Necromancer Skills

Minions, curses, and corpses are the Necromancer's working materials. He rarely meets enemies himself: raised servants take the blows, curses change how monsters fight and behave, and the bodies left behind fuel spells that would otherwise be unavailable. Play consists largely of managing a battlefield, placing minions, keeping the right curse on the right pack, and deciding which corpses to spend.

Each tree owns one of those materials. Summoning covers skeletal warriors and mages, the four golems, and Revive, which presses slain monsters into temporary service; a fully invested summoner holds ground with very little direct input. Poison and Bone carries the offense, with bone spells that deal magic damage to single targets, poison spells that work over time against groups, Corpse Explosion, and the Bone Armor, Bone Wall, and Bone Prison utilities. Curses deal almost no damage themselves. They lower defense and resistances, drain life back to the party, or remove enemies from a fight entirely by blinding them, making them flee, or turning them against each other.

Synergies run inside a tree rather than across trees, so builds settle into one and borrow lightly from a second: a summoner using curses for control, a caster keeping a single golem as a bodyguard. The familiar results are the skeleton-and-Revive summoner, the Bonemancer around Bone Spear and Bone Spirit, and the Poison Nova caster, with Corpse Explosion at home in nearly all of them.

Curses

Amplify Damage
Level 1Dim Vision
Level 6Weaken
Level 6Iron Maiden
Level 12Terror
Level 12Confuse
Level 18Life Tap
Level 18Attract
Level 24Decrepify
Level 24Lower Resist
Level 30

Poison and Bone

Bone Armor
Level 1Teeth
Level 1Corpse Explosion
Level 6Poison Dagger
Level 6Bone Wall
Level 12Bone Spear
Level 18Poison Explosion
Level 18Bone Prison
Level 24Bone Spirit
Level 30Poison Nova
Level 30

Summoning

Raise Skeleton
Level 1Skeleton Mastery
Level 1Clay Golem
Level 6Golem Mastery
Level 12Raise Skeletal Mage
Level 12Blood Golem
Level 18Iron Golem
Level 24Summon Resist
Level 24Fire Golem
Level 30Revive
Level 30