Necromancer

"Mastery over life and death was chief among my early pursuits. I began in humility, but my ambition was limitless. Who could have divined the prophetic import of something as unremarkable... as a twitch in the leg of a dead rat?

I entertained a delegation of experts from overseas, eager to plumb the depths of their knowledge and share with them certain techniques and alchemical processes I had found to yield wondrous and terrifying results. Having learned all I could from my visiting guests, I murdered them as they slept.

I brought my colleagues back with much of their intellect intact - a remarkable triumph for even the most experienced necromancer. Freed from the trappings of their humanity, they plied their terrible trade anew: the dead reviving the dead, on and on, down the years. Forever.

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- The Ancestor

The Necromancer is an Unholy/Eldritch boss that appears in the Ruins. He is one of the reanimated scholars that collaborated with the Ancestor, murdered and then brought back with much of his intellect intact, but with little to no humanity remaining. After the Ancestor's death, the Necromancer and his Apprentices took over the Ruins, using their magic to bring the corpses buried there back to life as their servants, continuing their unholy experiments with necromancy.

Behavior
The Necromancer will always start in position 1. Each time he uses an attack, he creates a Skeleton enemy in rank 1, steadily pushing himself back until he is in position 4, where his attacks no longer spawn anything. His attacks do not have to hit a hero in order to trigger this ability - therefore the only way to stop him summoning a minion in a turn is either to stun him, or for there to be 3 of them existing already.

The Necromancer notably has no weighted skill selection or targeting, making his series of attacks effectively random.

Strategy
Unlike most Unholy type creatures, the Necromancer can bleed; however, the skeletons he spawns are immune, making this much less of a viable strategy. For a boss, he is also quite susceptible to being moved, though his attacks also move him back 1 in addition to summoning.

The most recommended way to deal with this boss is through powerful backline damage, as he will likely spawn enemies faster than the party can kill them.

The Crusader is by far one of the best heroes to take on the Necromancer, as he deals extra damage to Unholy creatures. The best skill to use here is Holy Lance, which is able target the Necromancer in any position except the very front. For an ideal setup, position 2 Crusaders with Holy Lance in either the 2nd and 3rd, or 3rd and 4th positions, using each Crusader's Holy Lance to move the other back. Try to ensure that the Crusader in the back has a (Higher) SPD (as you want him to Holy Lance first- thus your Crusader in rank 2 gets moved back, allowing you to repeat this process). With the Crusader's high damage and bonus to Unholy and Holy Lance's crit chance, the Necromancer will go down very quickly.

An alternative strategy is having a high-damage hero like the Leper attempt to defeat the skeleton as the Necromancer spawns them, while having the other characters focus on attacking the Necromancer. In terms of priority, Bone Soldiers and Bone Defenders should be killed quickly to mitigate damage, and prevent the Necromancer from being guarded. You may safely ignore any of the Bone Rabble the Necromancer summons because of their low damage and lackluster utility.

The Hellion is also a powerful hero against the Necromancer, as her high damage can attack all positions; even her bleed can be useful if given the opportunity to use it. Her Iron Swan ability is especially useful for constantly dealing full damage to the Necromancer when it is at the very back. A Plague Doctor could also be a useful hero for her blight abilities, since many of the enemies in the Ruins are immune to bleed effects.

Heroes such as the Occultist or Bounty Hunter can constantly pull him to the front and put him in range of your heavy-hitting frontline fighters, though they will need trinkets to assist in this at higher difficulties. Alternatively, a shuffling skill like the Plague Doctor's Disorienting Blast or the Bounty Hunter's Flashbang have a chance to move him forward, with the added benefit of having a chance to stun the Necromancer to prevent him spawning more enemies. His stun resist is fairly high, however, so this may not be a consistent strategy.

This fight becomes much harder on higher difficulty levels, as the Necromancer starts to spawn more heavily-armored enemies and enemies with Stealth as well, making it difficult to clear the frontlines to put him in range of a Crusader. If stealthed Skeletons are overwhelming your party, an Arbalest's Rallying Flare should be able to erase stealth from the whole lot, leaving your melee classes free to start tearing their way towards him.

As of The Color of Madness patch, all of the Necromancer's summoned minions are life-linked to him and will expire when he does.

Trophy
After completing the Necromancer's champion quest, he will drop his collar as a Trophy.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Veteran =

Champion =

The Necromancer's summoning will occur regardless of if the attack hits a hero or not. The exact enemies summoned vary and depend on the boss's difficulty:

Barks
Every base game hero (and Musketeer) has a unique bark as a reaction on each of Necromancer's attacks. The two DLC heroes—Flagellant and Shieldbreaker—don't have unique reactions and can use only generic barks. Some heroes share their unique and generic barks.

The Flesh Is Willing = The Crawling Dead = Six Feet Under =