely can use necromancy from Tier 1, even with the Skellies, against Brutal AI.
Sure, it might not be as good as Tome of Cryomancy or Tome of Evocation builds that can flatten 1v7 Brutal AIs with Major Advantage, but it IS good enough to handle normal Brutals, and I assume that majority of playerbase are not going past that level of gameplay tbh.
@@forwenein2669 You can kinda make anything work in manuals, so if folks really want to use Skeletons that is the recommended format for them. That said, there's so much going on in Necromancy I don't think people should obsess about the very first introduction to using souls. That's like jamming Magic Missile on level 1 mages in Baldur's Gate. Neither particularly powerful nor particularly creative. We can do better.
What do you think of researching multiple tomes that have soul harvest stacking with each other to increase the number of souls you get from kills in battle? Because it seems like necromancy focus really has no passive/SPI unlocks and they feel pretty empty…
@@okonkwojones That would be pretty cool, but overall I think the biggest issue with Necromancy is primarily generic weakness to meta stuff (once Warbreeds, now Pyre Templars) as well as the "I'll just explode your corpse or stand on it" issue. Once those are resolved I think they'll be in a better place, but Skeletons will kinda always just be pure meme nonsense kinda no matter how you slice it. Necromancy does have some nice payoffs right now, it just has a lot of weaknesses too, so if you wanna use it you just need to focus on the good stuff, which is the economy first and foremost.
@ it also doesn’t feel very “necromancer”-y. It’s a *lot* better than at launch, but something is off.
I don't think you mentioned it here, but what's your opinion on using souls to re-build cities rather than imperium?
Generally I'd only advise doing it if you find a T1 Free City with no walls and limited population as your 3rd/4th city potentially. It saves you a bunch of imperium, but now that you need high level Town Halls to do stuff you can't be burning down T2+ Free Cities early game (where the imperium is strongest) most of the time.
@wepg bah, burn down everything:D
I am very curious about your impression of High Necromancy and Dark Necromancy
@@persepheliaeve8256 Dark doesn't really get much out of it other than Fetid Legion interactions, but High tends to be strong enough that it can get pretty creative (including Necromancy stuff). If you *are* going high you probably want to be on the same basic structure as Industrious - you can get good value out of a lot of the full Necromancy package so no need to be super shy. Just know that if you are doing Wightborn and stuff you'll have less total souls for Reaper spamming so you need to be careful with when you apply them and in what form so as to not sacrifice your early and mid and still be able to body people later when Reapers come online.
@ i had not actually ever thought about declaring early war on my vassal to get a wightborn hero. My first necro build was high necro and mystic (summoner) necro has now grown on me but I find myself focusing on necromancer wightborn hero builds so maybe it is time to try High Necro again
@@persepheliaeve8256 Yeah, it's soooo good to attack your local free city that typically you need to look for reasons *not* to do it. Necromancy's early power, therefore, is kinda a consequence of what it really "does," which is pay you out for doing the things you "want" to do be doing early anyways (conquer your Free City, fight stuff, and get good heroes).
@ makes sense! i really dont focus on reanimation as much as having my culture be wightborn. I will start attacking my vassal early! Great video.
@@persepheliaeve8256 If you haven't gotten around to watching "Let's Vivisect Age of Wonders 4" I think you'd probably dig it. Helps also explain the theory behind this Necromancy Build Guide too.
Hey, so how does high culture pair with necromancy? Do you pair awakeners and necromancers and try to juice up units or do you just stick to the strong hero focus and later spam reapers?
@@PerennialSash High naturally has a lot of knowledge, which allows you to use Tome of Necromancy itself if you so desire. This in turn gives you easier access to Corrupt Souls, important as High does need Frontline stuff for creeping. Awakeners can be powerful backline units to control the battlefield engagements, but you always need an appropriate focus on your melee stuff if you are going to do autoresolves or PvP so don't attempt to spam Awakeners. "Try this @home" is High + Necromancy stuff if you want a deeper idea than that, but High's economy just supports massive resource expansion in the same way Necromancy tends to ask you to, so I'm pretty happy with the basic interaction.
@wepg thank you very much for the breakdown!
Ok, you said that decaying gets countered by regenaration. From the tooltip and my own gameplay that I've seen with my own eyes, it says that decaying disables regeneration. I'm not 100% sure it removes all regen (but I think it does), but I'm 100% sure you can't remove it with regen
@@yeeterbohlen282 It might have been changed a while back, but *generally* counters operate multi-directionally; I can check in debug later tonight to confirm though. It's not a *big* part of the conversation for Necromancy in any case, as decaying tends to be one of those things that forces cleanses when they are available and low opportunity cost, as being unable to heal is *very* dangerous in a PvP fight, and it's mostly just reasonable damage scaling in autos vs the map.
Necromancy is basicly nice hero build you had now try to fight it your selfe
@sansalphawolf3293 Eh, Necromancy should be using minimal souls until they can spend it on something good. Skeletons are not. People advocating to use swarms of skeletons are doing a disservice to their viewers, as necromancy is *much* more than just one of the worst T1 units in the game.
@@wepg I never said I summon Skelletons I do go out of my way to kill Heros and then resurect them to make "makeshift" armys made of "scraps" to wreck some guy who thought letting me start a war think it was good idea
edit: its also always easyer to kill an army even with less battlepower when there is no hero to cast Spells and can demoralise enemys to the point of leaving the latter does happen not that often tho
addendum: I sadly do have to agree that the T1 book is bad, it can set you up with a steady suply of souls if you are not strong enoth or have a lot of plagus/ recorce nodes near you
@sansalphawolf3293 Yeah, Tome of Necromancy isn't *bad* exactly but it is pretty narrow- I think you mostly take it for the Hero and souls economy early. It's functional in that it provides synergistic *economic* value, which is still quite useful, but it is a serious penalty to your military early in a game that rewards good military. If you wanna use it you need to be open to leveraging the extra souls for creeping as soon as your T2 tomes hit (ideally; the setup cost on Wizard Tower is expensive but absolutely worth it to pump some Corrupt Souls for clearing).