In the long term, the Necromancer is quite possibly the most difficult character to play. Certainly he is the easiest misled along the path. This is quite possibly due to the flexibility in his morality. If the Necromancer focuses in any one area, to the exclusion of another area, he may well find himself at a dead end as a result. The ability to raise the dead has its own peril, as the undead are mindless servants, and are easily confused in later levels. Poison and Bone spells are perhaps the most effective for the Necromancer in the end, but are difficult to start with. Certainly developing his curses is the way in which the Necromancer can be most effective in a team, but this can be limiting on his own.

The Necromancer's characteristics are largely dependent on other factors. He will need mana more than any character save the Sorceress. To this end, if he can not find enough mana generating items, he must boost his energy. At the same time he is similarly cursed as the Sorceress is, with poor physical characteristics. He, too, needs strength to wear decent armor, good dexterity to hold his own in melee combat, and better vitality so that champion monsters do not destroy his life essence in a quick series of hits.

In terms of items, the Necromancer would seem to be less dependent. Mostly he should look for items to keep him alive or to regenerate mana. The Necromancer requires guile to play, and he should not shrink from his natural strategy despite the complaints of other characters. Those who are less gifted often decry intelligence and cunning. Certainly the Necromancer should always seek after quality armor.

Skill Strategies
The Necromancer's unique abilities allow for some interesting combinations when it comes to skill selection. Unlike the other classes where skill specialization is the way to go, it is to the Necromancer's advantage to advance through all three skill trees and use the skills to complement one another. The Summoning Spells will help provide minions that will absorb the damage from the hordes of monsters that are sure to come. The Poison and Bone Spells will provide the direct damage needed to produce the corpses that the Necromancer draws his power from. The Curses will increase the rate at which the Necromancer and his minions will be able to slay the offending monsters.

Summonables
Of the summonable minions, Golems are the single strongest companions to have at your side. These towers of might are able to take punishment that might otherwise seriously wound your Necromancer. Combined with Curses, they can inflict considerable damage as well. The only drawback is you can only have one type of golem with you at a time. Don't waste too many points on the lower level golems since at the higher levels, you will want to upgrade to Iron or Fire Golems. If you absolutely must increase the effectiveness of your golems at an early level, put points into Golem Mastery rather than putting points into the golems themselves. This will ensure that the more advanced Golems will benefit from the passive upgrade as well as the lowly Clay Golem.

Revived monsters can be almost as good, if not better than Golems when the situation demands them. The biggest advantage of Revive is that you can summon almost any fallen enemy and have them fight for you - utilizing the special abilities that they have at their disposal (except for resurrection of fallen companions). This means that with Revive you can pick and choose whether or not to concentrate on melee or ranged attack minions, thus filling any gaps that you might have with your existing Golem or Skeletal minions. The short lifespan and high mana cost of Revived monsters are the main restrictions for this skill so use it with care - but don't hesitate to provide support for your Golems with this skill if you have the mana to spare.

Skeletal Mages are also very useful to have around with their variety of ranged attacks. Since they are attacking from a distance, you don't have to worry too much about their durability in combat. Each summoning will produce a random mage with a concentration in one of the four magic types: cold, fire, lightning and poison. If you aren't happy with the mage types that you've raised, simply resummon until you are. With the relatively low mana cost you should be able to have a good combination of mages within a few summonings. Also since the mages use a ranged attack, they will provide ample support for your golem without getting in the way of melee combat.

The Skeleton warrior minions are the least effective of the summonables. Being melee attackers, they will always attempt to get to an enemy within range. They also serve as poor cannon fodder and they don't inflict much damage. While helpful at the very early levels, they won't carry their weight very well in the later levels. There are far better skills to place points into once your character reaches level 6.

Magic Items and Minions
Some Magical Prefixes and Suffixes will not work when your Minions make the the killing blow on a monster. Some of these include %Life/%Mana Steal Items, Items that increase Gold from Monsters, and Triumphant items which give +1 to Mana for each kill. Almost everything else should work with Minions.

Damage and Destroy
The Necromancer's Poison and Bone spells are some of the most powerful damage spells found in the game. In particular, Corpse Explosion (CLVL 6) and Bone Spear (CLVL 18) can be your most useful skills throughout all your adventures as a Necromancer.

Corpse Explosion has the interesting property of causing a proportional amount of damage rather than a fixed amount AND causing this damage as an area effect. What this means is that since it causes 70 - 120% damage of a corpse's hit points, you will be able to wreak an unnerving amount of damage to monsters with a minimal number of casts - no matter what level the monster is. By putting more points into this skill, you can increase the range of destruction - which can be particularly useful in tight situations. Once you become proficient with selecting targets with the most hit points, you will be able to kill weaker monsters in one blow while still heavily damaging the stronger monsters.

An interesting side effect of this spell is that exploding corpses will often produce many more corpses for you to explode. Once you get these chain reactions started, you should easily be able to mow down entire legions of monsters unfortunate enough to be in your way. The only drawback of this skill is that you need an initial corpse to catalyze the chain reaction and for this you will either need to rely on you or your minion's ability to kill in melee combat, or use a powerful direct damage spell like Bone Spear, Bone Spirit or the Poison spells to get your first corpse.

At level 18, your Necromancer will become a death machine with the Bone Spear spell. It can cause serious damage with each hit and it has the ability to pierce one target and continue on its path to damage all others in its way. In tight corridors where enemy monsters are lining up to get you, Bone Spear will clear a path with frightening efficiency. This skill will probably be your best weapon from level 18 and up.

If your style of play favors the slow death of your enemies as opposed to instant death, be sure to put a few points into the Poison spells. Poison Dagger, Poison Explosion and Poison Nova are all capable of causing massive damage to a monster, however, there is a duration time associated with each spell. As the Hit Points drain from your enemies, you will need to continue to avoid their attacks until the poison has run its course. If you want your Necromancer to be physically fit, using Poison spells is a good way to spend a little time jogging around while your foes battle the toxic effects of your actions.

Curses
For Necromancers that rely heavily on minions to do their dirty work, using Curses will definitely help speed the effort of the hard working Golems, Skeletons and Revived Monsters. There are a wide variety of curses available and depending on your style of play, the Curses that work for one Necromancer may not work as well for another Necromancer. That being said, Curses can be categorized in one of two ways: damage-related or attribute-related.

Curses like Amplify Damage, Iron Maiden and Life Tap are all damage-related. Each has a way of manipulating either damage done or damage taken. Amplify Damage helps increase the damage dealt by you or your minions and is typically more useful in situations where you or your minions are physically superior to the monsters they face. Life Tap is also useful if you or your minions are dealing significant damage - since with each hit, a portion of that damage is converted into health. If the monsters are physically stronger, then Iron Maiden can be used to return double or more the damage back to the offending monster. Iron Maiden can also be useful in situations where you or your melee minions are completely surrounded. Since you or your melee minions can only attack one monster at a time, Iron Maiden can help reduce the HP of all monsters that are trying to hit you - so if you're tied up with tackling one monster, the others are damaging themselves as they attempt to attack you while you're vulnerable.

Attribute-related Curses are more general purpose than the damage-related Curses. These decrease one or more attributes of the affected monsters. For example, the Lower Resist Curse lowers all the resistances of the affected monsters (fire, cold, lightning, poison), Decrepify decreases the speed of the affected monster, etc. There are a wide variety of these curses and you can view each one in the Necromancer Curses page. There is less strategy involved with these Curses - just cast before combat and let them work their magic.

Unsummon
Use Unsummon to choose which type of Skeletal Mage you want. If you find you no longer want a Fire Skeletal Mage, Unsummon it, and create a new Skeletal Mage. You can do the same with Revive. You may also want to use Unsummon to get rid of Minions when they get in the way.