Last updated on Mar 05, 2024 at 00:00 by Lexyu and Enzee
This is the perfect leveling guide for new players wanting to start with Necromancer!This page will cover everything and anything you could need to know about leveling the class,including which skills to use, what stats to prioritize, and what uniques are useful early inthe game.
1.
Introduction
This Necromancer mastery leveling guide is designed to get us started in the rightdirection with your new mastery, by offering a simple skill setup to assist uswhile we play through main story act of the game and begin the Monolithendgame. We have chosen a set of skills and passives that create an effectiveand yet simplistic play style that can rapidly push our character to level 70and complete the main campaign.
This build uses a Minion army on the battlefield, composed of
Summon Skeletons, 
Summon Skeletal Mages, 
Summon Bone Golems,
Summon Volatile Zombies and 
Summon Wraiths. With all theseMinions under our control, we have designed each of their skill trees to focuson keeping them alive while doing a good amount of damage going. The idea iswe don't want to spend the entire time re-summoning our minions, so we need tohave some strong defenses to stop our minions from dying all the time. The onlyskill we will be manually casting is our Summon Volatile Zombie, which wewill be using like time-bombs to send out on to the battlefield to explode.Overall, this build pushes content quite easily with our Minion army doing themajority of the work.
2.
Necromancer Leveling Passive Trees
Class PassivesSkill Passives
AcolyteNecromancer
Summon SkeletonSummon Bone GolemSummon Skeleton MageSummon Volatile ZombieSummon Wraith
2.1.
Acolyte Passive Tree
Acolyte is our base class to start this character off with. Our goal in thisPassive Tree is to gain some critical stats for Minions as they will be ourallies and major skills all the way to level 70. We start withForbidden Knowledge to boost our Intelligence which directly helps toscale our Minions. Next we want to take points in Dark Rituals for theincreased Attack and Cast Speed for our Minions. We take 7 points in Stolen Vitality forthe boost to our Minions Health and to hit the 20 point threshold in the tree. Lastly, we included thesingle node for Soul Aegis for the Minion Armor per level.
Now that we've completed the Passive Tree for Acolyte, we will be movingon to our Mastery Passive Tree. For this build specifically, we will befocusing all of our points into the Necromancer Passive Tree, which is our chosenmastery as well. This tree will synergize well with our Summoning skills and provideour Minions with powerful boosts to help us with the leveling process.
2.2.
Necromancer Passive Tree
The Necromancer tree will be the rest of our points, focusing on buffing ourMinions to carry us through the game. Our first major investment is the nodeRisen Army to increase our Minion's Damage, Attack Speed and Cast Speed.Follow this up by taking the two linked nodes; 3 points into Cursed Blood to allow us toplace 4 points into Aegisfall, which is quite important to our Minion armyfor the Armor Shred. However,we don't need to max it out, as Armor Shred has a bit of diminishing returns,and most of our minions end up doing more Fire Damage later on.
Next, we will put the minimum points into Blood Armourand Mortal Tether to allow us access to Unbound Necromancy. After that,you are free to take the pictured passives in whichever order you prefer.
Please note, there is no need to put more than 1 point into Mark of Punishmentas it is taken simply for boss damage, in which case your Summon Volatile Zombieconstantly dying will keep the debuff on the boss for an extra 25% damage.
2.3.
Summon Skeleton
As a summoner, this is the first summoning skill we get from the base Acolyteclass starting at Level 2. This skill will stay with us the entire levelingprocess as the minions are a solid choice with decent stats.
The highest priority for nodes in this Passive tree will be the ones thatadd an additional Skeleton to our available summon pool. Immediately path towardsHollow Walkers, Grave Walkers, andMarrow Walkers in that order. From here, head towards Mightier than the Sword,which will remove Warriors from your Skeleton pool. This forces Archers only, raising their survival rate since they willnow only attack from range, allowing your Bone Golems to tank for them. Once you have your Archers, take Dread Phalanx;this cuts your Skeletons in half, but buffs them substantially. Finish this Passive Tree off by capping the points in Unholy Rageand continuing onward to place the last two points into Multishot, which allows your Archers to shoot Fire Arrows.
2.4.
Summon Bone Golem
The next part of our Skeleton Army is going to be theSummon Bone Golem. These huge beasts act as tanks to protect us from harm. Though theyalso do decent damage early on, we will be focusing all the points in this Passive Tree intoallowing them to hold agro on enemies, increasing their Health and Armor stats, and providinga way for them to Leech Health through the damage they deal; this Leech also applies to us.
Prioritize pathing towards Tower of Bones, immediately making your Golem thetank in your party. Hunger should be prioritized next for the Health Leech.From here, path towards Twinned Golems, which lowers the Golems'stats, but you now have two of them. This equates to more overall damage, and much more Health between them.Finish the Passive Tree off by throwing the last four points into Amalgam of Primalists,adding a hefty amount of Armor to them.
2.5.
Summon Skeleton Mage
Summon Skeletal Mage has two uses for us. The first, and more important aspect, beinga full conversion to Pyromancers through Inferno. From here, focusOrder of Death to add an additional Mage to your summon pool. This willprovide a substantial amount of Minion Fire Damage to our output, quickly clearing pathways for us aswe traverse maps. To further enhance the Mages you have, take all the points in Gravetide.This adds 15 flat Spell Damage to their attacks.
This skill doubles as a movement skill as well; by taking the node Grave Passage, weteleport to a target location when we summon a new Mage. This is perfect for moving through maps swiftly asyour Minion army follows behind you, making quick work of mobs in your wake. Path towards this node last.
2.6.
Summon Volatile Zombie
Summon Volatile Zombie is our main spam, and we are going to convert theseZombies into a Fire Skill to coincide with the Fire and Ignite Damage that mostof our minions will be doing. This means immediate pathing towards Flammable Vitae,through the starting point of Forceful Commander.From here, focus on maxing out their effective damage through Fervor andRavenous .
2.7.
Summon Wraith
The first step with this skill is to remove the decay on Wraiths, which also limits our summon count with them to two.This is done through the node Twin Spirits; we will need Mana to cast Summon Volatile Zombie.Continue into the next node, Sequel of Avarice, in order to bolster Wraiths both offensively, with amore damage modifier, and defensively, by nearly doubling their Health.
From here, we want to a chance to summon a Flame Wraith with Flame Wraith on theleft hand side of the skill tree. This node only gives us a 22% chance to get a Flame Wraith,which generally means you will have only one Flame Wraith at a time, so we will be increasing this chancewith some of our targeted Idols later in the guide. Finish the Tree with Dawn of the Fall,which will provide a way for our Wraith's to sustain themselves through the Critical Damage they deal.
Image courtesy of Last Epoch Tools
3.
Mechanics and Playstyle
The playstyle for this Minion leveling build is as simple as summoning yourminions to full capacity and then heading into battle. We have targeted ourskill trees to amplify our Minion Army's damage and survivability as much aspossible, however, you will need to resummon any units that die. This is themost difficult challenge as you level up, but it will become easier as youscale towards level 70. Be sure to use Summon Skeletal Mage skill to jumpout of danger.
There is no set rotation of skills, it's basically a 'one button' build.Just work on keeping your Minion Army refreshed if you lose any minionswhile moving throughout the map. This won't come up too much except duringBoss fights, as some of them may take heavy damage from Boss skills. Overall,this play style is very relaxed, and when lined up with some of the recommendedUniques can make for a hugely rewarding playthrough.
4.
Gearing and Affixes
As for gearing, we will be targeting Minion based stats and someHealth/Resistance for our summoner. You should aim to upgrade your gear using aloot filter to highlight the gear you need with the right affixes. This gamealso carries a substantial crafting system where you will be able to augmentpieces of gear you find with either strong affixes or craft new one you can addto an empty slot.
| Attributes | Offensive | Defensive |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Vitality | Increased Minion Damage Flat Damage for Minions Increased Minion Critical Strike Chance Critical Strike Chance for Skeletons Critical Strike Chance for Skeleton Mages | Armor Resistances Minion Damage Leeched as Health Reduced Damage of Critical Strikes (no more than 100%) Increased Minion Health |
4.1.
Useful Uniques
As you go through the game we will come across many uniques. While the majorityof low-level uniques should be set aside for leveling alts,we will want to keep our eyes out for these specific items toassist with the build. While none of these have huge build changing affixes, themajority of them are good items you can scale easily with. One ofthemes you will see with these uniques is Movement Speed; this affixaccelerates gameplay even just from being able to go around faster thebattlefield.
If you happen to come across the unique wand 
Reach of the Grave, thiswill likely be your best option for a weapon until you find Exalted items in the Monolith.On non-unique weapons, there aren't many good prefixes for our build, so itcan be hard to get an upgrade during the campaign. Despite its level, this uniquewand carries some great damage and Attack Speed buffs for our Minions.
Another great unique for Minion builds is the 
Doublet of Onos Tull.This unique leather coat grants us Flat Health and decent bonus to our Minion'sdamage, in the form of a 40% chance to inflict Bleed on enemies.This chance to bleed is further built out with an increased duration modifier tokeep them ticking away on our enemies. However, unlike the wand, this could be replacedby a decent crafted chest as early as level 30.
As for a great unique ring that can be used for any class to boost ourjourney through the campaign is the 
Arboreal Circuit. This level 1 ringboasts two valuable stats for our build. The first is the increase in Armor toour Minions and the second is the Movement Speed for both us and our Minions.While this may not stand out as important, Movement Speed is one of thebest time savers we can find and often makes your minions more effective at dealing damage.
Speaking of accelerating, we must talk about unique boots, particularlythe 
Advent of the Erased. These boots boots can grant us Haste,and while this chance is low, it is likely to happen frequently with mob groups dying constantly.
Despite the lower level of these uniques, they are quite valuable and canhelp push you that much faster to level 70. These can all be expanded intofantastic items if found with Legendary Potential for any future levelingneeds. Good luck hunting and may your luck be high!
5.
Idols
Idol slots are gained through the campaign, unlocking small bonuses andunique affixes for the player to discover and augment their builds with. The Idol screenconsists of a grid system for the player to fill out with different sized idols,eventually filling in every part of the grid. As the Idol shape increases (1x1, 1x2,1x3, 1x4, etc.) the stronger an affix you might find for your build.
The target Affixes we want to look for in our Idols are:
- +% Health
- + Health
- Any Resistances needed
There is a class idol for Acolytes that we will want to look for. It worksspecifically with our Summon Wraith skill by increasing our chance tosummon a Flame Wraith instead of a standard Wraith. If you can find one with a decentroll, you may only need one to consistently get two Flame Wraiths summoned. The specificaffix is Chance for Summon Wraith to summon a Flame Wraith Instead.
Once your Resistances are sorted and you have at least one of the 2x2 Idols mentioned above, your best bet willbe to get a couple Large Immortal Idols with Increased Health and Shared Increased Critical StrikeChance.
6.
Progressing to Endgame
This build will carry you all the way to the start of the Monolith, whereyou will want to decide on an Endgame build to follow. We have several optionsavailable for Necromancers.
Wraithlord Army BuildMinion Autobomber BuildFire Wraiths BuildSkeletal Frost Mage BuildAbomination BuildGolem Betrayal BuildMinion Army Build
7.
Changelog
- 05 Mar. 2024: Guide updated for 1.0.
- 30 Nov. 2023: Guide added.
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