[1.0] The Definitive Necro Guide: Deck, Build, and Strategy (+Final Boss!)

Overview

The skeletons beckon back…

Intro

“Now that’s a lot of damage!”

UPDATE: This guide is (currently) not being maintained, yet most—if not all—of the strategies are still valid as of 1.1. Keep in mind there might be more synergies out there now that the game has been updated with new cards.

Welcome to the Definitive Necro Guide!

This guide includes all the info you’ll ever need to defeat any boss in the game and loop for a really good while if you want to farm resources. It assumes you know the basic gameplay stuff and you’ve unlocked the cards on the deck below—otherwise expect your run to be sub-optimal without them.

Though designed for 1.0, most of the strategies will work perfectly fine for 1.1.

Please keep in mind that following all the steps in the guide won’t guarantee success: there’s a lot of RNG in the background, and getting a bad batch of cards, traits, and items can definitely ruin your run. That said, expect your results to be much more positive and consistent if you do.

Let me know if you find the guide too basic/advanced, and as always comments and discussions are more than welcome!

Changelog:

• v1.7 (4/2/21):
  • Added note on the Antique Shelf camp item, perhaps the strongest supply in the game
• v1.6 (3/29/21):
  • Added section on Camp Supplies
  • Added extra common unlockable traits to trait tier list and reworked it a bit
  • More math
• v1.5 (3/17/21):
  • Added section on enemy level scaling
• v1.4 (3/13/21):
  • Added card drop probability
  • Removed Groves and added note on them
  • Added note on Battlefields and Prime Matters
• v1.3 (3/10/21):
  • Further deck refinement, prioritizing loot quality
• v1.2 (3/10/21):
  • Added tips and example setup for the Final Boss
  • Small deck refinement
  • Expanded on Blood Grove and Ruins combo
• v1.1 (3/8/21):
  • Removed Rocks and Mountains from the deck
  • Added Suburbs and Towns
  • Added Groves back
  • Comment on Swamp
  • Comment on Deserts/Dunes and Oases
• v1.0 (3/7/21):
  • Initial release

Deck

“This is the ideal necro deck. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.”

The deck is as follows, with the numbers in parenthesis indicating the probability for the card to drop:

• Road: Village (4%), Ruins (4%)
• Roadside: Vampires (4%), Battlefield (3%), Blood Grove (3%), Bookery (3%), Road Lantern (4%)
• Landscape: Forest/Thickets (16/14%), River (19%), Suburbs (24%)
• Special: Oblivion (3%)
• Golden: Ancestral Crypt

This selection prioritizes loot quality and encounter management, both of which are key to the Necromancer.

You can check out the ‘More on the Deck’ section for more info, but do read ‘Strategy’ to understand some of the logic behind these choices.

Stats

One of the best possible item combos, a.k.a., the stuff that can make or break your loop

The stat milestones we’re aiming for are the following:

• Skeleton Level ≥ Loop Level
• Skeleton Quality ≥ 40-50%
• Max Skeletons ≥ 4
• Attack Speed ≥ 100%

During your first loops you’ll be rotating items almost constantly to both reach and maintain the above stats. Keep Skeleton Level approximately equal to your Loop Level, overshooting it as much as possible while not letting the other two skeleton stats drop below their minimum: for survivability you need Skeleton Quality at 40-50% to get Skeleton Guards (the big ones) consistently and at least 4 Max Skeletons against bosses. As a guideline, you may for example trade Skeleton Quality for Skeleton Level as long as the first doesn’t drop below 50%. Rivers+Thickets should give you all the Attack Speed you need: don’t go into boss fights without at least 100%, and feel free to keep spamming this card combo up to 200-300%.

Our combination of Battlefields, Ruins, Bloody Groves and Villages will guarantee these items spawn more often than with other card combos.

All other stats (Vampirism, Counter, etc.) don’t matter much, though if you can try to prioritize Evasion—more Evasion never hurts (pun intended).

Strategy

“The Loop never ends.” (Actually it does, but whatever.)

Road and Roadside cards:

• We want Ruins for the great loot, since they almost always drop high rarity items (lots of stats) and this is very good for the Necro. The key to maximizing the benefit for this card is its placement: you should drop a Bloody Grove next to it directly touching the Ruins, otherwise the Scorch Worms have a 40% chance to escape and you may not get the loot. Its adjacent road tiles should be empty (the road leading to it is a priority, since once you’re out of the Ruins the Scorched Worms will be dead). Plan ahead by keeping a Forest and Bloody Grove card handy. Do not drop Ruins next to your campfire otherwise they will join the boss fight (!)
• As mentioned above, Blood Groves are key to dealing with worms, but even more they eventually spawn Blood Golems which drop fantastic items, but only if the grove is touching a cardinal tile (not diagonal) that is not a Village. However, you may want to avoid them if you don’t have good sustain traits
• Drop down Villages in between Ruins. They make opponents tougher but increase loot quality, and yield a lot of XP (the healing is a plus). Consider not dropping even-numbered villages (2nd, 4th, …) without an Oblivion card in your deck because Bandits will spawn, who have a 5% chance to steal a random item in your inventory per attack, which can be crippling. You’ve been warned…
• We want Battlefields for the easy loot. Minimize overlap (Blood Paths spawn Blood Clots which strike fast) and encounters with other enemies. Later on, after defeating the boss(es), they can be turned into Shipwrecks to spawn Sirens (if you dare…)
• We want Vampire Mansions for the loot vampires drop and to upgrade Villages to Count’s Lands when allowed. The first Mansions should be near your camp touching Villages so they turn into Count’s Lands (and your Watchtowers can help you). You can also place them touching empty tiles so you fight Vampires only with Slimes. Later you can start placing either them next to other Villages (or vice-versa) as you start getting stronger and hitting stat milestones
• Keep encounters manageable by dropping Road Lanterns as needed. Prioritize corners and possibly troublesome encounters (eg., Count’s Lands+Ruins). Ideally all roads should have one touching its tile. Once you’re you strong enough you can Oblivion them
• Bookeries are used to shuffle your card hand, such as turning Forests into more beneficial cards, and for upgrading Vampires into Vampire Mages, which drop better loot
• Turning Villages into Count’s Lands, as mentioned, is situational. It depends on how good your stats are, if you dropped a Lantern nearby, and if there are Ruins next to it: facing 4 Ghouls, a Vampire, and possibly 3-4 Scorched Worms is as tough an encounter as they come

Landscape cards:

• Build a River and lay Thickets next to them. This is key to every good necromancer build. Plan its path ahead of time so you maximize usable terrain: we’re aiming to achieve 100% Attack Speed fast, and eventually taking it all the way to 200-300%. Try not to use Forests by shuffling these cards in Bookeries, or simply rotating them out of your hand
• Suburbs and Towns are great since they allow getting more traits faster. Since traits make or break a Necro, they are extremely useful. Lay them down on the opposite side of your River+Thicket area
• Beware of A Village? spawning every 10 Forests/Thickets: initially they’re not much of a threat, but once your summoning speed is very high the Hero may start hitting the dummies themselves and getting countered for a lot of damage. Just keep an eye out and Oblivion them if needed, otherwise they’re great for Magic HP farming if you have the Unseen Care trait
• Drop a Forest/Thicket (or Grove) near your camp, then add a Bloody Grove touching the camp. This will kill boss(es) at 15% HP when you fight them. You can take this one step further by dropping an Oblivion card on the Forest/Thicket touching the grove so it becomes a Hungry Grove, killing enemies at 20% HP. You can also achieve this by dropping another Bloody Grove next to the first

Special cards:

• Always keep a couple backup Oblivion cards handy!
• Drop Beacons (if you brought them) on the inner part of the loop so that they touch a greater amount of road tiles; that way you get the most benefit per boss meter tick increase. Initially place them touching empty roads so your character goes faster and doesn’t let enemy count grow out of control (there are no Meadows so regeneration doesn’t matter). Place them touching encounter tiles as your Max Skeletons and Attack Speed grows. One should be touching your Camp since it doesn’t affect boss attack speed

Golden cards:

• Ancestral Crypt will allow you to increase your Max HP without the need of Mountains and Rocks. The additional resurrect at 100% HP is a great boon as well
• The Arsenal is a bad choice for the Necro because you will be stuck with your base HP for the whole expedition unless you bring Mountains and Rocks (which aren’t a good choice in my opinion) or once you acquire enough (10+) Antique Shelf camp items to counteract the lack of +Max HP. Even still, Shield drops lower the chance of getting the more useful Tomes which are your main means of increasing your Skeleton Level, your most important stat

And finally, but most importantly:

• Aim on facing the boss as soon as you hit all stat milestones (Skeleton level ≥ Loop Level, 40-50% Skeleton Quality, 4 Max Skellies, 100+% Attack Speed), because you get diminishing returns on your stat upgrades the further down the Loop Level you go. Loops 6-10 are usually the standard, but you can take it higher if needed, just don’t go overboard: remember that enemies scale faster per Loop Level after Chapter I. Don’t forget to use Oblivion cards to remove dangerous encounters during your final loop if needed

Traits

“Build for this feel?”

S-tier (instant pick):

• Laying Down One’s Life (any direct damage to the Hero will be evenly split between him and his skeletons) can reduce incoming damage by as much as 80% if you have 4 non-archer skeletons: that’s roughly the statistical equivalent of having permanent 80% Evasion (!). It also relaxes the need for Skeleton Quality, granting you more flexibility to choose items. Without question the best Necromancer trait
• Residual Heat (receive 3×loop HP after skeleton’s death) requires high Attack Speed, but is a fantastic perk. When combined with the trait above, you’ll be almost unstoppable

A-tier (pick if no S-tier):

• Field Practice (+0.25 Skeleton Level per loop) is a really good trait if picked as a first or second trait (provided you didn’t get an S-tier): it can mean as much as +2 Skeleton level on Loop 10 if you get it on Loop 3 for example. That’s a lot. It’s usefulness, however, degrades quite fast, so unless you get it as an early pick you can probably skip it
• Art of Control (+1 to maximum number of skeletons) is very useful in hitting stat milestones, allowing more flexibility when choosing items, and an extra archer/mage skeleton means on average +57% damage output* (once your Attack Speed is high enough to summon them)
• Unseen Care (permanent +0.5 bonus to energy armor for every summoned skeleton) is a very good sustain skill if gotten early, at least a couple of loops before facing the boss

*: assuming 1x friendly skeleton, 1x skeleton guard and 2x skeleton warriors, your average damage output per sec will be (22.74 * 0.54 + 14.22 * 0.41 + 32.42 * 0.63 * 2) = 58.96. Assuming 50/50 chance to get an Archer or Mage, you’re adding (56.74 * 0.5 + 76.73 * 0.5) / 2 = 33.37 extra damage per sec with a 5th skeleton, thus 33.37 / 58.96 gives us 57%. Note that since all these base values scale lineally to your Skeleton Level, the ratio will always be the same.

B-tier (pick if no S- or A-tier):

• Lightning Fast* (a Hero or his skeletons have a 20% chance to perform a quick 3-hit combo, with each hit dealing 50% damage) translates to +30% skeleton damage on average†. Quite good
• Counterattack (after Hero receives direct damage all skeletons have a 15% chance to immediately perform a counterattack) is an OK pick on good runs when your Max Skeletons count is high (5+) and if you have Horde to kickstart your summoning, but keep in mind it only triggers when you take normal HP damage, not Magic HP damage
• Omicron’s Technique* (+1 resurrect charge): good crutch that can save you in a pinch—take it only if you have Residual Life/Laying Down One’s Life, otherwise its usefulness is limited

*: unlockable trait.
†: 0.2 * 3 * 0.5 = 30% with each hit

C-tier (pick if no S-, A- or B-tier):

• Horde (3 strengthened skeletons will be joining the Hero on every loop to help in battle): the skeletons from this ability can exceed your current Max Skeletons stat. “Strenghtened” means that they will become skeleton warriors and skeleton guards instead of regular skeletons; they will not have any additional stats. This trait is good for increased survivability, particularly early when your stats aren’t great, but is very dependent on your map layout: if there are any A Village? early in your loop layout the Wooden Warriors will rip your skellies to shreds before you can get get any benefit out of them
• Edge of Impossible (20% chance to exceed the number of skeletons and summon 2 of them during the last summon) can be downright dangerous because if you’re at 4+ Max Skeletons you could get an extra Archer/Mage Skeleton on your last summon, and if one of your normal skeletons dies (the ones that soak up damage) you will not be able to replace it since now an Archer/Mage will be occupying the 4th+ slot. Get it only if you can consistently keep your Max Skeletons at 6+ because you’ve found good permanent items. Art of Control is a vastly superior alternative
• Bottomless Bottle* (40% chance not to spend a Healing Potion upon usage): extra potions are handy; scales into almost B-tier if you have all/most camp potion upgrades and are bringing Alchemy Shelf camp supplies
• Treasure Hunter* (5% chance for a chest to spawn on top of a killed enemy): more loot is never bad
• Skilled Architect* (upon each building, Hero gets 8×loop experience): bonus XP each time I place a card on the map? Sign me up

*: unlockable trait.

D-tier (pick if none above available):

• Preparation for a Ceremony (first two skeletons summoned in a day will be strengthened): “strenghtened” means that they will become skeleton warriors and skeleton guards instead of regular skeletons, and skeleton mages instead of skeleton archers; they will not have any additional stats. Not very advantageous since skeletons are disposable, and having your Summon Quality above 50% should mean you’re getting better quality skeletons consistently
• Shield of Faith* (upon killing an enemy, the Hero receives one Stained Glass charge which can protect him with 20% chance; max stack is 3 Stained Glasses): extra chance to ignore damage is always good, but is wasted against bosses
• Ambitions of the Dead (after killing an enemy, skeleton fully heals itself; its damage and HP are increased by 10% until the end of battle) only works well against multiple, weaker creatures and very high Skeleton Level (and/or Horde). Utterly useless against bosses, your real nemeses. Probably the worst trait of all

*: unlockable trait.

More on the Deck

Me: “Hey, I think my deck is good, what do you guys think?”
Other players:

L-Let us amiably discuss why I left some cards out…:

• I find Deserts and Dunes are a mixed bag since they severely delay you from hitting the +100% Attack Speed milestone. They tend to clutter your card hand, preventing you from getting the more useful Forests (and Suburbs) cards, though this can be mitigated to an extent with Bookeries. The -HP% doesn’t effect Archer-types (which the enemy has more of in the beginning), and it also affects your already low-HP Necro. Oases are even worse since they make Rivers lose their Doubling Effect of Adjacent Landscape Tiles bonus, meaning if you place Forests next to it you don’t get anything out of it. Placing Thickets next to a River, nets you +4/8/12/16% Attack Speed if 1/2/3/4 River tiles are touching it respectively, whereas with an Oasis you only get +2% speed ‘relative’ to enemies (-0.5% to yours, -1% to them); its effect only shines once you have a good amount of Forests/Thickets to balance out your Attack Speed loss, but even then the benefits usually take too long vs. Forests that are a fast straight-up gain. Anyway, if you’re taking these cards (they seem to be popular with Necro builds somehow), avoid placing Deserts (rotate them), and place Dunes normally, not adjacent to Rivers—at least not before you start getting triple digits on your Attack Speed
• Arsenal decreases your survivability by a lot, lowers item stats by 15% (!), and the most mileage you can get out of Shields are +1 Max Skeleton and +20% Skeleton Mastery (plus some negligible Skeleton Level). What’s more, it decreases the chances for the more useful tomes to drop. It’s definitely not a good trade-off. With the deck we’ve built you’ll get a lot of rare loot so it’ll be easier to hit the milestones, making this golden card generally not worth it. If you do try it out, you should definitely contemplate bringing Rocks and Mountains and/or the Loaf of Bread/Antique Shelf camp items since otherwise your HP will be forever stuck at base value
• Cemeteries almost made it into the card roster, you can definitely bring them along since enemy Skeletons drop good loot and attack very slowly. The reason why I didn’t add them to the deck is because Scorch Worms drop items of a higher tier, and having Cemeteries in your deck means there’s a lower chance of getting Ruins cards. On the other hand, it increases the overall probability of getting a creep card… The choice is yours
• Bringing Groves for faster card buildup and Max HP farming is a fair alternative, but consider you will be getting a good lot of them out of Ghouls in Ransacked Villages (and Scorch Worms). Ratwolves can proc bleeding through your Magic HP making them rather dangerous if you can’t summon big skellies fast enough, or don’t have the right perks
• Spider Cocoons are even worse: they attack very fast, lower your attack speed, and don’t have souls to increase your Max HP (if you’re going Ancestral Crypt). Expect to have trouble against them—Chapter IV particularly—unless you bring good Camp Supplies
• Swamps tend to drop lower quality loot for the Necro than Ruins. They help against Vampires, but you shouldn’t be having much problem against them early game (Watchtowers) or mid-game (you’ve hit the stat milestones)
• Beacons were initially a part of the build, but I’ve dropped them because I find they clog your hand more than anything. They’re an OK encounter management card
• Rocks and Mountains aren’t optimal: they add a +HP% bonus relative to your base HP, and since the Necro doesn’t have armor your means of scaling hit points are harvesting souls with the Ancient Crypt, which is quite adequate in providing enough HP by itself. Additionally, if you don’t have potions early Regen HP per Sec is a good crutch for sustainability, and later on you’ll be summoning strong big skellies really fast and they’ll shield you from damage (plus you’ll have some sustain traits). Furthermore, Rocks and Mountains spawn Goblins and Harpies which have very fast Attack Speed; these enemy types wreak havoc on the Necro. If you opt to take these cards, consider swapping your Ancestral Crypt with the Arsenal, and place them in a way you never generate a 3×3 area to avoid generating a Mountain Peak while keeping a couple of Oblivion cards handy for the Goblins
• Wheat Fields are bad. The Scarecrows attack in area and wreak havok on your skeletons, and the extra healing HP isn’t necessary on this Hero class
• You don’t need Meadows. Your skeletons and Magic HP mean you shouldn’t get hit as much as the Warrior. You’ll get more than enough healing from Villages, Residual Heat, potions, and the Camp
• Outposts hate the Necro, and you should too. This is a card that is perfectly tailored for the Rogue, though
• You’d only bring Chrono Crystals to pair up with Meadows (Warrior) or increase spawn rate (Rogue), but this is not our case
• Temporal Beacons are only good if you can hit the Watchers hard and fast (Rogue, anyone?), but our Necro’s summons are s l o w
• Last but not least, Prime Matters (the 3rd ghost spawn in a row) from Battlefields can sometimes drop Golden cards, which means you could potentially get an Arsenal or Ancestral Crypt from them! It’s definitely a gamble though, since they have a chance to slay their opponent on their 6th hit… For longer loops it can be a nice boon, but once you get the card I’d say it’s safer to remove Battlefields from difficult encounters since Prime Matters can end your expedition prematurely

Final Boss

“I’M LOOOOOOPING!”

The final boss is tricky. You will get hit, period, so you need to increase your survivability as much as possible:

• The first way is by picking Ancestral Crypt which increases your max HP per enemy w/soul killed since Rocks and Mountains are utterly wasted on the Necro, and also grants an extra resurrection at full HP. If you’ve accumulated Antique Shelf camp items, you can bring those along
• The second is by picking a good perk combo, mainly Laying Down One’s Life and Residual Heat. To increase the chances of those two perks spawning you need Suburbs and Towns to increase creature kill XP so you get more skills before facing the boss
• The third is by facing all bosses as early as possible: enemies start at 110% base strength on Chapter IV, and each Loop increases enemy strength relative to yours by +4%—this can add up fast, and it also means that the higher the Loop Level you are, the more Skeleton Level you will need to be on par with enemies (+14% per loop), as well as Base HP and Magic HP

The three earlier bosses will require extremely careful placing of the card hand you’re dealt:

• Avoid early wasteful cards such as Deserts and Dunes since Oases don’t increase your relative Attack Speed fast enough, and early-game the -HP% to creatures isn’t as vital as Attack Speed. You should be laying down Rivers+Thickets instead
• It’s better to wait for your hand to be rotated and wait another Loop than placing cards you don’t immediately need, ie., laying too long of a River’s path ahead of time, placing Forests instead of Thickets, adding too many Suburbs (I wouldn’t place more than 5-8 for the first boss), etc. Don’t wait more than one loop, though: remember that enemies scale faster in this Chapter…
• Concentrate on Battlefields, Bloody Groves and Ruins since these give amazing loot (from free chests and both the Blood Golems and Worms getting killed by the grove)

Example lazy setup:

Notice placement of Battlefields for easy early loot on the right, and Village+Ruins layout on the left.

For optimal Forest+River placement, check out this guide

Also my Skeleton Level was way below the required for Loop 15 on Chapter IV, which is 25.74, so it’s still doable without this stat being optimal. For more info on this, see section below.

Optimal Skeleton Level (a.k.a., The Math Section)

“I’m sure someone will read the math section. I’ll just wait…”

A special write-up on Skeleton Level is required given its importance to the Necromancer. It’s time to do some math 😨

The table below shows both the base and loop bonus applied to enemy stats on each Chapter:

The Base Bonus is added to the base stat, which is then multiplied by the Loop Level, which in turn is additively multiplied by the Loop Bonus per Loop after the 1st. Thus the equivalent Skeleton Level per Loop to keep up with enemy stat increase is as follows:

As we can see, the game punishes you severely the longer you loop, particularly in the later Chapters. Let’s take the last row as an example: for your skeletons to have the expected stats to face a given enemy on Loop 20 on Chapter IV, you would require a whopping 38.72 Skeleton Level—almost double the Loop’s Level—to be on the same stat level as you were during the first loop.

I hope the table above shows why it’s so important to face bosses as early as possible: the longer you take, the exponentially faster they are improving, and the more difficult it gets to keep up.

Here’s the same table in terms of how much percentually it differs from the expected Loop Level strength (0% = balanced):

eg., for Loop Level 12 on Chapter III, we would require a Skeleton Level that is +51% the value of the Loop Level, which gives us 18.12.

A more visual representation of how quickly things escalate is the following chart:

Typical to exponential behavior, the chart above shows that up to Loop 5 the scaling is roughly linear for all levels; on Loop 7 only the first two chapters are approximately linear; and after Loop 9 all Chapters are fully exponential, including Chapter I.

(As a corollary, in terms of pure enemy stats Chapter IV doesn’t differ all that much from Chapter III, but remember enemies have an extra ability, and then there’s this thing about four bosses…)

To conclude, the reason why you can still win even without hitting the Skeleton Level quota in the tables is because of all the other factors weighing in your favor: higher Max Skeletons count, better Skeleton Quality, more skills, and much faster Attack Speed—these are all multiplicative to your Skeleton Level. Regardless, the point still stands: have your Skeleton Level as high as possible!

Camp Supplies

“Having skipped the Stygian math section, our Hero proceeds into the more, erm, entertaining parts of the guide, such as those containing pictures.”

Of all three classes the Necromancer relies the least on Camp Supply items. That said, you may have some lying around, so it doesn’t hurt to stack as many of these as you can:

Best Furnitures:

• Antique Shelf (+1 to max HP for every whole Resource gained during this expedition): this supply is an absolute game-changer—perhaps the strongest camp item in the game in my opinion, with the Count’s Chair a close second—and can allow you to build up your Max HP to a formidable amount
• Alchemist’s Shelf (+1 to max number of Potions): extra potions are never bad; synergizes well with Bottomless Bottle perk

Best Tool:

• Jeweler’s Lens (raises chance of finding a rare item by 10%): the Necromancer needs loot rarity more than the other classes since we have to manage four stat modifiers

Best Food:

• Loaf of Bread (+10 max HP): a boon to the class with lowest HP

Best Jewelry:

• Old Painting (increases damage done to bosses by 4%): bonus damage to bosses—the biggest filter on any expedition—is just too good to pass up