Necromancer, Anyone?

[secretmantra]

Has anyone had the opportunity to try out the necromancer yet? I have only used the melee types so far (monk, barbarian, cleric--not exactly melee, not exactly spellcaster), and am curious how he works. I'm thinking about starting one with him soon but he seems harder to solo than the others; any tips out there?

[InfiniteNature]

Upgrade as soon as possible to let him have at least light armor, and since his dexterity sucks when you get to level four upgrade that as well, or you can use the item creation facet to upgrade with some item.

I have played with the necromancer up to Baldur's Gate, really hard playing at first, but when he gets up there, he's practically impossible to beat, still like the monk better, like the more physical oriented but still magicalish fighters, don't really like the cleric though.

Since he's fairly magic oriented but sucks in nearly every other trait, upgrade his Greater Fortitude feat, his Willpower, and in addition invest in Ranged weapons, so Accuracy would be a definite must.

And whenever possible let the familiar do the fighting, whether it be skeleton or whatever, and just pump him with spells from a distance or with your bow.

It's actually pretty easy to fight with him, its only really hard to play with him at the beginning, when he has no armor, no long range weapons, nor even any fighting close range skills to speak off.

On a side note, do you know how many runes it takes to create a plus five weapon, seems like I can only get up to plus three weapon?

[secretmantra]

Hey, thanks for the tips.
It takes 16 to make it +5 I believe. It's sort of bizarre how the gems work. As I understand it, it goes something like this:
# Runestones/Effect
1/+1
2/+2
4/+3
8/+4
16/+5
(Putting in 3, 5-7, etc. is of no value and is a waste of your money. Only put gems into your item in the increments called for above.)

Now, this changes if you have any other gems in the item, if the number of gems don't match. For instance, if you have 16 Runestones and 2 Topaz, the effect is as if you had 2 Runestones and 2 Topaz. So, you should always put an equal amount of each gem you are inserting. In the example above, if you only have 2 Topaz to put in the item, then you should insert only 2 Runestones, or else the rest will be wasted.
Hope this helps.

[Sojourner]

Not bizarre - mathematical progression:

To make an item with nth enchantment, you need 2 to the (n - 1) power.

So, to make an item with a +6 enchantment, you need 2 to the (6 - 1) or 5th power which is 2*2*2*2*2 = 32, which gets really expensive.

[secretmantra]

That's right, with one correction. You can enchant most items only to a max of +5 (16 gems). The only exceptions to this (from what I've heard--haven't tried it yet) are jewelry, which can go up to +15 (in Extreme Mode ONLY). Keep in mind boots count as jewelry also.