Festus a Necromancer Mage?? Ohhh My

[Festus]

Well, Ive never messed with Necromancy but I think I will give it a shot.  First I need a very nice Mage/Necro Suit of Armor.  Ideas?  I can buy it or Provide the stuff for someone to make it for me and pay for the effort.  Ideas?  Second, What would be the best skill set.  I dont mind going all the way to 1500 if needed but prefer to stick with 1200 max skill points.  I have a druid tamer now as well as another toon that is nearly finished with mage skills and archery.  I dont mind at all reskilling either if the consinsus is thats best.  I guess Im looking for info as well as build suggestions and a suit of armor that will fit the bill also.  Thanks all.  Cya soon ingame.  If i dont answer a pm im prolly macroing.  haha

[Foray]

Necro-Mage Core Skills:

120 Eval Int
120 Magery
100 Necromancy
100 Spirit Speak
120 Resisting Spells
120 Wrestle
120 Parry
= 800 Overall Levels

The rest of your levels can be spent as you see fit.

Focus and Meditation are options
Hiding and Stealth are options
Music and Discord/ Provo are options
80 Poisoning levels for l4 poison fields is also potentially useful
Inscription is a possible option
Anatomy and Healing also can work

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As for equipment you really need to work out if you want to build around:

* Vampire Form
- Can use mounts
- immune to l1 - l4 poison
- good passive stam/mana regen
- Suffers -25 Fire resistance

* Wraith Form
  - Can't use mounts
  - Can steal mana from enemies through damaging attacks (percentage based on Spirit Speak)
  - Suffers -25 Fire Resistance, -5 Energy Resistance, +10 Physical resistance, -5 Cold resistance

* Lich Form
- Can't use mounts
- significant amount of passive mana regen,
- 5hp degen (need combined HP regen of 6 from equipment to counteract)
- Suffers - 25 (?) fire resistance, + 10 Cold Resistance, + 10 Poison Resistance

* All Forms
- Requires you to take into consideration all of the above form penalties when making your suite.

* No Forms
-  Requies you to not concern yourself with any necromorph penalties or bonuses when making your suite.

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Once you have picked your style you then need to put together a suite that allows you to counteract whatever penalties you'll be suffering while at the same time giving you as much benefit to your standard magery play and possibly also assisting you on your other non-core skill choices. I'll be glad to speak further on this and can probably help you put together such a suite but you really have to decide on what if any morph direction you want to take your necromage through as it will impact your equipment options, the biggest offender being the massive fire resistance penalties.

Something else for you to be aware of is casting necromancy spells lowers karma and positive karma is of critical importance to Chivalry and Druidry so be-careful not to assume you'll get maximum benefits from those things if you are running around with negative or mostly neutral karma values.

[Howlinmadmurphy]

20 days later.....

Just some weird tidbits from perhaps a foolish person who did nothing but necromancers after they were added to uo.

For my mage focused characters with necro...

120 SS
60 Necro
120 Eval
120 Magery
120 Parry (unless I paired with alchemy or taming)

was my base to work off of.

why 60 necro...  cause thats all you need for wraith form and 100% corpse skin/blood oath and wisp familiar for even more mana.
why 120 ss...  that dictates how long corpse skin/blood oath and the like will last
Wraith form for unlimited mana in fights basically (paired with lots of LMC and slayer spellbooks = more mana than you know what to do with)

I only take Necromancy passed 60 if I want to spam wither, or if I wanted strangle/mace in pvp.  But with the changes to aoe magery spells here on sylvan I dont see why people would care too much about wither.

Usually had taming along with it for a meat shield while i corpse skin/flamestrike everything I saw.

[Cypress]

Whither is an area cold spell which is nice since cold damage is nice, and magery does not have an area cold spell that I remember.

[Howlinmadmurphy]

I was just thinking with the direct magery spell damage this server has, it might overcome the difference of the damage types.  I love wither, but some dont like having to be in the middle of the nastiness to get its full effect, also the whole negative karma thing >: )